The air as of an ice-house met me crossing the threshold.The door fell-to behind us.The sexton said something to his wife that made her turn toward us.--What a change had passed upon her!
It was as if the splendour of her eyes had grown too much for them to hold,and,sinking into her countenance,made it flash with a loveliness like that of Beatrice in the white rose of the redeemed.
Life itself,life eternal,immortal,streamed from it,an unbroken lightning.Even her hands shone with a white radiance,every "pearl-shell helmet"gleaming like a moonstone.Her beauty was overpowering;I was glad when she turned it from me.
But the light of the candle reached such a little way,that at first I could see nothing of the place.Presently,however,it fell on something that glimmered,a little raised from the floor.Was it a bed?Could live thing sleep in such a mortal cold?Then surely it was no wonder it should not wake of itself!Beyond that appeared a fainter shine;and then I thought I descried uncertain gleams on every side.
A few paces brought us to the first;it was a human form under a sheet,straight and still--whether of man or woman I could not tell,for the light seemed to avoid the face as we passed.
I soon perceived that we were walking along an aisle of couches,on almost every one of which,with its head to the passage,lay something asleep or dead,covered with a sheet white as snow.My soul grew silent with dread.Through aisle after aisle we went,among couches innumerable.I could see only a few of them at once,but they were on all sides,vanishing,as it seemed,in the infinite.--Was it here lay my choice of a bed?Must I go to sleep among the unwaking,with no one to rouse me?Was this the sexton's library?were these his books?Truly it was no half-way house,this chamber of the dead!
"One of the cellars I am placed to watch!"remarked Mr.Raven--in a low voice,as if fearing to disturb his silent guests."Much wine is set here to ripen!--But it is dark for a stranger!"he added.
"The moon is rising;she will soon be here,"said his wife,and her clear voice,low and sweet,sounded of ancient sorrow long bidden adieu.
Even as she spoke the moon looked in at an opening in the wall,and a thousand gleams of white responded to her shine.But not yet could I descry beginning or end of the couches.They stretched away and away,as if for all the disparted world to sleep upon.For along the far receding narrow ways,every couch stood by itself,and on each slept a lonely sleeper.I thought at first their sleep was death,but I soon saw it was something deeper still--a something Idid not know.
The moon rose higher,and shone through other openings,but Icould never see enough of the place at once to know its shape or character;now it would resemble a long cathedral nave,now a huge barn made into a dwelling of tombs.She looked colder than any moon in the frostiest night of the world,and where she shone direct upon them,cast a bluish,icy gleam on the white sheets and the pallid countenances--but it might be the faces that made the moon so cold!
Of such as I could see,all were alike in the brotherhood of death,all unlike in the character and history recorded upon them.Here lay a man who had died--for although this was not death,I have no other name to give it--in the prime of manly strength;his dark beard seemed to flow like a liberated stream from the glacier of his frozen countenance;his forehead was smooth as polished marble;a shadow of pain lingered about his lips,but only a shadow.On the next couch lay the form of a girl,passing lovely to behold.
The sadness left on her face by parting was not yet absorbed in perfect peace,but absolute submission possessed the placid features,which bore no sign of wasting disease,of "killing care or grief of heart":if pain had been there,it was long charmed asleep,never again to wake.Many were the beautiful that there lay very still--some of them mere children;but I did not see one infant.The most beautiful of all was a lady whose white hair,and that alone,suggested her old when first she fell asleep.On her stately countenance rested--not submission,but a right noble acquiescence,an assurance,firm as the foundations of the universe,that all was as it should be.On some faces lingered the almost obliterated scars of strife,the marrings of hopeless loss,the fading shadows of sorrows that had seemed inconsolable:the aurora of the great morning had not yet quite melted them away;but those faces were few,and every one that bore such brand of pain seemed to plead,"Pardon me:I died only yesterday!"or,"Pardon me:I died but a century ago!"That some had been dead for ages I knew,not merely by their unutterable repose,but by something for which I have neither word nor symbol.
We came at last to three empty couches,immediately beyond which lay the form of a beautiful woman,a little past the prime of life.
One of her arms was outside the sheet,and her hand lay with the palm upward,in its centre a dark spot.Next to her was the stalwart figure of a man of middle age.His arm too was outside the sheet,the strong hand almost closed,as if clenched on the grip of a sword.I thought he must be a king who had died fighting for the truth.
"Will you hold the candle nearer,wife?"whispered the sexton,bending down to examine the woman's hand.
"It heals well,"he murmured to himself:"the nail found in her nothing to hurt!"At last I ventured to speak.
"Are they not dead?"I asked softly.
