Читать книгу The Chord of Steel - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 3
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My pencil almost slipped into the error of saying it was on a lazy afternoon in August 1870 that a light phaeton, which, if it were still in existence, would be preserved with zealous care in a museum, drove down one of the main streets in Brantford, a small city in the province of Ontario, Canada. It could not have been a lazy afternoon. There was no indolence of pace about the city and the air was always as brisk as the habits of the people.
I was always wakened by the whistles and bells stridently summoning men to work. First there would be the arrogant clangor from the Massey-Harris, Waterous, Cockshutt, and Verity plants, the distinctive “buzz” which called carpenters to their labors at Schultz Brothers vying with the ringing of the iron bell at Buck’s Foundry, and finally, because it came from a distance, what seemed a laggard call from Slingsby’s. In later years, as a reporter in my home town, I found it necessary to hustle about my work and it seemed to me then that everyone else was moving with equal energy and purpose.
No, there has never been anything lazy about Brantford; and so I am inclined to think that the horse drawing this particular conveyance down Brant Avenue came along at a good rate of speed, making its hoofs sound a fine round clip-clop on the hard dirt surface of the road. Seated in the phaeton were two ladies and two men. One of the ladies was of middle age and had an air of refinement and a quiet charm which might have seemed familiar to readers of Jane Austen novels. The other was young and dressed with a hint of recent bereavement. The older of the two men had a beard which showed some traces of gray in its almost patriarchal length. The younger, who seemed in his quite early twenties, also had a beard: black, and carefully trimmed, and with the sparseness and gloss of youth. The elder wore a tall hat of gray beaver, the younger man a tweed cap.
Among the stories still told in Brantford about the coming of the Bell family, one concerns two citizens who happened to be standing together at the corner of Brant Avenue and Church Street when the dusty phaeton drove by. “There they are,” said one of them, who could be identified as a doctor by the tip of a stethoscope protruding from his vest pocket. “Did you see the item about them in the Expositor?”
The second man, who was in the real estate business, nodded briskly. “Name’s Bell. I heard this morning they’ve bought the Morton property on Tutelo Heights.”
“Away out there? Isn’t that odd?”
“I certainly thought so. There were good properties on my list would have suited them. Right here on Brant Avenue and over on Dufferin. They paid a good price, too, I hear.”
“How much?”
“Two thousand six hundred dollars. It goes to show. Values are picking up in Brantford.”
“I’ve heard something or other about his family,” said the doctor. “The father was well known in England. A scientist, I think.”
The real estate man nodded his head with the satisfaction which accompanies the possession of precise information. “He’s a real professor. Gives lectures around the country. On deafness. He knows how to read lips, so I hear.”
The phaeton passed on and vanished from sight down the grade leading to the downtown bridge. The doctor shook his head thoughtfully. “It seems to me,” he said, “that the young fellow looked kind of peaked. As though he might have a touch of lung trouble.”
The trained medical eye had not been at fault. It was because of a weakness in the lungs of his sole surviving son that Alexander Melville Bell had given up his lucrative post in London and had come out to settle in Brantford. The section known as Tutelo Heights on the high circular bluff around which the Grand River coils on its way to Lake Erie had been selected because the atmosphere there seemed particularly fresh and invigorating.
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The carriage with the Bell family crossed over the river at the foot of Brant Avenue on a temporary bridge soon to be replaced by one which lasted for many years and would be called the Iron Bridge. They found themselves in a section known as West Brantford. Turning onto the Mount Pleasant Road, they began a gradual ascent. After passing Farringdon Church, they made a left turn onto the Tutelo Heights Road, which followed in narrow dustiness the line of the river bluffs.
This had been part of the Indian grant, and all the land along the bluffs had once belonged to a man named Stewart because he had taken unto himself an Indian wife, obviously a chief’s daughter. The Stewart holdings had gradually been sold and at this time there were a number of comfortable houses along the opposite side of the road from the water; the McIntyre house, the white stone home of Thomas Brooks, and the Edward Blacker place. Farther down, where the road took a sharp turn to the left, lay Grove Park Farm, where Ignatius Cockshutt, one of the leading citizens, had built an expensive home in a cover of trees which screened it partially from view. All beyond this was Cockshutt domain. The Cockshutt Road crossed the river farther down at the Cockshutt Bridge, and most of the land thereabouts belonged to members of the family.
The property which Professor Bell had purchased was the second between the road and the river. The ladies of the family, seeing it for the first time, found it an engaging prospect. The house stood well back from the road and was screened by tall trees and thick green shrubs; a two-story structure of quaint charm, with white walls and black trim, an ornate but not unattractive porch stretching across most of the front. To the right, as seen from the road, was a conservatory, which in the esteem of most people gave quite an air to the place.
“Melville House,” said the new owner, climbing out of the phaeton and surveying his domain with a proper pride. He looked rather stout in his double-breasted frock coat, an effect heightened by the fullness of his beard.
His quiet wife, who had been looking about her with quickly inquiring eyes, read from his lips what he had said. She smiled in acquiescence; and Melville House it remained, until the time came when the extraordinary success of their son made another name, a prouder one, more suitable.
Mrs. Bell was very well dressed. To a feminine eye she would have seemed stylish (the highest praise possible) in a traveling suit of shot velvet, of a brown shade called cuir. Although she conformed to the standards of the day in the matter of a bustle and a fullness of skirt, she succeeded in looking slender and even delicate.
Their daughter-in-law, the widow of the oldest of the three Bell sons, was in black and seemed somewhat subdued in mood. Her straw bonnet, which she wore tilted forward, was nevertheless small and pretty.
The inside of the house was as charming as the exterior. The high-ceilinged hall had a stairway at the back with a graceful rail. To the right was a long parlor with a fireplace and a tall french window opening on the porch. Behind this was a small room which would serve them as a study. Still further to the right, behind the conservatory, was a room which was taken over later as a workshop, and which, perhaps, should be counted the most important part of the house. Here also, tucked into a corner, was a small bathroom with a newly installed tub, a rather tinny affair but quite smart for that day.
To the left of the hall was a sitting room, also with a fireplace and a french window, and behind that a dining room with a hatch in the wall opening out to the pantry. Back of the kitchen was a room on the order of a summer kitchen. There were four bedrooms above with a central hall. Some doubts exist now as to how they were apportioned, but the general opinion seems to be that the soon to be famous son occupied the rear room to the right.
A rather rambling place, a little perhaps like Bleak House (in a very small way) but a comfortable one. Unlike the home of Mr. Jarndyce, the east wind would seldom be felt here while the Bell family was in possession.
While the ladies went on a minute tour of inspection of the house, the two men walked back toward the river through the orchard.
“A first dividend on our investment” was the thought in the mind of the head of the family as his eyes took in the ample crop of apples, pears, and plums.
The typical Scot seldom showed in the men of the family. There was nothing dour or stern about them. In fact, there was a hint of the actor instead, a mobility of expression, a slight puckishness about the corners of the eyes. They laughed a great deal and frowned seldom. There was much of the thespian in the head of the family when he spread out both arms on reaching the edge of the deep slope down to the river.
The real estate men who sold them the property had claimed, characteristically, that Tutelo Heights was almost on a par with the Plains of Abraham. But as Melville Bell talked, every word he said could have been heard on the water below and perhaps even from the opposite bank; so strong and round was his voice.
There was perhaps more of the poet than the actor in the son. He was looking about him with a new sense of inner satisfaction. The bluffs above the water were steep and high. To the north, the river looped and twisted several times before passing out of sight under the spires and factory chimneys of Brantford. To the south the heights took a sharp circular turn and then tapered down to the flat expanse of farm lands known as Bow Park. The soil of part of the slope was as bare as a newly turned furrow, giving the impression that the cutting of the channel had been a recent labor of the Grand.
“Not as fine as the view from Arthur’s Seat,” thought the father.
The son drew his breath in deep draughts, for he was finding the air stimulating and good. Perhaps this new home would provide the salvation for him that they were seeking. He had seen his two brothers die of the disease which accounted for his own slenderness of frame and the trace of high color in his cheeks. It had seemed a doubtful gamble to him when they started on their long sea voyage. When he sang at the ship’s concert “Will Ye No Come Back Again,” accompanying himself on the piano, it had been of his own plight he had been thinking and not of the departure from Scotland of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The other passengers had been carried away by the intensity of the feeling he had put into the old song and had applauded enthusiastically.
Here, so isolated and high, with a cool breeze blowing off the river, he might get his health back. For the first time, perhaps, he felt really hopeful.
His father pointed to the line of tall trees along the brink and selected one spot where the space between two poplars was just the right width for a hammock.
A few feet beneath this, scooped out of the sloping earth, was a hole of quite considerable size, large enough for a tall man to stretch himself out at full length. This would be put to good and frequent use, with the aid of pillows and a horse blanket, and would be called by the members of the family the “sofa seat.”
Young Aleck Bell had already seen other uses for these shady places where the full benefit of the breeze could be enjoyed. Even during his most doubtful moments, when he had secretly feared that he must soon follow his brothers to the grave, his mind had been full of plans, of theories, of half formulated beliefs in the possibility of making an extraordinary new use of sound. Yes, he said to himself, this was an ideal place to rest, but it was more than that. It was a perfect place to reflect and study and plan.
