The Late Mrs. Null

Late Mrs. Null, The

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Title: The Late Mrs. Null
Author: Frank Richard Stockton
Release Date: February 7, 2004 [EBook #10973]
Language: English
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THE LATE MRS NULL
BY
FRANK R. STOCKTON
1886

CHAPTER I.
There was a wide entrance gate to the old family mansion of
Midbranch, but it was never opened to admit the family or visitors;

although occasionally a load of wood, drawn by two horses and two
mules, came between its tall chestnut posts, and was taken by a
roundabout way among the trees to a spot at the back of the house,
where the chips of several generations of sturdy wood-choppers had
formed a ligneous soil deeper than the arable surface of any portion of
the nine hundred and fifty acres which formed the farm of Midbranch.
This seldom opened gate was in a corner of the lawn, and the driving of
carriages, or the riding of horses through it to the porch at the front of
the house would have been the ruin of the short, thick grass which had
covered that lawn, it was generally believed, ever since Virginia
became a State.
But there had to be some way for people who came in carriages or on
horseback to get into the house, and therefore the fence at the bottom of
the lawn, at a point directly in front of the porch, was crossed by a set
of broad wooden steps, five outside and five inside, with a platform at
the top. These stairs were wide enough to accommodate eight people
abreast; so that if a large carriage load of visitors arrived, none of them
need delay in crossing the fence. At the outside of the steps ran the
narrow road which entered the plantation a quarter of a mile away, and
passed around the lawn and the garden to the barns and stables at the
back.
On the other side of the road, undivided from it by hedge or fence,
stretched, like a sea gently moved by a groundswell, a vast field,
sometimes planted in tobacco, and sometimes in wheat. In the midst of
this field stood a tall persimmon tree which yearly dropped its
half-candied fruit upon the first light snow of the winter. It is true that
persimmons, quite fit to eat, were to be found on this tree at an earlier
period than this, but such fruit was never noticed by the people in those
parts, who would not rudely wrench from Jack Frost his one little claim
to rivalry with the sun as a fruit-ripener. To the right of the field was a
wide extent of pasture land, running down to a small stream, or
"branch," which, flowing between two other streams of the same kind a
mile or two on either side of it, had given its name to the place. In front,
to the left, lay a great forest of chestnut, oak, sassafras, and sweet gum,
with here and there a clump of tall pines, standing up straight and stiff

with an air of Puritanic condemnation of the changing fashions of the
foliage about them.
On one side of the platform of the broad stile, which has been
mentioned, sat one summer afternoon, the lady of the house. She was a
young woman, and although her face was a good deal shadowed by her
far-spreading hat, it was easy to perceive that she was a handsome one.
She was the niece of Mr Robert Brandon, the elderly bachelor who
owned Midbranch; and her mother, long since dead, had called her
Roberta, which was as near as she could come to the name of her only
brother.
Miss Roberta's father was a man whose mind and time were entirely
given up to railroads; and although he nominally lived in New York, he
was, for the greater part of the year, engaged in endeavors to forward
his interests somewhere west of the Mississippi. Two or three months
of the winter were generally spent in his city home. At these times he
had his daughter with him, but the rest of the year she lived with her
uncle, whose household she directed with much good will and
judgment. The old gentleman did not keep her all the summer at
Midbranch. He knew what was necessary for