"You frighten me, my dear madam!" cried she. "For Heaven's sake,what is the matter?""Nothing, my dear, nothing," said the widow; then, whispering closeto her ear, "There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of. I amexpecting my bridegroom to come into the church, with my first twohusbands for groomsmen!""Look, look!" screamed the bridemaid. "What is here? The funeral!"As she spoke, a dark procession paced into the church. First camean old man and woman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired fromhead to foot in the deepest black, all but their pale features andhoary hair; he leaning on a staff, and supporting her decrepit formwith his nerveless arm. Behind appeared another, and another pair,as aged, as black, and mournful as the first. As they drew near, thewidow recognized in every face some trait of former friends, longforgotten, but now returning, as if from their old graves, to warn herto prepare a shroud; or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, toexhibit their wrinkles and infirmity, and claim her as their companionby the tokens of her own decay. Many a merry night had she danced withthem, in youth. And now, in joyless age, she felt that some witheredpartner should request her hand, and all unite, in a dance of death,to the music of the funeral bell.
While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle, it wasobserved that, from pew to pew, the spectators shuddered withirrepressible awe, as some object, hitherto concealed by theintervening figures, came full in sight. Many turned away their faces;others kept a fixed and rigid stare; and a young girl giggledhysterically, and fainted with the laughter on her lips. When thespectral procession approached the altar, each couple separated, andslowly diverged, till, in the centre, appeared a form, that had beenworthily ushered in with all this gloomy pomp, the death knell, andthe funeral. It was the bridegroom in his shroud!
No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such adeathlike aspect; the eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchrallamp; all else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear inthe coffin. The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow inaccents that seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fellheavily on the air while he spoke.
"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips, "the hearse is ready. Thesexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us bemarried; and then to our coffins!"How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her theghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful friends stood apart,shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom, and herself;the whole scene expressed, by the strongest imagery, the vain struggleof the gilded vanities of this world, when opposed to age,infirmity, sorrow, and death. The awestruck silence was first brokenby the clergyman.
"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat ofauthority, "you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by theunusual circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must bedeferred. As an old friend, let me entreat you to return home.""Home! yes, but not without my bride," answered he, in the samehollow accents. "You deem this mockery; perhaps madness. Had Ibedizened my aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery- hadI forced my withered lips to smile at my dead heart- that might havebeen mockery, or madness. But now, let young and old declare, which ofus has come hither without a wedding garment, the bridegroom or thebride!"He stepped forward at a ghostly pace, and stood beside the widow,contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare andglitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None,that beheld them, could deny the terrible strength of the moralwhich his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.
"Cruel! cruel!" groaned the heart-stricken bride.
"Cruel!" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in awild bitterness: "Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to theother! In youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims;you took away all the substance of my life, and made it a dreamwithout reality enough even to grieve at- with only a pervading gloom,through which I walked wearily, and cared not whither. But after fortyyears, when I have built my tomb, and would not give up the thought ofresting there- no, not for such a life as we once pictured- you callme to the altar. At your summons I am here. But other husbands haveenjoyed your youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart, and all thatcould be termed your life. What is there for me but your decay anddeath? And therefore I have bidden these funeral friends, and bespokenthe sexton's deepest knell, and am come, in my shroud, to wed you,as with a burial service, that we may join our hands at the door ofthe sepulchre, and enter it together."It was not frenzy; it was not merely the drunkenness of strongemotion, in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. Thestern lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone.
She seized the bridegroom's hand.
"Yes!" cried she. "Let us wed, even at the door of the sepulchre!
My life is gone in vanity and emptiness. But at its close there is onetrue feeling. It has made me what I was in youth; it makes me worthyof you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for Eternity!"With a long and deep regard, the bridegroom looked into her eyes,while a tear was gathering in his own. How strange that gush ofhuman feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away thetears even with his shroud.
