THE HORRORS OF THE GRAVE.—A FRIGHTFUL ADVENTURE.
One would have thought that young Ringwood might with effect and with
discretion have disclosed his plan of watching in the old church to one
of the brothers of Clara, but he shrunk from doing that.
In the first place he thought he should be put down as a visionary,
and as one who was disposed to insult the memory of Clara by imagining
that the story of the sexton could be true, and in the second place,
if anything did happen, he was afraid that the feelings of the brother
might clash with his.
“No,” he said, “I will go alone—I will not rest again until I have
thoroughly satisfied myself that this tale is but a fabrication of the
fancy. Oh, Clara! can it be possible—no, no. The thought is by far
too—too horrible.”
It may really be considered a fortunate thing that the communication of
the clergyman was made in the evening, for had it been earlier in the
day, the hours of frightful anxiety which Ringwood would have endured
until the night came must have been most painful.
As it was, however, the hours that would elapse ere he could venture to
go to the church on his strange and melancholy errand were not many,
and they passed the more quickly, that during some of them, he was
making up his mind as to what he should do.
“Yes, Clara, my best beloved Clara,” he said, “I will rescue your sweet
memory from this horrible doubt that is cast upon it, or I will join
you in the tomb. Welcome, a thousand times welcome death, rather than
that I should live to think that you are—God, no—no! I cannot pronounce
the dreadful word. Oh, what evil times are these, and what a world of
agony do I endure. But courage, courage; let fancy sleep, I must not
allow my imagination to become sufficiently excited to play me any
pranks to-night. Be still my heart, and let me go upon this expedition
as a spectator merely. Time enough will it be to become an actor, when
I know more, if indeed there be more to know.”
The clergyman sent the key, according to his promise, by a confidential
servant, who had orders to ask for Mr. Ringwood and to give it into his
own hands, so that the young man was fully prepared to go, when the
proper time should arrive for him to start upon his expedition.
He purposely kept very much out of the way of Sir George Crofton and
his two sons during the remainder of the evening, for such was the
ingenuous nature of young Ringwood, and so unused was he to place any
curb upon his speech, that he dreaded letting slip some information
regarding his intention to keep watch in the old church that night; in
such a case it would have been difficult to refuse company.
Sir George took the advice of the clergyman and said nothing to any one
of the dreadful communication that had been made to him. But he could
not conceal from the family and his servants, that some unusual grief
was preying upon him, beyond even the sadness that had remained after
the death of his daughter. He retired to rest unusually early, that he
might escape their curious and inquiring glances.
The clock struck eleven.
“It is time,” said Ringwood, as he sprung from his seat in his
bed-room. “It is time. For the love of thee, my Clara, I go to brave
this adventure, Mine are you in death as in life. My heart is widowed,
and can know no other love.”
He armed himself with a pair of loaded pistols, for he made up his
mind that if any trickery was at the bottom of the proceeding, the
authors of such a jest should pay dearly for their temerity, and then
cautiously descending from his bed-room, he crossed the dining-room,
and passing through a conservatory, easily made his way out of the
house, and into a flower-garden that was beyond.
He thought that if he went out of the grounds by the way of the
porter’s lodge, it might excite some remark, his not returning again,
so he went to a part of the wall which he knew was low and rugged.
“There,” he said, “I can easily climb over, and by getting into the
meadows make my way into the road.”
This, to a young man, was not by any means a difficult matter, and
he in a few minutes more found himself quite free of the house and
grounds, and making his way very rapidly towards the church, the tower
of which, he could just see.
The night was again a cloudy one; although nothing had as yet fallen,
the wind was uncertain, and no one could with any safety have ventured
to predict whether it would be fair, or rain. Of the two, certainly,
Ringwood would have preferred moonlight, for he wished in the church to
be able to see well about him, without thinking of the necessity of a
light.
“No,” he said, as he pursued his way, “I must have no light; that would
ruin all.”
By the time he reached the church, he had a better opinion of the
weather, and from a faint sort of halo that was in the sky, he was led
to believe that the moon’s light would soon be visible, and enable him
to see everything that might take place.
The key that the parson had given him opened the same little door
by which Will Stephens, the sexton, had entered, and there was no
difficulty in turning the lock, for it was frequently used.
The young man paused for a moment, debating with himself, whether he
should fasten the door securely on the inner side, or leave it open,
and at last he thought, that considering all things, the latter was the
best course to pursue.
“I do not wish,” he said, “to stop any proceedings, so much as I wish
to see what they are. There shall therefore be every facility for any
one coming into the church, who may chance to have an intention so to
do.”
He still, it will be seen, clung a little to the hope that it was a
trick.
When he pushed open the door that was covered with green baize, he
found that in consequence of the cloth curtain being entirely drawn
aside from before the south window, that there was not near the amount
of darkness within the building that he had anticipated finding there.
When his eyes got a little accustomed to it, he could even see, dimly
to be sure, but still, sufficiently to distinguish the several shapes
of the well-known objects in the church. The pulpit, the communion
table, the little rails before it, and some of the old monuments
against the walls.
The stone slab that covered the opening to the vault of the Crofton
family, had been before the commencement of the morning service
properly secured, so that that entrance could be walked over with
perfect safety, and Ringwood carefully ascertained that such was the
fact.
“Surely, surely,” he said, “it is as Mr. Bevan says. That man must have
come here half stupefied by ale, and have gone to sleep, The only thing
that gives the slightest semblance to such a tale, is the adventure of
that most mysterious man who was reclaimed from the sea.”
Yes, Ringwood was right. That was the circumstance, full of dread and
awful mystery as it was, which sufficed to make anything else probable,
and possible.
And what had become of him? Since the time when he made his escape from
the Grange, nothing had been seen or heard of him, unless that were
he indeed, who was in the church pointing to the moonlight when the
terrified Will Stephens was there.
And yet Stephens, although he might be supposed to be in a position to
know him, did not recognise him, for we do not find in his account of
the affair that he made any mention of him, or insinuated any opinion
even, that the Mr. Smith of the bone-house, was the same person who had
played so strange a part in the church.
The reader will have his own opinion.
“Where shall I bestow myself,” thought Ringwood, “I ought to be
somewhere from whence I can get a good view of the whole church.”
After some little consideration, and looking about him as well as
the semi-darkness would permit him, he thought that he could not by
any possibility do better than get into the pulpit. From there he
could readily turn about in any direction from whence any noise might
proceed, at the same time, that it was something like a position which
could not be very well attacked except with fire arms, and if such
weapons were used against him, he should have the great advantage of
seeing who was his assailant.
Accordingly he ascended the pulpit stairs, and soon ensconced himself
in that elevated place.
There was something very awful, and solemn, and yet beautiful about
the faint view he got of the old conventicle-looking church from its
pulpit, and irresistible had he chosen to resist it, there came to his
lips a prayer to Heaven for its aid, its protection, and its blessing
upon his enterprise.
How much calmer, and happier he felt after that. How true it is, as
Prospero says, that prayer,
——“Pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.”
Who is there in the wide world who has not felt the benign influence of
an appeal to the great Creator of all things, under circumstances of
difficulty, and of distress. Let us pity the heart, if there be such a
one in existence, that is callous to such a feeling.
But there are none. A reliance upon divine mercy is one of the
attributes of humanity, and may not be turned aside, by even all the
wickedness and the infidelity that may be arrayed against it.
“All is still,” murmured Ringwood. “The stillness of the very grave is
here, Oh, my Clara; methinks without a pang of mortal fear, I could
converse in such an hour as this, with thy pure and unsullied spirit!”
In the enthusiasm of the moment, no doubt, Ringwood could have done so,
and it is a wonder that his most excited imagination did not conjure up
some apparent semblance of the being whom he loved so devotedly, and
whose image he so fondly cherished, even although she had gone from him.
“Yes, my Clara,” he cried, in tones of enthusiasm. “Come to me, come to
me, and you will not find that in life or in death the heart that is
all your own, will shrink from you!”
This species of mental exaltation was sure soon to pass away, and it
did so. The sound of his own voice convinced him of the impropriety of
such speeches, when he came there as an observer.
“Hush! hush!” he said. “Be still, be still.”
It was evident to him that many clouds were careering over the face
of the moon, for at times the church would get very dark indeed, and
everything assumed a pitchy blackness, and then again a soft kind of
light would steal in, and give the whole place a different aspect.
This continued for a long time, as he thought, and more than once he
tried to ascertain the progress of the hours by looking at his watch,
but the dim light baffled him.
“How long have I been here?” he asked himself; “I must not measure the
time by my feelings, else I should call it an age.”
At that moment the old church clock began to chime, and having
proclaimed the four quarters past eleven, it with its deep-toned solemn
bell struck the hour of twelve—Ringwood carefully counted the strokes,
so that, although it was too dark to see his watch, he could not be
deceived.