There Was Room There For Thirty Or Forty Good
Houses With Big Gardens.
And his answer invariably was:
"It shan't be
touched! I was born in that house, and though I'm too old ever to go
and see it again, it must not be pulled down - not a brick of it, not a
tree cut, while I'm alive. When I'm gone you can do what you like,
because then I shan't know what you are doing."
My friends and relations, who were in occupation of the house, and
loved it, hoped that he would go on living many, many years: but alas!
the visit of the feared dark angel was to them and not to the old
owner, who was perhaps "too old to die"; the dear lady of the house and
its head was taken away and the family broken up, and from that day to
this I have never ventured to revisit that sweet spot, nor sought to
know what has been done to it.
At that time it used to be my week-end home, and on one of my early
visits I noticed the skull of an animal nailed to the wall about a yard
above the stable door. It was too high to be properly seen without
getting a ladder, and when the gardener told me that it was a bulldog's
skull, I thought no more about it.
One day, several months later, I took a long look at it and got the
idea that it was not a bulldog's skull - that it was more like the skull
of a human being of a very low type. I then asked my hostess to let me
have it, and she said, "Yes, certainly, take it if you want it." Then
she added, "But what in the world do you want that horrid old skull
for?" I said I wanted to find out what it was, and then she told me
that it was a bulldog's skull - the gardener had told her. I replied
that I did not think so, that it looked to me more like the skull of a
cave-man who had inhabited those parts half a million years ago,
perhaps. This speech troubled her very much, for she was a religious
woman, and it pained her to hear unorthodox statements about the age of
man on the earth. She said that I could not have the skull, that it was
dreadful to her to hear me say it might be a human skull; that she
would order the gardener to take it down and bury it somewhere in the
grounds at a distance from the house. Until that was done she would not
go near the stables - it would be like a nightmare to see that dreadful
head on the wall. I said I would remove it immediately; it was mine, as
she had given it to me, and it was not a man's skull at all - I was only
joking, so that she need not have any qualms about it.
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