Close to the bank of the river, on a little eminence commanding a view of the country around Elmsdale, stood a singularly constructed stone building which had long been unoccupied and deserted. Its original owner and projector was a man of singular habits, whose eccentricity had been universally regarded as a species of harmless insanity. Rich and childless, he had erected this mansion according to his own ideas of gothic architecture, and nothing could be more grotesque than its whole appearance. It soon obtained the appellation of Hopeton’s Folly, and though he whose name it bore had long since occupied a narrower house in the silent land, and the property had passed into other hands, the deserted mansion was still known by the same title. Great was the surprise of the villagers when it was known that the strange lady had become the purchaser of Hopeton’s Folly, and that in future she would reside permanently in Elmsdale. Curiosity was newly awakened, and every body was desirous to know something about one who seemed so unprotected and solitary. But there was a quiet dignity in her manners which rebuked and disconcerted impertinent inquiry, while all efforts to draw some information from her single attendant—an elderly sedate woman, who seemed to hold a middle rank between companion and servant—were equally unsuccessful.
“Has Mrs. Norwood been long a widow?” asked a pertinacious newsmonger, who kept the only thread and needle shop in the place, and therefore had a fine opportunity of gratifying her gossipping propensities.
“It is now nearly two years since she lost her husband,” was the reply of the discreet servant, who was busily employed in selecting some tape and pins.
“Only two years, and she has already laid aside her mourning!” exclaimed the shopkeeper; “but I suppose that is an English fashion.”
The woman made no reply, and, consequently, the next day, all the village was given to understand that Mrs. Norwood’s help had told Miss Debby Tattle that Mrs. Norwood was a very rich widow who had just arrived from England. This was all that Miss Debby’s ingenuity could make out of the scanty materials which she had been able to obtain, and with this meagre account people were obliged to be satisfied.
Mrs. Norwood was one of those quiet, gentle beings who, though little calculated to excite a sudden prepossession, always awakened a deep and lasting interest. Her age might have been about eight and twenty, but the ravages of illness, and, perhaps, the touch of a still more cruel destroyer, had given a melancholy expression to her countenance, and a degree of gravity to her manners which made her seem much older. Her features, still classically beautiful, were attenuated and sharpened, her complexion was pale almost to ghastliness, and her thin, flexible lips were perfectly colorless. But she possessed one charm which neither time nor disease could spoil. Her eyes—those dark, soft, lustrous eyes, with their veined and fringed lids, beautiful alike when the full orbs were veiled beneath their shadowy lashes, or when their beaming light turned full upon an object of regard—were the most distinguishing trait in Mrs. Norwood’s countenance. No one dreamed of calling her beautiful, but all noticed the grace of her tall and slightly bending figure, her courteous and ladylike manners, her low, sweet voice, and the touching air of melancholy which seemed to characterize her every movement.
Under the direction of its new mistress, Hopeton’s Folly was now fitted up with a degree of neatness and comfort which it had seemed scarcely capable of assuming. Furniture, plain but costly, was brought from a distant town, the grounds were laid out with a view to elegance rather than mere usefulness, and, in short, money and good taste soon converted the desolate spot into a little paradise of beauty. The neighbors, who, with the kindness which generally prevails in every place where fashion has not destroyed social feeling, had been ready to afford Mrs. Norwood every assistance in the completion of her plans, became now equally ready to share her hospitality, and, for a time, the newly arranged mansion was always full of well-disposed but ill-judging visiters. But Mrs. Norwood’s health was soon made the plea for discountenancing all such attentions on the part of the village gossips. Always courteous and hospitable, she yet declined all visitations to the frequent “hot water conventions” or “tea drinkings” which constituted the chief amusement of the place, while she managed to keep alive the good feelings of her new associates by many acts of unostentatious charity. Simple in her daily habits, benevolent in her impulses, yet retiring and reserved in her manners, Mrs. Norwood made her faithful old servant the almoner of her bounties, while the poor, the sick and the sorrowful were never refused admission to her presence. Her regular attendance on the public duties of religion, in the only church which Elmsdale could then boast, had tended to establish her character for respectability in a community so eminently moral and pious; and when it was known that the pastor, whose rigid ideas of propriety were no secret, had become a frequent visiter at Hopeton’s Folly, no doubt remained as to Mrs. Norwood’s virtues and claims upon general sympathy.
Mr. Allston, who for some ten years had presided over the single church in a place which had fortunately escaped the curse of sectarianism, was a man as remarkable in character as he was peculiar in habit. A close and unwearied student, ascetic in his daily life, and an enthusiast in his profession, he was almost idolized by his people, who regarded him as a being of the most saint-like character. Indeed, if self-denial could afford a title to canonization, he was fully competent to sustain the claim; but such is the inconsistency of human judgment, that Mr. Allston owed his high reputation to a belief in his stoical indifference to earthly temptations, and much of his influence would have been diminished if it had been suspected that resistance to evil ever cost him a single effort. The truth was that nature had made Allston a voluptuary, but religion had transformed him into an ascetic. He had set out in life with an eager thirst after all its pleasures, but he had been stayed in the very outset of his career by the reproaches of an awakened conscience. Violent in all his impulses, and ever in extremes, he had devoted himself to the gospel ministry because the keen goadings of repentance urged him to offer the greatest sacrifice in his power as atonement for past sins. But he had experienced all the trials which await those who, when gathering the manna from heaven, still remember the savory fleshpots of Egypt. His life was a perpetual conflict between passion and principle, and though his earthly nature rarely obtained the mastery, yet the necessity for such unwearied watchfulness had given a peculiar tone of severity to his manners. Like many persons of similar zeal, Allston had committed the error of confounding the affections with the passions of human nature, and believing all earthly ties to be but fetters on the wings of the soul, he carefully avoided all temptation to assume such bonds. His religion was one of fear rather than of love, and forgetting that He who placed man in a world of beauty and delight has said, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” he made existence only a protracted scene of self-devotion and privation. A superstitious dread of yielding even to the most innocent impulses had induced him to suppress every feeling of his ardent and excitable nature. He had turned from the face of beauty and the voice of love with the same dread as would have induced him to eschew the temptation of the gaming-table and the wine-cup, and his thirtieth summer found him still a solitary student by the fireside of his widowed mother. His fine talents as a preacher, his powers of persuasion, his thrilling eloquence, aided by the example of his own habits of life, had produced a great effect in the community where he had been called to minister in holy things. The church was in a most flourishing condition; numbers had been united to it, and the influence of the pastor over the minds of all, but especially those of the young, was almost unbounded. Is it strange, therefore, that spiritual pride should have grown up in the heart of the isolated student, and twined its parasitic foliage around many a hardy plant of grace and goodness? Is it to be wondered at if Charles Allston at length indulged the fancy that he had been set apart as one chosen for a high and holy work—that he was destined to be one of the “vessels of honor,” of whom St. Paul has spoken—and that nothing now could sully the spotless garments in which his self-denial had clothed him.
Mrs. Allston had been among the first to welcome the sick stranger to Elmsdale, and, pleased with the gentle grace which characterized her manners, had lavished upon her every kindness. Mrs. Norwood was grateful for her attentions, and seemed happy to find a friend whose mature age and experience could afford her counsel and sympathy. This feeling of childlike dependence, on the one hand, and matronly affection on the other, was growing up between them, and served to establish a closer intimacy than at first might have appeared natural to persons so entirely unlike in character. Mrs. Allston was a woman of unpretending good sense, and plain education, whose rustic habits and utter indifference to etiquette made her appear very different from the languid invalid whose elegant manners and refined language marked her cultivation rather than her strength of mind. But “accident,” and “the strong necessity of loving,” may often account for friendships as well as loves, and this world would be a sad desert of lonely hearts if we could only attach ourselves to our own counterparts. No one could know Mrs. Norwood intimately, without being irresistibly attracted towards a character of such singular sensitiveness and amiability. She seemed like one in whom the elements of strength had been slowly and gradually evolved by circumstances, for, though her disposition was by nature yielding and dependent, yet her habits of thought and action were full of decision and firmness. Gentle and feminine in her feelings, reserved and quiet in her demeanor, she appeared to a careless observer merely as the dignified and discreet, because unprotected woman. But one who looked beneath the calm surface, might have found a deep strong under-current of feeling. Heart-sickness, rather than bodily disease, had been at work with her, and the blight which had passed over her young beauty, was but a type of that which had checked the growth of her warm affections.
Whatever might have been Mrs. Norwood’s feelings when she first took possession of her new abode, she certainly seemed both healthier and happier after a year’s sojourn in Elmsdale. A faint color returned to her thin cheek, a smile, bright and transient as an April sunbeam, often lit up her fine face, her features lost much of their sharpness of outline, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, the feeble, drooping invalid was transformed by the renovating touch of health into the lovely and elegant woman. Yet the same pensiveness characterized her usual manner—the same reluctance to mingle in society was evident in her daily intercourse with her neighbors, and to a stranger she might still seem to be mourning over the memory of a buried affection. But Mrs. Allston and her son alone knew better. They alone knew that affection had been crushed in its very bud by unkindness and neglect—they alone believed that the widow had found death one of the best of friends, when he relieved her from the intolerable bondage of domestic tyranny. Not that Mrs. Norwood had ever confided to them her former history; for the slightest question which had reference to the past always seemed to give her exquisite pain, but a casual remark, a trifling hint, a passing allusion, uttered in the confidence of friendship, had led them to form such conclusions.