From a Bench in Our Square Part 10

"I think from his face that he has suffered much," said the gentle collector, wise in human pain.

"Me; I suppose I don't suffer!" pointed out the landlord vehemently.

"Fourteen dollars out. Two months' rent. A b.u.m clock."

He kicked the shabby case which whizzed and birred and struck five. The voice of its bell, measured and mellow and pure, was unquestionably D in alt.

"My dear sir," said Stepfather Time urbanely, but quivering underneath his calm manner with the hot eagerness of the chase, "I will buy your clock."

A gust of rough laughter pa.s.sed through the crowd. The injurious word "nut" floated in the air, and was followed by "Verrichter." The landlord took thought and hope.

"It is a very fine clock," he declared.

"It is a b.u.m clock," Stepfather Time reminded him mildly.

"Stepnadel, the auctioneer, would pay me much money for it."

"I will pay you much money for it."

"How much?"

"Seven dollars. That is one month's rent that he owed."

"Two months' rent I must have."

"One," said Stepfather Time firmly.

"Two," said the landlord insistently.

"Urff! Grr--rr--rr--rrff!" said w.i.l.l.y Woolly in emphatic dissuasion.

Stepfather Time was scandalized. Expert opinion was quite outside of w.i.l.l.y Woolly's province. Only once in the course of their years together had he interfered in a purchase. Justice compelled Stepfather Time to recall that the subject of w.i.l.l.y's protests on that occasion had subsequently turned out to be far less antique than the worm holes in the woodwork (artificially blown in with powder) would have led the unsuspecting to suppose. But about the present legacy there could be no such question. It was genuine. It was old. It was valuable. It possessed a seraphic note pitched true to the long-desired chord.

Extracting a ten-dollar note from his wallet, Stepfather Time waved it beneath the landlord's wrinkled and covetous nose. The landlord capitulated. w.i.l.l.y Woolly, sniffing at the clock with fur abristle, lifted up his voice and wailed. Perhaps his delicate nose had already detected the faint, unhallowed odor of the chemicals within. He stubbornly refused to ride back in the cart with the new acquisition, and was accused of being sulky and childish.

The relic of the late unlamented Lukisch was temporarily installed in a high chair before the open window giving on the areaway of Number 37.

There it briefly beamed upon the busy life of Our Square with its bland and hypocritical face, and there, thrice and no more, it sounded the pa.s.sing of the hours with its sweet and false voice, biding the stroke of nine. Meantime w.i.l.l.y Woolly settled down to keep watch on it and could not be moved from that duty. Every time it struck the half he growled. At the hour he barked and raged. When Stepfather Time sought to draw him away to dinner he committed the unpardonable sin of dog-dom, he snarled at his master. Turning this strange manifestation over in his troubled mind, the collector decided that w.i.l.l.y Woolly must be ill, and therefore that evening went to seek the Little Red Doctor and his wisdom.

Together they came across the park s.p.a.ce opposite the House of Silvery Voices in time to witness the final scene.

The new clock struck the half after eight as they reached the turn in the path. A long, quavering howl, mingled of rage and desperation, answered in w.i.l.l.y Woolly's voice.

"You hear?" said Stepfather Time anxiously to the Little Red Doctor.

"The dog is not himself."

They saw him rear up against the clock case. He seemed to be trying to tear it open with his teeth.

"w.i.l.l.y!" cried his master in a tone such as, I suppose, the well-loved companion had not heard twice before in his life. "Down, w.i.l.l.y!"

The dog drooped back. But it was not in obedience. For once he disregarded the master's command. Perhaps he did not even hear it in the absorption of his dread and rage. Step by step he withdrew, then rushed and launched himself straight at the timepiece. Slight though his bulk was, the impetus of the charge did the work. The clock reeled, toppled, and fell outward through the window; then--

From the House of Silvery Voices rose a roar that smote the heavens. A roar and a belch of flame and a spreading, poisonous stench that struck the two men in the park to earth. When they struggled to their feet again, the smoke had parted and the House of Silvery Voices gaped open, its front wall stripped bodily away. But within, the sound of the busy industry of time went on uninterrupted.

Weaving and wobbling on his feet, Stepfather Time staggered toward the pot calling on the name of w.i.l.l.y Woolly. At the gate he stopped, put forth his hand, and lifted from the railing a wopsy, woolly fragment, no bigger than a sheet of note paper. It was red and warm and wet.

"He's gone," said Stepfather Time.

The Clock of Conscience took up the tale. "Gone. Gone. Gone," it pealed.

As the collector would not leave the shattered house, they sent for me to stay the night with him. A strange vigil! For now it was the man who followed with intent, unworldly eyes that which I, with my lesser vision, could not discern. And the Unseen moved swiftly about the desolate room, low to the floor, and seemed finally to stop, motionless beneath a caressing hand. I thought to hear that dull, measured thumping of a grateful tail, but it was only the Twelve Apostles getting ready to strike.

Only once that night did Stepfather Time speak, and then not to me.

"Tell her," he said in an a.s.sured murmur, "that I shan't be long."

"Not-long. Not-long. Not-long. Not-long. Not-long," confirmed Grandfather from his stance on the stairway.

In that a.s.surance Stepfather Time fell asleep. He did not go out again with his pushcart, but sat in the rear room while the Mordaunt Estate in person superintended the job of putting a new front on the house.

The night after it was finished I received an urgent telephone call to come there at once. At the entrance I met the Little Red Doctor coming out.

"The clocks have stopped," said he gently.

So I turned to cross the park with him.

"I shall certify," said he, "heart disease."

"You may certify what you please," said I. "But what do you believe?"

The Little Red Doctor, who prides himself on being a hard-bitted materialist, glared at me as injuriously as if my innocent question had been an insult.

"I don't believe it!" he averred violently. "Do you take me for a sentimental idiot that I should pin silly labels on my old friend, Death?" His expression underwent a curious change. "But I never saw such joy on any living face," he muttered under his breath.

The House of Silvery Voices is silent now. But its echo still lives and makes music in Our Square. For, with the proceeds of Stepfather Time's clocks, an astounding total, we have built a miniature clock tower facing Number 37, with a silvery voice of its own, for memory. The Bonnie La.s.sie designed the tower, and because there is love and understanding in all that the Bonnie La.s.sie sets her wonder-working hand to, it is as beautiful as it is simple. Among ourselves we call it the Tower of the Two Faithful Hearts.

The silvery voice within it is the product of a paragon among timepieces, a most superior instrument, of unimpeachable construction and great cost. But it has one invincible peculiarity, the despair of the best consulting experts who have been called in to remedy it and, one and all, have failed for reasons which they cannot fathom. How should they!

It never keeps time.

HOME-SEEKERS' GOAL

Long ago I made an important discovery. It comes under the general head of statics and is this: by occupying an invariable bench in Our Square, looking venerable and contemplative and indigenous, as if you had grown up in that selfsame spot, you will draw people to come to you for information, and they will frequently give more than they get of it.

Such, I am informed, is the method whereby the flytrap orchid achieves a satisfying meal. Not that I seek to claim for myself the colorful splendors of the Cypripedium, being only a tired old pedagogue with a taste for the sunlight and for observing the human bubbles that float and bob on the current in our remote eddy of life. Nevertheless, I can follow a worthy example, even though the exemplar be only a carnivorous bloom. And, I may confess, on the afternoon of October 1st, I was in a receptive mood for such flies of information as might come to me concerning two large invading vans which had rumbled into our quiet precincts and, after a pause for inquiry, stopped before the Mordaunt Estate's newly repaired property at Number 37.