Twice-told tales
contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None
that beheld them could deny the terrible strength of the moral which
his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.
“Cruel! cruel!” groaned the heartstricken bride.
“Cruel?” repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a wild
bitterness, “Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the other! In
youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took away
all the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality enough
even to grieve at—with only a pervading gloom, through which I walked
wearily and cared not whither. But after forty years, when I have built
my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting there—no, not for
such a life as we once pictured—you call me to the altar. At your
summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your youth, your
beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed your life.
What is there for me but your decay and death? And therefore I have
bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the sexton’s deepest knell,
and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a burial-service, that we
may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre and enter it together.”
It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion
in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. The stern
lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She
seized the bridegroom’s hand.
“Yes!” cried she; “let us wed even at the door of the sepulchre. My
life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is one
true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth: it makes me worthy of
you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for eternity.”
With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while
a tear was gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human feeling
from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear, even with
his shroud.
“Beloved of my youth,” said he, “I have been wild. The despair of my
whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me. Forgive and be
forgiven. Yes; it is evening with us now, and we have realized none of
our morning dreams of happiness. But let us join our hands before the
altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through life,
yet who meet again as they are leaving it and find their earthly
affection changed into something holy as religion. And what is time to
the married of eternity?”
Amid the tears of many and a swell of exalted sentiment in those who
felt aright was solemnized the union of two immortal souls. The train
of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale
features of the aged bride and the death-bell tolling through the whole
till its deep voice overpowered the marriage-words,—all marked the
funeral of earthly hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as
if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene, poured forth an
anthem, first mingling with the dismal knell, then rising to a loftier
strain, till the soul looked down upon its woe. And when the awful rite
was finished and with cold hand in cold hand the married of eternity
withdrew, the organ’s peal of solemn triumph drowned the wedding-knell.
THE MINISTER’S BLACK VEIL
A PARABLE[1]
The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house pulling lustily
at the bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along the
street. Children with bright faces tripped merrily beside their parents
or mimicked a graver gait in the conscious dignity of their Sunday
clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and
fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week-days.
When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to
toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper’s door. The
first glimpse of the clergyman’s figure was the signal for the bell to
cease its summons.
“But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?” cried the sexton,
in astonishment.
All within hearing immediately turned about and beheld the semblance of
Mr. Hooper pacing slowly his meditative way toward the meeting-house.
With one accord they started, expressing more wonder than if some
strange minister were coming to dust the cushions of Mr. Hooper’s
pulpit.
“Are you sure it is our parson?” inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton.
“Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper,” replied the sexton. “He was to
have exchanged pulpits with Parson Shute of Westbury, but Parson Shute
sent to excuse himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral sermon.”
The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight. Mr.
Hooper, a gentlemanly person of about thirty, though still a bachelor,
was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had
starched his band and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday’s garb.
There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about his
forehead and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his
breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed to
consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his features
except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight
further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate
things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper walked onward
at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking on the ground,
as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his
parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps. But so
wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met with a return.
“I can’t really feel as if good Mr. Hooper’s face was behind that piece
of crape,” said the sexton.
“I don’t like it,” muttered an old woman as she hobbled into the
meeting-house. “He has changed himself into something awful only by
hiding his face.”
“Our parson has gone mad!” cried Goodman Gray, following him across the
threshold.
A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into
the meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could refrain
from twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright and
turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon the
seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a general
bustle, a rustling of the women’s gowns and shuffling of the men’s
feet, greatly at variance with that hushed repose which should attend
the entrance of the minister. But Mr. Hooper appeared not to notice the
perturbation of his people. He entered with an almost noiseless step,
bent his head mildly to the pews on each side and bowed as he passed
his oldest parishioner, a white-haired great-grandsire, who occupied an
arm-chair in the centre of the aisle. It was strange to observe how
slowly this venerable man became conscious of something singular in the
appearance of his pastor. He seemed not fully to partake of the
prevailing wonder till Mr. Hooper had ascended the stairs and showed
himself in the pulpit, face to face with his congregation except for
the black veil. That mysterious emblem was never once withdrawn. It
shook with his measured breath as he gave out the psalm, it threw its
obscurity between him and the holy page as he read the Scriptures, and
while he prayed the veil lay heavily on his uplifted countenance. Did
he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was addressing?
Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape that more than one
woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet
perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to
the minister as his black veil to them.
Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic
one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive
influences rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the
word. The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same
characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his pulpit
oratory, but there was something either in the sentiment of the
discourse itself or in the imagination of the auditors which made it
greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their
pastor’s lips. It was tinged rather more darkly than usual with the
gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament. The subject had reference to
secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and
dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even
forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them. A subtle power was
breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most
innocent girl and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher
had crept upon them behind his awful veil and discovered their hoarded
iniquity of deed or thought. Many spread their clasped hands on their
bosoms. There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said—at least, no
violence; and yet with every tremor of his melancholy voice the hearers
quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe. So sensible were
the audience of some unwonted attribute in their minister that they
longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil, almost believing
that a stranger’s visage would be discovered, though the form, gesture
and voice were those of Mr. Hooper.
At the close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous
confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious
of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some
gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths
all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped in
silent meditation; some talked loudly and profaned the Sabbath-day with
ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads, intimating
that they could penetrate the mystery, while one or two affirmed that
there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper’s eyes were so
weakened by the midnight lamp as to require a shade.
After a brief interval forth came good Mr. Hooper also, in the rear of
his flock. Turning his veiled face from one group to another, he paid
due reverence to the hoary heads, saluted the middle-aged with kind
dignity as their friend and spiritual guide, greeted the young with
mingled authority and love, and laid his hands on the little children’s
heads to bless them. Such was always his custom on the Sabbath-day.
Strange and bewildered looks repaid him for his courtesy. None, as on
former occasions, aspired to the honor of walking by their pastor’s
side. Old Squire Saunders—doubtless by an accidental lapse of
memory—neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table, where the good
clergyman had been wont to bless the food almost every Sunday since his
settlement. He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and at the moment
of closing the door was observed to look back upon the people, all of
whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister. A sad smile gleamed
faintly from beneath the black veil and flickered about his mouth,
glimmering as he disappeared.
“How strange,” said a lady, “that a simple black veil, such as any
woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on
Mr. Hooper’s face!”
“Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper’s intellects,” observed
her husband, the physician of the village. “But the strangest part of
the affair is the effect of this vagary even on a sober-minded man like
myself. The black veil, though it covers only our pastor’s face, throws
its influence over his whole person and makes him ghost-like from head
to foot. Do you not feel it so?”
“Truly do I,” replied the lady; “and I would not be alone with him for
the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself.”