WILL STEPHEN’S VISIT TO THE FAMILY VAULT WITH THE SAW-DUST, AND WHAT HE SAW THERE.
Will Stephens waited at the ale-house much longer than he intended. To be sure the rain cleared off, but what of that? It was not a circumstance that made the ale anything the worse, and so he waited to drink it with a gusto that improved each glass amazingly, and then some of those who were present—jolly topers like himself—began to laugh and to say,—
“Ah, Will, you may as well poke that bag of saw-dust into some corner; you won’t do anything with it to-night, old fellow, we know.”
Now, some people get good tempered and complying when they have had the drop too much, and others again, get particularly obstinate and contradictory. Will of the two, certainly had more pretensions to belong to the latter class than the former, so when he heard such a prophecy concerning his movements and knew it was all an assumption based upon the ale he had drank, he felt indignant.
“Not go!” he cried. “Not go. You may fancy if you please that I will not go, but you will find yourselves mistaken, I will go.”
“What, so late.”
“What’s the odds to me. Any of you now would be frightened out of your lives to set foot in the old church at such a time as this, I know; but I’m none of the timid sort, I’m afraid of nobody living, and it ain’t likely that I am now going to be afraid of anybody dead.”
“Then you really will go.”
The only reply that he made to this was to finish off the glass of ale that was before him, shouldering the bag of saw-dust, and sally out into the open air. Will Stephens felt highly indignant and touchy about his honour, and as he had said he would go and then somebody chose to imply a doubt still, he was grievously offended.
When he got out, he found that the night was anything but an inviting one. He was still sober enough to see that, and to feel that although the heavy rain had ceased, there was a little disagreeable misty sort of vapour in the air.
He staggered at the first turning he came to, for rather an uncomfortable gust of wind blew in his face, carrying along with it such a shower of small cold rain that he was, or fancied himself to be, wet through in a moment.
“Pleasant, this,” thought Will, “but I won’t go back to be laughed at.”
As for the saw-dust he was carrying, its weight was by no means any great consideration for it was just as light as it could be.
“No, I won’t go back—back indeed, not I; they would make me stand a pot of ale to a certainly if I were to go back, and besides it would be all over the parish to-morrow that Will Stephens after he got half way to the church was afraid to go any further. Confound the small rain, it pricks like pins and needles.”
Nothing is more sobering than rain, and as he, Will, gradually got saturated with the small aqueous particles, the effect of the strong ale as gradually wore off, until by the time the dim, dusky outline of the church rose before him he was almost as sober as need be.
“Ah,” he said, “here I am at last at any rate. I do hate this sort of rain, you can hardly make up your mind that it is raining at all, and yet somehow you get soaked before you know where you are. It’s just like going through a damp cloud, that it is, and yet somehow or another, I don’t much mind it; I’m earning a guinea easy enough. Ha, ha!”
This was by no means an unpleasant reflection.
“Yes,” he added, “I am earning a guinea easily enough that’s quite clear, but then it’s not everybody who would, for a guinea, go into anybody’s family vault at such a time. By-the-by, I wonder now what the time is exactly.”
Scarcely had Will spoken those words when the old church-clock struck twelve.
It was a very serious, deliberate sort of clock that, and it took a long time to strike twelve, and Will listened with the greatest attention with the hope of persuading himself that it was only eleven, but there could be no mistake, twelve it was.
“Really,” he said, “is it so late, well, I didn’t think—”
Will stood within the porch of the church door, and he gave a sort of shiver, and then, with the bag of sawdust in his hand, he stopped to listen attentively, for he thought he heard a slight sound.
“What was that, eh? what—I thought, nay, I am sure I heard something; it’s very odd—very odd indeed.”
As if then to afford Will an excuse for resolving the sound to something else, the wind at this moment came in such a sudden gale round the ancient edifice, that quite congratulated himself he was within the porch and protected from its fury, and besides it to his mind was a sufficing explanation of the noise he had heard.
“Some of the old doors,” he muttered, “rattled by the wind, that’s all. Now I suppose we shall have a clear night after all the rain. Such a gale will soon blow off the damp clouds.”
Will was right. The gale, for a gale it was, blew from the north, and away went the rain clouds as if a curtain had been drawn aside by some invisible hand.
After some rummaging Will found in his pocket the key of the church; it was not the key of the principal door, but of a smaller side entrance, at which the officials, who required at all times free ingress and egress, made application. The little arched door creaked upon its hinges and then Will stood in a sort of vestibule, for another door that was never fast had to be opened before he could be fairly said to be within the church.
This second door was covered with green baize, and could be opened and shut very noiselessly, indeed.
Will Stephens stood in the vestibule until he had got a small lantern out of one pocket, and some matches from another. Then, in a few moments he had a light, and once again shouldering the bag of sawdust, he pushed open the inner door, and stood in the church.
It might have been fancy—nay, he felt certain, it could be nothing else—but he thought as he opened the door that a faint sort of sigh came upon his ears.
Fancy or not, though, it was an uncomfortable thing at such an hour, and in such a place too, and he had never before heard anything of the sort upon his visits to the church, and he had visited it at all hours, many and many a time.
“It’s odd,” he said, “it’s uncommonly odd, I never felt so uncomfortable in the church before. I—I never used to mind coming to it in the middle of the night. But now, I—eh?—what was that?”
Again an odd sort of noise came upon his ears, and he dropped the bag of sawdust.
All was still again, save the regular roar of wind, as it swept round the sacred building, and although Will Stephens stood for nearly ten minutes in an attitude of listening, he heard nothing to augment his terrors. But let an impulse once be given to fear, and it will go on accumulating material from every trivial circumstance. The courage of the sexton was broken down, and there was no knowing, now, what tricks his awakened imagination might play him.
He began to wish he had not come, and from that wish, to think that he might as well go back, only shame forbade him, for it would be easily known on the morrow, that he had not placed the sawdust in the vault, and lastly, he began to think that some one might be playing him a trick.
This last supposition, probably, had more effect in raising his courage than any preceding one. Indignation took possession of him, and he no longer thought of retreating. He went forward at once, and fell over the bag of sawdust.
“Murder!” shouted Will.
The moment he did so, he recollected what it was that had occasioned his fall, and being ashamed of himself he called out impulsively, as if somebody was there to hear him,—
“No—no, it’s only the sawdust. No—no.”
He rose to his feet again, heartily ashamed of his own fears. Luckily, his lantern had not been broken or extinguished in his fall, and now, without another word, he prepared himself to execute the work he came to do, and leave the church to its repose as quickly as possible.
At one end of the church, the southern end, there was a large window, which might be said to light the whole of the interior, for the little windows at the sides were more ornamental than useful, being nothing but lattices; and across this window was drawn a heavy cloth curtain, so that when the sun shone too brightly upon the congregation on a summer’s day, it could be wholly or partially excluded upon a sign from the clergyman.
The curtain was drawn close on the window now, at night, and Will just glanced up to it, as he walked on towards the aisle where the opening to the family vault of the Crofton’s was situated.
“All’s right,” he said, “what a fool I have been, to be sure. Upon my word I might have saved frightening myself all night, and some people would too, but that’s not my way of doing business. So here we are, all right. The door on one side, so that I have just room enough to go down into the vault. Oh! when one comes to think of it, it was rather a melancholy thing, the death of such a young girl as she was, going to be married too. Well, that’s the way the world goes.”
The stone steps leading down to the vault were rather steep, and Will threw down the bag of sawdust first, in preference to carrying it, and then with his lantern in his hand, he commenced his own descent.
“That’ll do,” said Will, when he felt his feet upon the soft old sawdust that was on the floor of the vault. “That’ll do—now for it, I shall soon have this job settled, and then I’ll get home no faster than I can.”
Somehow, or another, he felt very much inclined to talk; the sound of his own voice, conversing, as he might be said to be, with himself, gave him a sort of courage, and made the place not appear to be altogether so desperately lonely as it really was.
That, no doubt, was the feeling that brought forth so many indifferent remarks from Will Stephens. He held up his light to look round him, and turned gradually upon his heels as he did so.
The light shook in his hand. The hair almost stood on end on his head—his teeth chattered, and he tried to speak in vain, as he saw lying at his feet, a coffin lid.
It was new. The nails that held the blue cloth upon it, were bright, and fast—the plate shone like silver. Yes, it was the lid of the coffin of Miss Clara Crofton; but how came it off—unsecured, and lying upon the floor of the vault, while the coffin was in its proper niche?
“Gracious goodness!” gasped Will at length. “What does this mean?”
The question was easy to ask, but most difficult to answer, and he stood trembling and turning over in his mind all the most frightful explanations of what he saw, that could occur to any one.
“Has she been buried alive? Have the body snatchers been after her? How is it—what—what has happened?”
Then it occurred to Will, that it would be just as well to look into the coffin, and see if it was tenantless or not. If it were, and thought he should know what to think, or if the dead body was there, then he could only conclude that she had been buried alive, and had had just strength enough to force open the coffin, and cast the lid of it on the floor of the vault, and then to die in that horrible place.
It required almost more courage than Will could muster, to go and look into the coffin, for now that his usual indifference was completely broken down, he was as timid as any stranger to graves and vaults would have been. But curiosity is, after all, a most exciting passion, and that lent him power.
“Yes,” he said, “I-I will look in the coffin, I shall have but a poor tale to tell to Sir George Crofton, if I do not look in the coffin. I—I—have nothing to be afraid of.”
He advanced with trembling steps, the light shaking in his hands as he did so. He reached the coffin, and with eyes unusually wide he looked in: it was empty.
