Twice-told tales
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 Elcanore’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 eyewitness 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.
IV.
OLD ESTHER DUDLEY
Our host having resumed the chair, he as well as Mr. Tiffany and myself
expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story to which
the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of all saw lit to
moisten his throat with another glass of wine, and then, turning his
face toward our coal-fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into
the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally he poured forth a great
fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had imbibed, while it
warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his
heart and mind, and gave him an energy to think and feel which we could
hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore winters.
His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than those of a
younger man—or, at least, the same degree of feeling manifested itself
by more visible effects than if his judgment and will had possessed the
potency of meridian life. At the pathetic passages of his narrative he
readily melted into tears. When a breath of indignation swept across
his spirit, the blood flushed his withered visage even to the roots of
his white hair, and he shook his clinched fist at the trio of peaceful
auditors, seeming to fancy enemies in those who felt very kindly toward
the desolate old soul. But ever and anon, sometimes in the midst of his
most earnest talk, this ancient person’s intellect would wander
vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in hand and groping for it amid
misty shadows. Then would he cackle forth a feeble laugh and express a
doubt whether his wits—for by that phrase it pleased our ancient friend
to signify his mental powers—were not getting a little the worse for
wear.
Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist’s story required more
revision to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series
which have preceded it; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment
and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight—or perchance more
than slight—metamorphosis in its transmission to the reader through the
medium of a thoroughgoing democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch
with no involution of plot nor any great interest of events, yet
possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over
the mind which the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the
loiterer in its court-yard.
The hour had come—the hour of defeat and humiliation—when Sir William
Howe was to pass over the threshold of the province-house and embark,
with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board
the British fleet. He bade his servants and military attendants go
before him, and lingered a moment in the loneliness of the mansion to
quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom as with a
death-throb. Preferable then would he have deemed his fate had a
warrior’s death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a grave
within the soil which the king had given him to defend. With an ominous
perception that as his departing footsteps echoed adown the staircase
the sway of Britain was passing for ever from New England, he smote his
clenched hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had flung the
shame of a dismembered empire upon him.
“Would to God,” cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, “that
the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the floor
should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
his trust.”
The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.
“Heaven’s cause and the king’s are one,” it said. “Go forth, Sir
William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in
triumph.”
Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith
that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged
woman leaning on a gold-headed staff was standing betwixt him and the
door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years
in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from it as
the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an ancient
and once eminent family which had fallen into poverty and decay and
left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the king, nor
any shelter except within the walls of the province-house. An office in
the household with merely nominal duties had been assigned to her as a
pretext for the payment of a small pension, the greater part of which
she expended in adorning herself with an antique magnificence of
attire. The claims of Esther Dudley’s gentle blood were acknowledged by
all the successive governors, and they treated her with the punctilious
courtesy which it was her foible to demand, not always with success,
from a neglectful world. The only actual share which she assumed in the
business of the mansion was to glide through its passages and public
chambers late at night to see that the servants had dropped no fire
from their flaring torches nor left embers crackling and blazing on the
hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of walking her rounds in
the hush of midnight that caused the superstition of the times to
invest the old woman with attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that
she had entered the portal of the province-house—none knew whence—in
the train of the first royal governor, and that it was her fate to
dwell there till the last should have departed.
But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.
“Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?” asked he, with some
severity of tone. “It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of
the king.”
“Not so, if it please Your Excellency,” answered the time-stricken
woman. “This roof has sheltered me long; I will not pass from it until
they bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there
for old Esther Dudley save the province-house or the grave?”
“Now, Heaven forgive me!” said Sir William Howe to himself. “I was
about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg.—Take this,
good Mistress Dudley,” he added, putting a purse into her hands. “King
George’s head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will
continue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock
their king. That purse will buy a better shelter than the
province-house can now afford.”
“While the burden of life remains upon me I will have no other shelter
than this roof,” persisted Esther Dudley, striking her staff upon the
floor with a gesture that expressed immovable resolve; “and when Your
Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome
you.”
“My poor old friend!” answered the British general, and all his manly
and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears.
“This is an evil hour for you and me. The province which the king
entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune—perchance in
disgrace—to return no more. And you, whose present being is
incorporated with the past, who have seen governor after governor in
stately pageantry ascend these steps, whose whole life has been an
observance of majestic ceremonies and a worship of the king,—how will
you endure the change? Come with us; bid farewell to a land that has
shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government at
Halifax.”
“Never! never!” said the pertinacious old dame. “Here will I abide, and
King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal
province.”
“Beshrew the old fool!” muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient of
her obstinacy and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been
betrayed. “She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could
exist nowhere but in this musty edifice.—Well, then, Mistress Dudley,
since you will needs tarry, I give the province-house in charge to you.
Take this key, and keep it safe until myself or some other royal
governor shall demand it of you.” Smiling bitterly at himself and her,
he took the heavy key of the province-house, and, delivering it into
the old lady’s hands, drew his cloak around him for departure.
As the general glanced back at Esther Dudley’s antique figure he deemed
her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative
of the decayed past—of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions,
faith and feelings all fallen into oblivion or scorn, of what had once
been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence. Then