CHAPTER V.
“Jane, have you heard that we shall soon have some new neighbors at ‘Solitude’?”
“No; who is brave enough to settle there?”
“Mrs. Gerome, a widow, has purchased and refitted the house, preparatory to making it her home.”
“Do you suppose she knows the history of its former owners?”
“Probably not, as she has never seen the place. The purchase was made some months since by her agent, who stated that she was in Europe.”
“Ulpian, I am sorry that the house will again be occupied, for some mournful fatality seems to have attended all who ever resided there; and I have been told that the last proprietor changed the name from ‘Solitude’ to ‘Bochim.’”
“You must not indulge such superstitious vagaries, my dear, wise Janet. The age of hobgoblins, haunted houses, and supernatural influences has passed away with the marvels of alchemy and the weird myths of Rosicrucianism. Because 60 many deaths have occurred at that place, and the residents were consequently plunged in gloom, you must not rashly impute eldritch influences to the atmosphere surrounding it. Knowing its ghostly celebrity, I have investigated the grounds of existing prejudice, and find that of the ten persons who have died there during the last fifteen years, three deaths were from hereditary consumption, one from dropsy, two from paralysis, one from epilepsy, one from brain-fever, one from drowning, and the last from a fall that broke the victim’s neck. Were these attributable to any local cause, the results would certainly not have proved so diverse.”
“Call it superstition, or what you will, no amount of coaxing, argument, or ridicule, no imaginable inducement could prevail on me to live there,—even if the house were floored with gold and roofed with silver. It is the gloomiest-looking place this side of Golgotha, and I would as soon crawl into a coffin for an afternoon nap as spend a night there.”
“Your imagination invests it with a degree of gloom which is adventitious, and referable solely to painful associations; for intrinsically the situation is picturesque and beautiful, and the grounds have been arranged with consummate taste. This morning I noticed a quantity of rare and very superb lilies clustered in a corner of the parterre.”