Wayfarers on the far side of Our Square used to stop before Number 37
and wonder. The little house, it seemed, was making music at them.
"Kleam, kleam, kleam, kleam," it would pipe pleasantly.
"BHONG! BHONG! BHONG!" solemn and churchly, in rebuke of its own levity.
"Kung-_glang_! Kung-_glang_! Kung-_glang_! Kung-_glang_! Kung-_glang_!"
That was a duet in the middle register.
Then from some far-off aerie would ring the tocsin of an elfin
silversmith, fast, furious, and tiny:
"Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!"
We surmised that a retired Swiss bell-ringer had secluded himself in our
remote backwater of the great city to mature fresh combinations of
his art.
Before the Voices came, Number 37 was as quiet a house as any in the
Square. Quieter than most, since it was vacant much of the time and the
ceremonious sign of the Mordaunt Estate, "For Rental to Suitable
Tenant," invited inspection. "Suitable" is the catch in that
innocent-appearing legend. For the Mordaunt Estate, which is no estate
at all and never has been, but an ex-butcher of elegant proclivities
named Wagboom, prefers to rent its properties on a basis of prejudice
rather than profit, and is quite capable of rejecting an applicant as
unsuitable on purely eclectic grounds, such as garlic for breakfast, or
a glass eye.
How the new tenant had contrived to commend himself to Mr.
Mordaunt-Wagboom is something of a mystery. Probably it was his name
rather than his appearance, which was shiny, not to say seedy. He
encountered the Estate when that incorporated gentleman was engaged in
painting the front door, and, in a deprecating voice, inquired whether
twenty-five dollars a month would be considered.
"Maybe," returned the Estate, whereupon the stranger introduced himself,
with a stiff little bow, as Mr. Winslow Merivale.
Mr. Wagboom was favorably impressed with this, as possessing
aristocratic implications.
"The name," he pronounced, "is satisfactory. The sum is satisfactory. It
is, however, essential that the lessor should measure up in character
and status to the standards of the Mordaunt Estate." This he had adapted
from the prospectus of a correspondence school, which had come to him
through the mail, very genteelly worded. "Family man?" he added briskly.
"Yes, sir."
"How many of you?"
"Two."
"Wife?"
"No, sir," said the little man, very low.
"Son? Daughter? What age?"
"I have never been blessed with a child."
"Then who--"
"Willy Woolly would share the house with me, sir."
For the first time the Mordaunt Estate noticed a small, fluffy poodle,
with an important expression, seated behind the railing.
"I don't like dogs," said the Mordaunt Estate curtly.
"Willy Woolly"--Mr. Winslow Merivale addressed his companion--"this
gentleman does not like dogs."
The Mordaunt Estate felt suddenly convicted of social error. The feeling
deepened when Willy Woolly advanced, reckoned him up with an appraising
eye, and, without the slightest loss of dignity, raised himself on his
hind legs, offering the gesture of supplication. He did not, however,
droop his paws in the accepted canine style; he joined them, finger tip
to finger tip, elegantly and piously, after the manner of the
Maiden's Prayer.
The Estate promptly capitulated.
"Some pup!" he exclaimed. "When did you want to move in?"
"At once, if you please."
Before the Estate had finished his artistic improvements on the front
door, the new tenant had begun the transfer of his simple lares and
penates in a big hand-propelled pushcart. The initial load consisted in
the usual implements of eating, sitting, and sleeping. But the burden of
the half-dozen succeeding trips was homogeneous. Clocks. Big clocks,
little clocks, old clocks, new clocks, fat clocks, lean clocks, solemn
clocks, fussy clocks, clocks of red, of green, of brown, of pink, of
white, of orange, of blue, clocks that sang, and clocks that rang,
clocks that whistled, and blared, and piped, and drummed. One by one,
the owner established them in their new domicile, adjusted them, dusted
them, and wound them, and, as they set themselves once more to their
meticulous busy-ness, that place which had for so long been muffled in
quiet and deadened with dust, gave forth the tiny bustle of unresting
mechanism and the pleasant chime of the hours. Number 37 became the
House of Silvery Voices.
* * * * *
Thus came to Our Square, to be one of us, for better or for worse, Mr.
Winslow Merivale, promptly rechristened Stepfather Time. The Bonnie
Lassie gave him the name. She said that only a stepfather could bring up
his charges so badly. For his clocks were both independent and
irresponsible, though through no fault of their own. When they were
wound they went. When they were unwound they rested. Seldom were more
than half of them simultaneously busy, and their differences of opinion
as to the hour were radical and irreconcilable. The big, emphatic
eight-day, opposite the front door, might proclaim that it was eleven,
only to be at once contradicted by the little tinkler on the parlor
mantel, which announced that it was six, thereby starting up the
cathedral case on the stairway and the Grandfather in the dining-room,
who held out respectively for eight and two, while all the time it was
really half-past one. Thence arose in the early days painful
misunderstandings on the part of Our Square, for we are a simple people
and deem it the duty of a timepiece to keep time. In particular we were
befooled by Grandfather, the solemn-voiced Ananias of a clock with a
long-range stroke and a most convincing manner. So that Schepstein, the
note-shaver, on his way to a profitable appointment at 11 A.M., heard
the hour strike (thirty-five minutes in advance of the best professional
opinion) from the House of Silvery Voices, and was impelled to the
recklessness of hiring a passing taxi, thereby reaching his destination
with half an hour to spare and half a dollar to lack, for which latter
he threatened to sue the Mordaunt Estate's tenant. To the credit side of
the house's account it must be set down that MacLachan, the tailor,
having started one of his disastrous drunks within the precincts of his
Home of Fashion, was on his way to finish it in the gutter via the
zigzag route from corner saloon to corner saloon, when the Twelve
Apostles clock in the basement window lifted up its voice and
(presumably through the influence of Peter) thrice denied the hour,
which was actually a quarter before midnight. "Losh!" said MacLachan,
who invariably reacted in tongue to the stimulus of Scotch whiskey,
"they'll a' be closed. Hame an' to bed wi' ye, waster of the priceless
hours!" And back he staggered to sleep it off.
Then there was the disastrous case of the Little Red Doctor, who set out
to attend a highly interesting consultation at 4 P.M. and, hearing
Grandfather Ananias strike three, erroneously concluded that he had
spare time to stop in for a peek at Madame Tallafferr's gout (which was
really vanity in the guise of tight shoes), and reached the hospital,
only to find it all over and the patient dead.
"It's an outrage," declared the Little Red Doctor fiercely, "that an old
lunatic can move in here from God-knows-where in a pushcart and play
merry hell with a hard-working practitioner's professional duties. And
you're the one to tell him so, Dominie. You're the diplomat of
the Square."
He even inveigled the Bonnie Lassie into backing him up in this
preposterous proposal. She had her own grievance against the House of
Silvery Voices.
"It isn't the way it plays tricks on time alone," said she. "There's one
clock in there that's worse than conscience."
And she brought her indictment against a raucous timepiece which was
wont to lead up to its striking with a long, preliminary
clack-and-whirr, alleging that twice, when she had quit her sculping
early because the clay was obdurate and wouldn't come right, and had
gone for a walk to clear her vision, the clock had accosted her in these
unjustifiable terms:
"Clacketty-whirr-rr-rr! Back-to-yer-worr-rr-rrk! Yerr-rr-rr-rr _wrong!
wrong! wrong! wrong!"_
"Wherefore," said the Bonnie Lassie, "your appellant prays that you be a
dear, good, stern, forbidding Dominie and go over to Number 37 and ask
him what he means by it, anyway, and tell him he's got to stop it."
Now, the Bonnie Lassie holds the power of the high, the middle, and the
low justice over all Our Square by the divine right of loveliness and
kindliness. So that evening I went while the Little Red Doctor, as a
self-constituted Committee in Waiting, sat on my bench. Stepfather Time
himself opened the door to me.
"What might they call you, sir, if I may ask?" he inquired with timid
courtesy.
"They might call me the Dominie hereabouts. And they do."
"I have heard of you." He motioned me to a seat in the bare little room,
alive with tickings and clickings. "You have lived long here, sir?"
"Long."
From some interminable distance a voice of time mocked me with a subtle
and solemn mockery: "_Long. Long. Long_."
My host waited for the clock to finish before he spoke again. As I
afterward discovered, this was his invariable custom.
"I, too, am an old man," he murmured.
"A hardy sixty, I should guess."
"A long life. Might I ask you a question, sir,' as to the folk in this
Square?" He hesitated a moment after I had nodded. "Are they, as one
might say, friendly? Neighborly?"