Stephen had never before seen it open, and descending one or two steps stooped to look under the arch. The vault appeared to be crowded with coffins, with the exception of an open central space, which had been necessarily kept free for ingress and access to the sides, round three of which the coffins were stacked in stone bins or niches.
The place was well lighted with candles stuck in slips of wood that were fastened to the wall. On making the descent of another step the living inhabitants of the vault were recognizable. They were his father the master-mason, an under-mason, Martin Cannister, and two or three young and old labouring-men. Crowbars and workmen’s hammers were scattered about. The whole company, sitting round on coffins which had been removed from their places, apparently for some alteration or enlargement of the vault, were eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale from a cup with two handles, passed round from each to each.
“Who is dead?” Stephen inquired, stepping down.
XXVI
“To that last nothing under earth.”
All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the ancient-mannered conclave scrutinized him inquiringly.
“Why, ’tis our Stephen!” said his father, rising from his seat; and, still retaining the frothy mug in his left hand, he swung forward his right for a grasp. “Your mother is expecting ye—thought you would have come afore dark. But you’ll wait and go home with me? I have all but done for the day, and was going directly.”
“Yes, ’tis Master Stephy, sure enough. Glad to see you so soon again, Master Smith,” said Martin Cannister, chastening the gladness expressed in his words by a strict neutrality of countenance, in order to harmonize the feeling as much as possible with the solemnity of a family vault.
“The same to you, Martin; and you, William,” said Stephen, nodding around to the rest, who, having their mouths full of bread and cheese, were of necessity compelled to reply merely by compressing their eyes to friendly lines and wrinkles.
“And who is dead?” Stephen repeated.
“Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall,” said the under-mason. “Ay, and we be going to enlarge the vault to make room for her.”
“When did she die?”
“Early this morning,” his father replied, with an appearance of recurring to a chronic thought. “Yes, this morning. Martin hev been tolling ever since, almost. There, ’twas expected. She was very limber.”
“Ay, poor soul, this morning,” resumed the under-mason, a marvellously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in position. “She must know by this time whether she’s to go up or down, poor woman.”
“What was her age?”
“Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candlelight. But, Lord! by day ’a was forty if ’a were an hour.”
“Ay, nighttime or daytime makes a difference of twenty years to rich feymels,” observed Martin.
“She was one and thirty really,” said John Smith. “I had it from them that know.”
“Not more than that!”
“ ’A looked very bad, poor lady. In faith, ye might say she was dead for years afore ’a would own it.”
“As my old father used to say, ‘dead, but wouldn’t drop down.’ ”
“I seed her, poor soul,” said a labourer from behind some removed coffins, “only but last Valentine’s-day of all the world. ’A was arm in crook wi’ my lord. I says to myself, ‘You be ticketed Churchyard, my noble lady, although you don’t dream on’t.’ ”
“I suppose my lord will write to all the other lords anointed in the nation, to let ’em know that she that was is now no more?”
“ ’Tis done and past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the death. Sich wonderful black rims as they letters had—half-an-inch wide, at the very least.”
“Too much,” observed Martin. “In short, ’tis out of the question that a human being can be so mournful as black edges half-an-inch wide. I’m sure people don’t feel more than a very narrow border when they feels most of all.”
“And there are two little girls, are there not?” said Stephen.
“Nice clane little faces!—left motherless now.”
“They used to come to Parson Swancourt’s to play with Miss Elfride when I were there,” said William Worm. “Ah, they did so’s!” The latter sentence was introduced to add the necessary melancholy to a remark which, intrinsically, could hardly be made to possess enough for the occasion. “Yes,” continued Worm, “they’d run upstairs, they’d run down; flitting about with her everywhere. Very fond of her, they were. Ah, well!”
“Fonder than ever they were of their mother, so ’tis said here and there,” added a labourer.
“Well, you see, ’tis natural. Lady Luxellian stood aloof from ’em so—was so drowsy-like, that they couldn’t love her in the jolly-companion way children want to like folks. Only last winter I seed Miss Elfride talking to my lady and the two children, and Miss Elfride wiped their noses for em’ so careful—my lady never once seeing that it wanted doing; and, naturally, children take to people that’s their best friend.”
“Be as ’twill, the woman is dead and gone, and we must make a place for her,” said John. “Come, lads, drink up your ale, and we’ll just rid this corner, so as to have all clear for beginning at
