tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">"To Love is to Forgive"

A PASTEBOARD

CROWN

CHAPTER I

THE LAWTONS ARRIVE

It was on a Monday, the 30th of April, that the boys with the grocers' and butchers' delivery wagons, the gray-uniformed postmen behind their bony, always-tired horses, and the blue-coated, overfed mounted policemen began to circulate the report that the old White house had found a tenant; and every soul that listened made answer: "Impossible! No one could live in that old rookery!" and then, with incredible inconsistency, ended with: "Who's taken it?"

At first no answer could be given to that question, but later in the day a man who strung telegraph wires won a brief importance through overhearing a conversation between two men standing below him and beside the pole he was mounted on. One man was Jacob Brewer, who now owned the old White estate, and the other he ascertained, by careful listening, to be John Lawton; and he learned that Mr. Lawton was to take possession of the old house the next day, which would be May 1st, the conventionally correct day for moving.

Through the usual suburban channels this bit of information was put into circulation and swiftly reached every householder in the village—to say nothing of outlying farmhouses. And everywhere women with towels about their heads—sure sign that the house-cleaning microbe is abroad in the land—could be seen talking over back fences to neighbors whose fingers were still puckered from long immersion in the family wash-tub, and the name Lawton and such disjointed exclamations as: "Who?" "Why—how many do you suppose?" and "Did you ever hear of such a thing?" filled the warm air, even as the frail, inconsequent little May-flies filled it.

The telegraph lineman over his noon beer told many times what old Brewer had called the stranger: "Lawton—yes, John Lawton—was the name, and he was coming up the next day; yes, come to think of it, he had said they were coming—so there was a family of some sort." The letter-carrier, in leaving the mail, paused a moment to catch these last words, and at his next stopping-place he was enabled to leave with a letter the information that "John Lawton, who had taken that roofless old sheebang, had a family coming with him"; and the lady informed made sure "he would not have a family very long, if he tried to keep them in that mouldering old ruin." Doctors hearing the news exchanged jests as they met on the roads, one opining that "some business was coming their way and that quinine would soon be in demand," while another, always a pessimist, said that "any one that was poor enough to take the White house to live in was too hard up to pay a doctor."

But really, no one knowing anything about the old place could help having a feeling of amazement at hearing of a tenant being found for it. It was that saddest, most uncanny thing—a deserted house. A great, big, Colonial-like frame structure, it stood high on the hillside, showing white and ghostly between the too-closely set evergreens and conifers before it. That money had been lavished upon the place in the distant past was evident even in these very trees, which were the choicest of their kind. He who had planted them must have been a melancholy man. Drooping, mournful trees seemed particularly to appeal to him, for the very rare weeping hemlock, like a black fountain, was there as well as the weeping larch, with its small cones; and a veritable army of white pines, Norway spruces, balsam firs, and the red cedar that in its blackish stateliness is so like the Irish yew. A solemn company at the best of times, when properly spaced and trimmed, but now with unpruned branches intertwining, the trees that were killing one another in their struggle for light were positively lugubrious. And behind that screen of matted, many-shaded evergreen the pallid, bony old house stood trembling under high winds, while its upper windows stared blankly down upon that Broadway that, escaping from the hurrying city with its millions of restless feet, here passed calmly on, by woodland and green meadows, toward distant Albany.

The cruel roadway had swept away with it all the footsteps that had used to make life in the old house. Two great gates were let into the stone wall. One was locked so securely that even a burglar might have failed to solve the combination of a ten years' twisted leafy growth of woodbine; but whenever anyone wished to enter the grounds he went to the second gate, which was easily opened by the simple process of throwing it down and walking over it. Grass grew in tufts down the old carriage drive, and all about the lower part of the house were curious stains that looked as though little green waves had washed up against it, while on the north side the long streaks of green beneath the windows painfully suggested tear-marks on its white old face. A melancholy and unwholesome place for people to seek a home in, and yet the morning's report proved reliable, for Jacob Brewer's handy man had been over to the old White house, as people would call it, because Peter White had lived and died there years ago, and had cleared up a bit; had secured two or three hanging shutters, put a swing-door in the kitchen and a bolt on the front door, and had tacked on to the mighty body of an ancient willow—a landmark for miles about that grew directly by the unhinged gate—a strip of black painted tin, bearing in gold letters the word "Woodsedge"—and lo! the old house was ready for the new tenant.

Promptly the Lawtons arrived upon the scene the next day, preceded by a furniture van under the directorship of a very young, very rumpled, but most optimistic German maid-of-all-work, who proudly carried a large key in her hand as a symbol of authority. She had unlocked and thrown wide the creaking front door, opened the windows, made a fire in the kitchen, and had undone the bundle she had carried in her lap all the way from the city, revealing to the astonished men a small black tea-kettle.

"Oh, ja! I carry him mysel', und den I have him alretty und can make quick de tea for de mistress—right so soon as she gits here!"

And before the van had been emptied a dust-covered hack arrived, with four people inside and several boxes and a trunk sharing the top with the driver. A mounted policeman, loitering along Broadway and watching the debarkation, saw John Lawton—tall and thin and almost white-haired, a gentleman without a doubt—descending. Then an elderly lady, with surprisingly red cheeks glowing through a dotted veil, followed, and then—"Oh, by Jove!" muttered the blue-coat, as out sprang, one after the other, the two young girls, as fresh and bright and full of bubbling laughter as the day was bright and full of sunshine and bird