_Ghosts like good architecture_
I believe I cannot quite give to-day my first impression of the house.
In the years that have followed it has blended into so many other
impressions that I could never be sure I was getting the right one. I
had better confine myself to its physical appearance and what was
perhaps a reflex impression--say, number two.
One glance was enough to show that it was all that the other old house
was not. It did not sag, or lurch, or do any of those disreputable
things. It stood up as straight and was as firm on its foundations as on
the day when its last hand-wrought nail had been driven home, a century
or so before. No mistaking its period or architecture--it was the
long-roofed salt-box type, the first Connecticut habitation that
followed the pioneer cabin; its vast central chimney had held it
unshaken during the long generations of sun and storm.
Not that it was intact--oh, by no means. Its wide weather-boards were
broken and falling; the red paint they had once known had become a mere
memory, its shingles were moss-grown and curling, the grass was uncut.
The weeds about the entrances and rotting well-curb grew tall and dank;
the appearance of things in general was far from gay. Clouds had
overcast the sky, and on that dull afternoon a sort of still deadliness
hung about the premises. No cheap, common house can be a haunted house.
Ghosts like good architecture, especially when it has become pretty
antique, and they have a passion for neglected door-yards. The place
lacked nothing that I could see to make it attractive to even the most
fastidious wandering wraith. As I say, I think this was not my first
impression, but certainly it was about the next one, and I could see by
her face that it was Elizabeth's.
"Place wants trimming up," said Mr. Westbury, producing a big brass key,
"and the house needs some work on it, but the frame is as sound as ever
it was. Been standing there going on two hundred years--hewn oak and
hard as iron. We'll go inside."
We climbed down rather silently. I felt a tendency to step softly, for
fear of waking something. The big key fitted the back door, and we
followed Mr. Westbury. He told us, as we entered, that the place
belonged to his wife and her sister--that they had been born there;
also, their father, their grandmother, and their great-grandfather,
which was as far back as they knew, though the house had always been in
the family. Through a little hallway we entered a square room of
considerable size. It had doors opening into two smaller rooms, and to
one much larger--long and low, so low that, being a tall person, my hair
brushed the plaster. Just in the corner where we entered there was an
astonishingly big fireplace to which Mr. Westbury waved a sort of
salute.
"There is a real antique for you," he said.
There was no question as to that. The opening, which included a Dutch
oven, was fully seven feet wide, and the chimney-breast no less than
ten. The long, narrow mantel-shelf was scarcely a foot below the
ceiling. It took our breath a little--it was so much better than
anything we had hoped for. We forgot that this was a haunted house. It
had become all at once a sort of a dream house in which mentally we
began placing all the ancient furnishings we had been gathering since
our far-off van-dwelling days. There was a big hole in the plaster, but
it was a small matter. We hardly saw it. What we saw was the long, low
room, with its wide wainscoting and quaint double windows, and ranged
about its walls--restored and tinted down to match--our low bookshelves;
on the old oak floor were our mellow rugs, and here and there tables and
desk and couches, with deep easy-chairs gathered about a wide open fire
of logs. Oh, there is nothing more precious in this world than the dream
of a possibility like that, when one is still young enough, and strong
enough to make it come true!
"This was the kitchen in the old days," Mr. Westbury said. "They cooked
over the fire and baked in that oven. Old Uncle Phineas Todd, over at
Lonetown, who is ninety years old, and remembers when his mother cooked
that way, says that nothing has ever tasted so good since as the meat
and bread that came out of those ovens. The meat was rich with juice
and the bread had a crust on it an inch thick. That would be
seventy-five years ago, and it's about that long, I guess, since this
one was used." Mr. Westbury opened a door to another square room of
considerable size. "This was their best room," he said. "They opened the
front door only for funerals and weddings. I was married over there in
that corner twelve years ago. That was the last wedding. My wife's
father lived here till last year. That was the last funeral. He was
eighty-five when he died. People get to be old folks up here."
There was a smaller fireplace in this room, and another in a little room
behind the chimney, and still another in the first we had entered--four
in all--one on each side of the great stone chimney-base. For the most
part the walls seemed in good condition--the plaster having been made
from oyster shells, Westbury said, hauled fifteen miles from Long Island
Sound.
We returned to the long, low room and climbed the stair to a sort of
half-room--unfinished, the roof sloping to the eaves. Westbury called it
the kitchen-chamber, and it led to bedrooms--a large one and three
small ones. Also, to a tiny one which in our dream we promptly converted
into a bath-room. Then we climbed still another stair--a tortuous,
stumbling ascent--to the attic.
We had expected it to be an empty place, of dust, cobwebs, and darkness.
It was dusty enough and none too light, but it was far from empty. Four
spinning-wheels of varying sizes were in plain view between us and the
front window. A dozen or more of black, straight-backed chairs of the
best and oldest pattern were mingled with a mass of other ancient
relics--bandboxes, bird-cages, queer-shaped pots and utensils,
trenchers, heaps of old periodicals, boxes of trinkets, wooden chests of
mystery--a New England garret collection such as we had read of, but
never seen, the accumulation of a century and a half of time and change.
We looked at it greedily, for we had long ago acquired a hunger for such
drift as that, left by the human tide. I said in a dead, hopeless tone:
"I suppose it will all be taken away when the place is sold."
William C. Westbury sighed. "Oh yes, we'll clear out whatever you don't
care for," he said, gloomily, "but it all goes with the house, if
anybody wants it."