Twice Told Tales | Page 9

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 were heard, and

the gentlemen and ladies composing 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 gayety. 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 gayety. The
gorgeous dresses of the time--the 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 anything 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, stopped 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; then,
recovering herself, while her attendants were yet 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