III

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE

 

MINE excellent friend, the landlord of the Pro­vince House, was pleased, the other evening, to invite Mr. Tiffany and myself to an oyster supper. This slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he handsomely observed, was far less than the ingenious tale-teller, and I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had fairly earned, by the public notice which our joint lucubrations had attracted to his establishment. Many a cigar had been smoked within his premises -- many a glass of wine, or more potent aqua vitae, had been quaffed -- many a dinner had been eaten by curious strangers, who, save for the fortunate conjunction of Mr. Tiffany and me, would never have ventured through that darksome avenue which gives access to the historic precincts of the Province House. In short, if any credit be due to the courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas Waite, we had brought his forgotten man­sion almost as effectually into public view as if we had thrown down the vulgar range of shoe shops and dry goods stores, which hides its aristocratic front from Washington Street. It may be unad­visable, however, to speak too loudly of the in­creased custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite should find it difficult to renew the lease on so favorable terms as heretofore.

 

Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. Tiffany nor myself felt any scruple in doing full justice to the good things that were set before us. If the feast were less magnificent than those same panelled walls had witnessed in a by-gone century, -- if mine host presided with somewhat less of state than might have befitted a successor of the royal Governors, -- if the guests made a less im­posing show than the bewigged and powdered and embroidered dignitaries, who erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table, and now sleep, within their armorial tombs on Copp's Hill, or round King's Chapel, -- yet never, I may boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the Province House, from Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered more interesting by the presence of a venerable personage, whose own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe, and even supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two of Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and now all but extinguished, class, whose attachment to royalty, and to the colonial institutions and customs that were con­nected with it, had never yielded to the democratic heresies of after times. The young queen of Brit­ain has not a more loyal subject in her realm -- perhaps not one who would kneel before her throne with such reverential love -- as this old grandsire, whose head has whitened beneath the mild sway of the Republic, which still, in his mellower mo­ments, he terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices so obstinate have not made him an ungentle or im­practicable companion. If the truth must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has been of such a scrambling and unsettled character, -- he has had so little choice of friends and been so often desti­tute of any, -- that I doubt whether he would re­fuse a cup of kindness with either Oliver Cromwell or John Hancock, -- to say nothing of any dem­ocrat now upon the stage. In another paper of this series I may perhaps give the reader a closer glimpse of his portrait.

 

Our host, in due season, uncorked a bottle of Madeira, of such exquisite perfume and admirable flavor that he surely must have discovered it in an ancient bin, down deep beneath the deepest cel­lar, where some jolly old butler stored away the Governor's choicest wine, and forgot to reveal the secret on his death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost, and a libation to his memory! This pre­cious liquor was imbibed by Mr. Tiffany with peculiar zest; and after sipping the third glass, it was his pleasure to give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet raked from the store­house where he keeps such matters. With some suitable adornments from my own fancy, it ran pretty much as follows.

 

Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government of Massachusetts Bay, now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago, a young lady of rank and fortune arrived from England, to claim his protection as her guardian. He was her distant relative, but the nearest who had survived the gradual extinction of her family; so that no more eligible shelter could be found for the rich and high-born Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe than within the Province House of a transatlantic col­ony. The consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as a mother to her childhood, and was now anxious to receive her, in the hope that a beau­tiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril from the primitive society of New Eng­land than amid the artifices and corruptions of a court. If either the Governor or his lady had es­pecially consulted their own comfort, they would probably have sought to devolve the responsi­bility on other hands; since, with some noble and splendid traits of character, Lady Eleanore was re­markable for a harsh, unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her hereditary and personal ad­vantages, which made her almost incapable of control. Judging from many traditionary anec­dotes, this peculiar temper was hardly less than a monomania; or, if the acts which it inspired were those of a sane person, it seemed due from Providence that pride so sinful should be fol­lowed by as severe a retribution. That tinge of the marvellous, which is thrown over so many of these half-forgotten legends, has probably im­parted an additional wildness to the strange story of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe.

 

The ship in which she came passenger had ar­rived at Newport, whence Lady Eleanore was con­veyed to Boston in the Governor's coach, attended by a small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage, with its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled through Cornhill, surrounded by the prancing steeds of half a dozen cavaliers, with swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their holsters. Through the large glass windows of the coach, as it rolled along, the people could discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely combining an almost queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty of a maiden in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the ladies of the province, that their fair rival was indebted for much of the irresistible charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress -- an embroidered mantle -- which had been wrought by the most skilful artist in London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the present occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress, being clad in a riding habit of velvet, which would have appeared stiff and ungraceful on any other form.

 

The coachman reined his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade came to a pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced the Pro­vince House from the public street. It was an awkward coincidence that the bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome peal with which it was cus­tomary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if calamity had come em­bodied in her beautiful person.

 

"A very great disrespect!" exclaimed Captain Langford, an English officer, who had recently brought dispatches to Governor Shute. "The funeral should have been deferred, lest Lady Elea­nore's spirits be affected by such a dismal wel­come."

 

"With your pardon, sir," replied Doctor Clarke, a physician, and a. famous champion of the popu­lar party, "whatever the heralds may pretend, a dead beggar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers high privileges."

 

These remarks were interchanged while the speakers waited a passage through the crowd, which had gathered on each side of the gateway, leaving an open avenue to the portal of the Pro­vince House. A black slave in livery now leaped from behind the coach, and threw open the door; while at the same moment Governor Shute de­scended the flight of steps from his mansion, to assist Lady Eleanore in alighting. But the Gov­ernor's stately approach was anticipated in a man­ner that excited general astonishment. A pale young man, with his black hair all in disorder, rushed from the throng, and prostrated himself be­side the coach, thus offering his person as a foot­stool for Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe to tread upon. She held back an instant, yet with an expression as if doubting whether the young man were wor­thy to bear the weight of her footstep, rather than dissatisfied to receive such awful reverence from a fellow-mortal.

 

"Up, sir," said the Governor, sternly, at the same time lifting his cane over the intruder. "What means the Bedlamite by this freak?"

 

"Nay," answered Lady Eleanore playfully, but with more scorn than pity in her tone, "your Ex­cellency shall not strike him. When men seek only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily granted -- and so well de­served!"

 

Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form, and extended her hand to meet that of the Governor. There was a brief interval, during which Lady Eleanore retained this attitude; and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of aristo­cracy and hereditary pride trampling on human sympathies and the kindred of nature, than these two figures presented at that moment. Yet the spectators were so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did pride seem to the existence of such a creature, that they gave a simultaneous acclama­tion of applause.

 

"Who is this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who still remained beside Doc­tor Clarke." If he be in his senses, his imper­tinence demands the bastinado. If mad, Lady Eleanore should be secured from further incon­venience, by his confinement."

 

"His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the Doctor; "a youth of no birth or fortune, or other advantages, save the mind and soul that nature gave him; and being secretary to our colonial agent in London, it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved her ­and her scorn has driven him mad."

"He was mad so to aspire," observed the Eng­lish officer.

 

"It may be so," said Doctor Clarke, frowning as he spoke, "But I tell you, sir, I could well-nigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if no sig­nal humiliation overtake this lady, who now treads so haughtily into yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our common nature, which envelops all human souls. See, if that nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring her level with the lowest!"

 

"Never!" cried Captain Langford indignantly -- "neither in life, nor when they lay her with her ancestors."

 

Not many days afterwards the Governor gave a ball in honor of Lady 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 dispatches. 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.

 

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 over-wearied 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."

 

"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 whose 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 by-standers 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. Doctor 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.

 

"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.

 

"God forbid!" answered Doctor 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 by-standers 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 conquerer -- 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 blood-red 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!"

 

"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, Doctor 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 Doctor 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 super­-human 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.

 

"Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!" he cried. "All have been her victims! Who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?" 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.

 

 

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