The bell-ringer : an old-time village tale

Front matter

REFERENCE LIBRARY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

2 Park Street, Boston

NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE SHELVES. EXCEPT BY PERMISSION OF THE LIBRARIAN

Contents

. Eveninc MEETING

. THE FuNnERAL oF Deacon JOEL

AND Deacon SILAS .

CHAPTER I EVENING MEETING Those evening bells! those evening bells!

How many a tale their music tells! YEEI83T is at the close of a Sabbath Bd BRS d Herath ess ye > ‘ ay, at sundown, when the air RSE is still, that one should listen MRA for the bells. Their voices can be heard ringing across the intervale from one hill-town to another — calling and answering all along the whole valley of the Nashua. As a rule Lancaster starts first, and a deep tone from the belfry of the old Bulfinch steeple reverberates in the hush of the magic hour.

There comes a momentary pause — then the faint, far-away sound of the bells of Fitchburg, and the bells of Leominster,

I of Lunenburg and Shirley can be heard ringing a chain of silver notes into the mellow afterglow, and out from the steeples of Still River, Harvard, and the towns along the eastern ridges pour the answers like a wave of crystal music — and back and forth, back and forth, peal the bells across the intervale at sundown.

Generations come and go and listen for their sweet-toned voices — but it is not every one who can hear them, and few there are that note the difference in their chiming, or stop to ponder upon their mys=' tic language; for they are human hands that toll the bells, and through these hands flows blood from human hearts, and who can tell the mysteries hidden therein?

Old Isaac Farrington, passing along the road over the hill, stopped his horse, and listened. |

“IT come around this way o’ purpose,” he explained to his neighbor John Miles, who was driving two cows home from pasture, “’cause I thought maybe I’d hear *em — the air’s so still.”

“Sure enough, sure enough!” he exclaimed after a pause, “‘there’s Shirley’s bell — and there goes Leominster a-pealing! I ain’t heard ’em like that this long while!”

The two old men, with necks outstretched and their hands spread back of the ears like sounding-boards, listened attentively.

After a while, Isaac Farrington broke the silence.

‘I suppose, 0’ course, youll be following one or the other o’ the processions to-morrow. I’1l follow Joel Whitcomb, but I calculate a considerable number will follow after Silas Wildes, and Seth Ware is a-going to toll the bell,” he said.

“That so? Well, Seth’ll do it fine, I have n’t a doubt,” replied John Miles; “tolling for two burials at one time’s something out o’ the common. It’s more than Luther Skinner could ha’ done, well on in years as he is, and I am glad Seth Ware’s took his place.” The old man flicked the cows, which were grazing along the roadside, with the leafy end of a long maple sapling. ‘‘The old woman has two minds as to who we'll follow,” he continued, — “TI ain’t particular, — either one’ll suit me so long as she gets her mind made up for sure.— Well, good-night, neighbor, — it’s time I got the cows in.”

With this parting salutation he started down the road, his bent figure plodding laboriously after the cattle and soon disappeared in the gathering twilight.

Down in the village church the people were assembling for evening prayer meeting. The air was warm, and heavy with the autumn scent of goldenrod and tansy, and through the open windows came the drowsy song of the crickets.

An undercurrent of expectancy and suppressed excitement could be felt passing rapidly from pew to pew as the church began to fill, while upon the surface the congregation held itself with a ceremonious solemnity in keeping with the announcement received in the village the day before of the decease of two of its oldest inhabitants. It was expected that Parson Goodwin would refer to the double loss to the community, and a full attendance was looked for. The new bell-ringer was still ringing the bell—the straining of the rope as he pulled and slackened broke into the stillness of the church like a rasping, wheezy cough, under cover of which whispered communications were interchanged concerning the all-absorbing topic.

When the ringing ceased suddenly, a hush came over the congregation, and Parson Goodwin’s tall, spare figure rose from the depths of the pulpit, and motioning with his hands, invited those present to unite in prayer.

It was a generally accepted fact that Parson Goodwin’s prayers exceeded in length any that had been heard for some years back; indeed, not since old Parson Dixby, some fifteen years before, used to glory in his gift of stating all the causes for giving thanks which he had been able to collect during the week, beginning with the hay crop in the summer season, and ending with such familiar incidents as the recovery of Deacon Dane’s old white horse.

But on this occasion the anticipation of what would surely be referred to sooner or later kept those present from evincing the customary restiveness, and an unusual stillness pervaded the church. After the singing of the hymn, which followed the reading of the Scriptures, came the moment they all had been waiting for. Parson Goodwin, standing in the pulpit, spoke thus:-——

“Tt is with a deep emotion that I speak of the double loss that has come to us, my dear friends. Two of our oldest and most respected neighbors have passed away in the fulness of years — one was taken only a few hours before the other. Every one in these parts knows of the close friendship that existed between them, starting from early youth and lasting to venerable age. Not a resident of this place but has participated, some more, some less, in the ups and downs that attended this friendship; for there were times, we must all admit, when the surface of the waters was mightily disturbed, especially when the season came round for harvesting the hay crop, and later, when the orchards were heavy with the juicy red-cheeked apples, and bartering and selling were the order of the day. At such times it was but natural that men of spirit should assert themselves, and it was pardonable if the competition caused some heated arguments, but all who are here to-day must remember the occasion when these two friends stood side by side ready to fight the man who had the temerity to suggest that there was no show of harmony between them.

My friends, these two aged brethren of our denomination were bound by ties of a real devotion. The act of grace has been accorded them in that they were allowed to depart this life together, and begin a new and broader one side by side. It was characteristic of our departed brother, Deacon Joel, that the very morning of his decease he anxiously inquired as to the likelihood of Deacon Silas’s accompanying him to another world. Upon hearing that at latest accounts he was pretty low, he said, ‘Tell Silas from me that though I never knew him to get round to being on time, yet this being something special maybe he’ll make an extra effort so’s we’ll cross over in company same as we’ve crossed the pastures year in, year out.’ Deacon Silas did not disappoint his old comrade, as you know, my dear friends, and though he was a little late he did not tarry here more than an hour after Deacon Joel.

“It has been decided by the bereaved relatives that these old friends should have one funeral and be buried at the same time. I am requested to announce that Deacon Joel’s funeral procession will start at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning from the Whitcomb farm east of the village, and Deacon Silas’s will start at the same time - from the Wildes farm, west. They will meet at the cross-roads and then come on together. It devolves upon our new sexton, Seth Ware, to toll the bell on this sombre and touching occasion.”

A faint rustle passed through the church like a breath of wind, caused by an involuntary movement of satisfaction and anticipation of coming emotion on the part of the listeners in the pews. The vestry door had hardly closed on Parson Goodwin at the end of the closing hymn, when a spontaneous rush down the aisle and out onto the church steps took place, where the pent-up feelings of the congregation poured forth in a torrent of questions and answers.

“Whose funeral do you follow? Jared and I follow Deacon Joel ’cause his wife’s brother visited our folks some summers ago, and seems as though we’d ought to remember it at a time like this.”

““No, we’re bent on lining up back of Deacon Silas. Father did considerable work for him helping pick apples off and on, and I guess he’d like as we should follow along back of him.”

So the talk went, shot back and forth with the swiftness of a shuttle-cock, and no one noticed the tall, angular figure of Seth Ware as he quietly closed the church doors and walked hurriedly away.

His destination was not far distant, for upon reaching a small white house standing a little farther down the road, but within sight of the church, his pace slackened. There was a gate that opened onto a narrow path leading to the front door, and on either side was a row of garden flowers — sweet alyssum, verbena, balsams, and heliotrope, all growing together

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in a tangle and giving out a delicate fragrance that seemed especially penetrating on this early September evening. His awkward hesitation in lifting the latch revealed an inherent shyness and reserve in the man as one accustomed to solitude; but his face redeemed all that could be termed ungainly in his body, and those who looked in it were wont to look again, and then to ponder over it.

The village people spoke of him as “‘odd and cranky-like,” but that was because they could not understand him. It was the look of the dreamer that lurked behind the swarthiness and sunburn of the tiller of the soil that puzzled them.

Seth Ware’s forbears had all been stalwart farmers. For six generations they had followed the plough and harvested their crops on their tract of land overlooking the Nashua Valley. There had not been a poet among them, yet surely there was a kind of poetry interwoven somehow with the toiler in the make-up of this tall,

II sombre-faced man as he lifted the latch of the little gate, and walked up the path to the cottage door. His foot had not touched, the rough stone step when a rather faint, thin voice, almost like that of a child, called out: ““Come in Seth, — we heard you coming; and, oh, Seth, we listened to the bell, —we thought you rung it fine!}— Mind you scrape your shoes on the mat. Aunt Lucinda had a house-cleaning this morning.”

Seth complied clumsily to this command and then walked into the room at the left of a small hallway. At the window sat a little crouched figure in a low wheel-chair. The bent head with its light wavy hair could have been taken for a child’s, but when it was lifted to greet Seth the sweet, appealing face of a woman, young in years, but marked with the pathos of suffering, was revealed to him. Much thought and meditation through hours of solitude had left their impress on the clear-cut features, imparting a gentle seriousness beyond her years, but the sudden smile illumined her, and was so spontaneous and whimsical that the crippled form left no impression whatsoever; it was the pure curves of the oval face, the luminous eyes so trusting in expression, — so full of eagerness and comprehension, — that drew the attention — and held it there unwaveringly. To Seth, Love Babbitt seemed apart from all the world. He felt that in some vague way the awkward shyness that hampered him so much, and rendered it so difficult for him to give his thoughts expression, increased his capacity to understand the sufferings that often racked her poor twisted limbs. Love had sat at the window in her wheel-chair, day in, day out, since she was twelve years old, when her slender, delicate body had been nearly crushed to death by the heavy wheels of a passing dray that was loaded with stones for the foundation of the new schoolhouse. She Was now past eight and twenty. The years had slipped by almost unawares.

She had watched from her window the first signs of each coming spring with its swelling buds and tinges of green, and she had seen a few months later all the splendor of the summer fade, and the fluttering leaves grow dry and shrivelled and blow aimlessly hither and thither in the autumn winds as they fell from the giant elm across the way. She had watched many a winsome bride step proudly up the steps of the village church in all the glory of her bridal trappings, — for the church was well in view from where she sat, and she could easily look up the village street, — and she had mingled her tears with the mourners as they brought their dead for burial. No one dreamed of the inner struggle that tore and wrenched her soul as she contrasted her life, bound in by limitations, with the gay freedom of the laughing girls and youths who passed in groups with baskets on their arms, all. headed towards the blueberry patch that flourished in the pastures half a mile or so away. The struggle was always fought out silently. Within the frail and broken body there glowed a strength and sweetness born of these hard hours that warded off all tendency to bitterness of spirit. Year in and year out those who crossed the threshold were greeted with that quick, responsive smile of welcome, and when any one had been there once they somehow went again — and still again.

So it had been with Seth. When Lemuel Babbitt died, leaving his little crippled daughter of eighteen to face her life alone, he had felt something so akin to a divine and infinite pity stir within him that he overcame his shyness sufficiently to put his head in at the parlor window one cae in passing.

‘Anything I can do to help I’d be al glad to do,” he had ventured hesitatingly.

“There’s nothing needed now I’m here with Aunt Lucinda, but thank you kindly, Seth Ware, just the same.”

Overcome at his boldness he had retreated hastily, but he found himself haunted all day by the memory of the small, childlike figure — the white face saddened by the recent sorrow, the strange, far-seeing gaze that met his own courageously and unflinchingly as she answered him.

That was the beginning of Seth Ware’s devotion. ‘‘However it is,” he murmured to himself as he was ploughing his threeacre lot the next morning, “‘there’s something in Love Babbitt’s face as makes me think o’ stars on a spring evening; and then again I get to thinking o’ white roses, and lilies, and flowers as has to be planted so’s a strong wind don’t hit ’em. But, oh, Lord, to think she’s crippled!’’ — the last sentence had sounded almost like a groan. Something in her face this evening recalled this first impression. As he sat down by the door and tucked his broad-brimmed farmer’s hat under his chair, he coughed to hide his emotion.

“‘Seems as though all this pollen floating in the aircome autumn kind o’ catches at one’s throat,” he said by way of explanation.

‘Maybe it’s the dust in the old belfry, Seth,” said Love; and then she added: “Aunt Lucinda’s been over to the Whitcomb farm to see if she could do aught to help prepare for to-morrow. She said the widow was bearing up real well for all she’s so far on in years. It’s kind o’ sad, Seth, to have the old folks all passing on, one after the other. Deacon Joel was nigh on to eighty-eight and Deacon Silas was just six months younger. Do you feel all right about tolling the bell?”

Seth twitched his elbows nervously. “Well, you might not say as I feel all right,” he replied. “Ill manage somehow, I guess. But it’s kind o’ strange about that bell. There’s something kind o’ loosens up in me when I get it to ringing. Seems as though I might learn to make it speak out things I can’t speak out for myself. I know it sounds foolish-like,” he stammered as the blood flushed his face, “‘but I thought likely you might understand. I was thinking about it when I rang for evening meeting to-night. I’m no kind o’ hand at talking, as you know, Love. My tongue don’t seem to get the words I want. But maybe I might get the bell to say things for me. I’ve a heap o’ things deep down inside as wants to speak out somehow.”

‘*‘T know what you mean! Oh, I’m sure I know what you mean, Seth! It’s a beautiful thought, and I have n’t a doubt but what it can be done.”

Love Babbitt’s face glowed as she answered him. She, too, possessed something of the poet-nature, and that same craving for more expression. Long ago she had discovered that underneath the rough exterior and the lumbering, halting ways that made the village people call Seth odd and cranky, a human soul was beating its wings in an effort to break loose and expand. Sometimes as she talked with him she had a curious sensation as if a prisoner were looking out at her from under the shaggy eyebrows, and she had pondered much over that mysterious ‘‘ dweller within the body” which no eye can behold, yet of whom she could often feel so acutely conscious, |

“There’s lots think all you’ve got to do is to pull the rope and the bell will ring all right,” he went on, “‘but that’s not so. There are ways and ways. When I toll to-morrow I’d like as every one should think it solemn-like, and as though I was doing honor to the dead.”

There was a little pause, and then Love said: ‘Seth, how comes it you have these thoughts so different from all the other folks I see? I sometimes wonder if it’s because you live alone, and have a deal of time to think. Father used to say that when he’d ploughed a field alone he’d thought a year’s thoughts by the time he’d finished. I guess it’s the same with you.”

Just as Love was finishing her sentence, Aunt Lucinda Tracy stood in the doorway with a plate of doughnuts in her hand which she first placed on a chair, then spreading a white cloth on a rather lopsided, mahogany table she put the plate in the middle of it, and turned with a look of satisfaction to inspect the room. + “T’m right glad you have n’t tracked in any mud, Seth Ware,” she said, nodding her head at him. “I had a regular cleanup this morning. Seems as though when a funeral comes I must needs have things spick and span. I get to thinking it may come my turn next, and I guess you won’t find me giving the neighbors a chance to find a speck o’ dust in my corners!” Lucinda Tracy’s face was puckered into a network of fine wrinkles as if it were a peanut. Her faded hair still had a little tinge of red about it, and she wore it pulled severely away from her face and twisted into a hard knot at the back of her head; and this surmounted a small, wiry body which vibrated with perpetual energy. :

Aunt Lucinda, as the whole village called her, was, to say the least, a positive character; she said what she thought and stuck to it—very often to the confusion of those about her. Moreover, she accentuated the effect of her words by snapping them out very fast, and bobbing her head so emphatically that it left the slow-minded helpless and, so to speak, stranded. Seth always gazed at her in dumb amazement. But he knew by instinct, and Love had often told him, that underneath the brownchecked gingham dress, which Aunt Lucinda was wont to wear, there beat a real woman’s heart, brimming over with goodness and with kindly feeling. She had given proof of this when Lemuel Babbitt had died.

That day when Minervy Wade, who lived half a mile farther down the road, ran in with a shawl over her head to tell the news of his death, Lucinda Tracy saw a vision in her mind’s eye of a poor crippled child left desolate and alone; and she did not waste any time deliberating, but quickly took her apron off and hung it on the hook behind the kitchen door, then smoothed her hair, and filled a saucer full of milk for her cat, and closing her front door behind her and locking it, she started at a brisk rate down the road for a good three miles until she reached the Lemuel Babbitt farm. Lemuel’s sister Beulah met her at the door.

‘‘What’s to become o’ the child?” Lucinda had said without starting any preliminaries.

“Tand sakes, ain’t you quick, Lucinda Tracy! Why, Lemuel’s not buried yet and the will’s not been read — like as not he forgot to make one; his memory warn’t over good, and search high, search low, none’s been found yet.”

Lucinda gave a defiant sniff and pushed her way into the house and into the best parlor, which was open in consideration of the solemn event, and there sat poor little Love Babbitt on the black haircloth’

sofa, her big eyes wide open with fear and despair and her young face white and piteous with the new experience of bereavement. At the sight of Lucinda Tracy, she bowed her head to hide the tears she could no longer hold back, and as she felt herself clasped by a pair of bony but very loving arms the poor little cripple sobbed out: —

“Oh, Aunt Lucinda, dear, what can I do? What can I do? I’m so helpless, and father’s gone, and Aunt Beulah says maybe I’ll have to be sent to the town farm.”

It was three days after this that Lucinda hired a farm team to bring Love Babbitt to her home on the village street, and from that day to this, — and it was ten years or more ago, — the girl had watched the goings and the comings of the village from the front windows, seated in her wheel-chair.

Seth had been told the story many times, and he recalled it now as he watched Aunt Lucinda put the plate of doughnuts on the table,

*’To-morrow’ll be a grand and solemn day,” she continued, “‘and there’ll be a grand showing of village folks at the church, and like as not a considerable number from outside, and I guess most all will follow to the cemetery. Minervy Wade’s going to take me along in her chaise. She says she guesses she’ll take her brother James’s horse as has the blind eye, so’s he can’t see more than one funeral ata time, looking out sideways, and I said to her, ‘Maybe it ’Il be safer so.’ We’ll follow along behind Deacon Joel, and not too far in front so’s we can see what’s to be seen.— Ain’t you going to stop and take supper with us, Seth? A dish o’ tea sets kind o’ good when it starts to grow dampish after sundown.”

Seth moved his feet with a sort of shuffling movement and glanced awkwardly at Love.

“We'd like it real well if you would,” she said, seconding the invitation, while her white face grew suddenly warm with a faint glow that made her look like some sweet flower growing in a shady nook, into which a sunbeam had suddenly penetrated. The sight of it struck sharply at Seth’s heart.

“I don’t know but I might take a swallow or two,” he said, and moved his chair up to the table.

And then for him came one of those hours that store themselves away in the memory in the deep places where Life’s treasures are kept. The quaint, low-ceilinged room, the light from the lamp bringing out the lustre of an old mahogany secretary that stood in the corner, and deepening the color of the red geraniums blossoming in pots by the window, the charm of friendly conversation and the mystery of that other feeling, — pity — tenderness — adoration, — he had no name for it, —he did not attempt to analyze it, — he simply knew that it made life sweet and beautiful in that hour, and in the depths of his honest heart something quickened which he knew would never leave him. In the solitude of his life, unshared by wife or children, Seth Ware had grown peculiarly sensitive to impressions. His life had been led close to the heart of nature — the woods and the fields and the running brooks were his friends, and they gave him something that he could not find in his intercourse with people. The inconsistencies, the petty qualities of human nature, disconcerted and confused him. He became troubled and restless when in the atmosphere of insincerity or envy or criticism, and he was becoming more and more prone to shun the village gatherings, and to retreat within the confines of his lonely farm.

But here in this little cottage on the village street, cheerfulness and warmth and kindly hospitality were always to be found, and on this evening, as he sat looking into the sweet face of Love Babbitt, and listening to Aunt Lucinda’s spicy comments on the village happenings, the sense of comfort and enjoyment sank deep into his soul.

It was just as he was reluctantly leaning down to get his hat from under his chair preparatory to leaving, that Love said: —

*“T’ll_ be listening here at the front win- _dow, Seth, when you toll the bell. I know you'll toll it sombre-like and slow, but mind that the tone goes out clear and strong so’s the folks’ll hear it far and near. You’ll do honor to Deacon Joel and Deacon Silas, Seth. They were good men and a and ee s many that’ll mourn them.”

“There are folks in this place as say you’ll make a mess of it and not toll even,” asserted Aunt Lucinda, taking the teacups off the table. “I’ve told ’em not to go and get sick a-worrying, as I guessed you’d come out all right with it. Seems as though some folks were set on looking for trouble and they feel kind o’ disappointed when it don’t come. Minervy Wade’s one o’ them kind. She does just love a good heap o’ trouble, and all the neighbors coming in to talk it over and every one of ’em sobbing and taking on. I reckon Minervy’ll have a pocketful of handkerchiefs to-morrow so’s no one’ll get the better of her when it comes to mourning the peti ge sets great store by a good flow o’ tears.’ i

Seth listened, but he was looking at Love and thinking that her pale golden hair as it framed her face looked strangely like an aureole. He remembered as a child having been taken to a neighboring town along about Christmas-time and in a shop window he had seen a picture of an angel. He had asked what the light was that shone around the head and was told by his mother that it was a sign to show that the angel belonged in heaven. It made a deep impression on his imagination and the light shining on Love Babbitt’s hair brought it vividly back to his mind.

“T reckon it’ll help a lot, Love, if you listen to me toll the bell,” he said, the blood suffusing his face as he spoke. ‘*“Maybe you would tell me afterwards if there’s aught amiss. I hope,” he added suddenly, “‘you ain’t been suffering over-much to-day?”

As she turned her face towards him an expression of pain had swept across it like a shadow. It had gone as quickly as it had come, but it had not escaped him.

There was something that sounded like a break in his voice as he spoke, and he hastily coughed to hide it, adding: “I guess there’s lots of folks as would do ’most anything to save you from feeling bad;— and there’s not many as would keep up so brave and strong. I reckon your road’s a kind o’ rough one to travel on, Love, for all you’re so cheery!”

For one moment the answering look glowed with radiant gratitude through which flashed something that startled and troubled Aunt Lucinda’s honest heart, and set her to fluttering about the room much as a hen would do who sensed an approaching danger to her one chicken.

“Was that joy or pain— or what was it that saw?” she asked herself distractedly.

But Love’s eyelids lowered. “Maybe heaven’Il seem extra fine to me when I get there, ’cause it’s not been so easy here,” she replied very softly. “‘Good-night, Seth.”

**Good-night, Love.”

They listened to the crunching of his feet on the gravel as he walked down the path and on towards his home in the starlight.

Late that night Aunt Lucinda on her knees beside her bed prayed with fervent supplication: —