MULLEN HOUSE.
It is hardly to be wondered at that the sleep of Tom Putnam was not
of the soundest that night. He recalled with painful minuteness the
details of his relations with Patience, reviewing every word, every
look, every gesture, from the evening of the thunder-storm until her
passionate exclamation as she encountered him upon the piazza. It was
not strange that he did not understand how that fierce declaration of
hatred arose from love. When Patty suddenly found herself face to face
with her lover, a sudden inner gleam, as with a lightning's flash,
showed her clearly her own heart. With swift and terrible distinctness
she saw how deep and strong was her love for him, and the miserable way
in which she had been paltering with her own happiness and truth. With
this came an equally rapid revulsion of feeling. She rebelled against
this man for holding her heart in bondage, for constraining her love.
Most of all she hated her own weakness; and upon him she wreaked her
self-contempt. Knowing nothing of her mental combat, her lover could
only wonder gloomily how he had deserved or provoked this bitterness,
and in the watches of the night arraigned himself for a thousand
fancied shortcomings which in love are crimes.
He fell into a troubled sleep towards morning, and awoke to find the
sun staring in at his windows, astonished to find him so late in bed.
October this year was unusually warm and pleasant; and when, after
breakfast, Mr. Putnam rode over to Mullen House, whither he had been
summoned, he found the air soft and mild as in August. The place was a
mile and a half from his home, standing a little out of the village,
by itself. The leaves along the way were falling rapidly from the
trees, and the sharp teeth of the frost had bitten the wild grapes
and nightshade at the roadside. In some moist places the elms still
remained full and green, while the brilliant sumach-clusters ran like a
crimson line along the way.
The crickets chirped merrily like the little old men they are in the
night-time, if the old fairy-tale be true. The asters and golden-rod
flaunted their bright blooms over the stone walls. The distant hills
looked blue and far.
The house to which the lawyer had been summoned was as singular
as it was pretentious. In the lifetime of its builder it had been
vulgarly dubbed "Mullen's Lunacy,"--a name not quite forgotten yet.
It was of stone, chiefly granite, although in a sort of tower which
had been built later than the rest, the material used was a species
of conglomerate. The building apparently had been modelled somewhat
inexactly after some old English manor-house, and was a very noticeable
object in a straggling modern village like Montfield. Mr. Mullen, its
builder, had inherited, with a large property, a studious disposition,
and a will as remarkable for its firmness as for its eccentricity.
He had given his life to study, which came to nothing as far as the
world was concerned, since it resulted in no productiveness. He had
attained a high degree of scholarly culture, but manifested it chiefly
in ways fairly enough regarded by his acquaintances and neighbors as
affectations. He wore the dress of the Englishman of letters fifty
years before his day,--an anachronism less striking then than now,
it is true, but significantly symbolical of his habit of looking to
the past rather than the present or future for mental nourishment.
His mansion was furnished largely with antique furniture obtained
in Europe, and was always associated, in the mind of Patty and Will
Sanford, with the mediæval romances they had pored over in the old
library in childhood. The Sanfords were among the very few Montfielders
who were admitted at Mullen House, as the proprietor chose to style
his dwelling, upon any thing like terms of equality. The doctor's
family-tree struck its roots deeper into the past than did that upon
which the eccentric scholar prided himself; and the two families had
been friends for generations. The children had been made welcome
to the childless mansion; and, when Ease Apthorpe came home to her
grandfather's house, she found the brother and sister already almost as
much domesticated there as at home. After the death of Mr. Mullen, the
visits of the young people were less frequent; but the close friendship
formed with Ease had never been loosened.
Mr. Mullen's youth had vanished early; but he had remained single until
well towards middle life. Scandal had made free with his name in
connection with Mrs. Smithers, both before and after he had married a
timid wife, whom, after the fashion of Browning's Duke, he expected
"To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen
At the proper place, in the proper minute,
And die away the life between."
A sweet woman, who lived again in her grand-daughter Ease, was
Mrs. Mullen,--a flower requiring sunshine and love, and who was
as surely chilled to death by the frosty smiles of her husband as
the four-o'clocks by the rime of autumn. Dying she left him two
children,--Tabitha, the eldest, "a little faithful copy of her sire;"
and Agnes, quite as true to the mother-type. Tabitha the father had
kept at home, and educated himself. She grew up so like him, that she
almost seemed an image into which had been breathed his spirit.
Tabitha Mullen was a woman of stately presence, with keen black
eyes, and hair which had been like a raven's wing until time began
to whiten it. She dressed always richly, wearing sumptuous apparel,
rather because it was in keeping with her state as the only remaining
representative of her name, than as if impelled thereto by any womanly
vanity. She ruled her household with a rod of iron; and, from the boy
who drove the cows afield, to the stately butler, the servants all
stood in awe of her. This butler had once been a great scandal to the
worthy people of Montfield; and even time had done little to change
their feelings. He was one of Mr. Mullen's English innovations; and
besides this objection, and the outrage of being a man-servant for
indoor service, the butler was, in the minds of the village people,
connected with the very questionable inversion of the natural order of
things caused by five-o'clock dinners, and the still more outrageous
habit of having wine at that meal. Miss Tabitha drank wine at dinner,
and had it served by a butler in livery, because her father had done so
before her. That Montfielders were shocked was a matter for which she
cared no more than she did what missionary the King of Borrioboola-Gha
ate for his breakfast. The absurdity of attempting to keep up the state
of an old English mansion in a New-England village was a matter which
the mistress of Mullen House did not choose to see; and that to which
she chose to be blind she would not have perceived if illuminated by
the concentrated light of a burning universe. So Mullen House and its
mistress, its life and its state, existed in strange anachronism in the
midst of the work-a-day world of Montfield.
Not an easy woman to live with was Tabitha Mullen, as her niece had
found. Agnes Mullen, the younger daughter, had been reared by the
sister of her mother; had married a young music-teacher with no fortune
save the
"Lands
He held of his lute in fee."
Very happy had they been together, and perhaps, for that reason, had
held but loosely to life, departing nearly together, as they believed
to a better existence, soon after the birth of little Ease.
The orphan had grown up, snowdrop like, in the gloomy state of Mullen
House,--a slender, graceful maiden, gentle and shy. Of yielding
disposition, the Mullen strength of will had somehow been tempered in
her to a firmness of principle. Hers was one of those natures which
hold to what they believe true and pure with the same despairing clasp
a drowning man fastens upon a floating spar, clinging with the strength
of one who struggles for very existence. Desiring to yield every thing
asked of her, she found the approval of conscience a necessity,--a
character to make life in adverse circumstances hard but high, bitter
but pure.
In some respects Ease's surroundings were fortunate for her peculiar
disposition. The Episcopal form of worship which Miss Tabitha affected
as most nearly like the Church of England was particularly suited to
the needs of her niece, since it gave color and richness to a faith
otherwise too sombre. The young girl's companionship with the Sanfords
also had been of a nature calculated to brighten her life.
The relation between Ease and Will Sanford had never been quite the
same as before since that Sunday afternoon at Wilk's Run. The young
man felt no longer towards Ease as a dear friend simply. The presence
of a rival had awakened in his heart the passion which had long lain
there dormant. Love ceased to be a dream coldly ideal, and sprang up a
living fire. He was conscious now of a keen delight in Ease's presence,
very different from the negative pleasure her companionship had
hitherto afforded him. The touch of her hand, the brushing of her dress
against him, suddenly became events to be watched for and remembered.
This changed very little their outward demeanor, save that they might
have seemed to an observer to have become somewhat reserved toward
each other. The smallest chances had suddenly assumed too great an
importance to be lightly indulged in. A virgin shyness enveloped Ease,
which Will had not yet dared break through by the caresses he longed to
bestow.
But all this has little to do, directly at least, with the visit of
Tom Putnam to Mullen House. He had been not a little surprised by the
summons, since no very cordial feeling existed between himself and Miss
Mullen; and he had speculated, as he drove along, upon the possible
nature of the business involved. His surprise was not lessened, when,
after the slightest exchange of civilities compatible with very scant
hospitality, Miss Tabitha suddenly came at once to the point by an
abrupt question.
"Why," she asked, "have you brought that Smithers woman into the
neighborhood?"
"Brought her into the neighborhood?" he echoed in astonishment.
"Yes, brought her into the neighborhood. She is living in your stone
cottage at this moment. If you haven't any care for my feelings, you
might have considered your own reputation."
"My reputation!" he repeated, puzzled. "What has that to do with it?"
"Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Shankland and Mrs. Sanford could tell you," she
retorted with a scornful smile.
He was silent. Wrongly, it is true, but with the weight of a certainty,
it flashed upon him that here was the key to Patty's sudden hatred. He
turned sick at the thought of the gossip she must have heard; then,
with a quick throb of pride, he raised his head in wonder that the
woman he loved could believe this of him. He rose at once, and stepped
towards the door.
"If you had hinted at your business," he said, "it would have saved my
coming over. Whatever cause you may have to be sensitive in regard to
Mrs. Smithers, I certainly have none; and you will allow, I think, that
the stone cottage belongs to me."
Nor could Miss Mullen's persuasions move him. The thrust she had given
his pride, thinking thereby the more surely to accomplish her object,
had turned against her. He felt that to send away the woman who had
become his tenant would appear an acknowledgment of the truth of the
slander against him.
But it was with a heavy heart that he rode homewards.