THE VAULT.
It is night, and the moon sheds a pale and sickly light over the silent streets of Stratford-upon-Avon, and the surrounding meadows and woodlands.
Is it that the idea of pestilence and death being rife in that silent town gives its streets so sickly and melancholy a look—a sort of unnatural and unwholesome glare—or is the surrounding air, impregnated as it seems with disease, of a more rarified and peculiar character?
The square, thick-ribbed, and embattled tower of the guild of the Holy Cross, with its Norman windows and grotesque ornaments, alone looks dark in shadow. The streets and windows of the various houses seem to glance white and spectral. The tower of the distant church hath a ghastly look, and the very tombstones of the dead seem also more white and ghostly; whilst a thick mist from the river rises like a cloud in the background.
Silence reigns supreme. Not a breath of wind stirs the foliage of the trees upon the margin of the river, or bends the long dank grass growing amongst the graves.
Suddenly the distant sound of a horse's hoof-tread disturbs the deep silence, and a solitary horseman, riding through the deserted streets of the town, approached the churchyard, and dismounting, after fastening his steed, entered it.
He takes his way slowly and with measured tread towards a vault attached to the church. His cheek is pale and haggard, and the large round tears course one another down it. It is Walter Arderne; he has come to spend the last hours he intends remaining in the vicinity of Stratford, beside the vault containing the remains of his beloved Charlotte.
The plague which raged in Stratford this year was now at its height. Already one-fifth of the inhabitants had fallen victims; and it was the custom, as much as possible, to bury the dead unobserved at night.
The remains of the domestic who had died at Clopton Hall were to be buried on this night after midnight; and as Walter Arderne knew the hour, he had preceded the corpse, intending to descend into the vault and gaze upon the remains of her he had so loved in life.
His feelings were, indeed, at the moment, wrought to a pitch of intensity. He felt that he could scarcely wait with patience for the coming of the body and the opening of the vault, so eager was he to descend.
"O Time," he said, as with folded arms, he stood gazing at the dark grating of the vault, "thy wings are of lightning in our pleasures; but thou creepest with feet of lead to the sorrowful and weary. And yet thou, who dost constantly move onwards, overcoming all things in thy flight, wilt at last conquer even death itself; thou, most subtle and insatiable of depredators, wilt at last take all."
A heavy rumbling sound interrupted the meditation of the mourner. It was the vehicle containing the body of the domestic from Clopton, and which, in its progress, had gathered up other bodies in the town on that night to be interred.
The ceremony was performed without the usual formalities, and in all haste. Walter drew aside as the buriers, preceded by the sexton, approached and opened the vault. They ignited their torches previous to descending the flight of steps, and when they did so a cry of horror and alarm proceeded from the sexton, who had first entered the vault, and he rushed out, whilst those who had followed seemed equally horror-stricken. They threw down the corpse, after a glance at the interior, and fled.
Walter, who had quietly followed, was struck with dread. He stopped, and taking up one of the torches, descended into the vault; when a dreadful sight presented itself,—a sight which, as long as memory held a seat in his brain, remained there.
The vault was situate deep below the surface. On hastening down the steps Walter held his torch on high, and when about half-way its rays fell upon a figure, which, like some sheeted ghost, leant against the damp walls.
Arderne was brave as the steel he wore, but at first he stopped and hesitated, whilst the door of the vault closing behind him added to the horror of the situation.
As he continued to regard this startling object, the light becoming more steady, he recognised the features of the figure.
"Oh!" he said, "do I behold aright, or do mine eyes play false?"
With horror in his features he approached nearer, and became confirmed in his first suspicion. It was Charlotte Clopton. She was dressed in her grave-clothes, as she had been consigned to the tomb. She appeared to have been but a short time dead, and in the agonies of despair, hunger, or, perhaps, madness, consequent upon the dreadful situation, she had bitten a large piece from her round white shoulder.
When the buriers of the dead returned, somewhat reassured by collecting all their number together, they found Walter in a swoon, with the body of Charlotte fast locked in his embrace. Separating them, they replaced the body in the coffin, and conveying Walter to upper air, closed up the vault for ever.
As the day broke, a tall cavalier rode slowly out of Stratford. The raven plumes of his hat almost shadowed his pale face, and his ample riding-cloak completely enveloped his form.
He reined up his steed as soon as he had cleared the suburbs, and gazed long and fixedly for some time at the handsome spire of the church. He then turned his steed, dashed the spurs into its flanks, and galloped like a madman along the Warwick road.