To me there is something fascinating about an old deserted house standing
near a lonely country road. The sashless windows and open doorways always
remind me of some strange animal gasping in the agonies of death. And I
fall to wondering whether the people were happy who once occupied the
home when it was new. What were their hopes and ambitions? Did they love
some one, and were they loved in return? Did children once play around
that damaged door and look out through those windows and long to go out
in the world and accomplish great things?
A few Sundays ago I rode out over the country roads near my home, and
finally came to a road on which I had never traveled before. It led down
a valley that extended to the creek a few miles below. We drove down this
road after inquiring and learning that it connected with the creek road.
We knew our bearings when safely on the creek highway. We had not driven
a mile before we came to the ideal fascinating deserted house. All around
it rank weeds and briars were growing. The one door facing the road was
very low, and on closer examination we discovered that two of the lower
logs had rotted away, allowing the house to settle down two feet or more.
The windows were small and warped out of shape, and not a single sash
in place. The mortar and packing were gone from the crevices between the
logs, and the old stone chimney was ragged and battered at the top.
But the wonder was that the shingles were in pretty good condition. They
had been hewn from the virgin pine and shaved by the man who built the
house some eighty years ago.
It was a story-and-a-half house, the upper half-story consisting of the
garret only. The upper floor was missing and one could see to the rafters
when looking in the open door.
While we were sitting in the buggy and looking with a peculiar awe upon
the old home, an old man came along and we asked him who had built the
house. He stopped and walked over to the fence, put one foot on the
second rail to rest his leg, and pointing to the old ruins with his
crooked cane, said:
“This is the Fred Beaver home. He came here from Germany in 1824, and
settled on this piece of land. He had only been married six weeks before
he sailed for the new world. He had barely enough money to bring him and
his young wife to America. He had a cousin living near here at the time,
and that is how he came to locate here in the woods. His wife was never
contented, but kept longing and longing for the dear old home across the
sea. They were very poor, so my father told me, often not having enough
to eat, and this made life still more dreary for the homesick wife.
“At the end of five years, they had two children—Frederick and
Elizabeth—Elizabeth is still living down in the town, a very old woman.
After the children were born, Mrs. Beaver realized that she could never
go back to her home across the sea. She would never have the money to pay
her passage. She felt like a caged lion pining behind iron bars. Before
the babies came she hoped to save money enough to go back and take her
husband along—providing he would go. If not, she would go alone. He was
a hunchback and not really kind to her, though he loved her after the
manner of a wild animal loving its mate.
“One day Beaver came home and found the children crying with hunger. They
were only four and two years old. The boy could talk enough to inform his
father that his mother had gone up to the loft and would not come down.
The man climbed up the ladder and was horrified to find his wife hanging
to a rafter—dead. She had taken the rope out of the bed to hang herself
with. Her longing and longing for the home across the sea had ceased
forever. If you will come to the door I can show you the rafter on which
she was hanging. No? Don’t care to?
“Yes, the father lived right here with the children after that. He got
a house keeper from somewhere in the neighborhood. He was young and the
love of life was still in his soul, but he never married another woman.
Years afterward the children would find him sitting under the rafter on
which his wife died, weeping like a child.
“Yes, the son, young Fred, built the new house over yonder, after he got
married, and took his father there to live. But the old man would come
back daily and sit in the open door and sing the German hymn that was the
favorite with his wife when they were courting across the sea.
“Yes, they say the house is haunted, since the old man died. People
passing on moonlight nights insist that they see Beaver and his wife
sitting in the open door, and hear a low crooning song. Me? Oh, I think
the noise is the sighing of the pines over yonder.”