CHAPTER XXXIX
“A man braggin’ gits riled if ye try ’n’ choke him off.” –Old Cy Walker.
Riverton, less provincial than Greenvale, was a village of some two thousand inhabitants. A few brick blocks, with less pretentious wooden buildings, formed a nucleus of stores. A brownstone bank, four churches, two hotels, the Quaboag House and the Astor House were intermingled among these, and a railroad with two trains in each direction a day added life and interest to the place. Each of the hotels sent a conveyance to meet every train, with a loud-voiced emissary to announce the fact of free transportation. In each hostelry a bar flourished, and like rival clubs, each had its afternoon and evening gathering of loafers who swapped yarns and gossip, smoked and chewed incessantly, and contributed little else to support the establishments. Three times daily, at meal hours, each of the rival landlords banged a discordant gong in his front doorway, without apparent result.
At about eleven in the forenoon each weekday in summer, Uncle Joe Barnes on his lumbering two-horse stage, arrived from Greenvale, paused at the post-office, threw off a mail-pouch, thence around to the Quaboag House stable, and cared for his horses. At two he was ready for the return trip and mounting his lofty seat, he again drove to the front of the hotel, shouting “All aboard!” dismounted to assist lady passengers, but let masculine ones do their own climbing, and after halting to receive a mail-bag, again departed on his return trip.
A certain monotonous regularity was apparent in every move and every act and function of village life in Riverton. At precisely seven o’clock each morning the two landlords appeared simultaneously and banged their gongs. At twelve and six, this was repeated. At eight o’clock the three principal storekeepers usually entered their places of business; at nine, and while the academy bell was ringing near by, every village doctor might be seen starting out. At ten exactly, Dwight Bennett, the cashier of the bank, unlocked its front door, and the two hotel ’buses invariably started so nearly together that they met at the first turn going stationward. Even the four church clocks had the same habit, and it was often related that a stranger there, a travelling man, on his first, visit, made an amusing discovery.
“What kind of a fool clock have you got in this town?” he said to Sam Gates, the landlord of the Quaboag, next morning after his arrival. “I went to bed in good season last night an’ just got asleep when I heard it strike thirty-two. I dozed off an’ the next I knew it began clanging again, and I counted forty-four. What sort of time do you keep here, anyway? Do you run your town by the multiplication table?”
The half-dozen chronic loafers who met every afternoon in the Quaboag House office arrived in about the same order, smoked, drank, told their yarns, gathered all the gossip, and departed at nearly the same moment. Their evening visits partook of the same clocklike regularity.
These of the old guard were also dressed much the same, and “slouchy” best describes it. Gray flannel shirts in winter or summer alike. Collars, cuffs, and ties were never seen on them, though patches were, and as for shaving or hair-cutting, a few shaved once a week, some never did, and semi-annual hair-cuts were a fair average.
The worst sinner in this respect, Luke Atwater, occasionally called “Lazy Luke,” never had his beard shortened but once, and that was due to its being burnt off while he was fighting a brush fire in spring.