Mary Spencer Dark Wager Epub Dow
Kian Trip
At length a rumor reached our shores that the prince of Orange had ventured onan enterprise the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religiousrights and the salvation of New England. It was but a doubtful whisper; itmight be false or the attempt might fail, and in either case the man thatstirred against King James would lose his head. Still, the intelligenceproduced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the streets andthrew bold glances at their oppressors, while far and wide there was a subduedand silent agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole landfrom its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved toavert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm theirdespotism by yet harsher measures.
Meantime, the purpose of the governor in disturbing the peace of the town at aperiod when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment wasalmost the Universal subject of inquiry, and variously explained.
While this cry was at the loudest the people were surprised by the well-knownfigure of Governor Bradstreet himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, whoappeared on the elevated steps of a door and with characteristic mildnessbesought them to submit to the constituted authorities.
When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round,displaying a face of antique majesty rendered doubly venerable by the hoarybeard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragementand warning, then turned again and resumed his way.
The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves brought toan unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed theirsnorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however,blenched not a step, but, glancing his severe eye round the group, which halfencompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would havethought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the governor andcouncil with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authorityof the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops had gonefrom King street and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear,Bradstreet, the aged governor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than hisown. Others soberly affirmed that while they marvelled at the venerablegrandeur of his aspect the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowlyinto the hues of twilight, till where he stood there was an empty space. Butall agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watchedfor his reappearance in sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, norknew when his funeral passed nor where his gravestone was.
Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to watch thesunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my chamber window. Firstthe weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter lustre gives the spire an airyaspect; next it encroaches on the tower and causes the index of the dial toglisten like gold as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now theloftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework of the portalis marked strongly out. At length the morning glory in its descent from heavencomes down the stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowingwith fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves amongthe nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same sun brightens itevery fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness for theSabbath.
All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now, attuningits grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ. Who are thechoristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down from heaven this blessedmorn to blend themselves with the worship of the truly good are playing andsinging their farewell to the earth. On the wings of that rich melody they wereborne upward.
This time the party wavered, stopped and huddled closer together, while aslight scream was heard from some of the ladies and a confused whispering amongthe gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might have been fancifullycompared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly shaken by a puff of wind whichthreatened to scatter the leaves of an old brown, withered rose on the samestalk with two dewy buds, such being the emblem of the widow between her fairyoung bridemaids. But her heroism was admirable. She had started with anirrepressible shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on herheart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in dismay, shetook the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell continued to swing,strike and vibrate with the same doleful regularity as when a corpse is on itsway to the tomb.
Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to fade inthe air. A whisper, communicated from those who stood nearest the windows, nowspread through the church: a hearse with a train of several coaches wascreeping along the street, conveying some dead man to the churchyard, while thebride awaited a living one at the altar. Immediately after, the footsteps ofthe bridegroom and his friends were heard at the door. The widow looked downthe aisle and clenched the arm of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand withsuch unconscious violence that the fair girl trembled.
As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. First came an old man andwoman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head to foot in thedeepest black, all but their pale features and hoary hair, he leaning on astaff and supporting her decrepit form with his nerveless arm. Behind appearedanother and another pair, as aged, as black and mournful as the first. As theydrew near the widow recognized in every face some trait of former friends longforgotten, but now returning as if from their old graves to warn her to preparea shroud, or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles andinfirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens of her own decay. Manya merry night had she danced with them in youth, and now in joyless age shefelt that some withered partner should request her hand and all unite in adance of death to the music of the funeral-bell.
While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed that frompew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe as some objecthitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full in sight. Many turnedaway their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid stare, and a young girl giggledhysterically and fainted with the laughter on her lips. When the spectralprocession approached the altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged,till in the centre appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with allthis gloomy pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in hisshroud.
No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like aspect. Theeyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all else was fixed inthe stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin. The corpse stoodmotionless, but addressed the widow in accents that seemed to melt into theclang of the bell, which fell heavily on the air while he spoke.
He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside the widow, contrastingthe awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and glitter in which she hadarrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None that beheld them could deny theterrible strength of the moral which his disordered intellect had contrived todraw.
With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while a tearwas gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human feeling from thefrozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear, even with his shroud.
Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape that more than one woman ofdelicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet perhaps thepale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister as hisblack veil to them.
From the coffin Mr. Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners, and thenceto the head of the staircase, to make the funeral prayer. It was a tender andheart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued with celestial hopesthat the music of a heavenly harp swept by the fingers of the dead seemedfaintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister. The peopletrembled, though they but darkly understood him, when he prayed that they andhimself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this youngmaiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from theirfaces. The bearers went heavily forth and the mourners followed, saddening allthe street, with the dead before them and Mr. Hooper in his black veil behind.
After performing the ceremony Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his lips,wishing happiness to the new-married couple in a strain of mild pleasantry thatought to have brightened the features of the guests like a cheerful gleam fromthe hearth. At that instant, catching a glimpse of his figure in thelooking-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with whichit overwhelmed all others. His frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spiltthe untasted wine upon the carpet and rushed forth into the darkness, for theEarth too had on her black veil.
At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in thought,considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to withdraw her loverfrom so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other meaning, was perhaps asymptom of mental disease. Though of a firmer character than his own, the tearsrolled down her cheeks. But in an instant, as it were, a new feeling took theplace of sorrow: her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when like asudden twilight in the air its terrors fell around her. She arose and stoodtrembling before him.
7fc3f7cf58