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THE WEDDING KNELL.
THE WEDDING KNELL.
There is a certain church in the city of New York,
which I have always regarded with peculiar interest,
on account of a marriage there solemnized, under
very singular circumstances, in my grandmother's girl-hood.
That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator
of the scene, and ever after made it her favorite narrative.
Whether the edifice now standing on the same
site be the identical one to which she referred, I am
not antiquarian enough to know; nor would it be
worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable
error, by reading the date of its erection on the
tablet over the door. It is a stately church, surrounded
by an inclosure of the lovelies green, within which
appear urns, pillars, obelisks, and other forms of monumental
marble, the tributes of private affection, or
more splendid memorials of historic dust. With such
a place, though the tumult of the city rolls beneath
legendary interest.
The marriage might be considered as the result of
an early engagement, though there had been two intermediate
weddings on the lady's part, and forty years
of celibacy on that of the gentleman. At sixty-five,
Mr. Ellenwood was a shy, but not quite a secluded
man; selfish, like all men who brood over their own
hearts, yet manifesting, on rare occasions, a vein of
generous sentiment; a scholar, throughout life, though
always an indolent one, because his studies had no
definite object, either of public advantage or personal
ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and fastidiously
delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable relaxation,
in his behalf, of the common rules of society.
In truth, there were so many anomalies in his character,
and, though shrinking with diseased sensibility
from public notice, it had been his fatality so often to
become the topic of the day, by some wild eccentricity
of conduct, that people searched his lineage for an
hereditary taint of insanity. But there was no need
of this. His caprices had their origin in a mind that
lacked the support of an engrossing purpose, and in
feelings that preyed upon themselves, for want of other
food. If he were mad, it was the consequence, and
not the cause, of an aimless and abortive life.
The widow was as complete a contrast to her third
bridegroom, in every thing but age, as can well be
conceived. Compelled to relinquish her first engagement,
years, to whom she became an exemplary wife, and by
whose death she was left in possession of a splendid
fortune. A southern gentleman considerably younger
than herself, succeeded to her hand, and carried her
to Charleston, where, after many uncomfortable years,
she found herself again a widow. It would have been
singular, if any uncommon delicacy of feeling had
survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's; it
could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment,
the cold duty of her first marriage, the
dislocation of the heart's principles, consequent on a
second union, and the unkindness of her southern
husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect
the idea of his death with that of her comfort. To
be brief, she was that wisest, but unloveliest variety
of woman, a philosopher, bearing troubles of the heart
with equanimity, dispensing with all that should have
been her happiness, and making the best of what remained.
Sage in most matters, the widow was perhaps
the more amiable, for the one frailty that made
her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not remain
beautiful by proxy, in the person of a daughter; she
therefore refused to grow old and ugly, on any consideration;
she struggled with Time, and held fast her
roses in spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared
to have relinquished the spoil, as not worth the trouble
of acquiring it.
The approaching marriage of this woman of the
was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return to her
native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones,
seemed to concur, in supposing that the lady must
have borne no inactive part, in arranging the affair;
there were considerations of expediency, which she
would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood;
and there was just the specious phantom of
sentiment and romance, in this late union of two early
lovers, which sometimes makes a fool of a woman,
who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of
life. All the wonder was, how the gentleman, with
his lack of worldly wisdom, and agonizing consciousness
of ridicule, could have been induced to take a
measure, at once so prudent and so laughable. But
while people talked, the wedding day arrived. The
ceremony was to be solemnized according to the
Episcopalian forms, and in open church, with a degree
of publicity that attracted many spectators, who occupied
the front seats of the galleries, and the pews near
the altar and along the broad aisle. It had been
arranged, or possibly it was the custom of the day,
that the parties should proceed separately to church.
By some accident, the bridegroom was a little less
punctual than the widow and her bridal attendants;
with whose arrival, after this tedious, but necessary
preface, the action of our tale may be said to commence.
The clumsy wheels of several old fashioned coaches
the bridal party, came through the church door, with
the sudden and gladsome effect of a burst of sunshine.
The whole group, except the principal figure, was
made up of youth and gaiety. As they streamed up
the broad aisle, while the pews and pillars seemed to
brighten on either side, their steps were as buoyant as
if they mistook the church for a ball-room, and were
ready to dance hand in hand to the altar. So brilliant
was the spectacle, that few took notice of a singular
phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the
moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold,
the bell swung heavily in the tower above her, and
sent forth its deepest knell. The vibrations died
away and returned, with prolonged solemnity, as she
entered the body of the church.
`Good heavens! what an omen,' whispered a young
lady to her lover.
`On my honor,' replied the gentleman, `I believe
the bell has the good taste to toll of its own accord.
What has she to do with weddings? If you, dearest
Julia, were approaching the altar, the bell would ring
out its merriest peal. It has only a funeral knell for
her.'
The bride, and most of her company, had been too
much occupied with the bustle of entrance, to hear
the first boding stroke of the bell, or at least to reflect
on the singularity of such a welcome to the altar.
They therefore continued to advance, with undiminished
crimson velvet coats, the gold-laced hats, the hoop-petticoats,
the silk, satin, brocade and embroidery,
the buckles, canes and swords, all displayed to the
best advantage on persons suited to such finery, made
the group appear more like a bright colored picture,
than any thing real. But by what perversity of taste,
had the artist represented his principal figure as so
wrinkled and decayed, while yet he had decked her
out in the brightest splendor of attire, as if the loveliest
maiden had suddenly withered into age, and become
a moral to the beautiful around her! On they
went, however, and had glittered along about a third
of the aisle, when another stroke of the bell seemed to
fill the church with a visible gloom, dimming and
obscuring the bright pageant, till it shone forth again
as from a mist.
This time the party wavered, stopt, and huddled
closer together, while a slight scream was heard from
some of the ladies, and a confused whispering among
the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might
have been fancifully compared to a splendid bunch of
flowers, suddenly shaken by a puff of wind, which
threatened to scatter the leaves of an old, brown, withered
rose, on the same stalk with two dewy buds;
such being the emblem of the widow between her fair
young bridemaids. But her heroism was admirable.
She had started with an irrepressible shudder, as if the
stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her heart;
in dismay, she took the lead, and paced calmly up the
aisle. The bell continued to swing, strike, and vibrate,
with the same doleful regularity, as when a
corpse is on its way to the tomb.
`My young friends here have their nerves a little
shaken,' said the widow, with a smile, to the clergyman
at the altar. `But so many weddings have been
ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and yet
turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune
under such different auspices.'
`Madam,' answered the rector, in great perplexity,
`this strange occurrence brings to my mind a marriage
sermon of the famous Bishop Taylor, wherein he
mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe,
that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he
seems to hang the bridal chamber in black, and cut
the wedding garment out of a coffin pall. And it has
been the custom of divers nations to infuse something
of sadness into their marriage ceremonies; so to keep
death in mind, while contracting that engagement
which is life's chiefest business. Thus we may draw
a sad but profitable moral from this funeral knell.'
But, though the clergyman might have given his
moral even a keener point, he did not fail to despatch
an attendant to inquire into the mystery, and stop
those sounds, so dismally appropriate to such a marriage.
A brief space elapsed, during which the silence
was broken only by whispers, and a few suppressed
who, after the first shock, were disposed to draw an illnatured
merriment from the affair. The young have
less charity for aged follies, than the old for those of
youth. The widow's glance was observed to wander,
for an instant, towards a window of the church, as if
searching for the time-worn marble that she had dedicated
to her first husband; then her eyelids dropt over
their faded orbs, and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly
to another grave. Two buried men, with a voice
at her ear and a cry afar off, were calling her to lie
down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth
of feeling, she thought how much happier had been
her fate, if, after years of bliss, the bell were now tolling
for her funeral, and she were followed to the grave
by the old affection of her earliest lover, long her
husband. But why had she returned to him, when
their cold hearts shrank from each other's embrace?
Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully, that the
sunshine seemed to fade in the air. A whisper, communicated
from those who stood nearest the windows,
now spread through the church; a hearse, with a train
of several coaches, was creeping along the street, conveying
some dead man to the church-yard, while the
bride awaited a living one at the altar. Immediately
after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends
were heard at the door. The widow looked down
the aisle, and clenched the arm of one of her bridemaids
in her bony hand, with such unconscious violence,
that the fair girl trembled.
`You frighten me, my dear madam!' cried she.
`For heaven's sake, what is the matter?'
`Nothing, my dear, nothing,' said the widow; then,
whispering close to her ear,—`There is a foolish fancy,
that I cannot get rid of. I am expecting my bridegroom
to come into the church, with my two first husbands
for groomsmen!'
`Look, look!' screamed the bridemaid. `What is
here? The funeral!'
As she spoke, a dark procession paced into the
church. First came an old man and woman, like
chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head to foot
in the deepest black, all but their pale features and
hoary hair; he leaning on a staff, and supporting her
decrepit form with his nerveless arm. Behind, appeared
another, and another pair, as aged, as black, and
mournful as the first. As they drew near, the widow
recognised in every face some trait of former friends,
long forgotten, but now returning, as if from their old
graves, to warn her to prepare a shroud; or, with purpose
almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles
and infirmity, and claim her as their companion by
the tokens of her own decay. Many a merry night
had she danced with them, in youth. And now, in
joyless age, she felt that some withered partner should
request her hand, and all unite, in a dance of death,
to the music of the funeral bell.
While these aged mourners were passing up the
aisle, it was observed, that, from pew to pew, the
object, hitherto concealed by the intervening figures,
came full in sight. Many turned away their faces;
others kept a fixed and rigid stare; and a young girl
giggled hysterically, and fainted with the laughter on
her lips. When the spectral procession approached
the altar, each couple separated, and slowly diverged,
till, in the centre, appeared a form, that had been
worthily ushered in with all this gloomy pomp, the
death-knell, and the funeral It was the bridegroom
in his shroud!
No garb but that of the grave could have befitted
such a death-like aspect; the eyes, indeed, had the
wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all else was fixed in
the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow
in accents that seemed to melt into the clang of the
bell, which fell heavily on the air while he spoke.
`Come, my bride!' said those pale lips, `The hearse
is ready. The sexton stands waiting for us at the
door of the tomb. Let us be married; and then to
our coffins!'
How shall the widow's horror be represented! It
gave her the ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her
youthful friends stood apart, shuddering at the mourners,
the shrouded bridegroom, and herself; the whole
scene expressed, by the strongest imagery, the vain
struggle of the gilded vanities of this world, when opposed
to age, infirmity, sorrow, and death. The awestruck
silence was first broken by the clergyman.
`Mr Ellenwood,' said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat
of authority, `you are not well. Your mind has
been agitated by the unusual circumstances in which
you are placed. The ceremony must be deferred. As
an old friend, let me entreat you to return home.'
`Home! yes; but not without my bride,' answered
he, in the same hollow accents. `You deem this
mockery; perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my
aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery—
had I forced my withered lips to smile at my dead
heart—that might have been mockery, or madness.
But now, let young and old declare, which of us has
come hither without a wedding garment, the bridegroom,
or the bride!'
He stept forward at a ghostly pace, and stood beside
the widow, contrasting the awful simplicity of his
shroud with the glare and glitter in which she had
arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None, that
beheld them, could deny the terrible strength of the
moral which his disordered intellect had contrived to
draw.
`Cruel! cruel!' groaned the heart-stricken bride.
`Cruel?' repeated he; then losing his death-like
composure in a wild bitterness,—`Heaven judge, which
of us has been cruel to the other! In youth, you deprived
me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you
took away all the substance of my life, and made it a
dream, without reality enough even to grieve at—with
only a pervading gloom, through which I walked
when I have built my tomb, and would not give up
the thought of resting there—no, not for such a life
as we once pictured—you call me to the altar. At
your summons I am here. But other husbands have
enjoyed your youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart,
and all that could be termed your life. What is there
for me but your decay and death? And therefore I
have bidden these funeral friends, and bespoken the
sexton's deepest knell, and am come, in my shroud, to
wed you, as with a burial service, that we may join
our hands at the door of the sepulchre, and enter it
together.'
It was not frenzy; it was not merely the drunkenness
of strong emotion, in a heart unused to it, that
now wrought upon the bride. The stern lesson of the
day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She
seized the bridegroom's hand.
`Yes!' cried she. `Let us wed, even at the door
of the sepulchre! My life is gone in vanity and
emptiness. But at its close, there is one true feeling.
It has made me what I was in youth; it makes me
worthy of you. Time is no more for both of us. Let
us wed for eternity!'
With a long and deep regard, the bridegroom looked
into her eyes, while a tear was gathering in his
own. How strange that gush of human feeling from
the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the
tear, even with his shroud.
`Beloved of my youth,' said he, `I have been wild.
The despair of my whole lifetime had returned at
once, and maddened me. Forgive; and be forgiven.
Yes; it is evening with us now; and we have realized
none of our morning dreams of happiness. But let us
join our hands before the altar, as lovers, whom adverse
circumstances have separated through life, yet who
meet again as they are leaving it, and find their earthly
affection changed into something holy as religion.
And what is Time, to the married of Eternity?'
Amid the tears of many, and a swell of exalted
sentiment, in those who felt aright, was solemnized
the union of two immortal souls. The train of withered
mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the
pale features of the aged bride, and the death-bell tolling
through the whole, till its deep voice overpowered
the marriage words, all marked the funeral of earthly
hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as
if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene,
poured forth an anthem, first mingling with the dismal
knell, then rising to a loftier strain, till the soul looked
down upon its woe. And when the awful rite was
finished, and with cold hand in cold hand, the Married
of Eternity withdrew, the organ's peal of solemn
triumph drowned the Wedding Knell.
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