Tiverton Tales Part 28

"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 pa.s.sionate 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 t.i.tcomb! 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. n.o.body 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 a.s.sembled.

Since he pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sailing 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, sc.r.a.ping 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 s.e.xton 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 n.o.body stirred, for n.o.body 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 b.u.mp 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, a.s.suring 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 pa.s.s.