The Four Corners in Middleton made a pleasant drive from the university town of Camberton. Many a time in the history of the house a party of young fellows had driven over the old turnpike that started where the arsenal used to stand in the sacred quarter of Camberton, and as the evening sun gilded the low, fresh-water marshes beyond Spring Pond, would trot on toward the rolling hills of Middleton. After dinner, or a dance, or, perhaps, mere chat over a late supper, they rode away at midnight singing as they whipped up their sleepy nags and otherwise disturbing the decorum of night in Middleton. Or, maybe, routed out early on a frosty October morning, after lighting pipes and a word with the stable-boy, they would snuggle into overcoats and spin away over the hard roads where the night frost still lay on the caked dust in the hollows like a crust of milk. In crossing the meadows the autumn sun swung into their faces, a comfortable solace on a morning drive, exciting them forward toward Camberton that they might report in the little stucco chapel while the tinny college bell was still harshly calling to prayer.
The Ellwells had kept the old Four Corners in Middleton long after the family had moved out into the wider world of Boston, and from farming and the ministry had entered the spheres of commerce and money-owning. In the time of old Roper Ellwell the Four Corners had been the parsonage for Middleton, and there first the Rev. Roper Ellwell had stirred the placid waters of meeting-house faith until something like a primitive revival had spread into neighboring parishes. His wife, a learned woman, had managed half a dozen young men who were preparing their Greek and Latin for Camberton. Those were the homely and kindly days of the Four Corners.
Then Roper Ellwell was called by the Second Church, in Boston, to be their pastor. This was the beginning of the Ellwell family in the good society of New England. The pastor's eloquence waxed into books that are found to-day on the shelves of the Harvard Library, with the University book-plate recording their gift by the author; also in black-cloth bindings, admirably printed, going to auction from some private library formed by a parishioner of the noted divine. When he became old in service, the congregation, now rich and fashionable, added to his ministrations the vigor of a younger man. Yet Roper Ellwell, on fine Sundays, still fired one of his former discourses from the lofty pulpit of his church. As these days grew rarer, the old pastor divided his time between his son's house on Beacon Street and the Four Corners.
Mark Ellwell was, as he should be, his father's son with the leaven of a newer world which led him into business instead of the ministry. But a fair product of Camberton, and a man well known and liked in Boston, where he was a merchant, when that term did not cover shop-keeping or gambling. He made a solid fortune in wool; built a house just beyond Charles Street on Beacon Street; was a member of two good clubs, and a deacon in his father's church.
In these days the Four Corners was used chiefly in the autumn months, and as a playhouse for the feeble pastor. Mark Ellwell built a summer home in Nahant.
There was one son who grew up—John. This Ellwell was sent to Camberton in due time, where he broke the family tradition by living a licentious life. He was kept in the university for two years, from respect to his family, in spite of his drunkenness and idleness. When the war broke out—John was then in his third year at Camberton—the wilder blood at the university found its field. Young Ellwell shirked his chance; while his mates were enlisting and leaving college, he slunk away in little sprees, pleading weak health. Mark Ellwell, shamed and mortified, would have horsewhipped his son into the ranks, but the mother defended the weakling.
One day young Ellwell announced his marriage to a Salem girl whom he had met the week before. His father gave him a house; as he chose to be a broker, his father started him with his own credit. A few years later, when the war was over and John Ellwell was succeeding in the general tide of success, established with a family and three young children, all seemed well. Now the Four Corners was rarely visited. The verandas broke down; grass and hardy roses grew into the cracks where the clap-boards had started. The Ellwells, father and son, were fashionable people; the family had developed.
Early in the seventies there came rumors of young Ellwell's disgrace in the Tremont Club. He was detected cheating at play, and left the club, of which Mark Ellwell was vice-president. John Ellwell was a large, florid man, with the fine features of the good New England pastor, a slightly Roman nose, and a gouty tendency in his walk. He was the flourishing broker, of the kind who worked on nerve, who was never sober after three in the afternoon, and having begun to drink at ten was uncertain after twelve. He knew a side of business life that his father had never seen; he associated with men whom the stiff Mark would have disdained to recognize. But his reputation for cleverness carried him on in spite of the club affair until. …
One day, after a spree, he went on the Board wild and flurried. What he did he could never remember, but when the settlement for that day's transactions was made he was ruined. The Board gave him a week to find the necessary funds and pay his debts. His father settled the affair, opened the Four Corners for his family, sold his own house on Beacon Street, and taking his two daughters, who had never married, sailed for Europe. That was the end of the Ellwells in old Boston. Mark Ellwell never came back.
"The old man is done with me." That had been John's comment to his wife. And well might Mark Ellwell be done with him; there was not much left for another clearing up. There were the Four Corners, and his seat in the Board, and then—beggary. So in the third generation the Ellwells established themselves once more in Middleton at the Four Corners.
Good people, people of fortunes nicely won and carefully transmitted, well-known people, in short the members of society who make life an important affair to be honorably transacted in due reverence for their own reputation and the opinion of their neighbors, had nothing more to do with the family. They were blotted out of the blue book of Boston and never ventured beyond the shady walks of the Common on the Beacon Street side. In the other world, about the exchange, in the bar-rooms and restaurants of the downtown hotels, John Ellwell still led a comfortable life. The Board liked him. His transactions never again assumed large proportions, but in the way of little things he did a brisk business and went his old, corrupt, uncertain path.
The old house at Middleton was pulled to pieces and made fit for a gentleman's family, with a comfortable dining-room and broad-bayed windows, fine mahogany from the Beacon Street house, and an opulent cellar. Wide verandas were run about the house again, giving delightful vine-covered nooks for talk and sewing in the hazy, heated summer days. The lawn was nicely shaved and watered; the drive that led through the orchard to the cross-roads which gave the name to the place was weeded and gravelled. A new stable was put up behind, and furnished with three horses, some smart little carts, besides a close carriage for rainy days. The exile was made tolerable—for the sake of the children.
Mrs. John Ellwell counted for little. She had married in romance the handsome, swell young man; reality had blasted her. She had sunk into a will-less invalid, and made admiration of her husband into pride and a religion. She had accepted; she never protested. The eldest son by the dint of much pushing had been put into Camberton just before the final smash and the exile. In the hall of the college there hung a portrait of his great grandfather in his black preacher's robes; of this, Roper Ellwell, second, was a weak travesty. The thin features had been blurred in the process of transmitting; an inclination to flabby stoutness of person made the young man portly, where the old minister had been nervously fragile. But Roper Ellwell, second, rarely compared notes, for he dined, not in hall under this picture, but at a private club with his own set.
These young fellows drove over now and then to the Four Corners, a pleasant place for a man to spend an evening or a Sunday when the weather was fair and the fields green. The dinners were long and rich; the wines good; and if old Ellwell was a somewhat scandalous host, pleasing only to the coarser lads, there were other members of the family—the two daughters, Leonora and Ruby.