The Water Ghost and Others | Page 9

the cause of
the mansion's quickly renting, as hardly a month had passed before it
was leased for one year by a retired London brewer, whose wife's
curiosity had been so excited by the strange wording of the
advertisement that she travelled out to Bangletop to gratify it, fell in
love with the place, and insisted upon her husband's taking it for a
season. The luck of the brewer and his wife was no better than that of
the Bangletops. Their cooks--and they had fourteen during their stay
there--fled after an average service of four days apiece, and later the
tenants themselves were forced to give up and return to London, where
they told their friends that the "'all was 'aunted," which might have
filled the Bangletops with concern had they heard of it. They did not
hear of it, however, for they and their friends did not know the brewer
and the brewer's friends, and as for complaining to the Bangletop agent
in the matter, the worthy beer-maker thought he would better not do
that, because he had hopes of being knighted some day, and he did not
wish to antagonize so illustrious a family as the Bangletops by running
down their famous hall--an antagonism which might materially affect

the chances of himself and his good wife when they came to knock at
the doors of London society. The lease was allowed to run its course,
the rent was paid when due, and at the end of the stipulated term
Bangletop Hall was once more on the lists as for rent.
II
For fourscore years and ten did the same hard fortune pursue the
owners of Bangletop. Additions to the property were made immediately
upon request of possible lessees. The Greek chapel was constructed in
1868 at the mere suggestion of a Hellenic prince, who came to England
to write a history of the American rebellion, finding the information in
back files of British newspapers exactly suited to the purposes of
picturesque narrative, and no more misleading than most home-made
history. Bangletop was retired, "far from the gadding crowd," as the
prince put it, and therefore just the place in which a historian of the
romantic school might produce his magnum opus without disturbance;
the only objection being that there was no place whither the eminently
Christian sojourner could go to worship according to his faith, he being
a communicant in the Greek Church. This defect Baron Bangletop
immediately remedied by erecting and endowing the chapel; and his
youngest son, having been found too delicate morally for the army, was
appointed to the living and placed in charge of the chapel, having first
embraced with considerable ardor the faith upon which the soul of the
princely tenant was wont to feed. All of these improvements--chapel,
priest, the latter's change of faith, and all--the Bangletop agent put at
the exceedingly low sum of forty-two guineas per annum and board for
the priest; an offer which the prince at once accepted, stipulating,
however, that the lease should be terminable at any time he or his
landlord should see fit. Against this the agent fought nobly, but without
avail. The prince had heard rumors about the cooks of Bangletop, and
he was wary. Finally the stipulation was accepted by the baron, with
what result the reader need hardly be told. The prince stayed two weeks,
listened to one sermon in classic university Greek by the youthful
Bangletop, was deserted by his cook, and moved away.
After the departure of the prince the estate was neglected for nearly
twenty-two years, the owner having made up his mind that the case was
hopeless. At the end of that period there came from the United States a
wealthy shoemaker, Hankinson J. Terwilliger by name, chief owner of

the Terwilliger Three-dollar Shoe Company (Limited), of Soleton,
Massachusetts, and to him was leased Bangletop Hall, with all its rights
and appurtenances, for a term of five years. Mr. Terwilliger was the
first applicant for the hall as a dwelling to whom the agent, at the
instance of the baron, spoke in a spirit of absolute candor. The baron
was well on in years, and he did not feel like getting into trouble with a
Yankee, so he said, at his time of life. The hall had been a thorn in his
flesh all his days, and he didn't care if it was never occupied, and
therefore he wished nothing concealed from a prospective tenant. It was
the agent's candor more than anything else that induced Mr. Terwilliger
to close with him for the term of five years. He suspected that the
Bangletops did not want him for a tenant, and from the moment that
notion entered his head, he was resolved that he would be a tenant.
"I'm as