Chapter L: The Tolling Bell

The bell slowly swaying in that high steeple rung out the solemn announcement that the oldest inhabitant of the village was lying dead in that brown house, with moss on the roof, and trees rooted before she was born, bristling with dead limbs in front of it.

Eighty-six times that iron tongue tolled out the years of her age. Up and down the valley its voice was heard, penetrating those pleasant-looking houses, like a cry for judgment, hoarse with denunciation.

Mothers heard it, surrounded by their families, and, conscience stricken, lowered their eyes beneath the questioning looks of their own innocent children.

Judge Lane heard it, and, bowing his face to the table before him, began to wonder if he had, indeed, done well in seeking his own interests at a price like that.

Deacon Jones heard the iron voice, in the counting-room far back in his store, and observed to a neighbor lingering there, that the old woman, Mrs. Anderson, had fallen like ripe wheat before the sickle; but said nothing of the cruel sweep of his own hand that had cut her down.

A group of females, who met to finish their work left incomplete the day before, looked in each other’s pallid faces, as the bell tolled above them, and whispered that the old woman was not only dead, but the poor young girl, whom they had always sustained and done so much for, was drowned.

Her footsteps had been traced down to the river, where she had been driven in frenzy by the wicked reports that only reached the grandmother’s ears a few hours before she died. Reports that they, as Christian women, had never encouraged, and felt it a solemn duty to put down, having daughters of their own.

No one of these women remembered, or admitted that she remembered, the chorus of condemnation that had been swelled by her own voice the day before. Yet the heart in each bosom quailed, under the iron blows of that bell, in terror of the falsehood she was acting.

You might have searched that village from end to end without finding one soul that would admit of belief, or personal share, in the slanders that had driven that poor girl to the desperate act she had committed. Nay, those who had been most industrious in hunting her down were now among the first to denounce the calumniators, who were fast growing intangible, and creeping out of sight, like rattlesnakes, slinking from the shadow of a white-ash tree.

But they could not escape the iron voice of that bell.

Upon the road coming up from the river, two horsemen riding toward the town at a rapid pace heard the first heavy swing of that death-bell. They both had known the bright girl whose character had been so ruthlessly assailed, and one had loved her dearly. That first iron blow smote them both to the heart. Lane uttered a single cry, and stopping his horse sat motionless counting the years as they were tolled forth; at every vibration the heart shrank grieving down in his bosom and his nerves tightened, holding him in mute agony until twenty had been slowly measured off, each bringing new anguish with it.

“She is dead, and I have come too late,” he said, looking at his companion. “I might have known that she would sink under—”

This sentence was broken up by another clang, which held the very breath suspended on those white lips.

“Again, again!”

“Twenty-two. Oh, thank God, she was not of that age!” he cried out. “Fletcher, Fletcher, there is hope yet.” Here the bell strikes again. “It is not she—it is not she, my love is not dead.”

A lad on horseback came over the bridge and rode toward them. Lane recognized him, and pushed forward close enough to know that the lad’s eyes were red and his face downcast.

“That bell; who is it tolling for, Ben?”

“Old Mrs. Anderson. She died last night. I don’t suppose they will toll for the other, till she’s found.”

“The other—the other? What do you mean?”

Ben burst into a great passion of tears.

“Don’t ask me—don’t ask me. I am trying and trying not to believe it, but the canoe is gone, and so is she.”

“She—who? for mercy’s sake speak out, boy!”

“Miss Clara. Oh, sir, she’s gone!”

“Gone—where?”

“Dead—drowned. I don’t know where. The canoe hasn’t turned up yet. I’m going to ride down the river till I get to the Housatonic, searching all the way. That’s what I’m starting for now. If I don’t come across nothing, that seems like killing me afore then, I’ll just foller on down to where the two rivers jine, and keep a going clear to the sound, nobody has thought of that but me; why should they, anyhow? didn’t I think more of her than any one else in this wide world?”

“Let us go with him,” said Lane, turning to his half-brother, who had shared his distress as if no trouble rested on his own life, and had come with him into the neighborhood when he determined to make that last appeal. “Let us go with him.”

There was a gleam of hope in the young man’s face that the brother’s heart answered.

“Yes, we will go,” he said; “anything is better than this suspense.”

“And suspense itself better than what seemed to be a certainty ten minutes ago,” said Lane.

The two young men had been startled by a vague rumor of Clara Anderson’s death, which reached them at the Stone Tavern at daylight, and had set forth at once to learn the truth. The news that Ben brought them was a relief, for with it came the possibility of a hope.

Down the banks of that beautiful stream along the larger river till it received the Naugatuck in its embrace, those three most anxious men rode; sometimes leaving their horses to search the banks more closely, and going at a slower pace after each pause, as disappointment settled more heavily upon them.

From the mouth of the river they returned up the other side, making their search complete, and long after dark rode into the village worn out and heavy-hearted.

Lane could not go to his father’s; the wound on his heart was too deep for that, but he rode up to the minister’s door and asked for shelter for himself and brother there.

The clergyman, filled with pity, supported the young man into his house. It was touching to see how heavily that strong frame leaned on the good old man, and with what thankfulness that proud spirit received the little cares which fall so gently on the weary-hearted.

The next day and the next, these two young men pursued their search, but no trace of the unfortunate creature they sought could be found; like a shadow she had drifted away.

Among old Mrs. Anderson’s papers a will was found, giving that old house, the few acres of land with all their poor belongings, to her granddaughter, and in case she should die first, to Benjamin Vose, that it might be a home for his mother and sister.

Poor Ben had ridden, and walked on foot, up and down those rivers many a weary time, before he took possession of that humble inheritance. When he did at last move into the brown house it was more as a custodian than an owner.

“Some day Miss Clara might come back,” he said, “and she should find everything just as she left it, only things might be mended up a little. People needn’t call the place his, any way.”