The Allen House; Or, Twenty Years Ago and Now

“You were not out, I believe, yesterday,” I remarked, as we moved on together.

“I didn’t feel very well,” he answered, in a voice pitched to a lower key than usual; “and, the day being a stormy one, I shut myself up at home.”

“Ah,” said I, in a cheerful way, “you lawyers have the advantage of us knights of the pill box and lancet. Rain or shine, sick or well, we must travel round our parish.”

“All have their share of the good as well as the evil things of life,” he replied, a little soberly. “Doctors and lawyers included.”

I did not observe any marked change in the young man, except that he was paler, and had a different look out of his eyes from any that I had hitherto noticed; a more matured look, which not only indicated deeper feeling, but gave signs of will and endurance. I carried that new expression away with me as we parted at the door of his office, and studied it as a new revelation of the man. It was very certain that profounder depths had been opened in his nature—opened to his own consciousness—than had ever seen the light before. That he was more a man than he had ever been, and more worthy to be mated with a true woman. Up to this time I had thought of him more as a boy than as a man, for the years had glided by so quietly that bore him onward with the rest, that he had not arisen in my thought to the full mental stature which the word manhood includes.

“Ah,” said I, as I walked on, “what a mistake in Delia Floyd! She is just as capable of high development as a woman as he is as a man. How admirably would they have mated. In him, self-reliance, reason, judgment, and deep feeling would have found in her all the qualities they seek—taste, perception, tenderness and love. They would have grown upwards into higher ideas of life, not downwards into sensualism and mere worldliness, like the many. Alas! This mistake on her part may ruin them both; for a man of deep, reserved feelings, who suffers a disappointment in love, is often warped in his appreciation of the sex, and grows one-sided in his character as he advances through the cycles of life.”

I had parted from Henry only a few minutes when I met his rival, Ralph Dewey. Let me describe him. In person he was taller than Wallingford, and had the easy, confident manner of one who had seen the world, as we say. His face was called handsome; but it was not a manly face—manly in that best sense which includes character and thought. The chin and mouth were feeble, and the forehead narrow, throwing the small orbs close together. But he had a fresh complexion, dark, sprightly eyes, and a winning smile. His voice was not very good, having in it a kind of unpleasant rattle; but he managed it rather skillfully in conversation, and you soon, ceased to notice the peculiarity.

Ralph lived in New York, where he had recently been advanced to the position of fourth partner in a dry goods jobbing house, with a small percentage on the net profits. Judging from the air with which he spoke of his firm’s operations, and his relation to the business, you might have inferred that he was senior instead of junior partner, and that the whole weight of the concern rested on his shoulders.

Judge Bigelow, a solid man, and from professional habit skilled in reading character, was, singularly enough, quite carried away with his smart nephew, and really believed his report of himself. Prospectively, he saw him a merchant prince, surrounded by palatial splendors.

Our acquaintance was as yet but slight, so we only nodded in passing. As we were in the neighborhood of Squire Floyd’s pleasant cottage, I was naturally curious, under the circumstances, to see whether the young man was going to make a visit at so early an hour; and I managed to keep long enough in sight to have this matter determined. Ralph called at the Squire’s, and I saw him admitted. So I shook my head disapprovingly, and kept on my way.

Not until late in the afternoon did I find occasion to go into that part of the town where the old Allen house was located, though the image of its gleaming north-west windows was frequently in my thought. The surprise occasioned by that incident was in no way lessened on seeing a carriage drive in through the gateway, and two ladies alight therefrom and enter the house. Both were in mourning. I did not see their faces; but, judging from the dress and figure of each, it was evident that one was past the meridian of life, and the other young. Still more to my surprise, the carriage was not built after our New England fashion, but looked heavy, and of a somewhat ancient date. It was large and high, with a single seat for the driver perched away up in the air, and a footman’s stand and hangings behind. There was, moreover, a footman in attendance, who sprung to his place after the ladies had alighted, and rode off to the stables.

“Am I dreaming?” said I to myself, as I kept on my way, after witnessing this new incident in the series of strange events that were half-bewildering me. But it was in vain that I rubbed my eyes; I could not wake up to a different reality.

It was late when I got home from my round of calls, and found tea awaiting my arrival.

“Any one been here?” I asked—my usual question.

“No one.’ The answer pleased me for I had many things on my mind, and I wished to have a good long evening with my wife. Baby Mary and Louis were asleep: but we had the sweet, gentle face of Agnes, our first born, to brighten the meal-time. After she was in dream-land, guarded by the loving angels who watch with children in sleep, and Constance was through with her household cares for the evening, I came into the sitting-room from my office, and taking the large rocking-chair, leaned my head back, mind and body enjoying a sense of rest and comfort.

“You are not the only one,” said my wife, looking up from the basket of work through which she had been searching for some article, “who noticed lights in the Allen House last evening.”

“Who else saw them?” I asked.

“Mrs. Dean says she heard two or three people say that the house was lit up all over—a perfect illumination.”

“Stories lose nothing in being re-told. The illumination was confined to the room in which Captain Allen died. I am witness to that. But I have something more for your ears. This afternoon, as I rode past, I saw an old-fashioned English coach, with a liveried driver and footman, turn into the gate. From this two ladies alighted and went into the house; when the coach was driven to the stables. Now, what do you think of that?”

“We are to have a romance enacted in our very midst, it would seem,” replied my wife, in her unimpassioned way. “Other eyes have seen this also, and the strange fact is buzzing through the town. I was only waiting until we were alone to tell you that these two ladies whom you saw, arrived at the Allen House in their carriage near about daylight, on the day before yesterday. But no one knows who they are, or from whence they came. It is said that they made themselves as completely at home as if they were in their own house; selected the north-west chamber as their sleeping apartment; and ordered the old servants about with an air of authority that subdued them to obedience.”

“But what of Mrs. Allen?” I asked, in astonishment at all this.

“The stories about her reception of the strangers do not agree. According to one, the old lady was all resistance and indignation at this intrusion; according to another, she gave way, passively, as if she were no longer sole mistress of the house.”

Constance ceased speaking, for there came the usual interruption to our evening tete-a-tete—the ringing of my office bell.

“You are wanted up at the Allen House, Doctor, said my boy, coming in from the office a few moments afterwards.

“Who is sick?” I asked.

“The old lady.”

“Any thing serious?”

“I don’t know, sir. But I should think there was from the way old Aunty looked. She says, come up as quickly as you can.”

“Is she in the office?”

“No, sir. She just said that, and then went out in a hurry.”

“The plot thickens,” said I, looking at Constance.

“Poor old lady!” There was a shade of pity in her tones.

“You have not seen her for many years?”

“No.”

“Poor old witch of Endor! were better said.”

“Oh!” answered my wife, smiling, “you know that the painter’s idea of this celebrated individual has been reversed by some, who affirm that she was young and handsome instead of old and ugly like modern witches.”

“I don’t know how that may be, but if you could see Mrs. Allen, you would say that ‘hag’ were a better term for her than woman. If the good grow beautiful as they grow old, the loving spirit shining like a lamp through the wasted and failing walls of flesh, so do the evil grow ugly and repulsive. Ah, Constance, the lesson is for all of us. If we live true lives, our countenances will grow radiant from within, as we advance in years; if selfish, worldly, discontented lives, they will grow cold, hard, and repulsive.”

I drew on my boots and coat, and started on my visit to the Allen House. The night was in perfect contrast with the previous one. There was no moon, but every star shone with its highest brilliancy, while the galaxy threw its white scarf gracefully across the sky, veiling millions of suns in their own excessive brightness. I paused several times in my walk, as broader expanses opened between the great elms that gave to our town a sylvan beauty, and repeated, with a rapt feeling of awe and admiration, the opening stanza of a familiar hymn:—

“The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.”

How the beauty and grandeur of nature move the heart, as if it recognized something of its own in every changing aspect. The sun and moon and stars—the grand old mountains lifting themselves upwards into serene heights—the limitless expanse of ocean, girdling the whole earth—rivers, valleys, and plains—trees, flowers, the infinite forms of life—to all the soul gives some response, as if they were akin.

I half forgot my interest in old Mrs. Allen, as my heart beat responsive to the pulsings of nature, and my thoughts flew upwards and away as on the wings of eagles. But my faithful feet had borne me steadily onwards, and I was at the gate opening to the grounds of the Allen House, before I was conscious of having passed over half the distance that lay between that and my home. I looked up, and saw a light in the north-west chamber, but the curtains were down.

On entering the house, I was shown by the servant who admitted me, into the small office or reception room opening from the hall. I had scarcely seated myself, when a tall woman, dressed in black, came in, and said, with a graceful, but rather stately manner—

“The Doctor, I believe?”

How familiar the voice sounded! And yet I did not recognise it as the voice of any one whom I had known, but rather as a voice heard in dreams. Nor was the calm, dignified countenance on which my eyes rested, strange in every lineament. The lady was, to all appearance, somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty, and, for an elderly lady, handsome. I thought of my remark to Constance about the beauty and deformity of age, and said to myself, “Here is one who has not lived in vain.”

I arose as she spoke, and answered in the affirmative.

“You have come too late,” she said, with a touch of feeling in her voice.

“Not dead?” I ejaculated.

“Yes, dead. Will you walk up stairs and see her?”

I followed in silence, ascending to the chamber which had been occupied by Mrs. Allen since the old Captain’s death. It was true as she had said; a ghastly corpse was before me. I use the word ghastly, for it fully expresses the ugliness of that lifeless face, withered, marred, almost shorn of every true aspect of humanity. I laid my hand upon her—the skin was cold. I felt for her pulse, but there was no sign of motion in the arteries.

“It is over,” I said, lifting myself from my brief examination, “and may God have mercy upon her soul!” The last part of the sentence was involuntary.