CHAPTER VII. THE CEMETERY
The air as of an ice-house met me crossing the threshold. The doorfell-to behind us. The sexton said something to his wife that made herturn toward us.--What a change had passed upon her! It was as if thesplendour of her eyes had grown too much for them to hold, and, sinkinginto her countenance, made it flash with a loveliness like that ofBeatrice in the white rose of the redeemed. Life itself, life eternal,immortal, streamed from it, an unbroken lightning. Even her handsshone with a white radiance, every "pearl-shell helmet" gleaming likea moonstone. Her beauty was overpowering; I was glad when she turned itfrom me.
But the light of the candle reached such a little way, that at first Icould see nothing of the place. Presently, however, it fell on somethingthat glimmered, a little raised from the floor. Was it a bed? Couldlive thing sleep in such a mortal cold? Then surely it was no wonderit should not wake of itself! Beyond that appeared a fainter shine; andthen I thought I descried uncertain gleams on every side.
A few paces brought us to the first; it was a human form under a sheet,straight and still--whether of man or woman I could not tell, for thelight seemed to avoid the face as we passed.
I soon perceived that we were walking along an aisle of couches, onalmost every one of which, with its head to the passage, lay somethingasleep or dead, covered with a sheet white as snow. My soul grewsilent with dread. Through aisle after aisle we went, among couchesinnumerable. I could see only a few of them at once, but they were onall sides, vanishing, as it seemed, in the infinite.--Was it here lay mychoice of a bed? Must I go to sleep among the unwaking, with no one torouse me? Was this the sexton's library? were these his books? Truly itwas no half-way house, this chamber of the dead!
"One of the cellars I am placed to watch!" remarked Mr. Raven--in a lowvoice, as if fearing to disturb his silent guests. "Much wine is sethere to ripen!--But it is dark for a stranger!" he added.
"The moon is rising; she will soon be here," said his wife, and herclear voice, low and sweet, sounded of ancient sorrow long bidden adieu.
Even as she spoke the moon looked in at an opening in the wall, and athousand gleams of white responded to her shine. But not yet could Idescry beginning or end of the couches. They stretched away and away, asif for all the disparted world to sleep upon. For along the far recedingnarrow ways, every couch stood by itself, and on each slept a lonelysleeper. I thought at first their sleep was death, but I soon saw it wassomething deeper still--a something I did not know.
The moon rose higher, and shone through other openings, but I couldnever see enough of the place at once to know its shape or character;now it would resemble a long cathedral nave, now a huge barn made intoa dwelling of tombs. She looked colder than any moon in the frostiestnight of the world, and where she shone direct upon them, cast a bluish,icy gleam on the white sheets and the pallid countenances--but it mightbe the faces that made the moon so cold!
Of such as I could see, all were alike in the brotherhood of death, allunlike in the character and history recorded upon them. Here lay a manwho had died--for although this was not death, I have no other name togive it--in the prime of manly strength; his dark beard seemed to flowlike a liberated stream from the glacier of his frozen countenance; hisforehead was smooth as polished marble; a shadow of pain lingered abouthis lips, but only a shadow. On the next couch lay the form of a girl,passing lovely to behold. The sadness left on her face by parting wasnot yet absorbed in perfect peace, but absolute submission possessed theplacid features, which bore no sign of wasting disease, of "killing careor grief of heart": if pain had been there, it was long charmed asleep,never again to wake. Many were the beautiful that there lay verystill--some of them mere children; but I did not see one infant. Themost beautiful of all was a lady whose white hair, and that alone,suggested her old when first she fell asleep. On her stately countenancerested--not submission, but a right noble acquiescence, an assurance,firm as the foundations of the universe, that all was as it shouldbe. On some faces lingered the almost obliterated scars of strife, themarrings of hopeless loss, the fading shadows of sorrows that had seemedinconsolable: the aurora of the great morning had not yet quite meltedthem away; but those faces were few, and every one that bore such brandof pain seemed to plead, "Pardon me: I died only yesterday!" or, "Pardonme: I died but a century ago!" That some had been dead for ages I knew,not merely by their unutterable repose, but by something for which Ihave neither word nor symbol.
We came at last to three empty couches, immediately beyond which lay theform of a beautiful woman, a little past the prime of life. One of herarms was outside the sheet, and her hand lay with the palm upward, inits centre a dark spot. Next to her was the stalwart figure of a man ofmiddle age. His arm too was outside the sheet, the strong hand almostclosed, as if clenched on the grip of a sword. I thought he must be aking who had died fighting for the truth.
"Will you hold the candle nearer, wife?" whispered the sexton, bendingdown to examine the woman's hand.
"It heals well," he murmured to himself: "the nail found in her nothingto hurt!"
At last I ventured to speak.
"Are they not dead?" I asked softly.
"I cannot answer you," he replied in a subdued voice. "I almost forgetwhat they mean by DEAD in the old world. If I said a person was dead, mywife would understand one thing, and you would imagine another.--This isbut one of my treasure vaults," he went on, "and all my guests are notlaid in vaults: out there on the moor they lie thick as the leaves of aforest after the first blast of your winter--thick, let me say rather,as if the great white rose of heaven had shed its petals over it. Allnight the moon reads their faces, and smiles."
"But why leave them in the corrupting moonlight?" I asked.
"Our moon," he answered, "is not like yours--the old cinder of aburnt-out world; her beams embalm the dead, not corrupt them. Youobserve that here the sexton lays his dead on the earth; he buries veryfew under it! In your world he lays huge stones on them, as if to keepthem down; I watch for the hour to ring the resurrection-bell, and wakethose that are still asleep. Your sexton looks at the clock to know whento ring the dead-alive to church; I hearken for the cock on the spire tocrow; 'AWAKE, THOU THAT SLEEPEST, AND ARISE FROM THE DEAD!'"
I began to conclude that the self-styled sexton was in truth an insaneparson: the whole thing was too mad! But how was I to get away from it?I was helpless! In this world of the dead, the raven and his wife werethe only living I had yet seen: whither should I turn for help? I waslost in a space larger than imagination; for if here two things, orany parts of them, could occupy the same space, why not twenty or tenthousand?--But I dared not think further in that direction.
"You seem in your dead to see differences beyond my perception!" Iventured to remark.
"None of those you see," he answered, "are in truth quite dead yet, andsome have but just begun to come alive and die. Others had begun to die,that is to come alive, long before they came to us; and when such areindeed dead, that instant they will wake and leave us. Almost everynight some rise and go. But I will not say more, for I find my wordsonly mislead you!--This is the couch that has been waiting for you," heended, pointing to one of the three.
"Why just this?" I said, beginning to tremble, and anxious by parley todelay.
"For reasons which one day you will be glad to know," he answered.
"Why not know them now?"
"That also you will know when you wake."
"But these are all dead, and I am alive!" I objected, shuddering.
"Not much," rejoined the sexton with a smile, "--not nearly enough!Blessed be the true life that the pauses between its throbs are notdeath!"
"The place is too cold to let one sleep!" I said.
"Do these find it so?" he returned. "They sleep well--or will soon. Ofcold they feel not a breath: it heals their wounds.--Do not be a coward,Mr. Vane. Turn your back on fear, and your face to whatever may come.Give yourself up to the night, and you will rest indeed. Harm will notcome t
o you, but a good you cannot foreknow."
The sexton and I stood by the side of the couch, his wife, with thecandle in her hand, at the foot of it. Her eyes were full of light, buther face was again of a still whiteness; it was no longer radiant.
"Would they have me make of a charnel-house my bed-chamber?" I criedaloud. "I will not. I will lie abroad on the heath; it cannot be colderthere!"
"I have just told you that the dead are there also,
'Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa,'"
said the librarian.
"I will NOT," I cried again; and in the compassing dark, the two gleamedout like spectres that waited on the dead; neither answered me; eachstood still and sad, and looked at the other.
"Be of good comfort; we watch the flock of the great shepherd," said thesexton to his wife.
Then he turned to me.
"Didst thou not find the air of the place pure and sweet when thouenteredst it?" he asked.
"Yes; but oh, so cold!" I answered.
"Then know," he returned, and his voice was stern, "that thou whocallest thyself alive, hast brought into this chamber the odours ofdeath, and its air will not be wholesome for the sleepers until thou artgone from it!"
They went farther into the great chamber, and I was left alone in themoonlight with the dead.
I turned to escape.
What a long way I found it back through the dead! At first I was tooangry to be afraid, but as I grew calm, the still shapes grew terrible.At last, with loud offence to the gracious silence, I ran, I fledwildly, and, bursting out, flung-to the door behind me. It closed withan awful silence.
I stood in pitch-darkness. Feeling about me, I found a door, opened it,and was aware of the dim light of a lamp. I stood in my library, withthe handle of the masked door in my hand.
Had I come to myself out of a vision?--or lost myself by going back toone? Which was the real--what I now saw, or what I had just ceased tosee? Could both be real, interpenetrating yet unmingling?
I threw myself on a couch, and fell asleep.
In the library was one small window to the east, through which, at thistime of the year, the first rays of the sun shone upon a mirror whencethey were reflected on the masked door: when I woke, there they shone,and thither they drew my eyes. With the feeling that behind it must liethe boundless chamber I had left by that door, I sprang to my feet,and opened it. The light, like an eager hound, shot before me into thecloset, and pounced upon the gilded edges of a large book.
"What idiot," I cried, "has put that book in the shelf the wrong way?"
But the gilded edges, reflecting the light a second time, flung it ona nest of drawers in a dark corner, and I saw that one of them was halfopen.
"More meddling!" I cried, and went to close the drawer.
It contained old papers, and seemed more than full, for it wouldnot close. Taking the topmost one out, I perceived that it was in myfather's writing and of some length. The words on which first my eyesfell, at once made me eager to learn what it contained. I carried itto the library, sat down in one of the western windows, and read whatfollows.