"Amos!" cried she, "I'll be whipped if you've spoke one word to 'Melia this livelong day! If you ain't ashamed, I be! If you can't speak, I can!"
Amos paused, with his habitual resignation to circumstances, but Amelia sped forward and clapped him cordially on the arm; with the other hand, she dealt one of the oxen a futile blow.
"Huddup, Bright!" she called, with a swift, smiling look at Amos. Even in kindness she would not do him the wrong of an unnecessary word. "Good-by, aunt Ann! Come again!"
Amos turned half about, the goad over his shoulder. His dull-seeming eyes had opened to a gleam of human feeling, betraying how bright and keen they were. Some hidden spring had been touched, though only they would tell its story. Amelia thought it was gratitude. And then aunt Ann, nodding her farewells in assured contentment with herself and all the world, was drawn slowly out of the yard.
When Amelia went indoors and warmed her chilled hands at the fire, the silence seemed to her benignant. What was loneliness before had miraculously translated itself into peace. That worldly voice, strangely clothing her own longings with form and substance, had been stilled; only the clock, rich in the tranquillity of age, ticked on, and the cat stretched herself and curled up again. Amelia sat down in the waning light and took a last stitch in her work; she looked the coat over critically with an artistic satisfaction, and then hung it behind the door in its accustomed place, where it had remained undisturbed now for many months. She ate soberly and sparingly of her early supper, and then, leaving the lamp on a side-table, where it brought out great shadows in the room, she took a little cricket and sat down by the fire. There she had mused many an evening which seemed to her less dull than the general course of her former life, while her husband occupied the hearthside chair and toldher stories of the war. He had a childlike clearness and simplicity of speech, and a self-forgetful habit of reminiscence. The war was the war to him, not a theatre for boastful individual action; but Amelia remembered now that he had seemed to hold heroic proportions in relation to that immortal past. One could hardly bring heroism into the potato-field and the cow-house; but after this lapse of time, it began to dawn upon her that the man who had fought at Gettysburg and the man who marked out for her the narrow rut of an unchanging existence were one and the same. And as if the moment had come for an expected event, she heard again the jangling of bells without, and the old vivid color rushed into her cheeks, reddened before by the fire-shine. It was as though the other night had been a rehearsal, and as if now she knew what was coming. Yet she only clasped her hands more tightly about her knees and waited, the while her heart hurried its time. The knocker fell twice, with a resonant clang. She did not move. It beat again, the more insistently. Then the heavy outer door was pushed open, and Laurie Morse came in, looking exactly as she knew he would look—half angry, wholly excited, and dowered with the beauty of youth recalled. He took off his cap and stood before her.
"Why didn't you come?" he asked imperatively. "Why didn't you let me in?"
The old wave of irresponsible joy rose in her at his presence; yet it was now not so much a part of her real self as a delight in some influence which might prove foreign to her. She answered him, as she was always impelled to do, dramatically, as if he gave her the cue, calling for words which might be her sincere expression, and might not.
"If you wanted it enough, you could get in," she said perversely, with an alluring coquetry in her mien. "The door was unfastened."
"I did want to enough," he responded. A new light came into his eyes. He held out his hands toward her. "Get up off that cricket!" he commanded. "Come here!"
Amelia rose with a swift, feminine motion, but she stepped backward, one hand upon her heart. She thought its beating could be heard.
"It ain't Saturday," she whispered.
"No, it ain't. But I couldn't wait. You knew I couldn't. You knew I'd come to-night."
The added years had had their effect on him; possibly, too, there had been growing up in him the strength of a long patience. He was not an heroic type of man; but noting the sudden wrinkles in his face and the firmness of his mouth, Amelia conceived a swift respect for him which she had never felt in the days of their youth.
"Am I goin' to stay," he asked sternly, "or shall I go home?"
As if in dramatic accord with his words, the bells jangled loudly at the gate. Should he go or stay?
"I suppose," said Amelia faintly, "you're goin' to stay."
Laurie laid down his cap, and pulled off his coat. He looked about impatiently, and then, moving toward the nail by the door, he lifted the coat to place it over that other one hanging there. Amelia had watched him absently, thinking only, with a hungry anticipation, how much she had needed him; but as the garment touched her husband's, the real woman burst through the husk of her outer self, and came to life with an intensity that was pain. She sprang forward.
"No! no!" she cried, the words ringing wildly in her own ears. "No! no! don't you hang it there! Don't you! don't you!" She swept him aside, and laid her hands upon the old patched garment on the nail. It was as if they blessed it, and as if they defended it also. Her eyes burned with the horror of witnessing some irrevocable deed.
Laurie stepped back in pure surprise. "No, of course not," said he. "I'll put it on a chair. Why, what's the matter, Milly? I guess you're nervous. Come back to the fire. Here, sit down where you were, and let's talk."
The cat, roused by a commotion which was insulting to her egotism, jumped down from thecushion, stretched into a fine curve, and made a silhouette of herself in a corner of the hearth. Amelia, a little ashamed, and not very well understanding what it was all about, came back, with shaking limbs, and dropped upon the settle, striving now to remember the conventionalities of saner living. Laurie was a kind man. At this moment, he thought only of reassuring her. He drew forward the chair left vacant by the cat, and beat up the cushion.
"There," said he, "I'll take this, and we'll talk."
Amelia recovered herself with a spring. She came up straight and tall, a concluded resolution in every muscle. She laid a hand upon his arm.
"Don't you sit there!" said she. "Don't you!"
"Why, Amelia!" he ejaculated, in a vain perplexity. "Why, Milly!"
She moved the chair back out of his grasp, and turned to him again.
"I understand it now," she went on rapidly. "I know just what I feel and think, and I thank my God it ain't too late. Don't you see I can't bear to have your clothes hang where his belong? Don't you see 't would kill me to have you sit in his chair? When I find puss there, it's a comfort. If 't was you—I don't know but I might do you a mischief!" Her voice sank, in awe of herself and her own capacity for passionate emotion.
Laurie Morse had much swift understanding of the human heart. His own nature partook of the feminine, and he shared its intuitions and its fears.
"I never should lay that up against you, Milly," he said kindly. "But we wouldn't have these things. You'd come to Saltash with me, and we'd furnish all new."
"Not have these things!" called Amelia, with a ringing note of dismay,—"not have these things he set by as he did his life! Why, what do you think I'm made of, after fifteen years? What didIthink I was made of, even to guess I could? You don't know what women are like, Laurie Morse,—you don't know!"
She broke down in piteous weeping. Even then it seemed to her that it would be good to find herself comforted with warm human sympathy; but not a thought of its possibility remained in her mind. She saw the boundaries beyond which she must not pass. Though the desert were arid on this side, it was her desert, and there in her tent must she abide. She began speaking again between sobbing breaths:—
"I did have a dull life. I used up all my young days doin' the same things over and over, when I wanted somethin' different. Itwasdull; but if I could have it all over again, I'd work my fingers to the bone. I don't know how it would have been if you and I'd cometogether then, and had it all as we planned; but now I'm a different woman. I can't any more go back than you could turn Sudleigh River, and coax it to run up-hill. I don't know whether 't was meant my life should make me a different woman; but Iamdifferent, and such as I am, I'm his woman. Yes, till I die, till I'm laid in the ground 'longside of him!" Her voice had an assured ring of triumph, as if she were taking again an indissoluble marriage oath.
Laurie had grown very pale. There were forlorn hollows under his eyes; now he looked twice his age.
"I didn't suppose you kept a place for me," he said, with an unconscious dignity. "That wouldn't have been right, and him alive. And I didn't wait for dead men's shoes. But somehow I thought there was something between you and me that couldn't be outlived."
Amelia looked at him with a frank sweetness which transfigured her face into spiritual beauty.
"I thought so, too," she answered, with that simplicity ever attending our approximation to the truth. "I never once said it to myself; but all this year, 'way down in my heart, I knew you'd come back. And I wanted you to come. I guess I'd got it all planned out how we'd make up for what we'd lost, and build up a new life. But so far as I go, I guess I didn't lose by what I've lived through. I guess I gainedsomethin' I'd sooner give up my life than even lose the memory of."
So absorbed was she in her own spiritual inheritance that she quite forgot his pain. She gazed past him with an unseeing look; and striving to meet and recall it, he faced the vision of their divided lives. To-morrow Amelia would remember his loss and mourn over it with maternal pangs; to-night she was oblivious of all but her own. Great human experiences are costly things; they demand sacrifice, not only of ourselves, but of those who are near us. The room was intolerable to Laurie. He took his hat and coat, and hurried out. Amelia heard the dragging door closed behind him. She realized, with the numbness born of supreme emotion, that he was putting on his coat outside in the cold; and she did not mind. The bells stirred, and went clanging away. Then she drew a long breath, and bowed her head on her hands in an acquiescence that was like prayer.
It seemed a long time to Amelia before she awoke again to temporal things. She rose, smiling, to her feet, and looked about her as if her eyes caressed every corner of the homely room. She picked up puss in a round, comfortable ball, and carried her back to the hearthside chair; there she stroked her until her touchy ladyship had settled down again to purring content. Then Amelia, still smiling, and with an absent look, as if her mind wanderedthrough lovely possibilities of a sort which can never be undone, drew forth the spinning-wheel, and fitted a roll to the spindle. She began stepping back and forth as if she moved to the measure of an unheard song, and the pleasant hum of her spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. Amelia felt her thread lovingly.
"I guess I'll dye it blue," she said, with a tenderness great enough to compass inanimate things. "He always set by blue, didn't he, puss?"
THE FLAT-IRON LOT
The fields were turning brown, and in the dusty gray of the roadside, closed gentians gloomed, and the aster burned like a purple star. It was the finest autumn for many years. People said, with every clear day, "Now this must be a weather-breeder;" but still the storm delayed. Then they anxiously scanned the heavens, as if, weeks beforehand, the signs of the time might be written there; for this was the fall of all others when wind and sky should be kind to Tiverton. She was going to celebrate her two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and she was big with the importance of it.
On a still afternoon, over three weeks before that happy day, a slender old man walked erectly along the country road. He carried a cane over his shoulder, and, slung upon it, a small black leather bag, bearing the words, painted in careful letters, "Clocks repaired by N. Oldfield." As he went on, he cast a glance, now and then, to either side, from challenging blue eyes, strong yet in the indomitable quality of youth. He knew every varying step of the road, and could have numbered, from memory,the trees and bushes that fringed its length; and now, after a week's absence, he swept the landscape with the air of a manorial lord, to see what changes might have slipped in unawares. At one point, a flat triangular stone had been tilted up on edge, and an unpracticed hand had scrawled on it, in chalk, "4 M to Sudleigh." The old man stopped, took the bag from his shoulder, and laid it tenderly on a stone of the wall. Then, with straining hands, he pulled the rock down into the worn spot where it had lain, and gave a sigh of relief when it settled into its accustomed place, and the tall grass received it tremulously. Now he opened his bag, took from it a cloth, carefully folded, and rubbed the rock until those defiling chalk marks were partially effaced.
"Little varmints!" he said, apostrophizing the absent school children who had wrought the deed. "Can't they let nothin' alone?" He took up his bag, and went on.
Nicholas Oldfield, as he walked the road that day, was a familiar figure to all the county round. He had a smooth, carefully shaven face, with a fine outline of nose and chin, and his straight gray hair shone from faithful brushing. He was almost aggressively clean. Even his blue eyes had the appearance of having just been washed, like a spring day after a shower. It was a frequent remark thathe looked as if he had come out of a bandbox; and one critic even went so far as to assert that on Sundays he sandpapered his eyes and gave a little extra polish to his bones. But these were calumnies; though to-day his suit of home-made blue was quite speckless, and the checked gingham neckerchief, which made his ordinary wear, still kept its stiff, starched creases.
"Dirt don't stick toyou, Mr. Oldfield," once said a seeking widow. "Your washing can't be much. I guess anybody 'd be glad to undertake it for you." Mr. Oldfield nodded gravely, as one receiving the tribute which was justly his, and continued to do his washing himself.
As he walked the dusty road, bearing his little bag, so he had walked it for years, sometimes within a few miles of home, and again at the extreme limit of the county edge. The clocks of the region were all his clients, some regarded with compassion ("ramshackle things" that needed perpetual tinkering) and others with a holy awe. "The only thing Nicholas Oldfield bows the knee before is a double-back-action clock a thousand years old," said Brad Freeman, the regardless. "That's how he reads Ancient of Days." The justice of the remark was acknowledged, though, as touching Mr. Oldfield, it was felt to be striking rather too keenly at the root of things. For Nicholas Oldfield was lookedupon with a respect not so much inspired by his outward circumstances as by his method of taking them. There are, indeed, ways and ways among us who serve the public. When Tom O'Neil went round peddling essences, children saw him from afar, ran to meet him, and, falling on his pack, besought him for "two-three-drops-o' -c'logne" with such fervor that the mothers had to haul them off by main force, in order themselves to approach his redolence; but when the clock-mender appeared, with his little bag, propriety walked before him, and the naughtiest scion of the flock would come soberly in, to announce:—
"Mother, here's Mr. Oldfield."
It is true that this little old man did exemplify the dignity and restraint of life to such a degree that, had it not been for his one colossal weakness, the town might have condemned him, in good old Athenian fashion. Clock-mending was a legitimate industry; but there were those who felt it to be, in his case, a mere pretext for nosing round and identifying ridiculous old things which nobody prized until Nicholas Oldfield told them it was conformable so to do. Some believed him and some did not; but it was known that a MacDonough's Victory tea-set drove him to an almost outspoken rapture, and that the mere mention of the Bay Psalm Book (a copy of which he sought with the haggard fervor of one who worshipsbut has ceased to hope) was enough to make him "wild as a hawk." Old papers, too, drew him by their very mildew; and when his townsfolk were in danger of respecting him too tediously, they recalled these amiable puerilities, drew a breath of relief, and marked his value down.
Many facts in his life were not in the least understood, because he never saw the possibility of talking about them. For example, when at the marriage of his son, Young Nick, he made over the farm, and kept his own residence in the little gambrel-roofed house where he had been born, and his father and grandfather before him, the act was, for a time, regarded somewhat gloomily by the public at large. There were Young Nick and his Hattie, living in the big new house, with its spacious piazza and cool green blinds; there the two daughters were born and bred, and the elder of them was married. The new house had its hired girl and man; and meantime the other Nicholas (nobody ever dreamed of calling him Old Nick) was cooking his own meals, and even, of a Saturday, scouring his kitchen floor. It was easy to see in him the pathetic symbol of a bygone generation relegated to the past. A little wave of sympathy crept to his very feet, and then, finding itself unnoted, ebbed away again. Only one village censor dared speak, saying slyly to Young Nick's Hattie:—
"Ain't no room for grandpa in the new house, is there?"
Hattie opened her eyes wide at this discovery, though now she realized that echoes of a like benevolence had reached her ears before. She went home very early from the quilting, and that night she said to her husband, as they sat on the doorstone, waiting for the milk to cool:—
"Nicholas, little things I've got hold of, first an' last, make me conclude folks pity father. Do you s'pose they do?"
Young Nick selected a fat plantain spike, and began stripping the seeds.
"Well, I dunno what for," said he, after consideration. "Father seems to be pretty rugged."
Hattie was one of those who find no quicker remedy than that of plentiful speech; and later in the evening, she sped over to the little house, across the dewy orchard. Mr. Oldfield had come home only that afternoon, and now he had drawn up at his kitchen table, which was covered by a hand-woven cloth, beautifully ironed, and set with old-fashioned dishes. He had hot biscuits and apple-pie, and the odor of them rose soothingly to Hattie's nostrils, dissipating, for a moment, her consciousness of tragedy and wrong. A man could not be quite forlorn who cooked such "victuals," and sat before them so serenely.
"See here, father," said she, with the desperation of speaking her mind for the first time to one from whom she had hitherto kept awesomely remote; "when we moved into the new house, I dunno's there was any talk about your comin', too. I guess it never entered into our heads you'd do anything but to stick to the old place. An' now, after it's all past an' gone, the neighbors say"—
Nicholas Oldfield had been smiling his slight, dry smile. At this point, he took up a knife, and cut a careful triangle of pie. He did all these things as if each one were very important.
"Here, Hattie," said he, "you taste o' this dried apple. I put a mite o' lemon in."
Hattie, somehow abashed by the mental impact of the little man, ate her pie meekly, and thenceforth waived the larger issue. All the same, she knew the neighbors "pitied father," and that they would continue to pity him so long as he lived alone in the little peaceful house, doing his own washing and making his own pie.
To-night was a duplication of many another when Nicholas Oldfield had turned the corner and come in sight of his own home; but often as it had been repeated, the experience was never the same. Some would have named his springing emotion delight; but it neither quickened his pace nor made him draw his breaththe faster. Perhaps he even walked a little more slowly, to enjoy the taste, for he was a saving man. There was the little house, white as paint could make it, and snug in bowering foliage. He noted, with an approving eye, that the dahlias in the front yard, set in stiff nodding rows, were holding their own bravely against the dry fall weather, and that the asters were blooming profusely, purple and pink. A rare softness came over his features when he stepped into the yard; and though he examined the roof critically in passing, it was with the eye of love. He fitted the key in the lock; the sound of its turning made music in his ears, and, setting his foot upon the sill, he was a man for whom that little was enough. Nicholas Oldfield was at home.
He laid down his bag, and went, without an instant's pause, straight through to the sitting-room, and stood before the tall eight-day clock. He put his hand on the woodwork, as if it might have been the shoulder of a friend, and looked up understandingly in its face.
"Well, here we be," said he. "You'd ha' hil' out till mornin', though."
For wherever he might travel, he always made it a point to be home in time to wind the clocks; and however early he might hurry away again, under stress of some antiquarian impulse, they were left alive and pulsing behind him. There was one in each room, besidesthe tall eight-day in the parlor, and they were all soft-voiced and leisurely, reminiscent of another age than ours. Though three of them had been inherited, it almost seemed as if Nicholas must have selected the entire company, so harmonious were they, so serenely fitted to the calm decorum of his own desires.
In half an hour he had accomplished many things, and his fire sent a spiral breath toward heaven. The dark old kitchen lay open, door and window, to the still opulent sun, and from the pantry and a corner cupboard came gleams of color, to delight the eye. Here were riches, indeed: old India china, an unbroken set of Sheltered Peasant, and, on the top shelf, little mugs and cups of a pink lustre, soft and sweet as flowers. Many a collector had wooed Nicholas Oldfield to part with his china (for the fame of it had spread afar,) but his only response to solicitation was to open the doors more widely on his treasures, remarking, without emphasis:—
"I guess they might as well stay where they be."
So passive was he, that many among merchants judged they had impressed him, and returned again and again to the charge; but when they found always the same imperturbable front, the same mild neutrality of demeanor, they melted sadly away, and were seen nomore, leaving their places to be taken by others equally hopeful and as sure to be betrayed.
One creature only was capable of rousing Nicholas Oldfield from that calm wherein he went ticking on through life. She it was who, by some natal likeness, understood him wholly; and to-night, just as he was sitting down to his supper of "cream o' tartar" biscuits and smoking tea, her clear voice broke upon his solitude.
"Gran'ther," called Mary Oldfield from the door, "mother says, 'Won't you come over to supper?' She saw your smoke."
Nicholas pushed back his chair a little; he felt himself completed.
"You had yours?" he asked, in his usual even tones.
"No. I waited for you."
"Then you come right in an' git it. Take your mug—here, I'll reach it down for ye—an' there's the Good-Girl plate."
Mary Oldfield was a tall, pleasant looking maid of sixteen, and standing quietly by, while her grandfather got out her own plate and mug, she was an amazingly faithful copy of him. They smiled a little at each other, in sitting down, but there was no closer greeting between them. They were exceedingly well content to be together again, and this was so simple and natural a state that there was nothing to say about it. Only Nicholas looked at her from time to time—her capablebrown hands and careful braids of hair,—and nodded briefly, as he had a way of nodding at his clocks.
"You know what I told you, Mary, about the Flat-Iron Lot?" he asked, while Mary buttered her biscuit.
She looked at him in assent.
"Well, I've proved it."
"You don't say!"
Mary had certain antique methods of speech, which the new-fangled school teacher, not liking to pronounce them vulgar, had tactfully dubbed "obsolete." "If we used 'em all the time they wouldn't get obsolete, would they?" asked Mary; and the school teacher, being a logical person, made no answer. So Mary went on plying them with a conscientious calmness like one determined to keep a precious and misprized metal in circulation. She even called Nicholas gran'ther, because he liked it, and because he had called his own grandfather so.
"Ye see," said Nicholas, "the fust rec'ids were missin'. 'Burnt up!' says that town clerk over to Sudleigh. 'Burnt when the old meetin'-house ketched fire, arter the Injun raid.' 'Burnt up!' thinks I. 'The cat's foot! I guess so, when the communion service was carried over fifteen mile an' left in a potato sullar.' So I says to myself, 'What become o' that fust communion set?' Why,before the meetin'-house was repaired, they all rode over to what's now Saltash, to worship in Square Billin's's kitchen. Now, when Square Billin's died of a fever, that same winter, they hove all his books into that old lumber-room over Sudleigh court-house. So, when I was fixin' up the court-house clock, t' other day, I clim' up to that room, an' shet myself in there. An', Mary, I found them rec'ids!" He looked at her with that complete and awe-stricken triumph which nobody else had ever seen upon his face. Her own reflected it.
"Where are they, gran'ther?" asked Mary. But she was the more excited; she could only whisper.
"They're loose sheets o' paper," returned Nicholas, "an'they're in my bag!"
Mary made an involuntary movement toward the bag, which lay, innocently secretive, on a neighboring chair. Even its advertising legend had a knowing look. Nicholas followed her glance.
"No," said he firmly, "not now. We'll read 'em all over this evenin', when I've done the dishes. But, Mary, I'll tell ye this much: it's got the whole story of the settlers comin' into town, an' which way they come, an' all about it, writ down by Simeon Gerry, the fust minister, the one that killed five Injuns, stoppin' to load an' fire, an' then opened on the rest with bilin' fat. An', Mary, the fust settler of all was Nicholas Oldfield, haulin' his wife on a kind of a drag made o' withes; an' the path they took led straight over our Flat-Iron Lot. An', Mary, 't was there they rested, an' offered up prayer to God."
"O my soul, gran'ther!" breathed Mary, clasping her little brown hands. "O my soul!" Her face grew curiously mature. It seemed to mirror his. She leaned forward, in a deadly earnestness. "Gran'ther," said she, "did they settle here first? Or—or was it Sudleigh?"
Now, indeed, was Nicholas Oldfield the herald of news good both to tell and hear.
"The fust settlement," said he, as if he read it from the book of fate, "was made in Tiverton, on the sixteenth day of the month; the second in Sudleigh, on the twenty-fifth."
"So, when you guessed at the date, and told parson to have the celebration then, you got it right?"
"I got it right," replied Nicholas quietly. "But pa'son shall see the rec'ids, an' I'll recommend him to put 'em under lock an' key."
The two sat there and looked at each other, with an outwelling of great content. Then Mary passed her mug, and while Nicholas filled it, he gave her an oft-repeated charge:—
"Don't you open your head now, Mary. All this is between you an' me. I'll just mention it to pa'son, an' make up my mind whetherhe sees the meanin' on 't. But don't you say one word to your father an' mother. To them it don't signify."
Mary nodded wisely. She knew, with the philosophy of a much older experience, that she and gran'ther lived alone in a nest of kindly aliens. As if their mention evoked a foreign presence, her mother's voice sounded that instant from the door:—
"Mary, why under the sun didn't you come back? I sent word for you to run over with her, father, an' have some supper. Well, if you two ain't thick!"
"We're havin' a dish o' discourse," returned Nicholas quietly.
Young Nick's Hattie was forty-five, but she looked much younger. Extreme plumpness had insured her against wrinkles, and her light brown hair was banded smoothly back. Hattie's originality lay in a desire for color, and therein she overstepped the bounds of all decorum. It was customary to see her barred across with enormous plaids, or stripes going the broad way; and so long had she lived under such insignia that no one would have known her without them. She came in with soft, heavy footfalls, and sat down in the little rocking-chair at Mr. Oldfield's right hand. She smiled at him, somewhat nervously.
"Well, father," said she, "you got home!"
Nicholas helped himself to another half cupof tea, after holding the teapot tentatively across to Mary's mug.
"Yes," he answered, in his dry and gentle fashion, "I've got home."
Hattie began rocking, in a rapid staccato, to punctuate her speech.
"Well," she began, "I'll say my say an' done with it. There's goin' to be a town-meetin' to-night, an' Nicholas sent me over to mention it. 'Father'll want to be on hand,' says he."
Mr. Oldfield pushed back his cup, and then his chair. He bent his keen blue eyes upon her.
"Town meetin' this time o' year?" said he. "What for?"
"Oh, it's about the celebration. Old Mr. Eaton"—
"What Eaton?"
"William W."
"He that went away in war time, an' made money in wool? Old War-Wool Eaton?"
Nicholas nodded, at her assent, and his look blackened. He knew what was coming.
"Well, he sent word he meant to give us a clock, same as he had other towns, an' he wanted we should have it up before the celebration."
"Yes," said Nicholas Oldfield, "he'll give us a clock, will he? I knew he would. I've said 'twas comin'. He give one to Saltash; he's gi'n 'em all over the county. Do youknow what them clocks be? They've got letters round the dial, in place o' figgers; an' the letters spell out, 'In Memory of Me.' An' down to Saltash they've gi'n up sayin' it's quarter arter twelve, or the like o' that. They say it's O minutes past I."
He glared at her. Young Nick's Hattie thought she had never heard father speak with such bitterness; and indeed it was true. Never before had he been assailed on his own ground; it seemed as if the whole township now conspired to bait him.
"Well" she remarked weakly, "I dunno's it does any hurt, so long as they can tell what they mean by it."
Nicholas threw her a pitying glance. He scorned to waste eternal truth on one so dull.
"Well," she went on, in desperation, "that ain't all, neither. I might as well say the whole, an' done with it. He wants 'em to set up the clock on the meetin'-house; an' seeing the tower mightn't be firm enough, he'll build it up higher, an' give 'em a new bell."
Now, indeed, Nicholas Oldfield was in the case of Shylock, when he learned his daughter's limit of larceny. "The curse never fell upon our nation till now," so he might have quoted. "I never felt it till now."
He rose from his chair.
"In the name of God Almighty," he asked solemnly, "what do they want of a new bell?"
Young Nick's Hattie gave an involuntary cry.
"O father!" she entreated, "don't say such words. I never see you take on so. What under the sun has got into you?"
Nicholas made no reply. Slowly and methodically he was putting the dishes into the wooden sink. When he touched Mary's pink mug, his fingers trembled a little; but he did not look at her. He knew she understood. Young Nick's Hattie rolled her hands nervously in her apron, and then unrolled them, and smoothed the apron down. She gathered herself desperately.
"Well, father," she said, "I've got another arrant. I said I'd do it, an' I will; but I dunno how you'll take it."
"O mother!" cried Mary, "don't!"
"What is it?" asked Nicholas, folding the tablecloth in careful creases. "Say your say an' git it over."
Hattie rocked faster and faster. Even in the stress of the moment Nicholas remembered that the old chair was well made, and true to its equilibrium.
"Well," said she, "Luella an' Freeman Henry come over here this very day, an' Freeman Henry's possessed you should sell him the Flat-Iron Lot."
"Wants the Flat-Iron Lot, does he?" inquired Nicholas grimly. "What's he made up his mind to do with it?"
"He wants to build," answered Hattie, momentarily encouraged. "He says he'll be glad to ride over to work, every mornin' of his life, if he can only feel 't he's settled in Tiverton for good. An' there's that lot on high ground, right near the meetin'-house, as sightly a place as ever was, an' no good to you,—there ain't half a load o' hay cut there in a season,—an' he'd pay the full vally"—
"Stop!" called Nicholas; and though his tone was conversational, Hattie paused, open-mouthed, in full swing. He turned and faced her. "Hattie," said he, "did you know that the fust settlers of this town had anything to do with that lot o' land?"
"No, I didn't know it," answered Hattie blankly.
"I guess you didn't," concurred Nicholas. He had gone back to his old gentleness of voice. "An' 't wouldn't ha' meant nothin' to ye, if ye had known it. Now, you harken to me! It's my last word. That Flat-Iron Lot stays under this name so long as I'm above ground. When I'm gone, you can do as ye like. Now, I don't want to hurry ye, but I'm goin' down to vote."
Hattie rose, abashed and nearly terrified. "Well!" said she vacantly. "Well!" Nicholas had taken the broom, under pretext of brushing up the crumbs, and he seemed literally to be sweeping her away. It was a windof destiny; and scudding softly and heavily before it, she disappeared in the gathering dusk.
"Mary!" she called from the gate, "Mary! Guess you better come along with me."
Mary did not hear. She was standing by Nicholas, holding the edge of his sleeve. The unaccustomed action was significant; it bespoke a passionate loyalty. Her blue eyes were on fire, and two hot tears stood in them, unstanched. "O gran'ther!" she cried, "don't you let 'em have it. I wish I was father. I'd see!"
Nicholas Oldfield stood quite still, obedient to that touch upon his arm.
"It's the name, Mary," said he. "Why, Freeman Henry's a Titcomb! He can't help that. But he needn't think he can buy Oldfield land, an' set up a house there, as if 't was all in the day's work. Why, Mary, I meant to leave that land to you! An' p'raps you won't marry. Nobody knows. Then, 't would stand in the name a mite longer."
Mary blushed a little, but her eyes never wavered.
"No, gran'ther," said she firmly, "I sha'n't ever marry anybody."
"Well, ye can't tell," responded Nicholas, with a sigh. "Ye can't tell. He might take your name if he wanted ye enough; but I should call it a poor tool that would do that."
He sighed again, as he reached for his hat, and Mary and he went out of the house together, hand in hand. At the gate they parted, and Nicholas took his way to the schoolhouse, where the town fathers were already assembled.
Since he passed over it that afternoon, the road had changed, responsive to twilight and the coming dark. Nicholas knew it in all its phases, from the dawn of spring, vocal with the peeping of frogs, to the revery of winter, the silence of snow, and a hopeful glow in the west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the strangeness and wonder of the time, how the north had streamed, and the neighboring houses had been rosy red. But at this hour of the brooding, sultry fall, there was a bitter fragrance in the air, and the world seemed tuned to the somnolent sound of crickets, singing the fields to sleep. That one little note brooded over the earth, and all the living things upon it: hovering, and crooning, and lulling them to the rest decreed from of old. The homely beauty of it smote upon him, though it could not cheer. A hideous progress seemed to threaten, not alone the few details it touched, but all the sweet, familiar things of life. Old War-WoolEaton, in assailing the town's historic peace, menaced also the crickets and the breath of asters in the air. He was the rampant spirit of an awful change. So, in the bitterness of revolt, Nicholas Oldfield marched on, and stepped silently into the little schoolhouse, to meet his fellows. They were standing about in groups, each laying down the law according to his kind. The doors were wide open, and Nicholas felt as if he had brought in with him the sounds of coming night. They kept him sane, so that he could hold his own, as he might not have done in a room full of winter brightness.
"Hullo!" cried Caleb Rivers, in his neutral voice. "Here's Mr. Oldfield. Well, Mr. Oldfield, there's a good deal on hand."
"Called any votes?" asked Nicholas.
"Well, no," said Caleb, scraping his chin. "I guess we're sort o' takin' the sense o' the meetin'."
"Good deal like a quiltin' so fur," remarked Brad Freeman indulgently. "All gab an' no git there!"
"They tell me," said Uncle Eli Pike, approaching Nicholas as if he had something to confide, "that out west, where they have them new-fangled clocks, they're all lighted up with 'lectricity."
"Do they so?" asked Caleb, but Nicholas returned, with an unwonted fierceness:—
"Does that go to the right spot with you? Do you want to see a clock-face starin' over Tiverton, like a full moon, chargin' ye to keep Old War-Wool Eaton in memory?"
"Well, no," replied Eli gently, "I dunno's I do, an' I dunnobutI do."
"Might set a lantern back o' the dial, an' take turns lightin' on 't," suggested Brad Freeman.
"Might carve out a jack-o'-lantern like Old Eaton's face," supplemented Tom O'Neil irreverently.
"Well," concluded Rivers, "I guess, when all's said and done, we might as well take the clock, an' bell, too. When a man makes a fair offer, it's no more'n civil to close with it. Ye can't rightly heave it back ag'in."
"My argyment is," put in Ebenezer Tolman, who knew how to lay dollar by dollar, "if he's willin' to do one thing for the town, he's willin' to do another. S'pose he offered us a new brick meetin'-house—or a fancy gate to the cemet'ry! Or s'pose he had it in mind to fill in that low land, so 't we could bury there! Why, he could bring the town right up! Or, take it t' other way round; he could put every dollar he's got into Sudleigh."
Nicholas Oldfield groaned, but in the stress of voices no one heard him. He slipped about from one group to another, and always the sentiment was the same. A few smiled at OldWar-Wool Eaton, who desired so urgently to be remembered, when no one was likely to forget him; but all agreed that it was, at the worst, a harmless and natural folly.
"Let him be remembered," said one, with a large impartiality. "'T won't do us no hurt, an' we shall have the clock an' bell."
Just as the meeting was called to order, Nicholas Oldfield stole away, and no one missed him. The proceedings began with some animated discussion, all tending one way. Cupidity had entered into the public soul, and everybody professed himself willing to take the clock, lest, by refusing, some golden future should be marred. Let Old Eaton have his way, if thereby they might beguile him into paving theirs. Let the town grow. Talk was very full and free; but when the moment came for taking a vote, an unexpected sound broke roundly on the air. It was the bell of the old church. One! it tolled. Each man looked at his neighbor. Had death entered the village, and they unaware? Two! three! it went solemnly on, the mellow cadence scarcely dying before another stroke renewed it. The sexton was Simeon Pease, a little red-headed man, a hunchback, abnormally strong. Suddenly he rose in amazement. His face looked ashen.
"Suthin's tollin' the bell!" he gasped. "The bell's a-tollin' an'I ain't there!"
A new element of mystery and terror sprang to life.
"The sax'on's here!" whispered one and another. But nobody stirred, for nobody would lose count. Twenty-three! the dead was young. Twenty-four! and so it marched and marched, to thirty and thirty-five. They looked about them, taking a swift inventory of familiar faces, and more than one man felt a tightening about his heart, at thought of the women-folk at home. The record climbed to middle-age, and tolled majestically beyond it, like a life ripening to victorious close. Sixty! seventy! eighty-one!
"It ain't Pa'son True!" whispered an awe-struck voice.
Then on it beat, to the completed century.
The women of Tiverton, in afterwards weighing the immobility of their public representatives under this mysterious clangor, dwelt upon the fact with scorn.
"Well, I should think you was smart!" cried sundry of them in turn. "Set there like a bump on a log, an' wonder what's the matter! Never heard of anything so numb in all my born days. If I was a man, I guess I'd see!"
It was Brad Freeman who broke the spell, with a sudden thought and cry,—
"By thunder! maybe's suthin's afire!"
He leaped to his feet, and with long, lopingstrides made his way up the hill to Tiverton church. The men, in one excited, surging rabble, followed him. The women were before them. They, too, had heard the tolling for the unknown dead, and had climbed a quicker way, leaving fire and cradle behind. At the very moment when they were pressing, men and women, to the open church door, the last lingering clang had ceased, the bell lay humming itself to rest, and Nicholas Oldfield strode out and faced them. By this time, factions had broken up, and each woman instinctively sought her husband's side, assuring herself of protection against the unresting things of the spirit. Young Nick's Hattie found her lawful ally, with the rest.
"My soul!" said she in a whisper, "it's father!"
Nicholas touched her arm in warning, and stood silent. He felt that the waters were troubled, as he had known them to be once or twice in his boyhood.
"He's got his mad up," remarked Young Nick to himself. "Stan' from under!"
Nicholas strode through the crowd, and it separated to let him pass. There was about him at that moment an amazing physical energy, apparent even in the dark. He seemed a different man, and one woman whispered to another, "Why, that can't be Mr. Oldfield! It's a head taller."
He walked across the green, and the crowd turned also, to follow him. There, just opposite the church, lay his own Flat-Iron Lot, and he stepped into it, over the low stone boundary, and turned about.
"Don't ye come no nearer," called he. "This is my land. Don't ye set foot on it."
The Flat-Iron Lot was a triangular piece of ground, rich in drooping elms, and otherwise varied only by a great boulder looming up within the wall nearest the church. Nicholas paused for a moment where he was; then with a thought of being the better heard, he turned, ran up the rough side of the boulder, and faced his fellows. As he stood there, illumined by the rising moon, he seemed colossal.
"He'll break his infernal old neck!" said Brad Freeman admiringly. But no one answered, for Nicholas Oldfield had begun to speak.
"Don't ye set foot on my land!" he repeated. "Ye ain't wuth it. Do you know what this land is? It belonged to a man that settled in a place that knows enough to celebrate its foundin', but don't know enough to prize what's fell to it. Do you know what I was doin' of, when I tolled that bell? I'll tell ye. I tolled a hunderd an' ten strokes. That's the age of the bell you're goin' to throw aside to flatter up a man that made money out o' thewar. A hunderd an' twelve years ago that bell was cast in England; a hunderd an' ten years ago 't was sent over here."
"Now, how's father know that?" whispered Hattie disparagingly.
"I've cast my vote. Them hunderd an' ten strokes is all the voice I'll have in the matter, or any matter, so long as I live in this God-forsaken town. I'd ruther die than talk over a thing like that in open meetin'. It's an insult to them that went before ye, an' fit hunger and cold an' Injuns. I've got only one thing more to say," he continued, and some fancied there came a little break in his voice. "When ye take the old bell down, send her out to sea, an' sink her; or bury her deep enough in the woods, so 't nobody'll git at her till the Judgment Day."
With one descending step, he seemed to melt away into the darkness; and though every one stood quite still, expectant, there was no sound, save that of the crickets and the night. He had gone, and left them trembling. Well as they knew him, he had all the effect of some strange herald, freighted with wisdom from another sphere.
"Well, I swear!" said Brad Freeman, at length, and as if a word could shiver the spell, men and woman turned silently about and went down the hill. When they reached a lower plane, they stopped to talk a little, and onceindoors, discussion had its way. Young Nick and Hattie had walked side by side, feeling that the eyes of the town were on them, reading their emblazoned names. But Mary marched behind them, solemnly and alone. She held her head very high, knowing what her kinsfolk thought: that gran'ther had disgraced them. A passionate protest rose within her.
That night, everybody watched the old house in the shade of the poplars, to see if Nicholas had "lighted up." But the windows lay dark, and little Mary, slipping over across the orchard, when her mother thought her safe in bed, tried the door in vain. She pushed at it wildly, and then ran round to the front, charging against the sentinel hollyhocks, and letting the knocker fall with a desperate and repeated clang. The noise she had herself evoked frightened her more than the stillness, and she fled home again, crying softly, and pursued by all the unresponsive presences of night.
For weeks Tiverton lay in a state of hushed expectancy; one miracle seemed to promise another. But Nicholas Oldfield's house was really closed; the windows shone blankly at men and women who passed, interrogating it. Young Nick and his Hattie had nothing to say, after Hattie's one unguarded admission that she didn't know what possessed father. The village felt that it had been arraigned before some high tribunal, only to be found lacking. It had an irritated conviction that, meaning no harm, it should not have been dealt with so harshly; and was even moved to declare that, if Nicholas Oldfield knew so much about what was past and gone, he needn't have waited till the trump o' doom to say so. But, somehow, the affair of clock and bell could not be at once revived, and a vague letter was dispatched to the prospective donor stating that, in regard to his generous offer, no decision could at the moment be reached; the town was too busy in preparing for its celebration, which would take place in something over two weeks; after that the question would be considered. The truth was that, at the bottom of each heart, still lurked the natural cupidity of the loyal citizen who will not see his town denied; but side by side with that desire for the march of progress, walked the spectre of Nicholas Oldfield's wrath. The trembling consciousness prevailed that he might at any moment descend again, wrapped in that inexplicable atmosphere of loftier meanings.
Still, Tiverton was glad to put the question by, for she had enough to do. The celebration knocked at the door, and no one was ready. Only Brad Freeman, always behindhand, save at some momentary exigency of rod or gun, was fulfilling the prophecy that thelast shall be first. For he had, out of the spontaneity of genius, elected to do one deed for that great day, and his work was all but accomplished. In public conclave assembled to discuss the parade, he had offered to make an elephant, to lead the van. Tiverton roared, and then, finding him gravely silent, remained, with gaping mouth, to hear his story. It seemed, then, that Brad had always cherished one dear ambition. He would fain fashion an elephant; and having never heard of Frankenstein, he lacked anticipation of the dramatic finale likely to attend a meddling with the creative powers. He did not confess, save once to his own wife, how many nights he had lain awake, in their little dark bedroom, planning the anatomy of the eastern lord; he simply said that he "wanted to make the critter," and he thought he could do it. Immediately the town gave him to understand that he had full power to draw upon the public treasury, to the extent of one elephant; and the youth, who always flocked adoringly about him, intimated that they were with him, heart and soul. Thereupon, in Eli Pike's barn, selected as of goodly size, creation reveled, the while a couple of men, chosen for their true eye and practiced hand, went into the woods, and chopped down two beautiful slender trees for tusks. For many a day now, the atmosphere of sacred art had hung about thatbarn. Brad was a maker, and everybody felt it. Fired by no tradition of the horse that went to the undoing of Troy, and with no plan before him, he set his framework together, nailing with unerring hand. Did he need a design, he who had brooded over his bliss these many months when Tiverton thought he was "jest lazin' round?" Nay, it was to be "all wrought out of the carver's brain," and the brain was ready.
Often have I wished some worthy chronicler had been at hand when Tiverton sat by at the making of the elephant; and then again I have realized that, though the atmosphere was highly charged, it may have been void of homely talk. For this was a serious moment, and even when Brad gave sandpaper and glass into the hands of Lothrop Wilson, the cooper, bidding him smooth and polish the tusks, there was no jealousy: only a solemn sense that Mr. Wilson had been greatly favored. Brad's wife sewed together a dark slate-colored cambric, for the elephant's hide, and wet and wrinkled it, as her husband bade her, for the shambling shoulders and flanks. It was she who made the ears, from a pattern cunningly conceived; and she stuffed the legs with fine shavings brought from the planing-mill at Sudleigh. Then there came an intoxicating day when the trunk took shape, the glass-bottle eyes were inserted, and Brad sprung upon a breathless world his onesurprise. Between the creature's fore-legs, he disclosed an opening, saying meantime to the smallest Crane boy,—
"You crawl up there!"
The Crane boy was not valiant, but he reasoned that it was better to seek an unguessed fate within the elephant than to refuse immortal glory. Trembling, he crept into the hole, and was eclipsed.
"Now put your hand up an' grip that rope that's hangin' there," commanded Brad. Perhaps he, too, trembled a little. The heart beats fast when we approach a great fruition.
"Pull it! Easy, now! easy!"
The boy pulled, and the elephant moved his trunk. He stretched it out, he drew it in. Never was such a miracle before. And Tiverton, drunk with glory, clapped and shouted until the women-folk clutched their sunbonnets and ran to see. No situation since the war had ever excited such ferment. Brad was the hero of his town. But now arose a natural rivalry, the reaction from great, impersonal joy in noble work. What lad, on that final day, should ride within the elephant, and move his trunk? The Crane boy contended passionately that he held the right of possession. Had he not been selected first? Others wept at home and argued the case abroad, until it became a common thing to see two young scions of Tiverton grappling in dusty roadways,or stoning each other from afar. The public accommodated itself to such spectacles, and grown-up relatives, when they came upon little sons rolling over and over, or sitting triumphantly, the one upon another's chest, would only remark, as they gripped two shirt collars, and dragged the combatants apart:—
"Now, what do you want to act so for? Brad'll pick out the one he thinks best. He's got the say."
In vain did mothers argue, at twilight time, when the little dusty legs in overalls were still, and stubbed toes did their last wriggling for the day, that the boy who moved the trunk could not possibly see the rest of the procession. The candidates, to a boy, rejected that specious plea.
"What do I want to see anything for, if I can jest set inside that elephant?" sobbed the Crane boy angrily. And under every roof the wail was repeated in many keys.
Meantime, the log cabin had been going steadily up, and a week before the great day, it was completed. This was a typical scene-setting,—the cabin of a first settler,—and through one wild leap of fancy it became suddenly and dramatically dignified.
"For the land's sake!" said aunt Lucindy, when she went by and saw it standing, in modest worth, "ain't they goin' todoanythin' with it? Jest let it set there? Why underthe sun don't they have a party of Injuns tackle it?"
The woman who heard repeated the remark as a sample of aunt Lucindy's desire to have everything "all of a whew;" but when it came to the ears of a certain young man who had sat brooding, in silent emulation, over the birth of the elephant, he rose, with fire in his eye, and went to seek his mates. Indians there should be, and he, by right of first desire, should become their leader. Thereupon, turkey feathers came into great demand, and wattled fowl, once glorious, went drooping dejectedly about, while maidens sat in doorways sewing wampum and leggings for their favored swains. The first rehearsal of this aboriginal drama was not an entire success, because the leader, being unimaginative though faithful, decreed that faces should be blackened with burnt cork; and the result was a tribe of the African race, greatly astonished at their own appearance in the family mirror. Then the doctor suggested walnut juice, and all went conformably again. But each man wanted to be an Indian, and no one professed himself willing to suffer the attack.
"I'll stay in the cabin, if I can shoot, an' drop a redskin every time," said Dana Marden stubbornly; but no redskin would consent to be dropped, and naturally no settler could yield. It would ill befit that glorious day tosee the log cabin taken; but, on the other hand, what loyal citizen could allow himself to be defeated, even as a skulking redman, at the very hour of Tiverton's triumph? For a time a peaceful solution was promised by the doctor, who proposed that a party of settlers on horseback should come to the rescue, just when a settler's wife, within the cabin, was in danger of immolation. That seemed logical and right, and for days thereafter young men on astonished farm horses went sweeping down Tiverton Street, alternately pursuing and pursued, while Isabel North, as Priscilla, the Puritan maiden, trembled realistically at the cabin door. Just why she was to be Priscilla, a daughter of Massachusetts, Isabel never knew; the name had struck the popular fancy, and she made her costume accordingly. But one day, when young Tiverton was galloping about the town, to the sound of ecstatic yells, a farmer drew up his horse to inquire:—
"Now see here! there's one thing that's got to be settled. When the day comes, who's goin' to beat?"
An Indian, his face scarlet with much sound, and his later state not yet apparent, in that his wampum, blanket, and horsehair wig lay at home, on the best-room bed, made answer hoarsely, "We be!"
"Not by a long chalk!" returned the other, and the settlers growled in unison. They hadall a patriot's pride in upholding white blood against red.
"Well, by gum! then you can look out for your own Injuns!" returned their chief. "Mylast gun's fired."
Settlers and Indians turned sulkily about; they rode home in two separate factions, and the streets were stilled. Isabel North went faithfully on, making her Priscilla dress, but it seemed, in those days, as if she might remain in her log cabin, unattacked and undefended. Tiverton was to be deprived of its one dramatic spectacle. Young men met one another in the streets, remarked gloomily, "How are ye?" and passed by. There were no more curdling yells at which even the oxen lifted their dull ears; and one youth went so far as to pack his Indian suit sadly away in the garret, as a jilted girl might lay aside her wedding gown. It was a sullen and all but universal feud.
Now in all this time two prominent citizens had let public opinion riot as it would,—the minister and the doctor. The minister, a grave-faced, brown-bearded young man, had seen fit to get run down, and have an attack of slow fever, from which he was just recovering; and the doctor had been spending most of his time in Saltash, with an epidemic of mumps. But the mumps subsided, and the minister gained strength; so, being public-spirited men, these two at once concerned themselves in village affairs. The first thing the minister did was to call on Nicholas Oldfield, and Young Nick's Hattie saw him there, knocking at the front door.
"Mary! Mary!" cried she, "if there ain't the young pa'son over to your grandpa's. I dunno when anybody's called there, he's away so much. Like as not he's heard how father carried on that night, an' now he's got out, he's come right over, first thing, to tell him what folks think."
Mary looked up from the serpentine braid she was crocheting.
"Well, I guess he'd better not," she threatened. And her mother, absorbed by curiosity, contented herself with the reproof implied in a shaken head and pursed-up lips.
A sad and curious change had befallen Mary. She looked older. One week had dimmed her brightness, and little puckers between her eyes were telling a story of anxious care. For gran'ther had been home without her seeing him. Mary felt as if he had repudiated the town. She knew well that he had not abandoned her with it, but she could guess what the loss of larger issues meant to him. Young Nick, if he had been in the habit of expressing himself, would have said that father's mad was still up. Mary knew he was grieved, and she grieved also. She had not expected him until the endof the week. Then watching wistfully, she saw the darkness come, and knew next day would bring him; but the next day it was the same. One placid afternoon, a quick thought assailed her, and stained her cheek with crimson. She laid down the sheet which was her "stent" of over-edge, and ran with flying feet to the little house. Hanging by her hands upon the sill of the window nearest the clock, she laid her ear to the glass. The clock was ticking serenely, as of old. Gran'ther had been home to wind it. So he had come in the night, and slipped away again in silence!
"There! he's gi'n it up!" cried Hattie, still watching the minister. "He's turnin' down the path. My land! he's headed this way. He's comin' here. You beat up that cushion, an' throw open the best-room door. My soul! if your grandpa's goin' to set the whole town by the ears, I wisht he'd come home an' fight his own battles!"
Hattie did not look at her young daughter; but if she had looked, she might have been amazed. Mary stood firm as iron; she was more than ever a chip o' the old block.
When the young minister had somewhat weakly climbed the two front steps, he elected not to sit in the best room, for he was a little chilly, and would like the sun. Presently he was installed in the new cane-backed rocker,and Mrs. Oldfield had offered him some currant wine.
"Though I dunno's you would," said she, anxiously flaunting a principle righteous as his own. "I s'pose you're teetotal."
The minister would not have wine, and he could not stay.
"I've really come on business," said he. "Do you know anything about Mr. Oldfield?"
So strong was the family conviction that Nicholas had involved them in disgrace, that Mary glanced up fiercely, and her mother gave an apologetic cough.
"Well," said Young Nick's Hattie, "I dunno's I know anything particular about father."
"Where is he, I mean," asked the minister. "I want to see him. I've got to."
"Gran'ther's gone away," announced Mary, looking up at him with hot and loyal eyes. "We don't know where." Her fingers trembled, and she lost her stitch. She was furious with herself for not being calmer. It seemed as if gran'ther had a right to demand it of her. The minister bent his brows impatiently.
"Why, I depended on seeing Mr. Oldfield," said he, with the fractiousness of a man recently ill. "This sickness of mine has put me back tremendously. I've got to make the address, and I don't know what to say. Imeant to read town records and hunt up old stories; and then when I was sick I thought, 'Never mind! Mr. Oldfield will have it all at his tongue's end.' And now he isn't here, and I'm all at sea without him."
This was perhaps the first time that Young Nick's Hattie had ever looked upon her father's pursuits with anything but a pitying eye. A frown of perplexity grew between her brows. Her brain ached in expanding. Mary leaned forward, her face irradiated with pure delight.
"Why, yes," said she, at once accepting the minister for a friend, "gran'ther could tell you, if he was here. He knows everything."
"You see," continued the minister, now addressing her, "there are facts enough that are common talk about the town, but we only half know them. The first settlers came from Devon. Well, where did they enter the town? From which point? Sudleigh side, or along by the river? I incline to the river. The doctor says it would be a fine symbolic thing to take the procession up to the church by the very way the first settlers came in. But where was it? I don't know, and nobody does, unless it's Nicholas Oldfield."
Mary folded her hands, in proud composure.
"Yes, sir," said she, "gran'ther knows. He could tell you, if he was here."
"I should like to inquire what makes you so certain, Mary Oldfield," asked her mother,with the natural irritation of the unprepared. "I should like to know how father's got hold of things pa'son and doctor ain't neither of 'em heard of?"
"Why," said the minister, rising, "he's simply crammed with town legends. He can repeat them by the yard. He's a local historian. But then, I needn't tell you that; you know what an untiring student he has been." And he went away thoughtful and discouraged, omitting, as Hattie realized with awe, to offer prayer.
Mary stepped joyously about, getting supper and singing "Hearken, Ye Sprightly!" in an exultant voice; but her mother brooded. It was not until dusk, when the three sat before the clock-room fire, "blazed" rather for company than warmth, that Young Nick's Hattie opened her mouth and spoke.
"Mary," said she, "how'd you find out your grandpa was such great shakes?"
Mary was in some things much older than her mother. She answered demurely, "I don't know as I can say."
"Nick," continued Hattie, turning to her spouse, "did you ever hear your father was smarter'n the minister an' doctor put together, so 't they had to run round beseechin' him to tell 'em how to act?"
Nicholas knocked his pipe against the andiron, and rose, to lay it carefully on the shelf."I can't say's I did," he returned. Then he set forth for Eli Pike's barn, where it was customary now to stand about the elephant and prophesy what Tiverton might become. As for Hattie, realizing how little light she was likely to borrow from those who were nearest and dearest her, she remarked that she should like to shake them both.
The next day began a new and exciting era. It was bruited abroad that the presence of Nicholas Oldfield was necessary for the success of the celebration; and now young men but lately engaged in unprofitable warfare rode madly over the county in search of him. They inquired for him at taverns; they sought him in farmhouses where he had been wont to lodge. He gained almost the terrible notoriety of an absconding cashier; and the current issue of the Sudleigh "Star" wore a flaming headline, "No Trace of Mr. Oldfield Yet!"
Mary at first waxed merry over the pursuit. She knew very well why gran'ther was staying away; and her pride grew insolent at seeing him sought in vain. But when his loss flared out at her in sacred print, she stared for a moment, and then, after that wide-eyed, piteous glance at the possibilities of things, walked with a firm tread to her little room. There she knelt down, and buried her face in the bed, being careful, meanwhile, not to rumple the valance. At last she knew the truth; he wasdead, and village gossip seemed a small thing in comparison.
It would have been difficult, as time went on, to convince the rest of the township that Mr. Oldfield was not in a better world.
"They'd ha' found him, if he's above ground," said the fathers, full of faith in the detective instinct of their coursing sons. It seemed incredible that sons should ride so fast and far, and come to nothing. "Never was known to go out o' the county, an' they've rid over it from one eend to t' other. Must ha' made way with himself. He wa'n't quite right, that time he tolled the bell."