“As well give
up the Bible at once, as our belief in
apparitions. - Wesley.
The house cried out to me for help.
In the after-knowledge I now possess
of what was to happen there, that impression is not
more clearly definite than it was at my first sight
of the place. Let me at once set down that this
is not the story of a haunted house. It is, or
was, a beleaguered house; strangely besieged as was
Prague in the old legend, when a midnight army of spectres
unfurled pale banners and encamped around the city
walls.
Of course, I did not know all this,
the day that my real-estate agent brought his little
car to a stop before the dilapidated farm. I believed
the house only appealed to be lived in; for deliverance
from the destroying work of neglect and time.
A spring rain was whispering down from a gray sky,
dripping from broken gutters and eaves with a patter
like timid footsteps hurrying by, yet even in the storm
the house did not look dreary.
“There, Mr. Locke, is a bargain,”
the agent called back to me, where I sat in my car.
“Finest bit in Connecticut for a city man’s
summer home! Woodland, farm land, lake and a
house that only needs a few repairs to be up-to-date.
Look at that double row of maples, sir. Shade
all summer! Fine old orchard, too; with a trifle
of attention.”
I nodded, surveying the house with
an eagerness of interest that surprised myself.
A box-like, fairly large structure of commonplace New
England ugliness, it coaxed my liking as had no other
place I had ever seen; it wooed me like a determined
woman. And as one would long to clothe beautifully
a beloved woman, I looked at the house and foresaw
what an architect could do for it; how creamy stucco;
broad white porches and a gay scarlet roof would transform
it.
“Come inside,” my agent
urged, hope in his voice as he observed my face; “let
me show you the interior. I brought the keys along.
Of course, the rooms may seem a bit musty. No
one has lived in it for some time.
It’s the old Michell property; been in the family
for a couple of hundred years. Last Michell is
dead, now, and it’s being sold for the benefit
of some religious institute the old gentleman left
it to. Trifle wet to walk over the land today!
But I’ve a plan and measurements in my portfolio.”
I said that we would go in. If
he had but known the fact, the place was already sold
to me; before I left my car, before I entered the house,
before I had seen the hundred-odd acres that make up
the estate.
There was a narrow, flagged path to
the veranda, where the planking moved and creaked
under our weight while my companion unlocked the front
door. Rather astonishingly, the air of the long-closed
place was neither musty nor damp, when we stepped
in. Instead, there was a faint, resinous odor,
very pleasant and clean; perhaps from the cedar of
which the woodwork largely consisted.
The house was partially furnished.
Not, of course, with much that I would care to retain,
but a few good antiques stood out among their commonplace
associates. A large bedroom on the north side,
which I appointed as my own at first sight, held an
old rosewood set including a four-posted, pineapple-carved
bed. I threw open the shutters in this room and
looked out.
I received the first jar to my satisfaction.
On this side of the place, the grounds ran down a
slight slope for perhaps half a block to the five-acre
hollow of shallow water and lush growth which the agent
called a lake. From it flowed a considerable
creek, winding behind the house and away on its journey
to the Sound. For that under-water marsh I felt
a shock of violent dislike.
“You don’t care for the
lake?” my companion deprecated, at my elbow.
“Fine trout in that stream, though! I’d
like you to see it in the sunshine.”
“I should care more for it if
it was a lake, not a swamp,” I answered.
“Oh, but that is only because
the old dam is down,” he exclaimed eagerly.
“That lets all the water out, you see. Why,
if the dam were put back, you’d have as pretty
a lake for a canoe as there is in the State!
Its natural depth is four or five feet all over, and
about eight or ten where the stream flows through
to the dam. Even yet, a few wild duck stop there
spring and fall, and when I was a boy I’ve seen
heron. Put back the dam, Mr. Locke, and I’ll
guarantee you’ll never say swamp again!”
“We will try it,” I said.
“Now let us find a lawyer and see how quickly
I can be put in possession.”
We drove back to the little town from
which we had that morning started out, and where my
agent lived; my sleek car following his small one with
somewhat the effect of a long-limbed panther striding
behind an agitated mouse.
It appeared that the sale was simply
consummated. I do not mean that all the formalities
were completed in a day. But by nightfall I could
feel myself the owner of the place.
Perhaps it was the giddiness of being
a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was
the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that
inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary
dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not
welcome the prospect of a second. A return to
New York was not practicable, because I had arranged
to meet several contractors and an architect at the
farm, next morning, to discuss the alterations I wanted
made. Why not drive out to my new house this
evening and sleep tonight in the rosewood-furnished
bedroom?
The idea gained favor as I contemplated
it. I could go over the house tonight and sketch
more clearly what I wanted done, while I would be on
the ground when my men arrived next morning. There
was an allure of camping out about it, too.
In the end I went, of course.
It was dark when I stabled my roadster
in the barn that was part of my new possessions; where
the car seemed to glitter disdain of the hay-littered,
ragged shelter. Equipped with a flashlight, suitcase
and bundle, I followed a faint path that wound its
way to the house through wet blackberry vines whose
thorns had outlived the winter. My steps broke
the blank silence that brooded over the place.
At this season there was no insect life; nor any other
stirring thing within hearing or sight. But just
as I stepped upon the veranda, I heard a vague sound
from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the north.
There was no wind, yet the water had seemed to move
with a sound like the smacking of soft, glutinous
lips. Or as if some soft body drew itself from
a bed of clinging mud. I wondered idly if the
tide could run this far back from Long Island Sound.
The house reiterated the impression
of welcoming me. I shut and locked the old door
behind me, and went up to the room I had chosen as
my own. There I unshuttered and opened the windows,
lighted one of the candles I had brought and set it
on a little bookcase filled with dingy volumes, and
threw my blankets on the bed. I had moved in!
My pleasant sense of proprietorship
continued to grow. Before I thought of sleep,
I had been through the house several times from cellar
to attic and accumulated a list of things to be done.
Back in my room, an hour passed in revising the list,
by candle-light.
Near ten o’clock, I rolled myself
in a dressing-gown and my blankets, spread an automobile
robe over the four-posted bed, and fell asleep.