Historical fiction, American; New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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