Chapter XVI: 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.