by Thomas Hardy
“The moonlight fell upon the sepulchral face and head, intensifying the child’s daytime aspect till it was only too much like that which had suggested the nickname. The unsuspecting and timid lady — a perfect necrophobist by reason of the care with which everything unpleasant had been kept out of her dainty life — saw the death — like shape, and, shrieking with sudden terror, fell to the ground. The lurking woman with her child disappeared in another direction, and passed through the churchyard gate homeward.
“The Lady Cicely’s shriek brought some villagers to the spot. They found her quivering, but not senseless; and she was taken home. There she lay prostrate for some time under the doctor’s hands.
II
“It was the following spring, and the time drew near when an infant was to be born to the Squire. Great was the anxiety of all concerned, by reason of the fright and fall from which the Lady Cicely had suffered in the latter part of the preceding year. However the event which they were all expecting took place, and, to the joy of her friends, no evil consequences seemed to have ensued from the terrifying incident before-mentioned. The child of Lady Cicely was a son and heir.
“Meanwhile the mother of the afflicted child watched these things in silence. Nothing — not even malevolent tricks upon those dear to him — seemed to interrupt the prosperity of the Squire. An Uncle of his, a money-lender in some northern city, died childless at this time, and left an immense fortune to his nephew the Lady Cicely’s husband; who, fortified by this acquisition, now bethought himself of a pedigree as a necessity, so as to be no longer beholden to his wife for all the ancestral credit that his children would possess. By searching in the County history he happily discovered that one of the knights who came over with William the Conqueror bore a name which somewhat resembled his own, and from this he constructed an ingenious and creditable genealogical tree; the only rickety point in which occurred at a certain date in the previous century. It was the date whereat it became necessary to show that his great-grandfather (in reality a respectable village tanner) was the indubitable son of a scion of the knightly family before alluded to, despite the fact that this scion had lived in quite another part of the county. This little artistic junction, however, was satisfactorily manipulated, and the grafting was only to be perceived by the curious.
“His upward progress was uninterrupted. His only son grew to be an interesting lad, though, like his mother, exceedingly timid and impressionable. With his now great wealth, the Squire began to feel that his present modest country-seat was insufficient, and there being at this time an Abbey and its estates in the market, by reason of some dispute in the family hitherto its owners, the wealthy gentleman purchased it. The Abbey was of large proportions, and stood in a lovely and fertile valley surrounded by many attached estates. It had a situation fit for the home of a prince, still more for that of an Archbishop. This historic spot, with its monkish associations, its fish-ponds, woods, village, abbey-church, and Abbots’ bones beneath their incised slabs, all passed into the possession of our illustrious self-seeker.
“Meeting his son when the purchase was completed, he smacked the youth on the shoulder.
“‘We’ve estates, and rivers, and hills, and woods, and a beautiful Abbey unrivalled in the whole of Wessex — Ha, ha!’ he cried.
“‘I don’t care about abbeys,’ said the gentleson. ‘They are gloomy; this one particularly.’
“‘Nonsense!’ said his father. ‘And we’ve a village, and the Abbey church into the bargain.’
“‘Yes.’
“‘And dozens of mitred Abbots in their stone coffins underground, and tons of monks — all for the same money. Yes the very dust of those old rascals is mine! Ho-ho!’
“The son turned pale. ‘Many were holy men,’ he murmured, ‘despite the errors in their creed.’
“‘D — ye, grow up, and get married, and have a wife who’ll disabuse you of that ghostly nonsense!’ cried the Squire.
“Not more than a year after this, several new peers were created for political reasons with which we have no concern. Among them was the subject of this legend; much to the chagrin of some of his neighbours, who considered that such rapid advancement was too great for his deserts. On this point I express no opinion.
“He now resided at the Abbey, outwardly honoured by all in his vicinity, though perhaps less honoured in their hearts; and many were the visitors from far and near. In due course his son grew to manhood and married a beautiful woman, whose beauty nevertheless was no greater than her taste and accomplishments. She could read Latin and Greek, as well as one or two modern languages; above all she had great skill as a sculptress in marble and other materials.
“The poor widow in the other village seemed to have been blasted out of existence by the success of her long-time enemy. The two could not thrive side by side. She declined and died; her death having, happily, been preceded by that of her child.
“Though the Abbey, with its little cells, and quaint turnings, satisfied the curiosity of visitors, it did not satisfy the noble lord (as the Squire had now become). Except the Abbot’s Hall, the rooms were miserably small for a baron of his wealth, who expected soon to be an Earl, and the parent of a line of Earls.
“Moreover the village was close to his very doors — on his very lawn, and he disliked the proximity of its inhabitants, his old craze for seclusion remaining with him still. On Sundays they sat at service in the very Abbey Church which was part of his own residence. Besides, as his son had said, the conventual buildings formed a gloomy dwelling, with its dark corridors, monkish associations, and charnel like smell.
“So he set to work, and did not spare his thousands. First, he carted the village bodily away to a distance of a mile or more, where he built new, and, it must be added, convenient cottages, and a little barn-like hutch. The spot on which the old village had stood was now included in his lawn. But the villagers still intruded there, for they came to ring the Abbey-Churchbells — a fine peal, which they professed (it is believed truly) to have an immemorial right to chime.
“As the natives persistently came and got drunk in the ringing-loft, the peer determined to put a stop to it. He sold the ring of bells to a founder in a distant city, and to him one day the whole beautiful set of them was conveyed on waggons away from the spot on which they had hung and resounded for so many centuries, and called so many devout souls to prayer. When the villagers saw their dear bells going off in procession, never to return, they stood at their doors and shed tears.
“It was just after this time that the first shadow fell upon the new lord’s life. His wife died. Yet the renovation of the residence went on a pace. The Abbey was pulled down wing by wing, and a fair mansion built on its site. An additional lawn was planned to extend over the spot where the cloisters had been, and for that purpose the ground was to be lowered and levelled. The flat tombs covering the Abbots were removed one by one, as a necessity of the embellishment, and the bones dug up.
“Of these bones it seemed as if the excavators would never reach the end. It was necessary to dig ditches and pits for them in the plantations, and from their quantity there was not much respect shown to them in wheeling them away.
III
“One morning, when the family were rising from breakfast, a message was brought to my lord that more bones than ever had been found in clearing away the ground for the ball-room, and for the foundations of the new card-parlour. One of the skeletons was that of a mitred abbot — evidently a very holy person. What were they to do with it?
“‘Put him into any hole,’ says my lord.
“The foreman came a second time, ‘There is something strange in those bones, my lord,’ he said; ‘we remove them by barrowfuls, and still they seem never to lessen. The more we carry away, the more there are left behind.’
“The son looked disturbed, rose from his seat and went out of the room. Since his mother’s death he had been much depressed, and seemed to suffer from nervous debility.
&nb
sp; “‘Curse the bones!’ said the peer, angry at the extreme sensitiveness of his son, whose distress and departure he had observed. ‘More, do ye say? Throw the wormy rubbish into any ditch you can find!’
“The servants looked uneasily at each-other, for the old Catholicism had not at that time ceased to be the religion of these islands so long as it has now, and much of its superstition and weird fancy still lingered in the minds of the simple folk of this remote nook.
“The son’s wife, the bright and accomplished woman aforesaid, to enliven the subject told her father-in-law that she was designing a marble tomb for one of the London churches, and the design was to be a very artistic allegory of Death and the Resurrection; the figure of an Angel on one side, and that of Death on the other (according to the extravagant symbolism of that date, when such designs as this were much in vogue). Might she, the lady asked, have a skull to copy in marble for the head of Death?
“She might have them all, and welcome, her father-in-law said. He would only be too glad.”She went out to the spot where the new foundations were being dug, and from the heap of bones chose the one of those sad relics which seemed to offer the most perfect model for her chisel.
“‘It is the last Abbot’s, my lady,’ said the clerk of the works.
“‘It will do,’ said she; and directed it to be put into a box and sent to the house in London where she and her husband at present resided.
“When she met her husband that day he proposed that they should return to town almost immediately. ‘This is a gloomy place,’ said he. ‘And if ever it comes into my hands I shan’t live here much. I’ve been telling the old man of my debts, too, and he says he won’t pay them. . . be hanged if he will, until he has a grandson at least.... So let’s be off.’
“They returned to town. This young man the son and heir, though quiet and nervous, was not a very domestic character; he had many friends of both sexes with whom his refined and accomplished wife was unacquainted. Therefore she was thrown much upon her own resources; and her gifts in carving were a real solace to her. She proceeded with her design for the tomb of her acquaintance; and the Abbot’s skull having duly arrived, she made use of it as her model as she had planned.
“Her husband being as usual away from home, she worked at her self-imposed task till bed-time — and then retired. When the house had been wrapped in sleep for some hours the front door was opened, and the absent one entered, a little the worse for liquor — for drinking in those days was one of a nobleman’s accomplishments. He ascended the stairs, candle in hand, and feeling uncertain whether his wife had gone to bed or no, entered her studio to look for her. Holding the candle unsteadily above his head, he perceived a heap of modelling clay; behind it a sheeted figure with a death’s-head above it — this being in fact the draped dummy arrangement that his wife had built up to be ultimately copied in marble for the allegory she had designed to support the mural tablet.
“The sight seemed to overpower the gazer with horror; the candle fell from his hand; and in the darkness he rushed downstairs and out of the house.
“‘I’ve seen it before!’ he cried in mad and maudlin accents. ‘Where? when?’
“At four o’clock the next morning news was brought to the house that my lord’s heir had shot himself dead with a pistol at a tavern not far off.
“His reason for the act was absolutely inexplicable to the outer world. The heir to an enormous property and a high title, the husband of a wife as gifted as she was charming; of all the men in English society he seemed to be the last likely to undertake such a desperate deed.
“Only a few persons — his wife not being one of them, though his father was — knew of the sad circumstance in the life of the suicide’s mother the late Lady Cicely, a few months before his birth — in which she was terrified nearly to death by the woman who held up poor little ‘Death’s-Head’, over the churchyard wall.
“Then people said that in this there was retribution upon the ambitious lord for his wickedness, particularly that of cursing the bones of the holy men of God. I give the superstition for what it is worth. It is enough to add, in this connection, that the old lord died, some say like Herod, of the characteristics he had imputed to the inoffensive human remains. However that may be in a few years the title was extinct, and now not a relative or scion remains of the family that bore his name.
“A venerable dissenter, a fearless ascetic of the neighbourhood, who had been deprived of his opportunities through some objections taken by the peer, preached a sermon the Sunday after his funeral, and mentioning no names, significantly took as his text, Isaiah XIV. 10-23: —
“‘Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations.... I will rise up against him, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord.’
“Whether as a Christian moralist he was justified in doing this I leave others to judge.”
Here the doctor concluded his story, and the thoughtfulness which it has engendered upon his own features spread over those of his hearers, as they sat with their eyes fixed upon the fire.
The End.
Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk
‘It all arose, you must know, from Andrey being fond of a drop of drink at that time – though he’s a sober enough man now by all account, so much the better for him. Jane, his bride, you see, was somewhat older than Andrey; how much older I don’t pretend to say; she was not one of our parish, and the register alone may be able to tell that. But, at any rate, her being a little ahead of her young man in mortal years, coupled with other bodily circumstances owing to that young man – ‘
(‘Ah, poor thing!’ sighed the women.)
‘– made her very anxious to get the thing done before he changed his mind; and ‘twas with a joyful countenance (they say) that she, with Andrey and his brother and sister-in-law, marched off to church one November morning as soon as ‘twas day a’most, to be made one with Andrey for the rest of her life. He had left our place long before it was light, and the folks that were up all waved their lanterns at him, and flung up their hats as he went.
‘The church of her parish was a mile and more from where she lived, and, as it was a wonderful fine day for the time of year, the plan was that as soon as they were married they would make out a holiday by driving straight off to Port Bredy, to see the ships and the sea and the sojers, instead of coming back to a meal at the house of the distant relation she lived wi’, and moping about there all the afternoon.
‘Well, some folks noticed that Andrey walked with rather wambling steps to church that morning; the truth o’t was that his nearest neighbour’s child had been christened the day before, and Andrey, having stood godfather, had stayed all night keeping up the christening, for he had said to himself, “Not if I live to be a thousand shall I again be made a godfather one day, and a husband the next, and perhaps a father the next, and therefore I’ll make the most of the blessing.” So that when he started from home in the morning he had not been in bed at all. The result was, as I say, that when he and his bride-to-be walked up the church to get married, the pa’son (who was a very strict man inside the church, whatever he was outside) looked hard at Andrey, and said, very sharp:
‘ “How’s this, my man? You are in liquor. And so early, too. I’m ashamed of you!”
‘ “Well, that’s true, sir,” says Andrey. “But I can walk straight enough for practical purposes. I can walk a chalk line,” he says (meaning no offence), “as well as some other folk: and – “ (getting hotter) – “I reckon that if you, Pa’son Billy Too good, had kept up a christening all night so thoroughly as I have done, you wouldn’t be able to stand at all; d – me if you would!”
‘This answer made Pa
’son Billy – as they used to call him– rather spitish, not to say hot, for he was a warm-tempered man if provoked, and he said, very decidedly: “Well, I cannot marry you in this state; and I will not! Go home and get sober!’ And he slapped the book together like a rat-trap.
‘Then the bride burst out crying as if her heart would break, for very fear that she would lose Andrey after all her hard work to get him, and begged and implored the pa’son to go on with the ceremony. But no.
‘ “I won’t be a party to your solemnizing matrimony with a tipsy man,” says Mr. Too good. “It is not right and decent. I am sorry for you, my young woman, seeing the condition you are in, but you’d better go home again. I wonder how you could think of bringing him here drunk like this!”
‘ “But if – if he don’t come drunk he won’t come at all, sir!” she says, through her sobs.
‘ “I can’t help that,” says the pa’son; and plead as she might, it did not move him. Then she tried him another way.
‘ “Well, then, if you’ll go home, sir, and leave us here, and come back to the church in an hour or two, I’ll undertake to say that he shall be as sober as a judge,” she cries. “We’ll bide here, with your permission; for if he once goes out of this here church unmarried, all Van Amburgh’s horses won’t drag him back again!”
‘ “Very well,” says the parson. “I’ll give you two hours, and then I’ll return.”
‘ “And please, sir, lock the door, so that we can’t escape!” says she.
‘ “Yes,” says the parson.
‘ “And let nobody know that we are here.”
‘The pa’son then took off his clane white surplice, and went away; and the others consulted upon the best means for keeping the matter a secret, which it was not a very hard thing to do, the place being so lonely, and the hour so early. The witnesses, Andrey’s brother and brother’s wife, neither one o’ which cared about Andrey’s marrying Jane, and had come rather against their will, said they couldn’t wait two hours in that hole of a place, wishing to get home to Longpuddle before dinner-time. They were altogether so crusty that the clerk said there was no difficulty in their doing as they wished. They could go home as if their brother’s wedding had actually taken place and the married couple had gone onward for their day’s pleasure jaunt to Port Bredy as intended. He, the clerk, and any casual passer-by would act as witnesses when the pa’son came back.