The Macabre Megapack. Lafcadio Hearn

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СКАЧАТЬ and enjoy the beauty of the evening.”

      It was on a summer’s Sabbath, in the beautiful neighborhood of Hastings, that William Lindsay spoke thus to Mary Stuart, a fair young girl who was his promised wife, when success in his toilsome profession might give sanction to the union. He was an artist of much talent but little celebrity, and she was the orphan child of a British officer. Her mother and herself lived in quiet contentment on the small pension allowed to the widow of a captain of Infantry. Their ways were simple—their wants were few—from their little, they had still a little to spare to such as needed, and they felt themselves

      “Passing rich on forty pounds a year.”

      If the want of wealth ever caused a sigh in the gentle bosom of Mary, it was when she beheld her William debarred from the foreign treasures of art which he panted to behold, or when she heard her prudent mother prophesy a long lapse of years ere they might venture to unite their earthly fate together. Mary had received a tolerable education, and her mind was naturally poetic, her thoughts were fraught with natural beauty and often untutored language would flow in rich and melodious eloquence; she was never of a buoyant temper: a placid calmness, a softened serenity which was not sadness, was her usual mood, and the very style of her features harmonized with this shadowed feeling. Her cheek was very fair, but when a chance excitement called the eloquent blood into it, the color was rather the blush of hectic than the crimson of health; her hair was a pale brown but perfectly straight, and without any of those sunlight hues which sometimes wander through chestnut tresses—in a word, Mary was more a lovely twilight than a brilliant day. Captain Stuart had died of decline, not as they fondly believed a constitutional malady, but brought on by over-exertion and exposure; still, when William would notice the translucent fairness of his Mary’s cheek, and mark the languid softness of her eye, a terrible fear would come across his heart, to be as instantly banished by the certainty of her perfect health.

      She arose in answer to his invitation to walk and, with a gentle smile, passed her arm through his and strolled up the hill which bounded their dwelling. William had truly said that the evening was beautiful—not a breath of air was stirring, but the atmosphere was soft and redolent of perfume. The rays of the declining sun, slanting from the west, tessellated the heavens with chequers of gold and lengthened the shadows upon the earth—not a ripple stirred the mighty ocean, the vast expanse of blue water lying unruffled as a lake, without a sound save when the receding tide carried with it the pebbles from the beach with a lulled and dreamy sound. The lowing of the cattle in the distant pastures and the chirping of the nimble grasshoppers joined to an occasional twittering from the inhabitants of the trees, all contributed to produce that feeling of repose which the night always induces. Almost insensibly, the lovers turned away from the groups of merry villagers, and directed their course to the village churchyard. Of all spots on earth, that containing the “short and simple annals of the poor,” is to a reflective mind most interesting, and that of Hastings is peculiarly so. From its mild and sheltered situation, its advantages of country joined to those of sea bathing, Hastings is recommended by the faculty to consumptive patients, and many a marble slab in the churchyard records the early exit of creatures in the spring and matin of their days, who have sought for health and found a grave. On one which this simple inscription,

      “Emily Markham—Aged Nineteen,”

      Mary sat down, and pulling a few wild flowers, strewed them reverentially on the grave.

      “William,” at last she said, “burial is a frightful thing.”

      “Death is, do you mean, my Mary?” answered he; “for after death, on this earth feeling is no more.”

      “Are you assured of that?” asked Mary solemnly. “Does that conviction bear an if? Oh, God! To be shut down, away from light and warmth, to be straightened here, rigid, immoveable and stiff—to rot by scarce perceptible degrees, to have the flesh which in life we guard so carefully, mangled and gnawed by crawling vermin—nay, in our very selves to engender the foul life of corruption! It is too horrible!”

      “Dearest Mary, this is a morbid feeling and a false fear. Our Creator made man in mercy, and could it be possible that the dead suffered by burial, it would long have been made manifest to the living. Now, for my part, this scene is one to me of rest and comfort—in this sacred spot the dead slumber in peace, the flowers grow here as sweet, and those graceful willows bend down their branches as if appointed by the Spirit of Holiness to guard the dead. And see—the evening star looks out upon this tranquil spot like a good angel calmly keeping

      ‘Watch o’er them till their souls should waken.’”

      Mary shuddered and shook her head. Alarmed to see her so depressed, William fondly urged her to return home.

      “William, dear William, I am well—fear nothing for me, but oh! My beloved, my heart quails at the thought of burial. I do not fear to die—thanks be to heaven I have no fear of death; but the grave—the grave to me is overwhelmingly horrible. Oh, dear William! Would that we lived in ancient Rome, where the mortal remains were consigned to the funeral pyre! Surely we have decreased in civilization to relinquish the burial by fire for the internment underground. Fire is a glorious element, free, mighty and immaterial as the soul! Fire is a purifier, and separates the grosser clay from its immortal spirit—fire even ascends to heaven—it is a type and emblem of the human soul, it is tangible to the senses only while it has earthly food, when the poor material is consumed, the invisible and unknown spirit passes away from human sight or knowledge, and returns to Him, the master of the elements! Would that my burial might be by fire!”

      “Your thoughts and wishes are strange, dear Mary; the survivor’s heart would be more wrung to see the loved remains consumed by fire. When buried, they retain at least a knowledge that it is there, they can visit the spot and in memory recall its inhabitant.”

      “Aye, William—but as what?” she asked, with a strange look of excessive horror: “As what? A livid and loathsome mass of rottenness! A decaying, revolting, putrifying corruption, from which every sense recoils in loathing! Let the fondest love pursue in fancy the buried dead—the lips they kissed are foul with decay—the breath that used to part them is changed to the stench of rottenness—the fair bosom on which lay the loving head is alive indeed, for the long, slimy grave worms are feeding on it—the eyes, oh, God! Dare imagination picture that eye once beaming with the soul of love, now glowing with the unnatural fire of putrefaction?”

      “No more, no more, dear Mary!” exclaimed William, alarmed at the excitement of her fancy on such a theme: “your mother will be waiting for us.”

      “Yet hear me out dearest; and oh, William, promise—promise me, that if God takes me from you, you will never lay me in the damp, cold ground to rot!—Think, oh, think how pure, how beautiful is the idea of resolving back each portion of our humanity into its native element! And then, how delightedly may fond affection weep over the consecrated ashes! The pure, inoffensive remains of all that was loved and lovely—while fancy dwells with rapture on the bright thought that the undying soul, the immortal mind, has mounted to its first essence on wings of ethereal flame! Come, let us go home. I shudder to tread this rank, rich soil, instinct with human corruption.”

      * * * *

      From this time it appeared that the health of Mary Stuart suffered under some secret excitement; at times, indeed, her cheerfulness would return, and the awful phantom that haunted her be put to flight by the voice of love; but too soon again the gloom returned over her soul, and by slow but sure degrees undermined her health and life. No words can picture the grief which wrung the honest heart of her lover, argument and caresses he tried in vain, and at last, believing that the coil lay in her body not her mind, he applied in despair to a friendly physician of eminence who resided in the neighborhood. Happy it is for science when such a man as Doctor John Burton is its professor; СКАЧАТЬ