Twice-Told Tales (45 page)

Years—many years—rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much
older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped
their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely
woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the
town as the "Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." A taint of insanity had
affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free
from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies
unmolested by the world with whose business or pleasures she had
naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight except
to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in
sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and proud
thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them
came the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called
her shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but
stood at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear
of the procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the
house of mourning and be the shadow of affliction and see that the
dead were duly buried. So long had this been her custom that the
inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as
the coffin-pall or the very corpse itself, and augured ill of the
sinner's destiny unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding
like a ghost behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal-party
with her pale presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall
just as the priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before
her lover had been dead a year. Evil was the omen to that marriage.
Sometimes she stole forth by moonlight and visited the graves of
venerable integrity and wedded love and virgin innocence, and every
spot where the ashes of a kind and faithful heart were mouldering.
Over the hillocks of those favored dead would she stretch out her arms
with a gesture as if she were scattering seeds, and many believed that
she brought them from the garden of Paradise, for the graves which she
had visited were green beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers
from April to November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon
the tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful and fantastic
life till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations
wondered how the dead had ever been buried or mourners had endured
their grief without the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. Still years
went on, and still she followed funerals and was not yet summoned to
her own festival of death.

One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with business
and bustle, though the sun now gilded only the upper half of the
church-spire, having left the housetops and loftiest trees in shadow.
The scene was cheerful and animated in spite of the sombre shade
between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants in white
wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed faces of sea-captains, the foreign
garb and air of Spanish Creoles, and the disdainful port of natives of
Old England, all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two
back-settlers negotiating sales of timber from forests where axe had
never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an
embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes and
courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious obeisances of the
gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far
from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from the pavement,
surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of loneliness rather
deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its site would have
been suitably occupied by a magnificent Exchange or a brick block
lettered all over with various signs, or the large house itself might
have made a noble tavern with the "King's Arms" swinging before it and
guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But, owing
to some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had been
long without a tenant, decaying from year to year and throwing the
stately gloom of its shadow over the busiest part of the town.

Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that
have been described was observed at a distance down the street.

"I espy a strange sail yonder," remarked a Liverpool captain—"that
woman in the long white garment."

The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others
who at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had
attracted his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of
conversation gave place to speculations in an undertone on this
unwonted occurrence.

"Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?" inquired some.

They looked for the signs of death at every door—the sexton, the
hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the
woeful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt
spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its
bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in
the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to
its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral except
the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.

"What may this portend?" asked each man of his neighbor.

All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in
their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were
prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one whose
presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet
is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on,
while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud
and the humble stood aside that her white garment might not wave
against them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity. Its wearer
appeared very old, pale, emaciated and feeble, yet glided onward
without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her course a
little rosy boy burst forth from a door and ran with open arms toward
the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips.
She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expression of
no earthly sweetness, so that the child shivered and stood awestruck
rather than affrighted while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her
garment might have been polluted even by an infant's touch; perhaps
her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy within the year.

"She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious. "The child put
forth his arms and could not grasp her robe."

The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of
the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron
knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture that
some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the
poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth—all gone from
their home long since and for ever unless their ghosts still haunted
it, fit company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.

An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his
gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.

"None, madam," said he, "have dwelt in this house these fifteen years
agone—no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral
you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among
themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin."

The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand and
a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than
ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer,
and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now
heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion which all conceived
to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the
pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more distinct
on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell on
the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance toward the
church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that
the people saw of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.

"Who undid the door?" asked many.

This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one
could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting
against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person
within was a negro and bore a singular resemblance to old Cæsar,
formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years
before.

"Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family," said one, half
seriously.

"Let us wait here," replied another; "more guests will knock at the
door anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open."

Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate or
the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was
wending his way homeward, when a coach—no common spectacle in those
days—drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage,
hanging close to the ground, with arms on the panels, a footman behind
and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front, the whole giving
an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was something awful in the
heavy rumbling of the wheels.

The coach rolled down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the
deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground.

"Whose grand coach is this?" asked a very inquisitive body.

The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,
gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach
door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day
examined the shield of arms on the panel.

"Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flowers de luce," said he,
then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.
The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long
residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and
wealth had given him no mean station. "He left no child," continued
the herald, "and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the
coach appertains to his widow."

Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made had not the speaker
been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady who
thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she
emerged the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her figure
dignified in spite of age and infirmity—a stately ruin, but with a
look at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid features
had an awe about them unlike that of the white Old Maid, but as of
something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed
cane. The door swung open as she ascended, and the light of a torch
glittered on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on the pillars of
the porch. After a momentary pause, a glance backward and then a
desperate effort, she went in.

The decipherer of the coat-of-arms had ventured up the lower step,
and, shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the
torch was held by the very image of old Cæsar.

"But such a hideous grin," added he, "was never seen on the face of
mortal man, black or white. It will haunt me till my dying-day."

Meantime, the coach had wheeled round with a prodigious clatter on the
pavement and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,
while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when the
people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient
lady, the spectre of old Cæsar and the Old Maid herself were not all a
strangely-combined delusion with some dark purport in its mystery. The
whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd
continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows of the
mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders, glad to
indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded
splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given and the
guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from
abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic
reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they
referred. So strong was the impression on some of the more imaginative
hearers that two or three were seized with trembling fits at one and
the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard three other
raps of the iron knocker.

"Impossible!" exclaimed others. "See! The moon shines beneath the
porch, and shows every part of it except in the narrow shade of that
pillar. There is no one there."

"Did not the door open?" whispered one of these fanciful persons.

"Didst thou see it too?" said his companion, in a startled tone.

But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third
visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A
few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red
gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front window,
as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This too was
pronounced a mere fantasy.

But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own
terror painted in the faces of all the rest.

"What an awful thing is this!" cried they.

A shriek too fearfully distinct for doubt had been heard within the
mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness, as
if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
whether to fly from the very sight of the house or to rush trembling
in and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and
affright they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their
clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught
them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of an
ordinary lifetime. He was a reverend figure with long white hair upon
his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast and a back so bent over
his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to
choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time before the
good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could be made to
comprehend such portions of the affair as were comprehensible at all.
But when possessed of the facts, his energies assumed unexpected
vigor.