The sacristan silently pointed to the chancel, and I walked
hesitatingly across the gloomy intervening space, my footsteps echoing
formidably in the silence. Two young priests stood, one at either side
of the lofty bier. One of them bowed to me, and I took his place. He
disappeared into the ambulatory. The other priest was praying for the
dead, a slight frown on his narrow white brow. His back was
half-turned towards the corpse, and he did not seem to notice me in
any way.
I folded my arms, and as some relief from the uncanny and troublous
thoughts which ran in my head I looked about me. I could not bring
myself to gaze on the purple cloth which covered the remains of
Alresca. We were alone--the priest, Alresca, and I--and I felt afraid.
In vain I glanced round, in order to reassure myself, at the
stained-glass windows, now illumined by September starlight, at the
beautiful carving of the choir-stalls, at the ugly rococo screen. I
was afraid, and there was no disguising my fear.
Suddenly the clock chimes of the belfry rang forth with startling
resonance, and twelve o'clock struck upon the stillness. Then followed
upon the bells a solemn and funereal melody.
"How comes that?" I asked the priest, without stopping to consider
whether I had the right to speak during my vigil.
"It is the carilloneur," my fellow watcher said, interrupting his
whispered and sibilant devotions, and turning to me, as it seemed,
unwillingly. "Have you not heard it before? Every evening since the
death he has played it at midnight in memory of Alresca." Then he
resumed his office.
The minutes passed, or rather crawled by, and, if anything, my
uneasiness increased. I suffered all the anxieties and tremors which
those suffer who pass wakeful nights, imagining every conceivable ill,
and victimized by the most dreadful forebodings. Through it all I was
conscious of the cold of the stone floor penetrating my boots and
chilling my feet....
The third quarter after one struck, and I began to congratulate myself
that the ordeal by the bier was coming to an end. I looked with a sort
of bravado into the dark, shadowed distances of the fane, and smiled
at my nameless trepidations. And then, as my glance sought to
penetrate the gloom of the great western porch, I grew aware that a
man stood there. I wished to call the attention of the priest to this
man, but I could not--I could not.
He came very quietly out of the porch, and walked with hushed
footfall up the nave; he mounted the five steps to the chancel; he
approached us; he stood at the foot of the bier; he was within a yard
of me. The priest had his back to him. The man seemed to ignore me; he
looked fixedly at the bier. But I knew him. I knew that fine, hard,
haughty face, that stiff bearing, that implacable eye. It was the man
whom I had seen standing under the trees opposite the Devonshire
Mansion in London.