Five nights at the Five Pines

by Harriet A. Gaul

“Oh, years and years! He went down with the White Wren—they got his body off the point. It was after that she had the stroke and was so mean to Mattie and the New Captain. They was young people then, and just the age. She wouldn’t let him have a penny of the Old Captain’s fortune. I suppose it was because she wouldn’t give him any cash to do it with that he had to build the new wing himself. She was dead set against it. But it served her right. Mattie got so wore out with it that she had to go to a hospital in Boston and get laid up for a while. Some say she fell off the roof, but I used to be right around there watchin’ them half the time and I never see her fall off any roof. And Mis’ Hawes, she had a miserable time of it while Mattie was gone. Once you get depending on any one, it’s them that is the masters.

“I don’t believe Mattie ever would ’a’ come back after that, she was so long away, only one day the New Captain hitched up his horse and went and fetched her. His mother simply couldn’t do without her another minute. It was winter and there was no ships plying. The harbor was ice from here way over to the lighthouse-point; I remember it. And we didn’t have trains clear down the cape in those times. So what did the New Captain do but drive all the way down to Boston and back in his square box-buggy. He was gone days and days. I saw them coming home that night, the horse’s coat all roughed up and sweaty and his breath steaming into the cold, like smoke, the side-curtains drawn tight shut and the lamps lit. I was bringing back our cow, and I drew to one side of the road to let them pass, and I could hear her whimpering-like inside. He must have thought a powerful sight of Mattie to have made that journey for her.”

“Were they happy after that?”

“Not that anybody knows of. There was old Mis’ Hawes so set against his marrying her that she would fly into a passion if she saw you was even so much as thinking of such a thing; and yet, what could she do about it? Or what did she even know about it, shut up in one room? Yes, ma’am, there’s been strange goings-on in that house, and there is still. That’s why the men they won’t go near it. When the New Captain wanted the roof shingled or the pipes mended from time to time, he had to do it himself.”

“Well, I’m not going to paint the house myself,” I said. “After I get in and have it all opened up, they will feel differently about it.” I held up my chin defiantly.

“That is, if you ever get in,” rejoined Mrs. Dove.

I walked on down the back street with my clean white skirts, that she had washed, over my arm, and thought things over.

To every house, as to every human being, is granted two sorts of life, physical and spiritual. These wear out. To renew the physical life, all that is needed is a few shingles and a can of white lead and a thorough overhauling of the drains. The regeneration of the spiritual is more complex, requiring a change of occupant. The deterioration of a family within the walls of a house leaves an aroma of decay that only the complete relinquishment of the last surviving occupant can dissipate. Even then, the new tenant, in order to be exempt from the influence of past psychological experiences, must be unaware of them. I was learning too much about the House of the Five Pines. I determined that I would inquire no further, but brush these revelations from my mind and make a clean beginning. I would go back to New York now, remembering the house only in its external aspect, impressing that alone upon my husband and forestalling his reaction to the side of the situation that lent itself to fiction, which was his profession, by not telling him all of these legends that I had recently unearthed. Jasper was more sensitive to such suggestions than myself, and I felt that if he knew what I did we should have no peace. To protect myself from exhaustive argument and speculation, it would be wiser to repeat nothing.

The road where I was walking led across the rear of the premises of the House of the Five Pines, which extended a block, from what was always called the “Front Street” to the “Back Street.” From here one had a view of the garden and the four-foot brick walls that held up the precious earth hauled from such a distance. The century’s growth of the five pine-trees had burst open the wall along one side, and their roots, extending into the next yard, had been ruthlessly chopped off. I hoped that these new neighbors would not extend their animosity to me. The land sloped gradually down from the house until it rose again in a wooded hill on the further side of Back Street. This incline had necessitated the placing of piles, topped with inverted tin pans, as they are in country corn-bins, to hold up the rear of the captain’s wing. The space thus formed beneath the house, called the “under,” was filled with the rubbish of years. There were no doors at the back of the house, nor did this one-story addition have any entrance. There was a big chimney in the center of the end-wall and windows on either side. No barns or outbuildings fringed the road. The needs of seafaring folk demanded that they keep their properties in sheds upon their wharves.

At first there was no sign of Mattie, but as I lingered in Back Street, lost in speculation, a little old woman came around the side of the mysterious house. She was dragging two heavy oars behind her which she propped against a tree, and, setting down a wicker fish-basket beside them, lifted out a live green lobster.