The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows and showed a
spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor;
the ghostly light through the other swept upon a bed, falling between
the heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man.
But how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how
like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a
corpse in its burial clothes.
Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion.
Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving
between the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber
opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in
the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of
triumph as she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed
her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from
that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting
with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse
had moved responsive to her own. Still an illusion. The silken
curtains had waved a second time between the dead face and the
moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided
ghostlike to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both
beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between them. But she
who had first entered was proud and stately, and the other a soft and
fragile thing.
"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him living; the dead is
mine."
"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well hast thou spoken; the
dead is thine."
The proud girl started and stared into her face with a ghastly look,
but a wild and mournful expression passed across the features of the
gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her
head pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with
his dark locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draft of
sorrow had bewildered her.
"Edith!" cried her rival.
Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart, and removing
her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully
encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.
"Wilt thou betray me?" said the latter, calmly.
"Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent," answered Edith.
"Leave us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return
and tell me of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest
of sufferings more than death, we will both forgive thee."
"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud girl, as if her heart
acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.
"This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark clustering
curls that lay heavily on the dead man's brow.
The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse and
appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next
meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at
the motionless countenance and departed, yet turned again and
trembled ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead
lover frowned upon her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form
fading into the moonlight? Scorning her own weakness, she went forth
and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a
waxlight, which he held between her face and his own and regarded
her, as she thought, with an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting
his torch on high, the slave lighted her down the staircase and undid
the portal of the mansion. The young clergyman of the town had just
ascended the steps, and, bowing to the lady, passed in without a word.
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 moldering. 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 house-tops 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 ax 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 spy 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
woful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the
sun-gilded 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 forever, 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.
"Verily," said the old gentleman, "it will b$ fitting that I enter
the mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke; lest any harm
should have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the 'Old
Maid in the Winding-Sheet.'"
Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the
mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who
had spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained
the shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like
their predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.
"Old Cæsar cometh not," observed the priest. "Well, I wot he no
longer doth service in this mansion."
"Assuredly, then, it was something worse in Old Cæsar's likeness,"
said the other adventurer.
"Be it as God wills," answered the clergyman. "See! my strength,
though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to, open this heavy door.
Let us enter and pass up the staircase."
Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a
very old man's mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs the
aged clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing
aside, and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a
throng. Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with
sad and solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary
locks, and was evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.
"Reverend sir," said his attendant, who conceived this a very
suitable prelude to their further search, "would it not be well that
the people join with us in prayer?"
"Well-a-day!" cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.
"Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were
present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth,
I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their
burials, one after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet
hath seen them to their graves."
Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his
staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from
each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They,
therefore, walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to
the great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the
shadow and partial moonlight of the street beneath. On the right
hand was the open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left.
The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter.
"Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole lifetime since, did I
sit by the deathbed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last
gasp--" Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas
which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from
his companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden
violence that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light
than the moonbeams which fell through two windows into the spacious
chamber. It was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In
a high-backed oaken armchair, upright, with her hands clasped across
her breast and her head thrown back, sat the Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet. The stately dame had fallen on her knees with her
forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor
and the other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a
lock of hair--once sable, now discolored with a greenish mold.
As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber the Old Maid's
features assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they
trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it
was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving between the dead
face and the moonlight.
"Both dead!" said the venerable man. "Then who shall divulge the
secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light
and shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now 'tis gone!"