Chapter IV: The Abandoned Farm

There are many of them scattered through New England, some on hillsides, some in valleys, some on public highways and some among the mountains, where rocks and ferns seem the only products of the soil. There are houses with slanting roofs, big chimneys, high window stools and small panes of glass; houses whose owners lived their quiet, monotonous lives, with no thought of change for themselves. They were content to till their barren fields, with only an occasional thought of the far West and the capabilities it held for them if they were younger and could get there. Their sons did get there when the fathers and mothers were laid away to rest, and the old homesteads and farms were left for other and distant fields. A few of the houses are in a fair state of preservation, but they look desolate and dreary, with no sign of life around or in them, except the rats or the squirrels, which, finding ingress through some broken window, make themselves a nest in the garret, where they hold high carnival through the winter until the warm sunshine of spring calls them back to their woodland home. After a lapse of time the strongest built house begins to show signs of decay, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the house to which Alex. came on a February day, a few weeks after his receipt of Amos Marsh’s letter. He had been to Denver and consulted with the lawyers, had visited the ranch and the house where his uncle had lived when in town, and had appropriated the Scotch collie, who had been his uncle’s companion since he was a puppy. He was a fine specimen of canines, with his intelligent face, his long wool and shaggy mane, and Alex., who was fond of dogs, fancied him at once. “Laddie” was his name, but Alex. rechristened him “Sherry,” greatly to the disgust of Chinaman Lee, who had been Mr. Marsh’s servant, and who said, “Sherry bad name; he not come for Sherry; he no like wine.”

Alex. laughed and patted the big fellow, who took kindly to him, and if he did not answer at once to Sherry, he soon learned the whistle with which his new master called him. Alex. would like to have taken the cat, but as that was impracticable he left it for Lee, with many injunctions that it should be well cared for, and with his dog started for home, turning aside from the main route to see the farm, about which he had a great deal of curiosity. At the station, which was a mile from the house, he took the only available conveyance, a box sleigh, drawn by a spavined horse and driven by a loquacious man, who informed him that his name was Bowles—“a carpenter by trade in the summer and a jack-at-all-trades in the winter, when folks didn’t have much tinkerin’ of houses to do.”

“Know the Marsh place? You bet,” he said, slapping the reins on Spavin’s back with an injunction to “ca-dap.” “I used to tinker there by odd spells before the old gent went away, and he left me to look after things,—kind of an agent. Nice man? Wall, I guess he was ’bout as good as they make ’em; never heard a breath against him. Little queer sometimes, and talked to himself a good deal; but, land sakes, there was nobody else to talk to half the time, he lived alone so much. It beats all how curis some folks is about an old house,—real old like this one which must have heard the thunder of the Revolution, if it had thundered this way. The grandees who come to the mountains in the summer drive up here, rafts of ’em, and, oh, my suz, what a time the women make over the old place, and how they want to buy things if they was for sale. Why, I could have sold an old chest in the garret a dozen times. It’s full of clothes, women’s clothes, and when I told ’em that they was crazy to see ’em. But I said no;—they wasn’t mine to sell, nor to show. I’ve been a faithful steward, I have. And you are goin’ to take the place? Well, I’m glad to have somebody see to it besides me. It’s a sin the way things has gone on sence he quit rentin’ it square. Old mother Chase and her brood squatted on it one winter. I let ’em in, to be sure, at a nominal rent, but, land sakes, I never got a cent, and they split up the back room floor for wood and half the suller stairs, and then decamped in the night. Farmer Jones kept his cows there in the summer, and somebody else their horses,—in the pasture, I mean,—and I can’t collect a cent. ’Twas the finest farm in these parts once, and might be again with a little care. Going to farm it yourself?”

Bowles glanced sidewise at the young man beside him, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, and thought how unlike he looked to a farmer.

“I don’t know,” Alex. said. “Is the house greatly out of repair?”

“Well, I’d laugh,” was the reply, as Bowles slapped Spavin’s back again and told him to “ca-dap!” “Out of repair? What can you expect of a house standin’ empty for years? It wants shinglin’ all over; leaks like a sieve; suller wall cavin’ in in two or three places; jice rotted here and another there; cistern gone; conductor pipes bust; eaves rotted; two chimneys down, tother ready to tumble; door-jams settled; winder lights smashed, and some frames tetotally gone; roof sagged in, the middle pillars on piazza ready to fall, and floors givin’ away, and——”

“Oh, please stop,” Alex. exclaimed. “You horrify me. It will take thousands to bring it up.”

“No, sir-ee,” Bowles replied, beginning to see a chance for himself. “Lumber is cheap here, and labor, too. I’m a carpenter, I told you, and I’ll take the job reasonable. You’ll have to have it shingled, though, and a suller wall built and a cistern and jice and jams and winders.”

He was going on with the list of needs again, when Alex. stopped him a second time by asking, “Is that the place?” as they came in sight of a great square house, standing on a rise of ground a little back from the road.

“Yes, yes, that’s it! Here we be,” Bowles said, reining up before the gate, or rather where the gate used to be.

It lay on the ground now, covered with snow, as was everything as far as the eye could reach, and Alex. involuntarily thought of the lines he had learned when a boy,

“On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”

The snow around him was certainly bloodless and lay white and glistening in the wintry sunshine, glints of which were falling on Mount Washington in the distance and on the hills and tree tops nearer by.

“It’s a beautiful view and must be lovely here in summer,” Alex. thought, as he went up the walk and the ricketty steps on to the piazza, where a board gave way under him and he came near falling.

“Take care, or you will break your neck. I come nigh breakin’ my laig on one of them rotten boards,” Bowles said, putting out a hand to steady the young man.

There was neither lock nor bolt to the door, and they soon stood in the long, wide hall, with a fireplace in a corner, a door at the farther end opening on to another piazza and stairs which led straight to the upper hall, where there was a scampering of little feet as of many animals running over the floor.

“Rats or squirrels,” Bowles said. “The house is full of ’em.”

It was a chilly, grewsome kind of place, and Alex. shivered as he went through room after room,—twelve downstairs and as many more upstairs, besides the attic. They visited that last, and saw where the rats had been and where the squirrels lived, and Alex. sat down near a big chest pushed into a corner and looked about him. Scattered through the garret, which was very large, were piles of old furniture, which would delight relic hunters, and he did not wonder that guests from the hotels had tried to buy them.

“There used to be some pillers here and blankets and things loose,” Bowles said; “but, my land, old mother Chase took ’em. Wonder she didn’t bust open that chist. Guess ’twas too strong for her. That is the one I told you some of the quality wanted to buy.”

Alex. glanced at it now, and saw that it was one of those old-fashioned cedar chests in which housewives of years ago kept their linen and parts of their wardrobe.

“It’s full of things,” Bowles went on; “women’s clothes, all flowered like and silky. He aired ’em when he was here and took as much pains with ’em as if the woman who used to wear ’em was alive,—Mr. Marsh, I mean.”

“Oh, yes,—my uncle. He came here, did he?” Alex. asked, and Bowles replied:

“Yes, and stopped two days with me, but stayed over here most of the day time and wrote letters or something in that chamber where there is a chair and table. That was his sleeping-room when he lived here, and he looked sorry when he went through it, and said, ‘The vandals haven’t left me much.’ Wall, there wasn’t much to leave after the auction. You see, he had a vendue before he left and sold a good deal. What he didn’t sell was put up here, and some has been stole, but there are piles left. This chist is too heavy to carry off, and I’ve kept a sharp look out, too, bein’ here every week. He was in here a good deal airin’ things, and when I ast him whose flowered gown that was on the line, he said, ‘Miss Crosby’s, who used to live here.’”

“Crosby,” Alex. repeated; “that’s the man who first owned the farm?”

“Yes, before I was born, I guess,” Bowles said, “and he and his wife are buried acrost the road. There’s a big monument to their memory,—put up by Mr. Marsh. Mabby you didn’t notice it as we drove up,” and then thinking he heard some one below he started down, followed by Alex., glad to escape from the cold garret, which affected him unpleasantly.

The place was certainly frightfully run down. “But it had great capables, and might be made a first-class summer house,” Bowles said, as they drove back to the station. Some such idea was in Alex.’s mind, and kept growing until, by the time he reached home, it was a fixed fact that he would try the “capables.” He was very fond of the country, and would like to live there half his time, and he meant to bring up the farm to what it used to be, and make over and modernize and add to the house, if necessary, until it could accommodate twenty or more people. He would call it “Maplehurst,” because of the maples which skirted the road leading to it, and he would fill it with his friends and his mother’s and Amy’s and Ruth’s for one summer, at least, and see how it worked. Some should be invited for a week, some for two, some for four and some for the entire season. In short, it was to be a grand house party, such as the English had, only it was to last longer. It would cost a great deal, of course, but he guessed he could stand it for once, and he was planning drives and picnics and excursions to Mount Washington when his train stopped at the Central Station, and he hurried home, full of his scheme, of which his mother and Amy did not at first approve. Their preference was for Saratoga and Newport and similar places, rather than a house in the country miles from anywhere. But his enthusiasm conquered their scruples, and they began at last to look forward with a good deal of interest to the summer they were to spend at Maplehurst when Alex.’s plans were perfected.