“The road do run all downhill too,” she said to herself, feeling somewhat reassured as she glanced down the lane; she possessed a light pair of heels—even if a spirit were to pursue her she fancied she could distance it.
Under the big cypress tree she now took up her stand, drawing her dark skirts closely about her, and only peering out occasionally behind the trunk. The moments passed very slowly, as it seemed to her; now and then the squeak of a bat broke the stillness, at other times a rustle in the long grass betokened the passage of some nocturnal wanderer—a stoat possibly, or a rat. On these occasions Martha would hitch up her skirts a little and look fearfully round—she was almost as much afraid of rats as of ghosts. Once she thought she heard a kind of stealthy movement in the grass just behind her, and almost uttered a shriek of terror as the possibility occurred to her that it might be a snake. After looking over her shoulder in the endeavour to ascertain the cause of this mysterious sound she turned round again suddenly.
Lo! advancing with swift and noiseless tread up the flagged path was a figure, the outlines of which were strangely familiar to her. As it approached nearer to her place of ambush the moonlight distinctly revealed a countenance which seemed to be that of Samuel Bundy. Seemed to be I say, for it wore an expression strangely unlike that which Martha had been accustomed to see on the blunt and honest face of her former lover: an expression of stern gravity; the eyes were fixed, the mouth resolutely set, the face, moreover, was deadly pale in the moonlight, and what alarmed Martha more than anything else was the fact that the figure moved onward without making a sound. Into the church-porch it passed, and was there engulfed by the darkness.
Martha’s heart was thumping like a sledgehammer; it was Sam sure enough—or rather Sam’s wraith, for surely no living thing could look or move in that ghostly fashion.
“So it’s to be him after all!”
“So it’s to be him after all!” gasped Martha, with an odd little choked spasm of laughter. “Dear, to be sure! I wonder if he d’ know as his sperret have a-come here to-night. He must be dreamin’ o’ me—I reckon he’ll have to believe now when I d’ tell him. . . . Well, I’d liefer ’twas him nor Bob, anyhow. He’ll own he be wrong arter this, an’ then all ’ull be pleasant again between us.”
She leaned her head against the spice-scented cypress bark, and smiled to herself, though she still trembled, partly with awe, partly with pleasurable anticipation. When the church clock chimed midnight, then might she confidently expect the wraith of her future husband to come gliding forth from the church into which it had so silently passed, and might gaze with certainty on the likeness of the man decreed to be the partner of her lot. It was a solemn thought, but a joyful one; any contact with the supernatural must be awe-inspiring, but Martha was a bold girl, and eminently practical, and she passed the moments which must intervene before the reappearance of the vision in choosing the colour of her wedding gown.
Clang! boomed out the clock in the church tower presently, and as the reverberating strokes fell upon the air, Martha, philosophical though she was, was conscious of a recurrence of the choking sensation of a little while before. The last vibrating echo died away, and she craned forward her head, fearful and yet eager. All was silent as the graves in the midst of which she stood; she strained her eyes towards the porch, but no white impalpable shape came forth from its blackness.
All at once Martha’s heart ceased its violent beating, and appeared to stand still: a new and awful thought had come to her. Had not her grandmother told her the dread fate which awaited the originals of those whose semblance passed into the church without again reappearing? Her own words to Sam recurred to her: “Them as is to die within the year do seem to go into the church and don’t never come out again.” Could it be possible that the apparition which had filled her with so much satisfaction a few moments before was the portent of poor Sam’s early death?