“Oh, yes! yes, I entreat you; something in my heart urges me beyond the possibility of keeping back; haste! haste, I implore you. I am sick with impatience while you hesitate. I feel as if something momentous, something tremendous hung upon this instant of time; haste, haste!” she said.
“My darling, my poor darling, strong as you are, this has been too much for you; you are nervous, excited, flighty; but, come along; I can take care of you.”
Elsie arose and took his arm, and solemnly and silently they passed out of the old sexton’s house, and took their mournful way toward the church. Solemnly and silently they entered its portals, and, dimly lighted by the lantern, passed up its shadowy aisles—silently, but for the mournful echo of their footsteps. The door of the vault was situated at the side of the altar. Opening this door with reverential care, and still bearing the lantern, Magnus Hardcastle descended, followed by Elsie, pale with grief and awe, into its shadows. There is a depth of solemnity about the last resting-place of the dead which overwhelms the wildest sorrow with awe, and subdues it into deathlike stillness. Magnus and Elsie entered the vault with profound calmness. But here was only the darkness and repose of death. The vault, like the church, was new. Only two mortals—an aged man and an infant—had been placed there to rest, just before Alice Garnet fell asleep and was laid by their side. As the two mourning pilgrims entered, the light of the lantern partially revealed the new, gray stone walls, the white ground floor, and the three coffins. That of Alice was, of course, easily recognized. Reverently, mournfully, they approached and knelt by its side. With reverent hands Magnus raised the top of the outer case.
A glass-plate set in the lid of the coffin gave the features of the quiet face once more to the view of the mourning son and daughter. There was the face, even as Elsie had seen it often in its natural sleep; only more serene than in slumber, for in her life the very sleep of Alice had seemed troubled or too deathlike. Was this repose deathlike? Was this death? Beautiful, strangely beautiful, was that heavenly face, in its deep repose, in its rapt repose, for there was a look of ecstasy in the countenance, in the elastic fullness of the muscles, in the faint color on the rounded cheeks, and the full and pouting lips. Was this death? Someone’s reverence for the beautiful had left the amber ringlets straying from the close border of the cap, and now so lifelike looked the lovely face, and these ringlets seemed to tremble as with a trembling breath. Was this death? Was the suddenness with which life had left the clay the cause of this lifelike look? There are moments when the most rational have wild hopes, moments when the most habitually self-collected doubt the evidence of their own senses; it was thus in amaze that they gazed upon her countenance, seemingly instinct with life; with the freshness, and fullness, and bloom of life; the color seemed brightening upon her cheeks and lips with life; the eyelashes and the amber ringlets seemed quivering with life, and even as they gazed with amaze the view was obscured by a mist on the glass, and the beautiful countenance veiled from their eyes. Elsie spoke with a voice full of tears.
“Oh, Magnus! dear Magnus! wipe off the glass. Our breath, as we looked too close, has dulled it. I cannot see her angel face any longer for the mist upon the glass.”
Magnus drew out his silk pocket-handkerchief and wiped the glass carefully.
“I cannot see her yet, Magnus. I cannot see her yet. Oh, I want to see her again, that that divine countenance may be indelibly fixed in my memory—oh-h-h!”
Magnus wiped the glass again very carefully, looked, wiped it a third time most carefully, and, taking up the lantern, threw its whole light upon the plate, rubbing it assiduously as he did so. Why did Dr. Hardcastle start—
“As if the Archangel’s trump he heard?”
The new mist upon the glass was from within the coffin. To snatch a hunting-knife from his belt, to wrench open the coffin lid with one wrench of his strong hand and throw it off, to give her fresh air; to snatch her from the coffin to the warmth and shelter of his living arms and bosom; to turn to the thunder-stricken Elsie, and exclaim: