THE MYSTERIES OF EDENLAWN.
She deemed him dead, in a foreign land;
Did her smile come back with its glory bland,
Lighting her face as in other years,
Ere shame and sorrow had taught her tears?
He was dead, and the secret of shame and gloom
Lay buried deep in his distant tomb!
No more should she shudder to hear his name,
With a chilling heart and a brow of flame.—_C. A. Warfield._
If Allworth Abbey was the most ancient and gloomy, and if the Anchorage
was the most commanding and cheerful, assuredly Edenlawn was the most
beautiful and delightful estate in the neighborhood of Abbeytown.
The three estates formed a right angle, of which Allworth Abbey was the
eastern, Edenlawn the southern, and the Anchorage the western points.
Edenlawn was equi-distant, about three miles from the two.
The mansion was an elegant modern edifice of white stone, in the Grecian
order of architecture, crowning the summit of a green and wooded hill
that ascended gradually from the banks of the lovely little lake Eden. A
wide vista had been opened between the trees from the white front of the
mansion down to the clear waters of the lake. This vista was laid out in
terraces, with stone steps leading down the centre, from level to level,
from the house to the lake. It was adorned with parterres of beautiful
flowers, groves of rare shrubs, and groups of fine statues.
On each side of these ornamented grounds, and behind the house, stood
the ancient woods, where the fine old forest-trees were kept well
trimmed and free from undergrowth by the zeal of old Davy Denny, the
head-gardener, whose care of the place was a labor of earnest love.
And this was well, else, for all the interest taken in it by the
proprietress, the Honorable Mrs. Elverton, this paradise might have
fallen into desolation, or been transformed to a Gehenna.
For this beautiful Edenlawn, though a comparatively new place, was a
house with a very dark history.
It was some years before the time of which we now write that the
Honorable Hollis Elverton, only son of Baron Elverton of Torg Castle, in
Yorkshire, while staying in Paris, married the beautiful and haughty
Athenie de la Compte, daughter of that celebrated General de la Compte
who held so high a place in the esteem of the ex-King Louis Phillippe
and in the councils of the nation.
Athenie de la Compte was a tall and dark brunette, with raven-black hair
and flashing black eyes, and with an imperious temper and a commanding
presence.
Immediately after their marriage the young couple set out for a
lengthened tour on the Continent, and came to England only at the end of
twelvemonths.
After a short season spent in London, where the imperial beauty of Mrs.
Elverton created an immense sensation, at the close of the summer the
young husband brought his youthful wife home to his beautiful villa of
Edenlawn, which had been built, furnished, and adorned by Lord Elverton
expressly for the residence of his son and daughter-in-law.
A few days after their settlement at home they were joined by a select
party of invited guests, who came down from town on a visit of a few
weeks.
Mrs. Elverton then issued cards for a large evening party to all the
neighboring nobility and gentry. The party was a great success, and
formed the initiative of a series of neighborhood festivities.
It was in the midst of all this gaiety that the thunderbolt fell that
struck the proud Athenie to the dust and spread a desert round her.
On a certain evening Mr. and Mrs. Elverton, and the friends who were
staying with them, had returned late from a dinner-party given at the
Anchorage. The visitors had withdrawn to their several apartments for
the night; but Mr. and Mrs. Elverton, as was their daily custom,
remained for a few minutes behind them in the drawing-room to discuss
the events of the day before retiring to rest.
While, with the buoyancy of youth, love and joy, they were sitting
talking and laughing together, a footman entered the room and announced
a stranger who imperatively demanded to see Mr. Elverton, and would take
no denial, although Charles had explained that it was too late for his
master to be disturbed.
Mr. Elverton though the most courteous of gentlemen, could not be said
to have yielded so much to courtesy as to curiosity to know who this
importunate stranger might be, when he ordered Charles to show the
unseasonable visitor into the library, whither he himself immediately
proceeded.
The stranger was a woman of majestic presence, whose tall, commanding
figure was wrapped in a long black cloak; and whose unknown features
were concealed beneath a thick black veil. Thus much only the servants
saw of her as Charles showed her into the library, whither she was
instantly followed by Mr. Elverton.
Charles, in the conscientious discharge of the principal duty of his
office, applied his ear to the keyhole; but his virtue was not rewarded
by any satisfactory result. He only heard, a low exclamation of
astonishment from his master, a muttered reply from the stranger, and
then the sound of their steps retreating towards a distant part of the
room, where the words of their conversation were quite inaudible.
The ingenuity and perseverance of Mr. Charles was really worthy of a
better cause and a greater success. He shut his eyes, plugged the
orifice of his left ear with his little finger, and concentrated his
five senses into the hearing of his right ear, which he plastered to the
keyhole.
Alas! he could make out not a single syllable of that mysterious
interview; and the few sounds that he heard only tortured his
curiosity—these sounds were occasionally a deep, half-smothered groan
from his master, and a sharp, sarcastic laugh from the stranger.
This secret interview lasted for about an hour, at the end of which
Charles heard the footsteps coming down the room towards the door, and
deemed it proper to withdraw from his post of observation. But Mr.
Charles’ limbs were so stiff and numb from long kneeling, that it was no
easy matter to rise, while at the same time there was imminent danger of
his being discovered in the act of listening when his master should open
the door.
With a last desperate effort he struggled upon his feet; and then, as
fortune crowns us when we least expect her to do so, he had the
satisfaction of overhearing something. It was the voice of his master,
saying, in a tone of anguish:
“You are a fiend! a fiend! H— never cast forth a blacker one to blast
this fair earth!”
And the moment after Mr. Elverton pulled open the door, and hurried
forth—alone! He crossed the hall, entered the drawing-room and shut the
door after him.
Charles stared after his master, and then looked to the right and to the
left, before and behind, above and below, and everywhere else, to see
whither the stranger had vanished, but in vain, for the earth seemed to
have swallowed her.
Then he entered the library, and turned on the full light of the gas,
and searched every nook and cranny, still in vain. Finally, he came to
the conclusion that the stranger had been let out through one of the
French windows that opened from the library upon the lawn.
And having settled that part of the mystery to his satisfaction, Charles
turned off the gas, shut up the library, and came back to the hall, just
in time to hear a wild shriek and a very heavy fall from the
drawing-room and to see Mr. Elverton rush forth and run up-stairs.
In astonishment and terror, Charles hurried into the drawing-room, where
to his farther consternation, he found Mrs. Elverton extended upon the
floor in a dead swoon. He hastened to summon the housekeeper and the
lady’s-maid, who came in great alarm to the assistance of their
mistress.
Mrs. Elverton was carried to her room, where every means was used to
restore her to consciousness. But when she came to her senses it was
only to fall into the most fearful ravings, in which was darkly shadowed
forth a calamity so direful, a grief so deep, a shame so intense, as
raised the hair from the heads of the listeners with horror.
The housekeeper ordered everyone from the room, that none should hear
these awful revelations. She also sent to summon Mr. Elverton to the
bedside of his wife, but the master of the house was nowhere to be
found. In her desperation she dispatched Charles for the medical
attendant of the family; but it was near morning before Dr. Watkins
could reach Edenlawn.
On his arrival he repaired immediately to the chamber of the suffering
lady, but on hearing the appalling nature of her ravings, he warned the
housekeeper to permit no one but herself to approach Mrs. Elverton until
the latter should recover her senses.
During that morning the illness of the lady assumed another phase, and
before noon an infant daughter was prematurely ushered into life.
But Mr. Elverton was not there to bless his first-born; and though
messengers were dispatched in all directions to seek him, yet no clue
could be found to the whereabouts of the missing master of the house.
Since the birth of her child Mrs. Elverton had fallen into no more
ravings, but lay in a sort of dull despair. To rouse her from this
state, the infant, a fine and healthy one, beautifully dressed, was
carried to her. But the great black eyes of the mother dilated with
horror at the sight of her child, and shuddering with excessive emotion,
she turned away.
Seeing how terribly the mother was agitated by the presence of the
child, the doctor ordered it to be carried to the nursery, where a nurse
was engaged to take charge of it.
Meanwhile the visitors assembled at Edenlawn had learned, from the
confusion of the household, the illness of the mistress, and the absence
of the master, that some great event, some crushing calamity, some
ill-understood horror, had suddenly fallen upon the family. Learning
from the physician that Mrs. Elverton was in no condition even to
receive their adieus, they left with him their parting compliments for
her, and set out for town.
The convalescence of Mrs. Elverton was very long protracted, but though,
during the ravings of her delirium, she had shrieked forth the names of
her husband and child in connection with some unimagined horror, yet,
from the moment of her return to reason, she never once recurred to the
existence of either. Her attendants wondered that she never inquired
after her husband; but her physician warned them not to force the
subject upon her attention. The babe was doing well in the nursery, but
Mr. Elverton had not yet returned, nor had any clue been found to his
disappearance.
It was a period of three months’ duration before Mrs. Elverton was
sufficiently recovered from her severe illness to make her appearance in
the drawing-room, and, oh! how changed from the haughty and beautiful
woman, who, some little time before, had been brought, a loved and happy
bride, to Edenlawn!
The majestic form was indeed the same, but every vestige of color had
fled from the classic face, leaving it white as the chiselled marble it
resembled. The imperious brow was painfully contracted, the proud eyes
were darkly veiled, the scornful lips were bitterly compressed, and the
whole countenance was deeply stamped with the ineffaceable marks of an
incurable despair. No one who had seen her three months previous could
look upon her without feeling that some unutterable misfortune had
blasted her life.
Her friends and neighbors, who, during her illness, had sent regularly
to inquire after her progress, now called to pay their compliments upon
her convalescence. But Mrs. Elverton declined to receive any visitors,
and commissioned the physician to make her excuses. She refused even to
receive a pastoral call from the clergyman of the parish; and though a
zealous Protestant, exact in all the forms of her faith, she shunned the
Christian rite of churching, and absented herself entirely from public
worship. And even when months had passed, and the venerable _bonne_,
whom she had brought with her from Paris, ventured to urge upon her the
duty of having the infant baptized, she shuddered, and to the horror of
Madame Julien, replied:
“_Baptize her!_ the baptismal waters, if sprinkled on _her_ forehead,
would hiss and fly off in steam, as if thrown upon red-hot iron.”
About this time Baron Elverton, summoned in haste from his official
duties in London, arrived at Edenlawn on a hurried visit to his
daughter-in-law. He was closeted with her for an hour in the library,
and at the end of the interview he—the case-hardened old judge of a
thousand criminal trials—came forth alone, with his face as pale as
death, and with blank horror stamped like madness on his brow. Without
waiting to see his grand-daughter, he ordered a carriage to take him at
once to the railway station, whence he set out the same hour for London.
He never came back to Edenlawn; but those who knew him well said that
within a fortnight after his flying visit there the hair of Baron
Elverton turned white as snow.
Months passed into years, and still the mystery of Edenlawn remained
unsolved. No news was heard of Mr. Elverton. No explanation was offered
by Mrs. Elverton. The unbaptized infant grew and thrived in health and
beauty as well as if his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury had
sprinkled her innocent brow; and she became the pet, the darling, and
the idol of the household, although her wretched mother still continued
to regard her as a creature thrice accursed. She was a healthy and a
happy child, and consequently beautiful and good.
“_So_ good, doctor, so very good,” was the constant report of Madame
Julien, or Madelon, as the old _bonne_ was more familiarly called.
“So good is she; so very good? Well, then, as she has no other name, let
us call her good—or Alma, which is the same thing,” said the doctor, one
morning.
And thus the infant, to whom her own mother strangely denied the rights
of baptism, received the well-omened name of Alma.
The infancy of the little heiress passed in the nursery until she had
attained the age of seven years, when an accomplished governess was
engaged to superintend her education, and she was removed to the
school-room.
But this migration brought Alma no nearer to her mother, who continued
to shun her presence.
Indeed, the greatest interest ever shown by Mrs. Elverton in her
daughter, was upon the occasion of the latter being attacked with
scarlet-fever, when the anxiety of the lady became intense; and such
anxiety as it was! an anxiety that made everyone shudder! anxiety, in
short—not that the child should live, but that she should _die_!
It curdled the blood of the boldest to see, that while the life of the
little girl was in imminent peril, the face of the lady was lighted up
with a wild, maniac hope. But one morning Dr. Watkins, who had been very
devoted in his attentions to his little patient, after paying his usual
visit to the bedside of Alma, entered the presence of Mrs. Elverton, and
with his countenance radiant with satisfaction, said:
“I am happy to announce to you, madam, that our little Alma is out of
danger. She will get well.”
To the consternation of the good doctor, the lady dropped her clasped
hands upon her lap, and while the old expression of incurable sorrow
came back to her face, replied, in a voice of deep despair:
“I had hoped it might have been otherwise, but Heaven’s holy will be
done!”
It was when Alma was about ten years of age that Mrs. Elverton received
the only news of her husband since the day of his strange disappearance.
This was contained in an annonymous letter from St. Petersburg,
announcing his decease in that city. Mrs. Elverton immediately wrote to
the British Ministry at that Court, to ascertain the facts of the case;
but after the most careful investigation, the utmost extent of
information she obtained was this, that a stranger, an Englishman, of
the name of Elverton, had died at St. Petersburg. He had left no papers
to afford a clue to his identity; his linen and boxes were marked “H.
Elverton.” And at the time that this inquiry was set on foot the body of
the stranger had been too long buried to afford the slightest
possibility of its being identified even if disinterred; and under these
circumstances the sanctity of the grave had not been violated.
Mrs. Elverton never discovered the writer of the annonymous letter. She
did not consider the intelligence she had received of sufficient
reliability to warrant her in publishing the death of Mr. Elverton, or
in placing her family in mourning. Yet those most familiar with the
lady’s moods thought that in her secret heart she believed in the death
of her husband, and derived satisfaction from the belief, for it was
observed that from the day she first received the intelligence—true or
false—her countenance, though retaining all its profound melancholy,
lost its unnatural expression of horror and despair.
Still, she took no delight in the society of her innocent daughter;
still she attended no place of public worship; received no company and
paid no visits, except visits of condolence to the houses of affliction,
or of charity to the abodes of poverty.
And so passed the years of Alma’s childhood. The young girl, if
unfortunate in her mother, was blessed in her governess—a woman of a
Christian heart, a cultivated, mind, and accomplished manners—who
conscientiously devoted herself to the temporal and eternal welfare of
her young charge.
It was to this lady that Alma owed not only all her worldly education,
but all her religious instruction. It was through her governess that
Alma was prepared for the Christian rites of baptism and confirmation,
both of which she received when she was about fifteen years of age.
But after this Alma lost her friend, companion, and governess.
The curate to whom Miss Moore had been betrothed for eight years at
length obtained a living, and claimed the long-promised hand of his
bride, who took leave of her friends at Edenlawn, and went to make the
happiness of a humble parsonage in Yorkshire.