THE WEDDING KNELL
There is a certain church in the city of New York which I havealways regarded with peculiar interest, on account of a marriagethere solemnized, under very singular circumstances, in mygrandmother's girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be aspectator of the scene, and ever after made it her favoritenarrative. Whether the edifice now standing on the same site bethe identical one to which she referred, I am not antiquarianenough to know; nor would it be worth while to correct myself,perhaps, of an agreeable error, by reading the date of itserection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church,surrounded by an inclosure of the loveliest green, within whichappear urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumentalmarble, the tributes of private affection, or more splendidmemorials of historic dust. With such a place, though the tumultof the city rolls beneath its tower, one would be willing toconnect some legendary interest.
The marriage might be considered as the result of an earlyengagement, though there had been two intermediate weddings onthe lady's part, and forty years of celibacy on that of thegentleman. At sixty-five, Mr. Ellenwood was a shy, but not quitea secluded man; selfish, like all men who brood over their ownhearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions a vein of generoussentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always an indolentone, because his studies had no definite object, either of publicadvantage or personal ambition; a gentleman, high bred andfastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerablerelaxation, in his behalf, of the common rules of society. Intruth, there were so many anomalies in his character, and thoughshrinking with diseased sensibility from public notice, it hadbeen his fatality so often to become the topic of the day, bysome wild eccentricity of conduct, that people searched hislineage for an hereditary taint of insanity. But there was noneed of this. His caprices had their origin in a mind that lackedthe support of an engrossing purpose, and in feelings that preyedupon themselves for want of other food. If he were mad, it wasthe consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless and abortivelife.
The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bridegroom, ineverything but age, as can well be conceived. Compelled torelinquish her first engagement, she had been united to a man oftwice her own years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and bywhose death she was left in possession of a splendid fortune. Asouthern gentleman, considerably younger than herself, succeededto her hand, and carried her to Charleston, where, after manyuncomfortable years, she found herself again a widow. It wouldhave been singular, if any uncommon delicacy of feeling hadsurvived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's; it could not butbe crushed and killed by her early disappointment, the cold dutyof her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart's principles,consequent on a second union, and the unkindness of her southernhusband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea ofhis death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was thatwisest, but unloveliest, variety of woman, a philosopher, bearingtroubles of the heart with equanimity, dispensing with all thatshould have been her happiness, and making the best of whatremained. Sage in most matters, the widow was perhaps the moreamiable for the one frailty that made her ridiculous. Beingchildless, she could not remain beautiful by proxy, in the personof a daughter; she therefore refused to grow old and ugly, on anyconsideration; she struggled with Time, and held fast her rosesin spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared to haverelinquished the spoil, as not worth the trouble of acquiring it.
The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such anunworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs.Dabney's return to her native city. Superficial observers, anddeeper ones, seemed to concur in supposing that the lady musthave borne no inactive part in arranging the affair; there wereconsiderations of expediency which she would be far more likelyto appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood; and there was just the speciousphantom of sentiment and romance in this late union of two earlylovers which sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost hertrue feelings among the accidents of life. All the wonder was,how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly wisdom and agonizingconsciousness of ridicule, could have been induced to take ameasure at once so prudent and so laughable. But while peopletalked the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnizedaccording to the Episcopalian forms, and in open church, with adegree of publicity that attracted many spectators, who occupiedthe front seats of the galleries, and the pews near the altar andalong the broad aisle. It had been arranged, or possibly it wasthe custom of the day, that the parties should proceed separatelyto church. By some accident the bridegroom was a little lesspunctual than the widow and her bridal attendants; with whosearrival, after this tedious, but necessary preface, the action ofour tale may be said to commence.
The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were heard,and the gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal party camethrough the church door with the sudden and gladsome effect of aburst of sunshine. The whole group, except the principal figure,was made up of youth and gayety. As they streamed up the broadaisle, while the pews and pillars seemed to brighten on eitherside, their steps were as buoyant as if they mistook the churchfor a ball-room, and were ready to dance hand in hand to thealtar. So brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice of asingular phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the momentwhen the bride's foot touched the threshold the bell swungheavily in the tower above her, and sent forth its deepest knell.The vibrations died away and returned with prolonged solemnity,as she entered the body of the church.
"Good heavens! what an omen," whispered a young lady to herlover.
"On my honor," replied the gentleman, "I believe the bell has thegood taste to toll of its own accord. What has she to do withweddings? If you, dearest Julia, were approaching the altar thebell would ring out its merriest peal. It has only a funeralknell for her."
The bride and most of her company had been too much occupied withthe bustle of entrance to hear the first boding stroke of thebell, or at least to reflect on the singularity of such a welcometo the altar. They therefore continued to advance withundiminished gayety. The gorgeous dresses of the time, thecrimson velvet coats, the gold-laced hats, the hoop petticoats,the silk, satin, brocade, and embroidery, the buckles, canes, andswords, all displayed to the best advantage on persons suited tosuch finery, made the group appear more like a bright-coloredpicture than anything real. But by what perversity of taste hadthe artist represented his principal figure as so wrinkled anddecayed, while yet he had decked her out in the brightestsplendor of attire, as if the loveliest maiden had suddenlywithered into age, and become a moral to the beautiful aroundher! On they went, however, and had glittered along about a thirdof the aisle, when another stroke of the bell seemed to fill thechurch with a visible gloom, dimming and obscuring the brightpageant, till it shone forth again as from a mist.
This time the party wavered, stopped, and huddled closertogether, while a slight scream was heard from some of theladies, and a confused whispering among the gentlemen. Thustossing to and fro, they might have been fancifully compared to asplendid bunch of flowers, suddenly shaken by a puff of wind,which threatened to scatter the leaves of an old, brown, witheredrose, on the same stalk with two dewy buds,--such being theemblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But herheroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressibleshudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on herheart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet indismay, she took the lead, and paced calmly up the aisle. Thebell continued to swing, strike, and vibrate, with the samedoleful regularity as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb.
"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," saidthe widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But somany weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of thebells, and yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for betterfortune under such different auspices."
"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strangeoccurrence brings to my mind a marriage sermon of the famousBishop Taylor, wherein he ming
les so many thoughts of mortalityand future woe, that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style,he seems to hang the bridal chamber in black, and cut the weddinggarment out of a coffin pall. And it has been the custom ofdivers nations to infuse something of sadness into their marriageceremonies, so to keep death in mind while contracting thatengagement which is life's chiefest business. Thus we may draw asad but profitable moral from this funeral knell."
But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even akeener point, he did not fail to dispatch an attendant to inquireinto the mystery, and stop those sounds, so dismally appropriateto such a marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which thesilence was broken only by whispers, and a few suppressedtitterings, among the wedding party and the spectators, who,after the first shock, were disposed to draw an ill-naturedmerriment from the affair. The young have less charity for agedfollies than the old for those of youth. The widow's glance wasobserved to wander, for an instant, towards a window of thechurch, as if searching for the time-worn marble that she haddedicated to her first husband; then her eyelids dropped overtheir faded orbs, and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly toanother grave. Two buried men, with a voice at her ear, and a cryafar off, were calling her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, withmomentary truth of feeling, she thought how much happier had beenher fate, if, after years of bliss, the bell were now tolling forher funeral, and she were followed to the grave by the oldaffection of her earliest lover, long her husband. But why hadshe returned to him, when their cold hearts shrank from eachother's embrace?
Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully, that the sunshineseemed to fade in the air. A whisper, communicated from those whostood nearest the windows, now spread through the church; ahearse, with a train of several coaches, was creeping along thestreet, conveying some dead man to the churchyard, while thebride awaited a living one at the altar. Immediately after, thefootsteps of the bridegroom and his friends were heard at thedoor. The widow looked down the aisle, and clinched the arm ofone of her bridemaids in her bony hand with such unconsciousviolence, that the fair girl trembled.
"You frighten me, my dear madam!" cried she. "For Heaven's sake,what is the matter?"
"Nothing, my dear, nothing," said the widow; then, whisperingclose to her ear, "There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get ridof. I am expecting my bridegroom to come into the church, with myfirst two husbands for groomsmen!"
"Look, look!" screamed the bridemaid. "What is here? Thefuneral!"
As she spoke, a dark procession paced into the church. First camean old man and women, like chief mourners at a funeral, attiredfrom head to foot in the deepest black, all but their palefeatures and hoary hair; he leaning on a staff, and supportingher decrepit form with his nerveless arm. Behind appearedanother, and another pair, as aged, as black, and mournful as thefirst. As they drew near, the widow recognized in every face sometrait of former friends, long forgotten, but now returning, as iffrom their old graves, to warn her to prepare a shroud; or, withpurpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles andinfirmity, and claim her as their companion by the tokens of herown decay. Many a merry night had she danced with them, in youth.And now, in joyless age, she felt that some withered partnershould request her hand, and all unite, in a dance of death, tothe 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 theirfaces; others kept a fixed and rigid stare; and a young girlgiggled hysterically, and fainted with the laughter on her lips.When the spectral procession approached the altar, each coupleseparated, and slowly diverged, till, in the centre, appeared aform, that had been worthily ushered in with all this gloomypomp, the death knell, and the funeral. It was the bridegroom inhis shroud!
No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such adeathlike aspect; the eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of asepulchral lamp; all else was fixed in the stern calmness whichold men wear in the coffin. The corpse stood motionless, butaddressed the widow in accents that seemed to melt into the clangof the bell, which fell heavily 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 stoodapart, shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom, andherself; the whole scene expressed, by the strongest imagery, thevain struggle of the gilded vanities of this world, when opposedto age, infirmity, sorrow, and death. The awe-struck silence wasfirst broken by 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 mustbe deferred. As an old friend, let me entreat you to returnhome."
"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 andembroidery--had I forced my withered lips to smile at my deadheart--that might have been mockery, or madness. But now, letyoung and old declare, which of us has come hither without awedding garment, the bridegroom or the bride!"
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 themoral which 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, myaims; you took away all the substance of my life, and made it adream without reality enough even to grieve at--with only apervading gloom, through which I walked wearily, and cared notwhither. But after forty years, when I have built my tomb, andwould not give up the thought of resting there--nor not for sucha life as we once pictured--you call me to the altar. At yoursummons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your youth,your beauty, your warmth of heart, and all that could be termedyour life. What is there for me but your decay and death? Andtherefore I have bidden these funeral friends, and bespoken thesexton's deepest knell, and am come, in my shroud, to wed you, aswith 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 thebride. The stern lesson of the day had done its work; herworldliness 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 thereis one true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth; it makesme worthy of you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed forEternity!"
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 awaythe tears even with his shroud.
"Beloved of my youth," said he, "I have been wild. The despair ofmy whole lifetime had returned at once, and maddened me. Forgive;and be forgiven. Yes; it is evening with us now; and we haverealized none of our morning dreams of happiness. But let us joinour hands before the altar as lovers whom adverse circumstanceshave separated through life, yet who meet again as they areleaving it, and find their earthly affection changed intosomething holy as religion. And what is Time, to the married ofEternity?"
Amid the tears of many, and a swell of exalted sentiment, inthose who felt aright, was solemnized the union of two immortalsouls. The train of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom inhis shroud, the pale features of the aged bride, and thedea
th-bell tolling through the whole, till its deep voiceoverpowered the marriage words, all marked the funeral of earthlyhopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as if stirred bythe sympathies of this impressive scene, poured forth an anthem,first mingling with the dismal knell, then rising to a loftierstrain, till the soul looked down upon its woe. And when theawful rite was finished, and with cold hand in cold hand, theMarried of Eternity withdrew, the organ's peal of solemn triumphdrowned the Wedding Knell.