Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony received
invitations, which were distributed to their residences, far and near,
by messengers on horseback, bearing missives sealed with all the
formality of official despatches. In obedience to the summons, there was
a general gathering of rank, wealth, and beauty; and the wide door of
the Province House had seldom given admittance to more numerous and
honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore’s ball. Without
much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed
splendid; for, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone
in rich silks and satins, outspread over wide-projecting hoops; and the
gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery, laid unsparingly upon the
purple, or scarlet, or sky-blue velvet, which was the material of their
coats and waistcoats. The latter article of dress was of great
importance, since it enveloped the wearer’s body nearly to the knees,
and was perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole year’s income, in
golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste of the present day—a taste
symbolic of a deep change in the whole system of society—would look upon
almost any of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous; although that
evening the guests sought their reflections in the pier-glasses, and
rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd. What a
pity that one of the stately mirrors has not preserved a picture of the
scene, which, by the very traits that were so transitory, might have
taught us much that would be worth knowing and remembering.
Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us some
faint idea of a garment, already noticed in this legend,—the Lady
Eleanore’s embroidered mantle,—which the gossips whispered was invested
with magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace to her
figure each time that she put it on! Idle fancy as it is, this
mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around my image of her, partly from
its fabled virtues, and partly because it was the handiwork of a dying
woman, and, perchance, owed the fantastic grace of its conception to the
delirium of approaching death.
[Illustration:
A gathering of rank, wealth and beauty
]
After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe
stood apart from the mob of guests, insulating herself within a small
and distinguished circle, to whom she accorded a more cordial favor than
to the general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance vividly
over the scene, bringing out its brilliant points in strong relief; but
she gazed carelessly, and with now and then an expression of weariness
or scorn, tempered with such feminine grace that her auditors scarcely
perceived the moral deformity of which it was the utterance. She beheld
the spectacle, not with vulgar ridicule, as disdaining to be pleased
with the provincial mockery of a court festival, but with the deeper
scorn of one whose spirit held itself too high to participate in the
enjoyment of other human souls. Whether or no the recollections of those
who saw her that evening were influenced by the strange events with
which she was subsequently connected, so it was that her figure ever
after recurred to them as marked by something wild and unnatural;
although, at the time, the general whisper was of her exceeding beauty,
and of the indescribable charm which her mantle threw around her. Some
close observers, indeed, detected a feverish flush and alternate
paleness of countenance, with a corresponding flow and revulsion of
spirits, and once or twice a painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude,
as if she were on the point of sinking to the ground. Then, with a
nervous shudder, she seemed to arouse her energies, and threw some
bright and playful, yet half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation. There
was so strange a characteristic in her manners and sentiments that it
astonished every right-minded listener; till, looking in her face, a
lurking and incomprehensible glance and smile perplexed them with doubts
both as to her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe’s circle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen remained in
it. These were Captain Langford, the English officer before mentioned; a
Virginian planter, who had come to Massachusetts on some political
errand; a young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a British Earl;
and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor Shute, whose
obsequiousness had won a sort of tolerance from Lady Eleanore.
At different periods of the evening the liveried servants of the
Province House passed among the guests, bearing huge trays of
refreshments, and French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe,
who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of champagne,
had sunk back into a large damask chair, apparently overwearied either
with the excitement of the scene or its tedium; and while, for an
instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter, and music, a young man
stole forward, and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his hand,
on which was a chased silver goblet, filled to the brim with wine, which
he offered as reverentially as to a crowned queen, or rather with the
awful devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol. Conscious that
some one touched her robe, Lady Eleanore started, and unclosed her eyes
upon the pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of Jervase Helwyse.
“Why do you haunt me thus?” said she, in a languid tone, but with a
kindlier feeling than she ordinarily permitted herself to express. “They
tell me that I have done you harm.”
[Illustration:
“I pray you take one sip of this holy wine.”
]
“Heaven knows if that be so,” replied the young man solemnly. “But, Lady
Eleanore, in requital of that harm, if such there be, and for your own
earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of this holy
wine, and then to pass the goblet round among the guests. And this shall
be a symbol that you have not sought to withdraw yourself from the chain
of human sympathies,—which whoso would shake off must keep company with
fallen angels.”
“Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental vessel?” exclaimed
the Episcopal clergyman.
This question drew the notice of the guests to the silver cup, which was
recognized as appertaining to the communion plate of the Old South
Church; and, for aught that could be known, it was brimming over with
the consecrated wine.
“Perhaps it is poisoned,” half whispered the Governor’s secretary.
“Pour it down the villain’s throat!” cried the Virginian fiercely.
“Turn him out of the house!” cried Captain Langford, seizing Jervase
Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder that the sacramental cup was
overturned, and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore’s mantle.
“Whether knave, fool, or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the fellow
should go at large.”
“Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm,” said Lady Eleanore, with
a faint and weary smile. “Take him out of my sight, if such be your
pleasure; for I can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at him;
whereas, in all decency and conscience, it would become me to weep for
the mischief I have wrought!”
But while the bystanders were attempting to lead away the unfortunate
young man, he broke from them, and, with a wild, impassioned
earnestness, offered a new and equally strange petition to Lady
Eleanore. It was no other than that she should throw off the mantle,
which, while he pressed the silver cup of wine upon her, she had drawn
more closely around her form, so as almost to shroud herself within it.
“Cast it from you!” exclaimed Jervase Helwyse, clasping his hands in an
agony of entreaty. “It may not yet be too late! Give the accursed
garment to the flames!”
But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the rich folds of the
embroidered mantle over her head, in such a fashion as to give a
completely new aspect to her beautiful face, which—half hidden, half
revealed—seemed to belong to some being of mysterious character and
purposes.
“Farewell, Jervase Helwyse!” said she. “Keep my image in your
remembrance, as you behold it now.”
“Alas, lady!” he replied, in a tone no longer wild, but sad as a funeral
bell. “We must meet shortly, when your face may wear another aspect, and
that shall be the image that must abide within me.”
He made no more resistance to the violent efforts of the gentlemen and
servants, who almost dragged him out of the apartment, and dismissed him
roughly from the iron gate of the Province House. Captain Langford, who
had been very active in this affair, was returning to the presence of
Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he encountered the physician, Dr. Clarke,
with whom he had held some casual talk on the day of her arrival. The
Doctor stood apart, separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the
room, but eying her with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford
involuntarily gave him credit for the discovery of some deep secret.
[Illustration:
Keep my image in your remembrance
]
“You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly
maiden,” said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician’s hidden
knowledge.
[Illustration:
The communication could be of no agreeable import.
]
“God forbid!” answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave smile; “and if you be
wise, you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who
shall be smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder stands the
Governor, and I have a word or two for his private ear. Good night!”
He accordingly advanced to Governor Shute, and addressed him in so low a
tone that none of the bystanders could catch a word of what he said;
although the sudden change of his Excellency’s hitherto cheerful visage
betokened that the communication could be of no agreeable import. A very
few moments afterwards, it was announced to the guests that an
unforeseen circumstance rendered it necessary to put a premature close
to the festival.
The ball at the Province House supplied a topic of conversation for the
colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might still
longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of
all-engrossing interest thrust it, for a time, from the public
recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic, which in
that age, and long before and afterwards, was wont to slay its hundreds
and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which we
speak, it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that it
has left its traces—its pit-marks, to use an appropriate figure—on the
history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown into confusion
by its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the disease seemed
to confine itself to the higher circles of society, selecting its
victims from among the proud, the well-born, and the wealthy; entering
unabashed into stately chambers, and lying down with the slumberers in
silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests of the Province
House—even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe had deemed
not unworthy of her favor—were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was
noticed, with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling, that the four
gentlemen—the Virginian, the British officer, the young clergyman, and
the Governor’s secretary—who had been her most devoted attendants on the
evening of the ball, were the foremost on whom the plague-stroke fell.
But the disease, pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be
exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no longer
conferred like a noble’s star, or an order of knighthood. It threaded
its way through the narrow and crooked streets, and entered the low,
mean, darksome dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the artisans
and laboring classes of the town. It compelled rich and poor to feel
themselves brethren, then; and stalking to and fro across the Three
Hills, with a fierceness which made it almost a new pestilence, there
was that mighty conqueror—that scourge and horror of our forefathers—the
Small-Pox!
We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore, by
contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must
remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of the
Asiatic cholera, striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic, and
marching like destiny upon cities far remote, which flight had already
half depopulated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing as
that which makes man dread to breathe Heaven’s vital air, lest it be
poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend, lest the gripe of
the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now followed
in the track of the disease, or ran before it throughout the town.
Graves were hastily dug, and the pestilential relics as hastily covered,
because the dead were enemies of the living, and strove to draw them
headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public councils
were suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices, now
that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the ruler’s mansion.
Had an enemy’s fleet been hovering on the coast, or his armies trampling
on our soil, the people would probably have committed their defence to
that same direful conqueror who had wrought their own calamity, and
would permit no interference with his sway. This conqueror had a symbol
of his triumphs. It was a bloodred flag, that fluttered in the tainted
air over the door of every dwelling into which the Small-Pox had
entered.
Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the Province
House; for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps back, had all
this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back to a lady’s
luxurious chamber,—to the proudest of the proud,—to her that was so
delicate, and hardly owned herself of earthly mould,—to the haughty one,
who took her stand above human sympathies,—to Lady Eleanore! There
remained no room for doubt that the contagion had lurked in that
gorgeous mantle, which threw so strange a grace around her at the
festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the delirious
brain of a woman on her death-bed, and was the last toil of her
stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its golden
threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far and
wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore, and cried out that her
pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that, between them both, this
monstrous evil had been born. At times, their rage and despair took the
semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red flag of the pestilence
was hoisted over another and yet another door, they clapped their hands
and shouted through the streets in bitter mockery, “Behold a new triumph
for the Lady Eleanore!”
One day, in the midst of these dismal times, a wild figure approached
the portal of the Province House, and, folding his arms, stood
contemplating the scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook fitfully,
as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At length,
climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade, he took
down the flag, and entered the mansion, waving it above his head. At the
foot of the staircase he met the Governor, booted and spurred, with his
cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of setting forth upon a
journey.
“Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?” exclaimed Shute, extending
his cane to guard himself from contact. “There is nothing here but
Death. Back,—or you will meet him!”
“Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence!” cried
Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. “Death and the Pestilence,
who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through the streets
to-night, and I must march before them with this banner!”
[Illustration:
“Young man, what is your purpose?”
]
“Why do I waste words on the fellow?” muttered the Governor, drawing his
cloak across his mouth. “What matters his miserable life, when none of
us are sure of twelve hours’ breath? On, fool, to your own destruction!”
He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the staircase,
but, on the first landing-place, was arrested by the firm grasp of a
hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up, with a madman’s impulse to
struggle with and rend asunder his opponent, he found himself powerless
beneath a calm, stern eye, which possessed the mysterious property of
quelling frenzy at its height. The person whom he had now encountered
was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties of whose sad profession had
led him to the Province House, where he was an infrequent guest in more
prosperous times.
“Young man, what is your purpose?” demanded he.
“I seek the Lady Eleanore,” answered Jervase Helwyse submissively.
“All have fled from her,” said the physician. “Why do you seek her now?
I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold of
that fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such a curse to our
shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore?—that her breath has filled the air
with poison?—that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land,
from the folds of her accursed mantle?”
“Let me look upon her!” rejoined the mad youth more wildly. “Let me
behold her, in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the
pestilence! She and Death sit on a throne together. Let me kneel down
before them!”
“Poor youth!” said Dr. Clarke; and, moved by a deep sense of human
weakness, a smile of caustic humor curled his lip even then. “Wilt thou
still worship the destroyer, and surround her image with fantasies the
more magnificent, the more evil she has wrought? Thus man doth ever to
his tyrants! Approach, then! Madness, as I have noted, has that good
efficacy that it will guard you from contagion; and perchance its own
cure may be found in yonder chamber.”
Ascending another flight of stairs, he threw open a door, and signed to
Jervase Helwyse that he should enter. The poor lunatic, it seems
probable, had cherished a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in
state, unharmed herself by the pestilential influence, which, as by
enchantment, she scattered round about her. He dreamed, no doubt, that
her beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into superhuman splendor. With
such anticipations, he stole reverentially to the door at which the
physician stood, but paused upon the threshold, gazing fearfully into
the gloom of the darkened chamber.
“Where is the Lady Eleanore?” whispered he.
“Call her,” replied the physician.
“Lady Eleanore!—Princess!—Queen of Death!” cried Jervase Helwyse,
advancing three steps into the chamber. “She is not here! There, on
yonder table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore upon
her bosom. There,”—and he shuddered,—“there hangs her mantle, on which a
dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where is the
Lady Eleanore?”
Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed; and a
low moan was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began
to distinguish as a woman’s voice, complaining dolefully of thirst. He
fancied, even, that he recognized its tones.
“My throat!—my throat is scorched,” murmured the voice. “A drop of
water!”
“What thing art thou?” said the brain-stricken youth, drawing near the
bed and tearing asunder its curtains. “Whose voice hast thou stolen for
thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore could be
conscious of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap of diseased mortality, why
lurkest thou in my lady’s chamber?”
“O Jervase Helwyse,” said the voice,—and, as it spoke, the figure
contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face,—“look not now on
the woman you once loved! The curse of Heaven hath stricken me, because
I would not call man my brother, nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in
PRIDE as in a MANTLE, and scorned the sympathies of nature; and
therefore has nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful
sympathy. You are avenged,—they are all avenged,—nature is avenged,—for
I am Eleanore Rochcliffe!”
The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom
of his heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined life, and love
that had been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jervase
Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched girl, and the chamber
echoed, the curtains of the bed were shaken, with his outburst of insane
merriment.
[Illustration:
“What thing art thou?”
]
“Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!” he cried. “All have been her
victims! Who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?”
[Illustration:
“That Night a Procession passed by Torchlight”
]
Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched the
fatal mantle and rushed from the chamber and the house. That night, a
procession passed, by torchlight, through the streets, bearing in the
midst the figure of a woman, enveloped with a richly embroidered mantle;
while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse, waving the red flag of the
pestilence. Arriving opposite the Province House, the mob burned the
effigy, and a strong wind came and swept away the ashes. It was said
that, from that very hour, the pestilence abated, as if its sway had
some mysterious connection, from the first plague-stroke to the last,
with Lady Eleanore’s Mantle. A remarkable uncertainty broods over that
unhappy lady’s fate. There is a belief, however, that, in a certain
chamber of this mansion, a female form may sometimes be duskily
discerned, shrinking into the darkest corner, and muffling her face
within an embroidered mantle. Supposing the legend true, can this be
other than the once proud Lady Eleanore?
Mine host, and the old loyalist, and I bestowed no little warmth of
applause upon this narrative, in which we had all been deeply
interested; for the reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the
effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in the present case, we may
repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who tells it. For my
own part, knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the foundation
of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the more faithfully
had he professed himself an eye-witness of the doings and sufferings of
poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might demand documentary
evidence, or even require him to produce the embroidered mantle,
forgetting that—Heaven be praised—it was consumed to ashes. But now the
old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer, began to talk,
in his turn, about the traditions of the Province House, and hinted that
he, if it were agreeable, might add a few reminiscences to our legendary
stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to dread a rival, immediately
besought him to favor us with a specimen; my own entreaties, of course,
were urged to the same effect; and our venerable guest, well pleased to
find willing auditors, awaited only the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who
had been summoned forth to provide accommodations for several new
arrivals. Perchance the public—but be this as its own caprice and ours
shall settle the matter—may read the result in another Tale of the
Province House.
[Illustration: Old Esther Dudley.]
IV.
OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.