III
“One morning, when the family were rising from breakfast, a message was brought to my lord that more bones than ever had been found in clearing away the ground for the ballroom, and for the foundations of the new card-parlour. One of the skeletons was that of a mitred abbot—evidently a very holy person. What were they to do with it?
“ ‘Put him into any hole,’ says my lord.
“The foreman came a second time, ‘There is something strange in those bones, my lord,’ he said; ‘we remove them by barrowfuls, and still they seem never to lessen. The more we carry away, the more there are left behind.’
“The son looked disturbed, rose from his seat and went out of the room. Since his mother’s death he had been much depressed, and seemed to suffer from nervous debility.
“ ‘Curse the bones!’ said the peer, angry at the extreme sensitiveness of his son, whose distress and departure he had observed. ‘More, do ye say? Throw the wormy rubbish into any ditch you can find!’
“The servants looked uneasily at each-other, for the old Catholicism had not at that time ceased to be the religion of these islands so long as it has now, and much of its superstition and weird fancy still lingered in the minds of the simple folk of this remote nook.
“The son’s wife, the bright and accomplished woman aforesaid, to enliven the subject told her father-in-law that she was designing a marble tomb for one of the London churches, and the design was to be a very artistic allegory of Death and the Resurrection; the figure of an Angel on one side, and that of Death on the other (according to the extravagant symbolism of that date, when such designs as this were much in vogue). Might she, the lady asked, have a skull to copy in marble for the head of Death?
“She might have them all, and welcome, her father-in-law said. He would only be too glad.
“She went out to the spot where the new foundations were being dug, and from the heap of bones chose the one of those sad relics which seemed to offer the most perfect model for her chisel.
“ ‘It is the last Abbot’s, my lady,’ said the clerk of the works.
“ ‘It will do,’ said she; and directed it to be put into a box and sent to the house in London where she and her husband at present resided.
“When she met her husband that day he proposed that they should return to town almost immediately. ‘This is a gloomy place,’ said he. ‘And if ever it comes into my hands I shan’t live here much. I’ve been telling the old man of my debts, too, and he says he won’t pay them … be hanged if he will, until he has a grandson at least. … So let’s be off.’
“They returned to town. This young man the son and heir, though quiet and nervous, was not a very domestic character; he had many friends of both sexes with whom his refined and accomplished wife was unacquainted. Therefore she was thrown much upon her own resources; and her gifts in carving were a real solace to her. She proceeded with her design for the tomb of her acquaintance; and the Abbot’s skull having duly arrived, she made use of it as her model as she had planned.
“Her husband being as usual away from home, she worked at her self-imposed task till bedtime—and then retired. When the house had been wrapped in sleep for some hours the front door was opened, and the absent one entered, a little the worse for liquor—for drinking in those days was one of a nobleman’s accomplishments. He ascended the stairs, candle in hand, and feeling uncertain whether his wife had gone to bed or no, entered her studio to look for her. Holding the candle unsteadily above his head, he perceived a heap of modelling clay; behind it a sheeted figure with a death’s-head above it—this being in fact the draped dummy arrangement that his wife had built up to be ultimately copied in marble for the allegory she had designed to support the mural tablet.
“The sight seemed to overpower the gazer with horror; the candle fell from his hand; and in the darkness he rushed downstairs and out of the house.
“ ‘I’ve seen it before!’ he cried in mad and maudlin accents. ‘Where? when?’
“At four o’clock the next morning news was brought to the house that my lord’s heir had shot himself dead with a pistol at a tavern not far off.
“His reason for the act was absolutely inexplicable to the outer world. The heir to an enormous property and a high title, the husband of a wife as gifted as she was charming; of all the men in English society he seemed to be the last likely to undertake such a desperate deed.
“Only a few persons—his wife not being one of them, though his father was—knew of the sad circumstance in the life of the suicide’s mother the late Lady Cicely, a few months before his birth—in which she was terrified nearly to death by the woman who held up poor little ‘Death’s-Head,’ over the churchyard wall.
“Then people said that in this there was retribution upon the ambitious lord for his wickedness, particularly that of cursing the bones of the holy men of God. I give the superstition for what it is worth. It is enough to add, in this connection, that the old lord died, some say like Herod, of the characteristics he had imputed to the inoffensive human remains. However that may be in a few years the title was extinct, and now not a relative or scion remains of the family that bore his name.
“A venerable dissenter, a fearless ascetic of the neighbourhood, who had been deprived of his opportunities through some objections taken by the peer, preached a sermon the Sunday after his funeral, and mentioning no names, significantly took as his text, Isaiah 14:10–23:—
“Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations. … I will rise up against him, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord.
“Whether as a Christian moralist he was justified in doing this I leave others to judge.”
Here the doctor concluded his story, and the thoughtfulness which it has engendered upon his own features spread over those of his hearers, as they sat with their eyes fixed upon the fire.