“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 perennial4 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 vernacular5 “turrible bad goin',” and when any other stage-driver in York County would have shrunk into his muffler and snapped and snarled6 on the slightest provocation7, Life Lane opened his great throat when he passed over the bridges at Moderation or Bonny Eagle, and sent forth8 a golden, sonorous9 “Yo ho! halloo!” into the still air. The later it was and the stormier it was, the more vigor10 he put into the note, and it was a drowsy11 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 derisively12 applied13 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, alas14! another in Bonny Eagle) who went to bed every night with the chickens, but stayed awake till she heard first the rumble15 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 culled16 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 auditor17 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 villains18 as personal friends or foes19. He always sat in one corner of the fireplace, poker21 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 parentheses22 and punctuation23 marks poked24 in at exciting junctures26.
“That 's so every time!” he would say, with a lunge at the forestick. “I'll bate27 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 backlog28.
The New England story seemed to flourish under these conditions: a couple of good hard benches in a store or tavern29, 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 poke20; and a cavernous fireplace into which tobacco juice could be neatly30 and judiciously31 directed. Those were good old times, and the stage-coach was a mighty32 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 reins33, 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 wedded34 to Jeremiah Todd. The Widder Bixby, then, was strong, self-reliant, valiant35, indomitable. Jerry Todd was, to use his wife's own characterization, so soft you could stick a cat's tail into him without ruffling36 the fur. He was always alluded37 to as “the Widder Bixby's husband;” but that was no new or special mortification38, 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 eldest39, 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 spouse40. She failed to intimidate41 him, for he was a foeman worthy42 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 pitcher43 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 trifling44 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 tattooed45 man between the windows, living skeletons on the blinds, and ladies insufficiently46 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 latched47 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 adhesive48 properties.
The temper of Prudence49, the youngest sister, now Mrs. Todd, paled into insignificance50 beside that of the others, but it was a very pretty thing in tempers nevertheless, and would have been thought remarkable51 in any other family in Scarboro.
You may have noted52 the fact that it is a person's virtues53 as often as his vices55 that make him difficult to live with. Mrs. Todd's masterfulness and even her jealousy56 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 virtue54 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 herald57 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-room58, but spread newspapers over the carpet wherever the sun shone in.
It was the desire of Jerry's heart to give up the fatigues59 and exposures of stage-driving, and “keep store,” but Mrs. Todd deemed it much better for him to be in the open air than dealing60 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 flannel61 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 candid62 with her on this point (as candid as a tender-hearted and obliging man can be with a woman who is determined63 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 reluctance64, she, being a woman, or at all events of the female gender65, could never quite forget that she had done the wooing.
Certainly his charms were not of the sort to tempt66 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 unlimited67 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
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