From the National Era.
A REMINISCENCE.
BY ALICE CAREY.
Some four or five years ago, there came to reside in the neighborhood in which I then lived a family consisting of three persons—an old lady, a young man, and a child of some fourteen years. The cottage they took was divided by a little strip of woods from my own home; and I well remember how rejoiced I was on first seeing the blue smoke curling up from the high red chimneys, for the house had been a long time vacant, and the prospect of having near neighbors gave me delight. Perhaps, too, I was not the less pleased that they were new neighbors. We are likely to under-estimate persons and things we have continually about us; but let separation come, and we learn what they were to us. Apropos of this—in the little grove I have spoken of I remember there was an oak tree, taller by a great deal than its fellows; and a thousand times I have felt as though its mates must be oppressed with a painful sense of degradation, and really wished the axe were laid at its root. At last, one day I heard the ringing strokes of that fatal instrument, and, on inquiry, was told that the woodman had received orders no longer to spare that tree. Eagerly I listened at first—every stroke was like the song of victory; then the gladness subsided, and I began to marvel how the woods would look with the monarch fallen; then I thought, the glory will have departed, and began to reflect on myself as having sealed its death warrant, so that when the crash, telling that the mighty was fallen, woke the sleeping echoes from the hills, I cannot tell how sad an echo it waked also in my heart. If I could see it standing once more, just once more! but I could not, and till this day I feel a twinge when I think of the tall oak.
But the new neighbors. Some curiosity mingled with my pleasure, I confess, and so, as soon as I thought they were settled, and feeling at home, I made my toilet with unusual care for the first call.
The cottage was somewhat back from the main road, and access to it was had by a narrow grass-grown lane, bordered on one side by a green belt of meadow land, and on the other by the grove, sloping upward and backward to a clayey hill, where, with children and children's children, about them,
"The rude forefathers of the hamlet slept."
A little farther on, but in full view of its stunted cypresses and white headstones, was the cottage. Of burial grounds generally I have no dread, but from this particular one I was accustomed, even from a child, to turn away with something of superstitious horror. I could never forget how Laura Hastings saw a light burning there all one winter night, after the death of John Hine, a wild, roving fellow, who never did any real harm in his life to any one but himself, hastening his own death by foolish excesses. Nevertheless, his ghost had been seen more than once, sitting on the cold clay mound beneath which the soul's expression was fading and crumbling into dust—so, at least, said some of the oldest and most pious inhabitants of our village. There, too, Mary Wildermings, a fair young girl who died, more sinned against than sinning, had been heard to sing sad lullabies under the waning moon sometimes, and at other times had been sitting by her sunken grave, and braiding roses, as for a bridal, in her hair. True, I never saw any of these wonderful things; but a spot more likely to be haunted by the unresting spirits of the bad could not readily be imagined. The woods, thick and full of birds, along the roadside, thinned away toward the desolate ridge, where briers grew over the grave-mounds, and about and through the fallen palings, as they would, with here and there a little clearing among weeds and thistles and high matted grass, for the making of a new bed.
It was the twilight of a beautiful summer day as I walked down the grassy lane and past the lonesome graveyard to make my first call at the cottage, feeling, I scarcely knew why, strangely sad. By an old broken bridge in the hollow between the cottage and the graveyard I remember that I sat down, and for a long time listened to the trickling of the water over the pebbles, and watched the golden patches of sunlight till they quite faded out as "came still evening on, and twilight gray, that in her sober livery all things clad."
So quietly I sat that the mole, beginning its blind work at sunset, loosened and stirred the ground beneath my feet, and the white, thick-winged moths, coming from beneath the dusty weeds, fluttered about me, and lighted in my lap, and the dull, flabby beating of the bat came almost in my face.
The first complaint of the owl sounded along the hollow and died over the next hill, warning me to proceed, when I heard, as it were the echo of my own thought, repeated in a low, melancholy voice, the conclusion of that beautiful stanza of the elegy in reference to that moping bird. I distinctly caught the lines——
"Of such as wandering near her sacred bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign."
Looking up, I saw approaching slowly, with arms folded and eyes upon the ground, a young and seemingly exceeding handsome man. He passed without noticing me at all, and I think without seeing me. As he did not observe me, I had the better opportunity of observing him, though I would fain have foregone that privilege to have won one glance. He interested me, and I felt humiliated that he should pass me as though I were a stick or a stone. His face was pale and very sad, and his forehead shaded with a mass of black, heavy hair, pushed away from one temple, and falling neglectedly over the other.
"Well!" said I, as I watched him ascending the opposite hill, feeling very much as though he had wantonly slighted some claim I had upon him, though I could not possibly have the slightest, and, turning ill-humoredly away, I walked with a quick step toward the cottage.
A golden-haired young girl sat in the window reading, and on my approach arose and received me with easy gracefulness and well-bred courtesy, but during my stay her manner did not once border upon cordiality. She was very beautiful, but her beauty was like that of statuary. The mother I did not see. She was, as I was told, slightly indisposed, and, on begging that she might not be disturbed, the daughter readily acquiesced. Every thing about the place indicated people accustomed to refined and elegant habits, but whence they came, how long they proposed to remain, and what relation the young man sustained to the other members of the family I confess I would gladly have known.
Seeing a flute on the table, I spoke of music, for I conceived it to belong to the absent gentleman. I received no enlightenment, however; and as the twilight was already falling deeply, I felt obliged to take leave, without obtaining even a glimpse of the person whom I had pictured in imagination as young and fair, and of course agreeable.
The sun had been set some time, but the moon had risen full and bright, so that I felt no fear even in passing the graveyard, but walked more slowly than I had done before, till, reaching the gate, I paused to think of the awful mystery of life and death and immortality.
This is not a very desolate spot after all, thought I, as leaning over the gate, something of the quiet of the place infused itself into my spirits. Here, I felt, the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Here the long train of evils that attach themselves to the best phases of humanity fade to silent dust. Here the thorn-crown of pain is loosened from the brow of sorrow by the white hand of peace, and the hearts that were all their lifetime bowed under the shadow of a great and haply unpitied affliction, never ache any more. And here, oh, best of all, the frailties of the unresisting tempted are folded away beneath the shroud from the humiliating glances of pity—from the cold eyes of pride. We have need to be thankful that when man brought upon his primal nature the mildew of sin, God did not cast us utterly from him, but in the unsearchable riches of his mercy struck open the refuge of the grave. If there were no fountain where our sins of scarlet might be washed as white as wool—if the black night of death were not bordered by the golden shadows of the morning of immortality—if deep in the darkness were not sunken the foundations of the white bastions of peace—it were yet an inestimable privilege to lay aside the burden of life, for life becomes—sooner or later, a burden, an echo among ruins.
In the corner of the burial ground, where the trees are thickest, a little apart from the rest, was the grave of Mary Wildermings, and year after year the blue thistles bloomed and faded in its sunken sod.
The train of my reflections naturally suggested her, and, turning my eyes in the direction of her resting place, I saw, or thought I saw, the outline of a human figure. I remembered the story of her unresting ghost, and at first little doubted that I beheld it, and felt, I own, a tumult of strange feeling on finding myself thus alone so near a questionable shape.
Then, I said, this is some delusion of the senses; and I passed my hand over my eyes, for an uncertain glimmer had followed my intensity of gaze. I looked towards the cottage to reassure myself by the light of a human habitation, but all there was dark—a cloud had passed over the moon, and, without venturing to look towards the haunted grave, I withdrew from the gate, very lightly; nevertheless, it creaked as I did so. Any sound save the beating of my own heart gave me courage; and when I had walked a little way, I turned and looked again, but the dense shadow would have prevented my seeing any thing, if any thing had been there. Certain it is, I saw nothing.
On returning home, I asked the housekeeper, a garrulous person usually, if she remembered Mary Wildermings, and if she was not buried in the graveyard across the wood.
"Yes, I remember her, and she is buried in the corner of the ground on the hill. They come to my house, I know, to get a cup, or something of the sort, with which to dip the water from her grave, for it rained terribly all the day of her funeral. But," she added, "what do you want to talk of the dead and gone for, when there are living folks enough to talk about?"
Truth is, she wanted me to say something of our new neighbors, and was vexed that I did not, though I probably should have done so had they not been quite driven from my thoughts by the more absorbing event of the evening; so, as much vexed and disappointed as herself, I retired. The night was haunted with some troublous dreams, but a day of sunshine succeeded, and my thoughts flowed back to a more cheerful channel.
Days and weeks went by, and we neither saw nor heard anything of our new neighbors, for my call was not returned, nor did I make any further overtures towards an acquaintance.
Often, as I sat under the apple tree by the door, of twilights, I heard the sweet mellow music of the flute.
"Is that at the cottage?" said the housekeeper to me, one night: "it sounds to me as though it were in the corner of the graveyard."
I smiled as she turned her head a little to one side, and, encircling the right ear with her hand, listened for some minutes eagerly, and then proceeded to express her conviction that the music was the result of no mortal agency.
"Did you ever hear of a ghost playing the flute?" said I.
"A flute!" she answered, indignantly, "it's a flute, just as much as you are a flute; and for the sake of enlightening your blind understanding, I'll go to the graveyard, night as it is, if you will go with me."
"Very well," I said. "Come on."
So, under the faint light of the crescent moon, we took our way together. Gradually the notes became lower and sadder, and quite died away. I urged my trembling companion to walk faster, lest the ghost should vanish too; and she acceded to my wish with silent alacrity, that convinced me at once of the sincerity of her expressed belief.
Just as we began to ascend the hill, she stopped suddenly, saying,
"There! did you hear that?"
I answered that I heard a noise, but that it was no unusual thing to hear sounds of the sort in an inhabited neighborhood at so early an hour.
It was the latching of the gate at the graveyard. She answered, solemnly.
"As you value your immortal soul, go no further."
In vain I argued, that a ghost would have no need to unlatch the gate. She positively refused to go farther, and with a courage not very habitual to me, I confess, I walked on alone.
"Do you think I don't know that sound?" she called after me. "I would know if I had forgotten everything else. Oh, stop till I tell you! The night Mary Wildermings died," I heard her say; but I knew the sound of the gate as well as she, and would not wait even for a ghost story. I have since wished I had, for I could never afterwards persuade her to reveal it.
Gaining the summit of the hill, I perceived, a little way before me, a dark figure, receding slowly; but so intent was I on the superhuman, that I paid little attention to the human; though afterward, in recalling the circumstance, the individual previously seen while I sat on the bridge became in some way associated with this.
How hushed and solemn the graveyard seemed! I was half afraid, as I looked in—quite startled, in fact, when latching and unlatching the gate, to determine whether the sound I had heard were that or not, a rabbit, roused from its light sleep, under the fallen grass, sped fleetly across the still mounds to the safer shelter of the woods. I saw nothing else, save that the grass was trampled to a narrow path leading towards Mary's grave.
During the summer, I sometimes saw the young girl in the woods, and I noticed that she neither gathered flowers nor sang with the birds; but would sit for hours in some deep shadow, without moving her position in the least, not even to push away the light curls which the wind blew over her cheeks and forehead, as they would. She seemed to neither love nor seek human companionship. Once only I noticed, and it was the last time she ever walked in the woods, that he whom I supposed to be her brother was with her. She did not sit in the shade, as usual, but walked languidly, and leaning heavily on the arm of her attendant, who several times swept off the curls from her forehead, and bent down, as if kissing her.
A few days afterwards, being slightly indisposed, I called in the village doctor. Our conversation, naturally enough, was of who was sick and who was dead.
"Among my patients," he said, "there is none that interests me so deeply as a little girl at the cottage—indeed, I have scarcely thought of anything else, since I knew that she must die. A strange child," he continued; "she seems to feel neither love of life nor fear of death—nor does she either weep or smile; and though I have been with her much of late, I have never seen her sleep. She suffers no pain—her face wears the same calm expression, but her large, melancholy eyes are wide open all the time."
The second evening after this, though not quite recovered myself, I called at the cottage, in the hope of being of some service to the sick girl. The snowy curtain was dropped over the window of her chamber—the sash partly raised, and all within still—very still. The door was a little open, and, pausing, I heard from within a low, stifled moan, which I could not misunderstand, and pushing open the door, I entered without rapping.
In the white sheet, drawn straight over the head and the feet, I recognised at once the fearful truth—the little girl was dead. By the head of the bed, and still as one stricken into stone, sat the personage I so often wished to see. The room was shadowy, and his face buried in his hands—nevertheless, I knew him—it was he who had passed me on the bridge.
Presently the housekeeper, or one that I took to be she, entered, and whispering to him, he arose and left the room, so that I but imperfectly saw him. When he was gone, the woman folded the covering away from the face, and to my horror I saw that the eyes were still unclosed. Seeing my surprise, she said, as she folded a napkin, and pinned it close over the shut lids——
"It is strange, but the child would never in life close her eyes—her mother, they say, died in watching for one who never came, and the baby was watchful and sleepless from the first."
The next day, and the next, it was dull and rainy—excitement and premature exposure had induced a return of my first indisposition, so that I was not at the funeral. I saw, however, from my window, preparations for the burial—to my surprise, in the lonesome little graveyard by the woods.
In the course of a fortnight, I prepared for a visit of condolence to the cottage, but, on reaching it, found the inhabitants gone—the place still and empty.
On my return, I stopped at the haunted burial ground—close by the grave of Mary Wildermings was that of the stranger child. The briers and thistles had been carefully cut away, there was no slab and no name over either, but the blue and white violets were planted thickly about both. That they slept well, was all I knew.