It was "wealthily" furnished and at first
sight imposing, but on closer acquaintance revealed a meager
personality, barren and austere. One looked for Rules and Regulations on
the walls, all signed By Order. The place was a prison that shut out
"the world." There was, of course, no billiard-room, no smoking-room, no
room for play of any kind, and the great hall at the back, once a
chapel, which might have been used for dancing, theatricals, or other
innocent amusements, was consecrated in his day to meetings of various
kinds, chiefly brigades, temperance or missionary societies. There was a
harmonium at one end--on the level floor--a raised dais or platform at
the other, and a gallery above for the servants, gardeners, and
coachmen. It was heated with hot-water pipes, and hung with Dor?'s
pictures, though these latter were soon removed and stored out of sight
in the attics as being too unspiritual. In polished, shiny wood, it was
a representation in miniature of that poky exclusive Heaven he took
about with him, externalizing it in all he did and planned, even in the
grounds about the house.
Changes in The Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel's
year of widowhood abroad--an organ put into the big hall, the library
made livable and re-catalogued--when it was permissible to suppose she
had found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views of
life, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts,
without, however, a touch of that trivial thoughtlessness usually termed
worldliness.
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