THE SEXTON’S AVARICE.—THE DEAD AND THE LIVING.—THE RING.
It was all very well for the sexton to wish, and to try to got to
sleep, but actually to succeed in procuring
“Nature’s sweet oblivion”
was quite another matter.
In vain he tossed and turned about, there was no rest for him of any
kind or description, dreamless or dreamful, and still he kept repeating
to himself,—
“A dead body, with gold and diamond rings in the bone-house.”
These were the magic words which, like a spell that he was compelled
by some malign influence continually to repeat, kept Will Stephens
awake, until at last he seemed to lose entirely his first perception of
the fact that he might be only hoaxed, and all his imagination became
concentrated on the idea of how came the dead body in the bone-house,
and how was it that gold and diamond rings were left on its fingers in
such a place?
These were mental ruminations, the result of which was transparent from
the first, for that result in the natural order of things was sure to
be that the passion of curiosity would get the better of all other
considerations, and he, Will Stephens, would rise to ascertain if such
were really the state of things.
“It ain’t far off morning, now,” he reasoned with himself, “so I may
as well get up at once as lie here tossing and tumbling about, and
certainly unable to get another wink of sleep, and besides after all I
may be wrong in thinking this a hoax. There may really be such a dead
body as those fellows mentioned in the bone-house and if there be, I
ought certainly to go and look after it.”
We easily reason ourselves into what is our pleasure, and so while
these cogitatory remarks were uttered by the sexton, he rose.
He found that if he drew back the blind from before his window, the
moon which was now sailing through a nearly cloudless sky, would give
him amply sufficient light to enable him to go through the process of
dressing, so he at once began that operation.
“Yes,” he said, “I ought to go, it’s my positive duty to do so, after
getting the information I have, and if that information be untrue, let
it recoil on the heads of those who invented the falsehood. I shall go,
that’s settled. What a sweet moonlight.”
It was a sweet moonlight indeed. The floods of soft silvery light fell
with an uncommon radiance upon all objects, and the minutest thing
could have been seen upon the ground, with the same clearness and
distinctness as at mid-day.
The only difference was that a soft preternatural looking atmosphere
seemed to be around everything, and a kind of marble like look was
imparted to all objects far and near on which those soft silvery rays
rested in beauty and sublimity.
The sexton was full dressed, and although the moonlight guided him
well, he thought that he might in the bone-house require another mode
of illumination, and he lighted and took with him a small lantern which
had a darkening shade to it.
Thus prepared, he walked at a rapid pace from his own house towards the
small shed-like building which served as a receptacle for the unowned
dead, and for such human remains as were from time to time cast ashore
by the waves, or flung up from new graves by the spade and the mattock.
Familiar as he was and had been for many a year with that bone-house,
and often in contact with the dead, he yet on this occasion felt as if
a strange fear was creeping over him, and then a flutter of his heart
and the fiery feel that was in his brain were circumstances quite novel
to him.
“Well, this is odd,” he said, “and I suppose it is what they call being
nervous I can’t make it out to be anything else, I’m sure.”
Thus reasoning with himself upon his own unwonted timidity, he reached
the bone-house.
The door of the dilapidated building which was known by that name, was
only secured by a latch, for it was not considered that the contents of
the place were sufficiently interesting for any one’s cupidity to be
excited by it.
The sexton paused a moment before he lifted the latch, and glanced
around him. Even then he half expected to hear a loud laugh expressive
of the triumph of those who had combined to play him the trick, if it
were one, of getting him out of his bed on a bootless errand. But all
was still around him—still as the very grave itself, and muttering then
in a hurried tone, “it is true, there is no trick,” he hastily opened
the door, and went into the bone-house.
All was darkness save one broad beam of moonlight that came in at
the door-way, but the sexton closed the entrance, and applied to his
lantern for a light.
He slid the darkening piece of metal from before the magnifying glass,
and then a rather sickly ray of light fell for a moment upon the
corpse that lay then upon its back—a ray only sufficiently strong and
sufficiently enduring to enable the sexton to make quite sure that
there was a body before him, and then his lantern went out.
“Confound the lantern!” he said, “I ought to have looked to it before
I started, instead of lighting it on the mere hazard of its going on
comfortably. What’s to be done? Ah, I have it, I remember.”
What the sexton remembered was that on the same wall in which the door
was situated, there was a large square aperture only covered by a kind
of shutter of wood, the withdrawal of a bolt from which would cause it
to fall in a moment on its hinges.
The sexton knew the place well, and drawing back the somewhat rusty
bolt, down went the shutter, and a broad flood of moonlight fell at
once upon the corpse.
“Ah,” said Will Stephens, “there it is sure enough. What a long
odd-looking fellow to be sure, and what a face—how thin and careworn
looking. I do very much wonder now who he really is?”
As he continued to gaze upon the dead body, his eyes wandered to the
hands, and then sure enough he saw the bright and glittering gems
the men had spoken of, and which the salt water had not been able to
tarnish into dimness. Perceiving that the setting was gold and the
stones real,—
“Ahem!” said Stephens, softly; “they will not bury the corpse with
those rings on his fingers. Why, he must have half a dozen on at least;
they will be somebody’s perquisite of course, and that somebody won’t
be me. The idea of leaving such property unprotected in a bone-house!”
Will Stephens remained now silent for a short time, moving his head
about in different directions, so that he caught the bright colours of
the jewels that adorned the dead man’s hands, and then he spoke again.
“What’s more easy,” said he, “than for some of the very fellows who
brought him here, to slip back quietly, and take away every one of
those rings?”
After this much, he went to the door of the bone-house and listened,
but all was perfectly still; and then his cogitations assumed another
shape.
“Who saw me come from my house?” he said.—“Nobody. Who will see me go
back to it?—Nobody. Then what is to hinder me from taking the rings,
and—and letting the blame lie on some one else’s shoulders, I should
like to know? Nothing will be easier than for me to say in the morning
that owing to the strange and insolent manner in which the information
was given me of the arrival of the dead body in the bone-house, I did
not believe it and therefore did not rise, and so—so I think I may as
well eh?”
He thought he heard something like a faint sigh, and the teeth
chattered in his head, and he shook in every limb as he bent all his
energies to the task of listening if there were really any one in or at
hand, playing the spy upon him.
All was as before profoundly still, and with a long breath of relief,
he cast off his terror.
“What a fool I am to be sure,” he said; “it was but the wind after all,
no doubt, making its way through some one of the numerous chinks and
crevices in this shed; it did sound like a sigh from some human lips,
but it wasn’t.”
The propriety of making short work of the affair, if he wished to do it
at all, now came forcibly to the mind of the sexton, and arming himself
with all the courage he could just then summon to his aid, he advanced
close to the corpse.
Kneeling on one knee he took up one of the hands from which he wished
to take the rings, and when he saw them closer, he felt convinced that
they did not belie their appearance, but were in reality what they
seemed to be—jewels of rarity and price.
The hand was cold and clammy and damp to the touch, and the knuckles
were swollen, so that there was great difficulty in getting the rings
over them, and the sexton was full five minutes getting one of them off.
When he had done so, he wiped the perspiration of fear and excitement
from his brow, as he muttered,—
“That’s always the case with your drowned folks, they are so swelled
when first they come out of the water, and so I shall have quite a job,
I suppose.”
The sexton’s cupidity was, however, now sufficiently awakened, to make
him persevere, despite any such obstacles, in what he was about, and
accordingly, kneeling on both knees he clasped the wrist of the dead
man in one hand, and with the other strove to coax off, by twisting the
hoop of gold round and round, a ring that had one diamond, apparently
of great value, set in it, and which the robber of the dead thought was
a prize worth some trouble in the obtaining.
In an instant, the dead hand clasped him tight.