“What may this portend?” asked each man of his neighbor.
All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living, of one whose presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet is to the earth, was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud and the humble stood aside, that her white garment might not wave against them. It was a long, loose robe, of spotless purity. Its wearer appeared very old, pale, emaciated, and feeble, yet glided onward, without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her course, a littly rosy boy burst forth from a door, and ran, with open arms, towards the ghostly woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips. She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expression of no earthly sweetness, so that the child shivered and stood awe-struck, rather than affrighted, while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have been polluted even by an infant’s touch; perhaps her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy, within a year.
“She is but a shadow,” whispered the superstitious. “The child put forth his arms and could not grasp her robe!”
The wonder was increased, when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron knocker, and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture, that some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth; all gone from their home, long since and forever, unless their ghosts still haunted it,—fit company for the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.” An elderly man approached the steps, and reverently uncovering his gray locks, essayed to explain the matter.
“None, Madam,” said he, “have dwelt in this house these fifteen years agone,—no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral you may remember to have followed. His heirs being ill-agreed among themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin.”
The Old Maid looked slowly round, with a slight gesture of one hand, and a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than ever, in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer, and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now heard, coming down the staircase of the old mansion, which all conceived to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more distinct on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell on the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance, towards the church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that the people saw of the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.”
“Who undid the door?” asked many.
This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting against an inference, which might be drawn, affirmed that the person within was a negro, and bore a singular resemblance to old Caesar, formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years before.
“Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family,” said one, half seriously.
“Let us wait here,” replied another. “More guests will knock at the door, anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open!”