On the first day of March, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty, I arrived at the parsonage. It was early morning when I saw the little wooden church-"steeple," in the distance, and the sun was not risen when she who said the "naughty words" and the grave minister came out to welcome me.
Ere the noontide came, I had learned who had gone from the village, all unattended, on the mysterious journey, since last I had been there. There were new souls within the town. And a few, that had been two, were called one. These things I heard whilst the minister sat in his study up-stairs, and held his head upon his hands, thinking over the theology of the schools; his wife, meanwhile, in the room below, working out a strange elective predestination, free-will gifts to be, for some little ones that had strayed into the fold to be warmed and clothed and fed. At length the village "news" having all been imparted to me, I gave a thought to my tower.
"How is the old place?" asked I, as my sister paused a moment in the cutting out of a formula for a coat, destined for a growing boy.
"Don't get excited about the tower yet, Sister Anna," she said; "let it alone one day."
"Oh, I can't, Sophie!" I said; "it's such a length of days since I sat in the grated window!"and I looked out as I spoke.
Square and small and high stood the tower, as high as the church's eaves.
"What could it have been built for?"
I knew not that I had spoken my thought, until Sophie answered,
"We have found out recently that the tower was here when the first church was built. It may have been here, for aught we know, before white men came."
"Perhaps the church was built near to it for safety," I suggested.
"It has been very useful," said Sophie. "Not long ago, the first night in January, I think, Mr. Bronson came to see my husband. He lived here when he was a boy, and remembers stories told by his father of escapes, from the church to the tower, of women and children, at the approach of Indians. One stroke of the bell during service, and all obeyed the signal. Deserted was the church, and peopled the tower, when the foes came up to meet the defenders outside."
"I knew my darling old structure had a history," said I. "Is there time for me to take one little look before dinner?"
"No," somewhat hastily said Sophie; "and I don't wish you to go up there alone."
"Don't wish me to go alone, Sophie? Why, I have spent hours there, and never a word said you."
"Ibelievetheplaceishaunted," slowly replied she, "by living, human beings."
"Never! Why, Sophie, think how absurd! Here's the key,a great, strong, honest key; where could another be found to open the heavy door? Such broad, true wards it has,look, and believe!"
As if unhearing, Sophie went on,
"I certainly heard a voice in there one day. Old Mother Hudson died, and was buried in the corner, close beside the church. My husband went away as soon as the burial was over, and I came across the graveyard alone. It was a bright winter's day, with the ground all asnow, and no footstep had broken the fleecy white that lay on my way. As I passed under the tower I heard a voice, and the words, too, Anna, as plainly as ever spoken words were heard."
"What were they, Sophie?"
"'But hope will not die; it has a root of life that goes down into the granite formation; human hand cannot reach it.'"
"Who said it?" I asked.
"That is the mystery, Anna. The words were plainly spoken; the voice was that of one who has sailed out into the region of great storms, and found that heavy calms are more oppressive."
"Was it voice of man?"
"Yes, deep and earnest."
"Where did it come from?"
"From the high window up there, I thought."
"And there were no footsteps near?"
"I told you, none; my own were the first that had crossed the church-yard that day."
"You know, Sophie, we voice our own thoughts sometimes all unknowingly; and knowing the thought only, we might dissever the voice, and call it another's."
Sophie looked up from the table upon which she had been so industriously cutting, and holding in one hand an oddly shapen sleeve, she gave a demonstrative wave at me, and said,
"Anna, your distinctions are too absurd for reason to examine even. Have I a voice that could command an army, or shout out orders in a storm at sea? Have I the voice of a man?"
Sophie had a depth of azure in her eyes that looked ocean-deep into an interior soul; she had softly purplish windings of hair around a low, cool brow, that said, "There are no torrid thoughts in me." And yet I always felt that there was an equator in Sophie's soul, only no mortal could find it. Looking at her, as thus she stood, I forgot that she Lad questioned me.
"Why do you look at me so?" she asked. "Answer me! Have I the voice of a man? Listen now! Hear Aaron up-stairs: he's preaching to himself, to convince himself that some thorn in theology grows naturally: could I do that?"
"Your voice, I fancy, can do wonders: but about the theology, I don't believe you like thorns in it; I think you would break one off at once, and cast it out";and I looked again at the rough tower, and ran my fingers over the strong protective key in my hands.
"Don't look that way, Anna,please don't!for your footsteps have an ugly way of following some will-o'-the-wisp that goes out of your eyes. I know it,I've seen it all your life," Sophie urged, as I shook my head in negation.
"Will you lend me this hood?" I asked, as I took up one lying near.
"If you are determined to go; but do wait. Aaron shall go with you after dinner; he will have settled the thorn by that time."
"What for should I take Aaron up the winding stairs? There is no parishioner in want or dying up there."
And I tied the hood about my head, and in a wrapping-shawl, closely drawn,for cold and cannon-like came the bursts of wind down through the mountain valleys,I went out. Through the path, hedged with leafless lilac-shrubs, just athrob with the mist of life sent up from the roots below, I went, and crossed the church-yard fence. Winding in and out among the graves,for upon a heart, living and joyous, or still and dead, I cannot step,I took my way. "Dear old tower, I have thee at last!" I said; for I talk to unanswering things all over the world. In crowded streets I speak, and murmur softly to highest heights.
But I quite forgot to tell what my tower was built like, and of what it was made. A few miles away, a mountain, neither very large nor very high, has met with some sad disaster that cleaved its stony shell, and so, time out of memory, the years have stolen into its being, and winter frosts have sadly cut it up, and all along its rocky ridges, and thickly at its base, lie beds of shaly fragments, as various in form and size as the autumn-leaves that November brings.
I've traced these bits of broken stone all the way from yonder mountain hither; and that once my tower stood firm and fast in the hill's heart, I know.
There are sides and curves, concaves and convexities, and angles of every degree, in the stones that make up my tower. The vexing question is, What conglomerated the mass?
No known form of cement is here, and so the simple village-people say, "It was not built by the present race of men."
On the northern side of the tower leaves of ungathered snow still lay.
In the key-hole all winter must have been dead, crispy, last-year leaves, mingled with needles of the pine-tree that stands in the church-yard corner; for I drew out fragment after fragment, before I could find room for my key. At last the opening was free, and my precious bit of old iron had given intimation of doing duty and letting me in, when a touch upon my shoulder startled me.