The Confession | Page 4

was a most alluring pasture, with a brook running through it, and
violets over the banks. It seemed to me that no cow with a conscience
could live in those surroundings and give colicky milk.
Then, the house was cheap. Unbelievably cheap. I suspected sewerage
at once, but it seemed to be in the best possible order. Indeed, new
plumbing had been put in, and extra bathrooms installed. As old Miss
Emily Benton lived there alone, with only an old couple to look after
her, it looked odd to see three bathrooms, two of them new, on the
second floor. Big tubs and showers, although little old Miss Emily
could have bathed in the washbowl and have had room to spare.

I faced the agent downstairs in the parlor, after I had gone over the
house. Miss Emily Benton had not appeared and I took it she was
away.
"Why all those bathrooms?" I demanded. "Does she use them in
rotation?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"She wished to rent the house, Miss Blakiston. The old-fashioned
plumbing--"
"But she is giving the house away," I exclaimed. "Those bathrooms
have cost much more than she will get out of it. You and I know that
the price is absurd."
He smiled at that. "If you wish to pay more, you may, of course. She is
a fine woman, Miss Blakiston, but you can never measure a Benton
with any yard-stick but their own. The truth is that she wants the house
off her hands this summer. I don't know why. It's a good house, and she
has lived here all her life. But my instructions, I'll tell you frankly, are
to rent it, if I have to give it away."
With which absurd sentence we went out the front door, and I saw the
pasture, which decided me.
In view of the fact that I had taken the house for my grandnieces and
nephews, it was annoying to find, by the end of June, that I should have
to live in it by myself. Willie's boy was having his teeth straightened,
and must make daily visits to the dentist, and Jack went to California
and took Gertrude and the boys with him.
The first curious thing happened then. I wrote to the agent, saying that I
would not use the house, but enclosing a check for its rental, as I had
signed the lease. To my surprise, I received in reply a note from Miss
Emily herself, very carefully written on thin note-paper.
Although it was years since I had seen her, the exquisite neatness of the

letter, its careful paragraphing, its margins so accurate as to give the
impression that she had drawn a faint margin line with a lead pencil
and then erased it--all these were as indicative of Emily Benton
as--well, as the letter was not.
As well as I can explain it, the letter was impulsive, almost urgent. Yet
the little old lady I remembered was neither of these things. "My dear
Miss Blakiston," she wrote. "But I do hope you will use the house. It
was because I wanted to be certain that it would be occupied this
summer that I asked so low a rent for it.
"You may call it a whim if you like, but there are reasons why I wish
the house to have a summer tenant. It has, for one thing, never been
empty since it was built. It was my father's pride, and his father's before
him, that the doors were never locked, even at night. Of course I can
not ask a tenant to continue this old custom, but I can ask you to
reconsider your decision.
"Will you forgive me for saying that you are so exactly the person I
should like to see in the house that I feel I can not give you up? So
strongly do I feel this that I would, if I dared, enclose your check and
beg you to use the house rent free. Faithfully yours, Emily Benton."
Gracefully worded and carefully written as the letter was, I seemed to
feel behind it some stress of feeling, an excitement perhaps, totally out
of proportion to its contents. Years before I had met Miss Emily, even
then a frail little old lady, her small figure stiffly erect, her eyes cold,
her whole bearing one of reserve. The Bentons, for all their open doors,
were known in that part of the country as "proud." I can remember, too,
how when I was a young girl my mother had regarded the rare
invitations to have tea and tiny cakes in the Benton parlor as commands,
no less, and had taken the long carriage-ride from the city with
complacency. And now Miss Emily, last of the family, had begged