Tranquillity House. Augusta Huiell Seaman

UP to the day when Connie fell downstairs at Tranquillity House, and broke her ankle, I had never connected anything strange or mysterious with the place or with Uncle Benham. Her accident changed all that. From the moment she put her foot through the wainscot on the lower landing—things began to happen!

But perhaps it would be just as well to explain at once how Connie came to tumble downstairs at Tranquillity House and how we came to be there at all. For old Mr. Benham isn’t our real uncle, though we have called him that ever since we were babies, when we moved next door to him in the new little house right close to the Benham grounds.

It was before Connie remembered anything much, as she was only two and a half and I was about four when we left Philadelphia a dozen years ago, with Father and Mother, and moved out to Penryd in New Jersey. As every one knows, that is a dear little old fashioned village sitting cozily on the banks of tiny, lovely Sawmill River. Father had been lucky enough to find a delightful little new house rather outside the town itself, built right alongside of the beautiful Benham place, with no other near neighbors. In fact, the ground had been a part of the Benham place, but old Mr. Benham had become tired of living all alone out on Sawmill Road and thought that if he built an attractive little house near by, he might acquire some nice neighbors. Father heard of the place through a mutual friend, and that was how we came to live here.

Well, naturally, Connie and I hadn’t been in the new house long before we began to tumble over the low stone fence that separated ours from the big, park-like grounds of the Benham place and toddle about in there. Mother, of course, didn’t realize it, as she was too busy getting settled, or she would have forbidden our trespassing. But we didn’t know any better, as we’d always lived in the city before that, and thought, I guess, that all country spaces belonged to everybody. Anyhow, the second day, as we were toddling along together down one of the beautiful garden paths (I remember it was the box garden, where the most wonderful box plants grow—some more than a hundred years old!) we suddenly came upon the dearest old gentleman, who acted quite bowled over for a minute to see two tiny girls, perfect strangers, calmly making themselves at home in his grounds.

“Hel-lo!” he said, sort of startled, and we both said, “Hello!” and Connie toddled off to pick some nasturtiums that she liked the looks of. Something about our calmness must have amused him, for he suddenly sat down on a bench and chuckled and lifted me to his knee and asked our names. I told him I was Elspeth Curtis and that was my sister Constance and we lived in the little house beyond the wall.

“I like this place,” I told him. “I’m glad we moved into a park with a nice red house in the middle!”

He laughed another chuckling laugh at that and said: “Thee must come often to the nice red house. And the park belongs to thee too, and the little sister also, as often as thee wishes to play in it!”

I wondered very much, I remember, that he should call me “thee,” and didn’t quite understand it. But at that time I had never before met a real Quaker, and, as I later discovered, Mr. Benham was a “Friend.” He often reminds me of the statues and pictures of William Penn, with his long, straight white hair and his beautiful bright blue eyes and the broad flat hat he wears.

He called on Father and Mother that evening and asked them to allow us children to run in and out of his place as freely as we pleased and regard it as a second home. He said he dearly loved children and was so lonely that it did him good to see us about. This is how it came about that we practically grew up at the Benham place. Old Beulah, the colored cook in the kitchen, simply adored us, especially Connie, who could always wheedle a piece of hot gingerbread from her, no matter how cranky she was; and Beulah was (and still is) desperately cross at times.

Tomkins too, who is Mr. Benham’s valet and butler, would do anything in the world for us. But we neither of us ever liked Mr. Cookson, the secretary, a long, lanky man, and always grouchy, who acted as if he was too busy to notice us—not that we wanted him to, for we detested him so that we rarely came to the house when he was about. But he was often ill with indigestion and in bed for days, or else off on long business trips, so we never saw much of him.

I haven’t yet said anything about the house itself, but I must describe it now, as it is the most fascinating place that two children ever had to grow up in. It is big and rambling and built of red brick trimmed with white wood-work—white shutters, with crescent moons in the top of each, and a four-pillared portico, also of white, that reaches above the second story. Off at the back are a number of ells and additions, which make it rather hard work to find your way about in it at first. Inside, it is all white woodwork, with beautiful carvings, great open fireplaces, and the most wonderful mahogany heirlooms for furniture that I have ever seen. It is almost like a museum. Mr. Benham said that his father's great grandfather left Pennsylvania and settled here way back in the days of William Penn, because the climate suited his health better. He built the house and laid out the grounds, and his descendants have lived here ever since. Mr. Benham feels it a great pity that when he dies there will be no descendants to leave it to, as he is the last of them all and has never married.

Скачать книгу