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 no more, 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 capable brown 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 whether he 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 cup of 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 you know 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 wind
of 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-Wool
Eaton, 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 dunno _but_ I
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 Old War-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, loping strides 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' the war. 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 once indoors, 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.