The Wedding Knell

Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is a certain church in the city of New York which I have always regarded with

peculiar interest, on account of a marriage there solemnized, under very singular

circumstances, in my grandmother's girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator

of the scene, and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now standing

on the same site be the identical one to which she referred, I am not antiquarian enough to

know; nor would it be worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error, by

reading the date of its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately church, surrounded

by an inclosure of the loveliest green, within which appear urns, pillars, obelisks, and other

like all men who brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occasions a vein of

generous sentiment; a scholar throughout life, though always an indolent one, because his

studies had no definite object, either of public advantage or personal ambition; a gentleman,

high bred and fastidiously delicate, yet sometimes requiring a considerable relaxation, in his

behalf, of the common rules of society. In truth, there were so many anomalies in his

character, and though shrinking with diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been his

fatality so often to become the topic of the day, by some wild eccentricity of conduct, that

people searched his lineage for an hereditary taint of insanity. But there was no need of this.

His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose,

and in feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food. If he were mad, it was

many uncomfortable years, she found herself again a widow. It would have been singular, if

any uncommon delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's; it

could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment, the cold duty of her first

marriage, the dislocation of the heart's principles, consequent on a second union, and the

unkindness of her southern husband, which had inevitably driven her to connect the idea of

his death with that of her comfort. To be brief, she was that wisest, but unloveliest, variety

of woman, a philosopher, bearing troubles of the heart with equanimity, dispensing with all

that should have been her happiness, and making the best of what remained. Sage in most

matters, the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one frailty that made her

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ridiculous. Being childless, she could not remain beautiful by proxy, in the person of a

daughter; she therefore refused to grow old and ugly, on any consideration; she struggled

with Time, and held fast her roses in spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared to have

relinquished the spoil, as not worth the trouble of acquiring it.

The approaching marriage of this woman of the world with such an unworldly man as Mr.

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 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

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

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 yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under

such different auspices."

"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strange occurrence brings to my

mind a marriage sermon of the famous Bishop Taylor, wherein he mingles so many

thoughts of mortality and future woe, that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he

seems to hang the bridal chamber in black, and cut the wedding garment out of a coffin pall.

And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse something of sadness into their

only by whispers, and a few suppressed titterings, among the wedding party and the

spectators, who, after the first shock, were disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from

the affair. The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth. The

widow's glance was observed to wander, for an instant, towards a window of the church, as

if searching for the time-worn marble that she had dedicated to her first husband; then her

eyelids dropped over their faded orbs, and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another

grave. Two buried men, with a voice at her ear, and a cry afar off, were calling her to lie

down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth of feeling, she thought how much

happier had been her fate, if, after years of bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral,

and she were followed to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover, long her

husband. But why had she returned to him, when their cold hearts shrank from each other's

embrace?

church; a hearse, with a train of several coaches, was creeping along the street, conveying

some dead man to the churchyard, while the bride awaited a living one at the altar.

Immediately after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends were heard at the door.

The widow looked down the aisle, and clinched the arm of one of her bridemaids in her

bony hand with such unconscious violence, that the fair girl trembled.

"You frighten me, my dear madam!" cried she. "For Heaven's sake, what is the matter?"

"Nothing, my dear, nothing," said the widow; then, whispering close to her ear, "There is a

nerveless arm. Behind appeared another, and another pair, as aged, as black, and mournful

as the first. As they drew near, the widow recognized in every face some trait of former

friends, long forgotten, but now returning, as if from their old graves, to warn her to prepare

a shroud; or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles and infirmity, and

claim her as their companion by the tokens of her own decay. Many a merry night had she

danced with them, in youth. And now, in joyless age, she felt that some withered partner

should request her hand, and all unite, in a dance of death, to the music of the funeral bell.

While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle, it was observed that, from pew to

pew, the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe, as some object, hitherto concealed by

the intervening figures, came full in sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed

men wear in the coffin. The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents

that seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the air while he spoke.

"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips, "the hearse is ready. The sexton stands waiting for

us at the door of the tomb. Let us be married; and then to our coffins!"

How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her the ghastliness of a dead man's

bride. Her youthful friends stood apart, shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded

bridegroom, and herself; the whole scene expressed, by the strongest imagery, the vain

struggle of the gilded vanities of this world, when opposed to age, infirmity, sorrow, and

death. The awe-struck silence was first broken by the clergyman.

"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of authority, "you are not well.

"Home! yes, but not without my bride," answered he, in the same hollow accents. "You

deem this mockery; perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my aged and broken frame with

scarlet and embroidery--had I forced my withered lips to smile at my dead heart--that might

have been mockery, or madness. But now, let young and old declare, which of us has come

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."

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

"Beloved of my youth," said he, "I have been wild. The despair of my whole lifetime had

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,