The night is moonlit... and our neighbor John is carrying me in his arms, an infant one month old... climbing the green hill on his way to the Silent Mansion.
He brings me in to my Aunt Myra... She was not my aunt in the literal sense... rather, we were both of the line of the Montad family... she from its wealthiest and most eminent branch... and I from its poorest and most wretched...
My mother died the hour I was born... and my father died yesterday, after charging our neighbor John to carry me to the Silent Mansion in the hope that Aunt Myra would take me to her bosom... and if she did not take pity on me and do so, then he was to carry me to an orphanage... any orphanage that would accept me... The neighbor buried my father, then carried me off to fulfill his last wish.
We entered the Silent Mansion... and I smiled at the scowling aunt... I was an angelic infant, and her heart softened toward me; she took me from his arms into her own, and thus I entered the paradise of wealth... and my father's bones found rest in their grave.
The three women gathered around me — and they were all the inhabitants of the mansion... my Aunt Myra, Mother Duncan, and the servant Gertrude... or the lady of the mansion... the governing stewardess... and the two old women's maid.
The Silent Mansion and three old women... is there not a story behind that...? Then let us go back a quarter of a century, to the day when Aunt Myra was twenty years old... Did I tell you that she was forty-five the day I entered the mansion at the age of one month...? And did I tell you that Mother Duncan was then fifty... and the servant Gertrude sixty?...
The Montad mansion on the green hill was flourishing a quarter of a century ago... housing a family of two parents and their beautiful young daughter... An Italian prince came forward to ask for the wealthy girl's hand, and she loved him, and the aristocrats of London grieved that their young men had let the beauty and the money slip away... The wedding night came, and the newspapers sang of the wealth and lavishness of the Montads... just as they sang of the
bride's charm and her refined manners... Then the wedding did not take place, and no one knew why...
But the closest of friends learned that the bridegroom had been a counterfeit prince... who had caught the girl in his snares and then fled, because he sensed that the hand of justice had found him out... The bride fell gravely ill, and recovered only by a miracle... From that time on, the doors of the mansion were closed in the faces of visitors... and stillness settled over it, until the neighboring villagers gave it the name of "the Silent Mansion."
The shock had its violent effect on Myra... an effect that robbed her of all trust in men... She tore up every picture of a man in the mansion... dismissed all the men from her service... closed the doors of the mansion in the face of every man... Then, whenever she read of some incident of one man's betrayal... or another's thievery... or the baseness of a third... she would cut out the clippings and paste them into a notebook that with time grew enormous, entitled "The Tragedies of Life and Those Who Cause Them." The book held such incidents that, had a devout hermit read it, he would have cried out to his Lord to send down thunderbolts to annihilate all men and leave not a single one alive...
In the Silent Mansion I lived fourteen years, during which I never saw a man... Then my Aunt Myra sent me to a school where girls are prepared to enter the convent... not that I should become a nun, but so that I should see no man... And after four years I returned to the Silent Mansion.
My mirror told me that I was beautiful, and that I had a face the happy smile never left... And why not... Was I not the idol of three women who lavished on me such tenderness and affection as only mothers lavish... Was not all the happiness that wealth can provide provided to me...?
But then I tasted the pains of life... Aunt Myra died suddenly... She died... how cruel the word... How could this happen to her... and suddenly... while she seemed so full of vigor and motion...
The day before yesterday I had ordered them to bring out the piano from its place