In the little villages along the Saco River, in the year 1850 or
thereabouts, the arrival and departure of the stage-coach was the one
exciting incident of the day. It did not run on schedule time in those
days, but started from Limington or Saco, as the case might be, at about
or somewhere near a certain hour, and arrived at the other end of the
route whenever it got there. There were no trains to meet (the railway
popularly known as the “York and Yank'em” was not built till 1862); the
roads were occasionally good and generally bad; and thus it was often
dusk, and sometimes late in the evening, when the lumbering vehicle
neared its final destination and drew up to the little post-offices
along the way. However late it might be, the village postmaster had to
be on hand to receive and open the mailbags; after which he distributed
the newspapers and letters in a primitive set of pine pigeon-holes on
the wall, turned out the loafers, “banked up” the fire, and went home to
bed.
“Life” Lane was a jolly good fellow,--just the man to sit on the box
seat and drive the three horses through ruts and “thank-you-ma'ams,”
slush and mud and snow. There was a perennial twinkle in his eye,
his ruddy cheeks were wrinkled with laughter, and he had a good story
forever on the tip of his tongue. He stood six feet two in his stockings
(his mother used to say she had the longest Life of any woman in the
State o' Maine); his shoulders were broad in proportion, and his lungs
just the sort to fill amply his noble chest. Therefore, when he had what
was called in the vernacular “turrible bad goin',” and when any other
stage-driver in York County would have shrunk into his muffler and
snapped and snarled on the slightest provocation, Life Lane opened his
great throat when he passed over the bridges at Moderation or Bonny
Eagle, and sent forth a golden, sonorous “Yo ho! halloo!” into the still
air. The later it was and the stormier it was, the more vigor he put
into the note, and it was a drowsy postmaster indeed who did not start
from his bench by the fire at the sound of that ringing halloo. Thus the
old stage-coach, in Life Lane's time, was generally called “The Midnight
Cry,” and not such a bad name either, whether the term was derisively
applied because the stage was always late; or whether Life's “Yo ho!”
had caught the popular fancy.
There was a pretty girl in Pleasant River (and, alas! another in Bonny
Eagle) who went to bed every night with the chickens, but stayed awake
till she heard first the rumble of heavy wheels on a bridge, then a
faint, bell-like tone that might have come out of the mouth of a silver
horn; whereupon she blushed as if it were an offer of marriage, and
turned over and went to sleep.
If the stage arrived in good season, Life would have a few minutes to
sit on the loafers' beach beside the big open fire; and what a feature
he was, with his tales culled from all sorts of passengers, who were
never so fluent as when sitting beside him “up in front!” There was a
tallow dip or two, and no other light save that of the fire. Who that
ever told a story could wish a more inspiring auditor than Jacob Bean,
a literal, honest old fellow who took the most vital interest in every
detail of the stories told, looking upon their heroes and their
villains as personal friends or foes. He always sat in one corner of the
fireplace, poker in hand, and the crowd tacitly allowed him the role of
Greek chorus. Indeed, nobody could have told a story properly without
Jake Bean's parentheses and punctuation marks poked in at exciting
junctures.
“That 's so every time!” he would say, with a lunge at the forestick.
“I'll bate he was glad then!” with another stick flung on in just the
right spot. “Golly! but that served 'em right!” with a thrust at the
backlog.
The New England story seemed to flourish under these conditions: a
couple of good hard benches in a store or tavern, where you could not
only smoke and chew but could keep on your hat (there was not a man in
York County in those days who could say anything worth hearing with his
hat off); the blazing logs to poke; and a cavernous fireplace into which
tobacco juice could be neatly and judiciously directed. Those were good
old times, and the stage-coach was a mighty thing when school children
were taught to take off their hats and make a bow as the United States
mail passed the old stage tavern.
Life Lane's coaching days were over long before this story begins, but
the Midnight Cry was still in pretty fair condition, and was driven
ostensibly by Jeremiah Todd, who lived on the “back-nippin'” road from
Bonny Eagle to Limington.
When I say ostensibly driven, I but follow the lead of the villagers,
who declared that, though Jerry held the reins, Mrs. Todd drove the
stage, as she drove everything else. As a proof of this lady's strong
individuality, she was still generally spoken of as “the Widder Bixby,”
though she had been six years wedded to Jeremiah Todd. The Widder Bixby,
then, was strong, self-reliant, valiant, indomitable. Jerry Todd was,
to use his wife's own characterization, so soft you could stick a cat's
tail into him without ruffling the fur. He was always alluded to as “the
Widder Bixby's husband;” but that was no new or special mortification,
for he had been known successively as Mrs. Todd's youngest baby, the
Widder Todd's only son, Susan Todd's brother, and, when Susan Todd's
oldest boy fought at Chapultepec, William Peck's uncle.
The Widder Bixby's record was far different. She was the mildest of the
four Stover sisters of Scarboro, and the quartette was supposed to
have furnished more kinds of temper than had ever before come from one
household. When Peace, the eldest, was mad, she frequently kicked the
churn out of the kitchen door, cream and all,--and that lost her a
husband.
Love, the second, married, and according to local tradition once kicked
her husband all the way up Foolscap Hill with a dried cod-fish. Charity,
the third, married too,--for the Stovers of Scarboro were handsome
girls, but she got a fit mate in her spouse. She failed to intimidate
him, for he was a foeman worthy of her steel; but she left his bed and
board, and left in a manner that kept up the credit of the Stover family
of Scarboro.
They had had a stormy breakfast one morning before he started to
Portland with a load of hay. “Good-by,” she called, as she stood in the
door, “you've seen the last of me!” “No such luck!” he said, and whipped
up his horse. Charity baked a great pile of biscuits, and left them on
the kitchen table with a pitcher of skimmed milk. (She wouldn't give
him anything to complain of, not she!) She then put a few clothes in a
bundle, and, tying on her shaker, prepared to walk to Pleasant River,
twelve miles distant. As she locked the door and put the key in its
accustomed place under the mat, a pleasant young man drove up and
explained that he was the advance agent of the Sypher's Two-in-One
Menagerie and Circus, soon to appear in that vicinity. He added that
he should be glad to give her five tickets to the entertainment if she
would allow him to paste a few handsome posters on that side of her barn
next the road; that their removal was attended with trifling difficulty,
owing to the nature of a very superior paste invented by himself; that
any small boy, in fact, could tear them off in an hour, and be well paid
by the gift of a ticket.
The devil entered into Charity (not by any means for the first time),
and she told the man composedly that if he would give her ten tickets he
might paper over the cottage as well as the barn, for they were going
to tear it down shortly and build a larger one. The advance agent was
delighted, and they passed a pleasant hour together; Charity holding the
paste-pot, while the talkative gentleman glued six lions and an elephant
on the roof, a fat lady on the front door, a tattooed man between the
windows, living skeletons on the blinds, and ladies insufficiently
clothed in all the vacant spaces and on the chimneys. Nobody went by
during the operation, and the agent remarked, as he unhitched his horse,
that he had never done a neater job. “Why, they'll come as far to see
your house as they will to the circus!” he exclaimed.
“I calculate they will,” said Charity, as she latched the gate and
started for Pleasant River.
I am not telling Charity Stover's story, so I will only add that
the bill-poster was mistaken in the nature of his paste, and greatly
undervalued its adhesive properties.
The temper of Prudence, the youngest sister, now Mrs. Todd, paled into
insignificance beside that of the others, but it was a very pretty thing
in tempers nevertheless, and would have been thought remarkable in any
other family in Scarboro.
You may have noted the fact that it is a person's virtues as often
as his vices that make him difficult to live with. Mrs. Todd's
masterfulness and even her jealousy might have been endured, by the
aid of fasting and prayer, but her neatness, her economy, and her
forehandedness made a combination that only the grace of God could have
abided with comfortably, so that Jerry Todd's comparative success is a
matter of local tradition. Punctuality is a praiseworthy virtue enough,
but as the years went on, Mrs. Todd blew her breakfast horn at so early
an hour that the neighbors were in some doubt as to whether it might not
herald the supper of the day before. They also predicted that she would
have her funeral before she was fairly dead, and related with great
gusto that when she heard there was to be an eclipse of the sun on
Monday, the 26th of July, she wished they could have it the 25th, as
Sunday would be so much more convenient than wash-day.
She had oilcloth on her kitchen to save the floor, and oilcloth mats to
save the oilcloth; yet Jerry's boots had to be taken off in the shed,
and he was required to walk through in his stocking feet. She blackened
her stove three times a day, washed her dishes in the woodhouse, in
order to keep her sink clean, and kept one pair of blinds open in the
sitting-room, but spread newspapers over the carpet wherever the sun
shone in.
It was the desire of Jerry's heart to give up the fatigues and exposures
of stage-driving, and “keep store,” but Mrs. Todd deemed it much better
for him to be in the open air than dealing out rum and molasses to a
roystering crew. This being her view of the case, it is unnecessary to
state that he went on driving the stage.
“Do you wear a flannel shirt, Jerry?” asked Pel Frost once. “I don'
know,” he replied, “ask Mis' Todd; she keeps the books.”
“Women-folks” (he used to say to a casual passenger), “like all other
animiles, has to be trained up before they're real good comp'ny. You
have to begin with 'em early, and begin as you mean to hold out. When
they once git in the habit of takin' the bit in their teeth and runnin',
it's too late for you to hold 'em in.”
It was only to strangers that he aired his convictions on the training
of “womenfolks,” though for that matter he might safely have done it
even at home; for everybody in Limington knew that it would always
have been too late to begin with the Widder Bixby, since, like all the
Stovers of Scarboro, she had been born with the bit in her teeth. Jerry
had never done anything he wanted to since he had married her, and he
hadn't really wanted to do that. He had been rather candid with her on
this point (as candid as a tender-hearted and obliging man can be with
a woman who is determined to marry him, and has two good reasons why she
should to every one of his why he shouldn't), and this may have been
the reason for her jealousy. Although by her superior force she had
overborne his visible reluctance, she, being a woman, or at all events
of the female gender, could never quite forget that she had done the
wooing.
Certainly his charms were not of the sort to tempt women from the
strict and narrow path, yet the fact remained that the Widder Bixby was
jealous, and more than one person in Limington was aware of it.
Pelatiah, otherwise “Pel” Frost, knew more about the matter than most
other folks, because he had unlimited time to devote to general culture.
Though not yet thirty years old, he was the laziest man in York County.
(Jabe Slocum had not then established his record; and Jot Bascom had
ruined his by cutting his hay before it was dead in the summer of '49,
always alluded to afterwards in Pleasant River as the year when gold was
discovered and Jot Bascom cut his hay.)
Pel was a general favorite in half a dozen villages, where he was the
life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to
one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six
of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal
of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other
ne'er-do-weels. You may be sure he was no favorite of Mrs. Todd's; and
she represented to him all that is most undesirable in womankind, his
taste running decidedly to rosy, smiling, easy-going ones who had no
regular hours for meals, but could have a dinner on the table any time
in fifteen minutes after you got there.
Now, a certain lady with a noticeable green frock and a white “drawn-in”
cape bonnet had graced the Midnight Cry on its journey from Limington to
Saco on three occasions during the month of July. Report said that she
was a stranger who had appeared at the post-office in a wagon driven by
a small, freckled boy.
The first trip passed without comment; the second provoked some
discussion; on the occasion of the third, Mrs. Todd said nothing,
because there seemed nothing to say, but she felt so out-of-sorts that
she cut Jerry's hair close to his head, though he particularly fancied
the thin fringe of curls at the nape of his neck.
Pel Frost went over to Todd's one morning to borrow an axe, and seized
a favorable opportunity to ask casually, “Oh, Mis' Todd, did Jerry find
out the name o' that woman in a green dress and white bunnit that rid to
Saco with him last week?”
“Mr. Todd's got something better to do than get acquainted with his lady
passengers,” snapped Mrs. Todd, “'specially as they always ride inside.”
“I know they gen'ally do,” said Pel, shouldering the axe (it was for
his mother's use), “but this one rides up in front part o' the way, so I
thought mebbe Jerry 'd find out something 'bout her. She's han'some as a
picture, but she must have a good strong back to make the trip down 'n'
up in one day.”
Nothing could have been more effective or more effectual than this
blow dealt with consummate skill. Having thus driven the iron into Mrs.
Todd's soul, Pel entertained his mother with an account of the interview
while she chopped the kindling-wood. He had no special end in view when,
Iago-like, he dropped his first poisoned seed in Mrs. Todd's fertile
mind, or, at most, nothing worse than the hope that matters might reach
an unendurable point, and Jerry might strike for his altars and his
fires. Jerry was a man and a brother, and petticoat government must
be discouraged whenever and wherever possible, or the world would soon
cease to be a safe place to live in. Pel's idea grew upon him in the
night watches, and the next morning he searched his mother's garret till
he found a green dress and a white bonnet. Putting them in a basket, he
walked out on the road a little distance till he met the stage, when,
finding no passengers inside, he asked Jerry to let him jump in and
“ride a piece.” Once within, he hastily donned the green wrapper and
tell-tale headgear, and, when the Midnight Cry rattled down the stony
hill past the Todd house, Pel took good care to expose a large green
sleeve and the side of a white bonnet at the stage window. It was easy
enough to cram the things back into the basket, jump out, and call a
cordial thank you to the unsuspecting Jerry. He was rewarded for his
ingenuity and enterprise at night, when he returned Mrs. Todd's axe, for
just as he reached the back door he distinctly heard her say that if she
saw that green woman on the stage again, she would knock her off with a
broomstick as sure as she was a Stover of Scarboro. As a matter of fact
she was equal to it. Her great-grandmother had been born on a soil where
the broomstick is a prominent factor in settling connubial differences;
and if it occurred to her at this juncture, it is a satisfactory proof
of the theory of atavism.
Pel intended to see this domestic tragedy through to the end, and
accordingly took another brief trip in costume the very next week,
hoping to be the witness of a scene of blood and carnage. But Mrs. Todd
did not stir from her house, although he was confident she had seen “my
lady green-sleeves” from her post at the window. Puzzled by her apathy,
and much disappointed in her temper, he took off the dress, and,
climbing up in front, rode to Moderation, where he received an urgent
invitation to go over to the county fair at Gorham. The last idea was
always the most captivating to Pel, and he departed serenely for a stay
of several days without so much luggage as a hairbrush. His mother's
best clothespin basket, to say nothing of its contents, appeared at this
juncture to be an unexpected incumbrance; so on the spur of the moment
he handed it up to Jerry just as the stage was starting, saying, “If
Mis' Todd has a brash to-night, you can clear yourself by showing her
this basket, but for massy sakes don't lay it on to me! You can stan' it
better'n I can,--you 're more used to it!”
Jerry took the basket, and when he was well out on the road he looked
inside and saw a bright green calico wrapper, a white cape bonnet, a
white “fall veil,” and a pair of white cotton gloves. He had ample time
for reflection, for it was a hot day, and though he drove slowly, the
horses were sweating at every pore. Pel Frost, then, must have overheard
his wife's storm of reproaches, perhaps even her threats of violence.
It had come to this, that he was the village laughing-stock, a butt of
ridicule at the store and tavern.
Now, two years before this, Jerry Todd had for the first and only time
in his married life “put his foot down.” Mrs. Todd had insisted on
making him a suit of clothes much against his wishes. When finished she
put them on him almost by main force, though his plaintive appeals would
have melted any but a Stover-of-Scarboro heart. The stuff was a large
plaid, the elbows and knees came in the wrong places, the seat was lined
with enameled cloth, and the sleeves cut him in the armholes.
Mr. Todd said nothing for a moment, but the pent-up slavery of years
stirred in him, and, mounting to his brain, gave him a momentary courage
that resembled intoxication. He retired, took off the suit, hung it over
his arm, and, stalking into the sitting-room in his undergarments,
laid it on the table before his astonished spouse, and, thumping it
dramatically, said firmly, “I--will--not--wear--them--clo'es!” whereupon
he fell into silence again and went to bed.
The joke of the matter was, that, all unknown to himself, he had
absolutely frightened Mrs. Todd. If only he could have realized the
impressiveness and the thorough success of his first rebellion! But
if he had realized it he could not have repeated it often, for so much
virtue went out of him on that occasion that he felt hardly able to
drive the stage for days afterward.
“I shall have to put down my foot agin,” he said to himself on the
eventful morning when Pel presented him with the basket. “Dern my luck,
I've got to do it agin, when I ain't hardly got over the other time.”
So, after an hour's plotting and planning, he made some purchases in
Biddeford and started on his return trip. He was very low in his mind,
thinking, if his wife really meditated upon warfare, she was likely to
inspect the stage that night, but giving her credit in his inmost heart
for too much common sense to use a broomstick,--a woman with her tongue!
The Midnight Cry rattled on lumberingly. Its route had been shortened,
and Mrs. Todd wanted its name changed to something less outlandish, such
as the Rising Sun, or the Breaking Dawn, or the High Noon, but her idea
met with no votaries; it had been, was, and ever should be, the Midnight
Cry, no matter what time it set out or got back. It had seen its best
days, Jerry thought, and so had he, for that matter. Yet he had been
called “a likely feller” when he married the Widder Bixby, or rather
when she married him. Well, the mischief was done; all that remained was
to save a remnant of his self-respect, and make an occasional dash for
liberty.
He did all his errands with his usual care, dropping a blue ribbon for
Doxy Morton's Sunday hat, four cents' worth of gum-camphor for Almira
Berry, a spool of cotton for Mrs. Wentworth, and a pair of “galluses”
for Living Bean. He finally turned into the “back-nippin'” road from
Bonny Eagle to Limington, and when he was within forty rods of his own
house he stopped to water his horses. If he feared a scene he had good
reason, for as the horses climbed the crest of the long hill the lady in
green was by his side on the box. He looked anxiously ahead, and there,
in a hedge of young alder bushes, he saw something stirring, and, unless
he was greatly mistaken, a birch broom lay on the ground near the hedge.
Notwithstanding these danger signals, Jerry's arm encircled the plump
waist of the lady in green, and, emboldened by the shades of twilight,
his lips sought the identical spot under the white “fall veil” where
her incendiary mouth might be supposed to lurk, quite “fit for treasons,
stratagems, and spoils.” This done, he put on the brake and headed his
horses toward the fence. He was none too soon, for the Widder Bixby,
broom in hand, darted out from the alders and approached the stage with
objurgations which, had she rated them at their proper value, needed
no supplement in the way of blows. Jerry gave one terror-stricken
look, wound his reins round the whipstock, and, leaping from his seat,
disappeared behind a convenient tree.
At this moment of blind rage Mrs. Todd would have preferred to chastise
both her victims at once; but, being robbed of one by Jerry's cowardly
flight, her weapon descended upon the other with double force. There was
no lack of courage here at least. Whether the lady in green was borne up
by the consciousness of virtue, whether she was too proud to retreat,
or whatever may have been her animating reason, the blow fell, yet she
stood her ground and gave no answering shriek. Enraged as much by her
rival's cool resistance as by her own sense of injury, the Widder
Bixby aimed full at the bonnet beneath which were the charms that
had befuddled Jerry Todd's brain. To blast the fatal beauty that had
captivated her wedded husband was the Widder Bixby's idea, and the broom
descended. A shower of seeds and pulp, a copious spattering of pumpkin
juice, and the lady in green fell resistlessly into her assailant's
arms; her straw body, her wooden arms and pumpkin head, decorating the
earth at her feet! Mrs. Todd stared helplessly at the wreck she
had made, not altogether comprehending the ruse that had led to her
discomfiture, but fully conscious that her empire was shaken to its
foundations. She glanced in every direction, and then hurling the
hateful green-and-white livery into the stage, she gathered up all
traces of the shameful fray, and sweeping them into her gingham apron
ran into the house in a storm of tears and baffled rage.
Jerry stayed behind the tree for some minutes, and when the coast was
clear he mounted the seat and drove to the store and the stable. When
he had put up his horses he went into the shed, took off his boots
as usual, but, despite all his philosophy, broke into a cold sweat of
terror as he crossed the kitchen threshold. “I can't stand many more
of these times when I put my foot down,” he thought, “they're too
weakening!”
But he need not have feared. There was a good supper under the mosquito
netting on the table, and, most unusual luxury, a pot of hot tea. Mrs.
Todd had gone to bed and left him a pot of tea!
Which was the more eloquent apology!
Jerry never referred to the lady in green, then or afterwards; he was
willing to let well enough alone; but whenever his spouse passed a
certain line, which, being a Stover of Scarboro, she was likely to do
about once in six months, he had only to summon his recreant courage and
glance meaningly behind the kitchen door, where the birch broom hung
on a nail. It was a simple remedy to outward appearances, but made his
declining years more comfortable. I can hardly believe that he ever
took Pel Frost into his confidence, but Pel certainly was never more
interesting to the loafers' bench than when he told the story of the
eventful trip of the Midnight Cry and “the breaking in of the Widder
Bixby.”