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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..acb5cb9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #54676 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54676) diff --git a/old/54676-8.txt b/old/54676-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0c30b18..0000000 --- a/old/54676-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8543 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Friendship Village Love Stories, by Zona Gale - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Friendship Village Love Stories - -Author: Zona Gale - -Release Date: May 7, 2017 [EBook #54676] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES - -BY - -ZONA GALE - -AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "THE LOVES -OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE," ETC. - -NEW YORK -GROSSET & DUNLAP -PUBLISHERS - - -COPYRIGHT, 1909, - -BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - -Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1909. Reprinted -November, 1909; April, 1912. - - -_Norwood Press -J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. -Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._ - - -To - -MY FRIENDS IN PORTAGE -WISCONSIN - - -Certain of the following chapters have appeared in _Everybody's_, _The -American Magazine_, _The Outlook_, _The Woman's Home Companion_, and -_The Delineator_. Thanks are due to the editors for their courteous -permission to reprint these chapters, and to Messrs. Harper Brothers for -permission to reprint the sonnet in Chapter XI. - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHAPTER PAGE - I. OPEN ARMS 1 - - II. INSIDE JUNE 15 - - III. MIGGY 33 - - IV. SPLENDOUR TOWN 43 - - V. DIFFERENT 62 - - VI. THE FOND FORENOON 81 - - VII. AFRAID 96 - - VIII. THE JAVA ENTERTAINMENT 116 - - IX. THE COLD SHOULDER 136 - - X. EVENING DRESS 148 - - XI. UNDERN 176 - - XII. THE WAY THE WORLD IS 191 - - XIII. HOUSEHOLDRY 206 - - XIV. POSTMARKS 223 - - XV. PETER 248 - - XVI. THE NEW VILLAGE 258 - - XVII. ADOPTION 274 - -XVIII. AT PETER'S HOUSE 293 - - XIX. THE CUSTODIAN 309 - - - - -Friendship Village Love Stories - - - - -I - -OPEN ARMS - - -Although it is June, the Little Child about whom I shall sometimes write -in these pages this morning brought me a few violets. June violets. They -sound unconvincing and even sentimental. However, here they are in their -vase; and they are all white but one. - -"Only one blue one," said Little Child, regretfully; "May must be 'most -dead by mistake." - -"Don't the months die as soon as they go away?" I asked her, and a -little shocked line troubled her forehead. - -"Oh, no," she said; "they never die at all. They wait and show the next -months how." - -So this year's May is showing June how. As if one should have a kind of -pre-self, who kept on, after one's birth, and told one what to live and -what not to live. I wish that I had had a pre-self and that it had kept -on with me to show me how. It is what one's mother is, only one is so -occupied in being one's born self that one thinks of her worshipfully -as one's mother instead. But this young June seems to be chiefly May, -and I am glad: for of all the months, May is to me most nearly the -essence of time to be. In May I have always an impulse to date my -letters "To-morrow," for all the enchantment of the usual future seems -come upon me. The other months are richly themselves, but May is all the -great premonitory zest come true; it is expectation come alive; it is -the Then made Now. Conservatively, however, I date my May letters merely -"To-morrow," and it is pleasant to find a conservative estimate which no -one is likely to exceed. For I own that though there is a conservatism -which is now wholly forbidden to me, yet I continue to take in it a -sensuous, stolen pleasure, such as I take in certain ceremonies; and I -know that if I were wholly pagan, extreme conservatism would be my chief -indulgence. - -This yet-May morning, then, I have been down in the village, gardening -about the streets. My sort of gardening. As in spring another looks -along the wall for her risen phlox and valley-lilies, or for the -upthrust of the annuals, so after my year's absence I peered round this -wall and that for faces and things in the renascence of recognition, or -in the pleasant importance of having just been born. Many a gate and -façade and well-house, of which in my absence I have not thought even -once, has not changed a whit in consequence. And when changes have come, -they have done so with the prettiest preening air of accomplishment: "We -too," they say, "have not been idle." - -Thus the streets came unrolling to meet me and to show me their -treasures: my neighbour's new screened-in porch "with a round extension -so to see folks pass on the cross street"; in the house in which I am to -live a former blank parlour wall gravely regarding me with a magnificent -new plate glass eye; Daphne Street, hitherto a way of sand, now become a -thing of proud macadam; the corner catalpas old enough to bloom; a white -frame cottage rising like a domestic Venus from a once vacant lot of -foam-green "Timothy"; a veranda window-box acquired, like a bright -bow-knot at its house's throat; and, farther on, the Herons' freshly -laid cement sidewalk, a flying heron stamped on every block. I fancy -they will have done that with the wooden heron knocker which in the -kitchen their grandfather Heron himself carved on sleepless nights. -("Six hundred and twenty hours of Grandpa Heron's life hanging on our -front door," his son's wife said; "I declare I feel like that bird could -just about lay.") To see all these venturesome innovations, these -obscure and pleasant substitutions, is to be greeted by the very annuals -of this little garden as a real gardener in green lore might be -signalled, here by a trembling of new purple and there by a yellow -marching line of little volunteers. - -I do not miss from their places many friends. In this house and that I -find a new family domiciled and to be divined by the subtle changes -which no old tenant would ever have made: the woodpile in an -unaccustomed place, the side shed door disused and strung for vines, a -wagon now kept by a north and south space once sacred to the sweet-pea -trench. Here a building partly ruined by fire shows grim, returned to -the inarticulate, not evidently to be rebuilt, but to be accepted, like -any death. But these variations are the exception, and only one -variation is the rule, and against that one I have in me some special -heritage of burning. I mean the felling of the village trees. We have -been used wantonly to sacrifice to the base and the trivial, trees -already stored with years of symmetry when we of these Midlands were the -intruders and not they--and I own that for me the time has never wholly -passed. They disturb the bricks in our walks, they dishevel our lawns -with twigs, they rot the shingles on our barns. It has seemed to occur -to almost nobody to pull down his barn instead. But of late we, too, are -beginning to discern, so that when in the laying of a sidewalk we meet a -tree who was there before we were anywhere at all, though we may not -yet recognize the hamadryad, we do sacrifice to her our love of a -straight line, and our votive offering is to give the tree the -walk--such a slight swerving is all the deference she asks!--and in -return she blesses us with balms and odours.... For me these signs of -our mellowing are more delightful to experience than might be the -already-made quietudes of a nation of effected and distinguished -standards. I have even been pleased when we permit ourselves an -elemental gesture, though I personally would prefer not to be the one to -have made the gesture. And this is my solace when with some -inquisitioner I unsuccessfully intercede for a friend of mine--an -isolated silver cottonwood, or a royally skirted hemlock: verily, I say, -it was so that we did here in the old days when there were forests to -conquer, and this good inquisitioner has tree-taking in his blood as he -has his genius for toil. And I try not to remember that if in America we -had had plane trees, we should almost certainly have cut them into -cabins.... But this morning even the trees that I missed could not make -me sad. No, nor even the white crape and the bunch of garden flowers -hanging on a street door which I passed. All these were as if something -elementary had happened, needless wounds, it might be, on the plan of -things, contortions which science has not yet bred away, but, as truly -as the natural death from age, eloquent of the cosmic persuading to -shape in which the nations of quietude and we of strivings are all in -fellowship. - -In fellowship! I think that in this simple basic emotion lies my joy in -living in this, my village. Here, this year long, folk have been -adventuring together, knowing the details of one another's lives, -striving a little but companioning far more than striving, kindling to -one another's interests instead of practising the faint morality of mere -civility; and I love them all--unless it be only that little Mrs. Oliver -Wheeler Johnson, newly come to Friendship; and perhaps my faint liking -for her arises from the fact that she has not yet lived here long enough -to be understood, as Friendship Village understands. The ways of these -primal tribal bonds are in my blood, for from my heart I felt what my -neighbour felt when she told me of the donation party which the whole -village has just given to Lyddy Ember:-- - -"I declare," she said, "it wasn't so much the stuff they brought in, -though that was all elegant, but it was the _Togetherness_ of it. I -couldn't get to sleep that night for thinkin' about God not havin' -anybody to neighbour with." - -It was no wonder, therefore, that when in the middle of Daphne Street my -neighbour met me this morning, for the first time since my return, and -held out her arms, I walked straight into them. Here is the secret, as -more of us know than have the wisdom to acknowledge: fellowship, -comradeship, kinship--call it what you will. My neighbour and I will -understand. - -"I heard you was here," my neighbour said--bless her, her voice -trembled. I suppose there never was such a compliment as that tremor of -her voice. - -I am afraid that I am not going to tell what else she said. But it was -all about our coming to Friendship Village to live; and that is a thing -which, as I feel about it, should be set to music and sung in the -wind--where Thoreau said that some apples are to be eaten. As for me, I -nodded at my neighbour, and could do no more than that--as is the custom -of mortals when they are face to face with these sorceries of Return and -Meeting and Being Together. - -I am not yet wonted to the sweetness of our coming to Friendship Village -to live, the Stranger and I. Here they still call him the Stranger; and -this summer, because of the busts and tablets which he must fashion in -many far places, so do I. Have I said that that Stranger of mine is a -sculptor? He is. But if anyone expects me to write about him, I tell you -that it is impossible. Save this: That since he came out of the mist one -morning on the Plank Road here in Friendship Village, we two have kept -house in the world, shared in the common welfare, toiled as we might -for the common good, observed the stars, and thanked God. And this: that -since that morning, it is as if Someone had picked us up and set us to -music and sung us to the universal piping. And we remember that once we -were only words, and that sometime we shall be whatever music is when it -is free of its body of sound, and for that time we strive. But I repeat -that these vagrant notes are not about this great Stranger, absent on -his quests of holy soul prisoned in this stone and that marble, nor yet -about our life together. Rather, I write about our Family, which is this -loved town of ours. For we have bought Oldmoxon House, and here, save -for what flights may be about and over-seas, we hope that we may tell -our days to their end. - -My neighbour had both my hands, there in the middle of Daphne Street, -and the white horse of the post-office store delivery wagon turned out -for us as if he knew. - -"If I'd thought of seeing you out so early I'd have put on my other -hat," my neighbour said, "but I'm doing up berries, an' I just run down -for some rubbers for my cans. Land, fruit-jar rubbers ain't what they -used to be, are they? One season an' they lay down life. I could jounce -up an' down I'm so glad to see you. I heard you'd been disappointed -gettin' somebody to help you with your writin'. I heard the girl that -was comin' to help you ain't comin' near." - -My secretary, it is true, has disappointed me, and she has done the -disappointing by telegraph. I had almost said, publicly by telegraph. -But I protest that I would rather an entire village should read my -telegrams and rush to the rescue, than that a whole city should care -almost nothing for me or my telegrams either. And if you please, I would -rather not have that telegram-reading criticised. - -"Well," said my neighbour, with simplicity, "I've got you one. She'll be -up to talk to you in a day or two--I saw to that. It's Miggy. She can -spell like the minister." - -I had never heard of Miggy, but I repeated her name with something of -that sense of the inescapable to which the finality of my neighbour -impressed me. As if I were to have said, "So, then, it is to be Miggy!" -Or was it something more than that? Perhaps it was that Miggy's hour and -mine had struck. At all events, I distinctly felt what I have come to -call the emotion of finality. I suppose that other people have it: that -occasional prophetic sense which, when a thing is to happen, expresses -this futurity not by words, but by a consciousness of--shall I -say?--brightness; a mental area of clearness; a quite definite physical -emotion of yes-ness. But if the thing will not happen this says itself -by a complementary apprehension of dim, down-sloping, vacant negation. I -have seldom known this divination to fail me--though I am chary of using -it lest I use it up! And then I do not always wish to know. But this -morning my emotion of finality prevailed upon me unaware: I _knew_ that -it would be Miggy. - -"What a curious name," I said, in a manner of feebly fending off the -imminent; "_why_ Miggy?" For it seemed to me one of those names instead -of which any other name would have done as well and perhaps better. - -"Her name is Margaret," my neighbour explained, "and her mother was a -real lady that come here from Off and that hard work killed her because -she _was_ a lady. The father was bound there shouldn't be any lady about -Miggy, but he couldn't seem to help himself. Margaret was her mother's -name and so he shaved it and shrunk it and strained it down to Miggy. -'No frills for nobody,' was his motto, up to his death. Miggy and her -little sister lives with her old Aunt Effie that dress-makes real French -but not enough to keep 'em alive on. Miggy does odd jobs around. So when -I heard about your needin' somebody, I says to myself, 'Miggy!'--just -like I've said it to you." - -It was not the name, as a name, which I would have said could be -uppermost in my mind as I walked on that street of June--that May was -helping to make fair. And I was annoyed to have the peace of my return -so soon invaded. I fell wondering if I could not get on, as I usually -do, with no one to bother. I have never wanted a helper at all if I -could avoid it, and I have never, never wanted a helper with a -personality. A personality among my strewn papers puts me in a fever of -embarrassment and misery. Once such an one said to me in the midst of a -chapter: "Madame, I'd like to ask you a question. What do _you_ think of -your hero?" In an utter rout of confusion I owned that I thought very -badly of him, indeed; but I did not add the truth, that she had -effectually drugged him and disabled me for at least that day. My taste -in helpers is for one colourless, noiseless, above all intonationless, -usually speechless, and always without curiosity--some one, save for the -tips of her trained fingers, negligible. As all this does sad violence -to my democratic passions, I usually prefer my negligible self. So the -idea of a Miggy terrified me, and I said to myself that I would not have -one about. As I knew the village, she was not of it. She was not a part -of my gardening. She was no proper annual. She was no doubt merely a -showy little seedling, chance sown in the village.... But all the time, -moving within me, was that serene area of brightness, that clear -certainty that, do what I could, it would still be Miggy. - -... It is through this faint soothsaying, this conception which is -partly of sight and partly of feeling, that some understanding may be -won of the orchestration of the senses. I am always telling myself that -if I could touch at that fluent line where the senses merge, I should -occasionally find there that silent Custodian who is myself. I think, -because emotion is so noble, that the Custodian must sometimes visit -this line where the barrier between her and me is so frail. Her presence -seems possible to me only for a moment, only, it may be, for the -fraction of a second in which I catch the romance, the _idea_ of -something old and long familiar. And when this happens, I say: She has -just been there, between the seeing and the feeling, or between the -seeing and the knowing. Often I am sure that I have barely missed her. -But I am never quick enough to let her know.... - -When I finished my walk and stepped under the poplars before my gate, I -caught a faint exclamation. It was that Little Child, who had been -waiting for me on my doorstep and came running to meet me and bring me -the violets. When she saw me, she said, "Oh!" quickly and sweetly in her -throat, and, as I stood still to taste the delight of having her run -toward me, I felt very sorry for every one who has not heard that -involuntary "Oh!" of a child at one's coming. Little Child and I have -met only once before, and that early this morning, at large, on the -village street, as spirits met in air, with no background of names nor -auxiliary of exchange of names; but we had some talk which for me -touched on eternal truth and for her savoured of story-telling; and we -are friends. So now when she gave me the violets and explained to me Who -was showing June how, I accepted this fair perception of the motherhood -of May, this childish discernment of the familyhood of things, and, - -"Will you come some day soon to have another story?" I asked her. - -"Prob'ly I can," said Little Child. "I'll ask Miggy." - -"Miggy! But is it your Miggy, too?" I demanded. - -"It's my sister," said Little Child, nodding. - -I thought that the concreteness of her reply to my ill-defined query was -almost as if she remembered how to understand without words. You would -think that children would need to have things said out, but they are -evidently closer to a more excellent way. - -So when I entered the house just now, I brought in with me a kind of -premonitory Miggy, one of those ghostly, anticipatory births which we -are constantly giving to those whom we have not met. As if every one -had for us a way of life without the formality of being seen. As if we -are a big, near family whether we want to be so or not. Verily, it is -not only May and June, or Little Child and Miggy, who are found -unexpectedly to be related; it is the whole world, it seems, and he is -wise who quickens to many kinships. I like to think of the comrade -company that already I have found here: June and Little Child and -Miggy-to-be and my neighbour and Daphne Street and the remembered faces -of the village and the hamadryads. I think that I include the very -herons in the cement sidewalk. Like a kind of perpetual gift it is, this -which my neighbour called _Togetherness_. - - - - -II - -INSIDE JUNE - - -_The difficulty with a June day is that you can never get near enough to -it. This month comes within few houses, and if you want it you must go -out to it. When you are within doors, knowing that out-of-doors it is -June, the urge to be out there with it is resistless. But though you -wade in green, steep in sun, breast wind, and glory in them all, still -the day itself eludes you. It would seem, in June, that there should be -a specific for the malady of being oneself, so that one might get to be -a June day outright. However, if one were oneself more and more, might -not one finally become a June day?..._ - -Or something of this sort. I am quoting, as nearly as may be, from the -Book of Our Youth, your youth and mine. Always the Book of Youth will -open at a page like this. And occasionally it is as if we turned back -and read there and made a path right away through the page. - -This morning a rose-breasted grosbeak wakened me, singing on a bough of -box-elder so close to my window that the splash of rose on his throat -almost startled me. It was as if I ought not to have been looking. And -to turn away from out-of-doors was like leaving some one who was saying -something. But as soon as I stepped into the day I perceived my old -problem: _The difficulty with a June day is that you can never get near -enough_. - -I stood for a little at the front gate trying soberly to solve the -matter--or I stood where the front gate should have been; for in our -midland American villages we have few fences or hedges, and, alas, no -stone walls. Though undoubtedly this lack comes from an insufficient -regard for privacy, yet this negative factor I am inclined to condone -for the sake of the positive motive. And this I conceive to be that we -are wistful of more ample occupation than is commonly contrived by our -fifty-feet village lots, and so we royally add to our "yards" the -sidewalk and the planting space and the road and as much of our -neighbour's lawn as our imagination can annex. There seems to me to be -in this a certain charming pathos; as it were, a survival in us of the -time when we had only to name broad lands our own and to stay upon them -in order to make them ours in very fact. And now it is as if this serene -pushing back of imaginary borders were in reality an appending, a kind -of spiritual taking up of a claim. - -How to get nearer to June? I admit that it is a question of the veriest -idler. But what a delightful company of these questions one can -assemble. As, How to find one's way to a place that _is_ the way it -seems Away Across a Meadow. How to meet enough people who hear what one -says in just the way that one means it. How to get back at will those -fugitive moments when one almost _knows_ ... what it is all about. And -with this question the field of the idler becomes the field of the wise -man; and, indeed, if one idles properly--or rather, if the proper person -idles--the two fields are not always on opposite sides of the road. To -idle is by no means merely to do nothing. It is an avocation, a calling -away, nay, one should say, a piping away. To idle is to inhibit the body -and to let the spirit keep on. Not every one can idle. I know estimable -people who frequently relax, like chickens in the sun; but I know only a -few who use relaxation as a threshold and not as a goal, and who idle -until the hour yields its full blessing. - -I wondered if to idle at adventure might not be the way to June, so I -went out on the six o'clock street in somewhat the spirit in which -another might ride the greenwood. Almost immediately I had an encounter, -for I came on my neighbour in her garden. Not my neighbour who lives on -the other side of me, and who is a big and obvious deacon, with a -family of a great many Light Gowns; but My Neighbour. She was watering -her garden. These water rules and regulations of the village are among -its spells. To look at the members of the water commission one would -never suspect them of romance. But if they have it not, why have they -named from five until nine o'clock the only morning hours when one may -use the city water for one's lawn and garden? I insist that it cannot be -a mere regard for the municipal resources, and that the commissioners -must see something of the romance of getting up before five o'clock to -drench one's garden, and are providing for the special educational value -of such a custom. Or, if I do not believe this, I wish very much that I -did, with the proper grounds. - -To tell the truth, however, I do not credit even my neighbour with -feeling the romance of the hour and of her occupation. She is a still -woman of more than forty, who does not feel a difference between her -flower and her vegetable gardens, but regards them both as a part of her -life in the kind of car-window indifference and complacency of certain -travellers. She raises foxgloves and parsley, and the sun shines over -all. I must note a strange impression which my neighbour gives me: she -has always for me an air of personal impermanence. I have the fancy, -amounting to a sensation, that she is where she is for just a moment, -and that she must rush back and be at it again. I do not know at what. -But whether I see her in church or at a festival, I have always all I -can do to resist saying to her, "How _did_ you get away?" It was so that -she was watering her flowers; as if she were intending at any moment to -hurry off to get breakfast or put up the hammock or mend. And yet before -she did so she told me, who was a willing listener, a motion or two of -the spirit of the village. - -There is, I observe, a nicety of etiquette here, about the -Not-quite-news, Not-quite-gossip shared with strangers and -semi-strangers. The rules seem to be:-- - -Strangers shall be told only the pleasant occurrences and conditions. - -Half strangers may discuss the unpleasant matters which they themselves -have somehow heard, but only pleasant matters may be added by accretion. - -The rest of society may say whatever it "has a mind." But this mind, as -I believe, is not harsh, since nobody ever gossips except to people who -gossip back. - -"Mis' Toplady told me last night that Calliope Marsh is coming home for -the Java entertainment, next week," my neighbour imparted first. And -this was the best news that she could have given me. - -It has been a great regret to me that this summer Calliope is not in the -village. She has gone to the city to nurse some distant kinswoman more -lonely than she, and until ill-health came, long forgetful of Calliope. -But she is to come back now and again, to this and to that, for the -village interests are all her own. I have never known any one in whom -the tribal sense is so persistently alive as in Calliope. - -I asked my neighbour what this Java entertainment would be, which was to -give back Calliope, and she looked her amazement that I did not know. It -would be, it appeared, one of those great fairs which the missionary -society is always projecting and carrying magnificently forward. - -"It's awful feet-aching work," said my neighbour, reflectively; "but -honestly, Calliope seems to like it. I donno but I do, too. The Sodality -meant to have one when they set out to pave Daphne Street, but it turned -out it wasn't needed. Well, big affairs like that makes it seem as if -we'd been born into the whole world and not just into Friendship -Village." - -My neighbour told me that a new public library had been opened in a -corner of the post-office store, and that "a great crowd" was drawing -books, though for this she herself cannot vouch, since the library is -only open Saturday evenings, and "Saturday," she says with decision, "is -a bad night." It is, in fact, I note, very difficult to find a free -night in the village, save only Tuesday. Monday, because of its obvious -duties and incident fatigue, is as impossible as Sunday; Wednesday is -club day; Thursday "is prayer-meeting"; Friday is sacred to church -suppers and entertainments and the Ladies' Aid Society; and Saturday is -invariably denominated a bad night and omitted without question. We are -remote from society, but Tuesday is literally our only free evening. - -"Of course it won't be the same with you about books," my neighbour -admits. "You can send your girl down to get a book for you. But I have -to be home to get out the clean clothes. How's your girl going to like -the country?" she asked. - -I am to have here in the village, I find, many a rebuke for habits of -mine which lag behind my theories. For though I try to solve my share of -a tragic question by giving to my Swedish maid, Elfa, the self-respect -and the privilege suited to a human being dependent on me, together with -ways of comfort and some leisure, yet I find the homely customs of the -place to have accomplished more than my careful system. And though, when -I took her from town I scrupulously added to the earnings of my little -maid, I confess that it had not occurred to me to wonder whether or not -she would like Friendship Village. We seem so weary-far from the -conditions which we so facilely conceive. Especially, I seem far. I am -afraid that I engaged Elfa in the first place with less attention to her -economic fitness than that she is so trim and still and wistful, with -such a peculiarly winning upward look; and that her name is Elfa. I told -my neighbour that I did not know yet, whether Elfa would like it here or -not; and for refuge I found fault with the worms on the rose bushes. -Also I made a note in my head to ask Elfa how she likes the country. But -the spirit of a thing is flown when you make a note of it in your head. -How does Elfa like the town, for that matter? I never have asked her -this, either. - -"She'll be getting married on your hands, anyway," my neighbour -observed; "the ladies here say that's one trouble with trying to keep a -hired girl. They _will_ get married. But I say, let 'em." - -At least here is a matter in which my theory, like that of my -neighbour's, outruns those of certain folk of both town and village. For -I myself have heard women complain of their servants marrying and -establishing families, and deplore this shortsightedness in not staying -where there is "a good home, a nice room, plenty to eat, and all the -flat pieces sent to the laundry." - -"Speaking of books," said my neighbour, "have you seen Nicholas Moor?" - -"I see almost no new books," I told her guiltily. - -"Me either," she said; "I don't mean he's a book. He's a boy. Nicholas -Moor--that does a little writin' himself? I guess you will see him. -He'll be bringin' some of his writing up to show you. He took some to -the new school principal, I heard, and to the invalid that was here from -the city. He seems to be sort of lonesome, though he _has_ got a good -position. He's interested in celluloid and he rings the Catholic bell. -Nicholas must be near thirty, but he hasn't even showed any signs." - -"Signs?" I hazarded. - -"Of being in love," she says simply. And I have pondered pleasantly on -this significant ellipsis of hers which takes serenely for granted the -basic business of the world. Her elision reminds me of the delicate -animism of the Japanese which says, "When the rice pot speaks with a -human voice, then the demon's name is Kanjo." One can appraise a race or -an individual by the class of things which speech takes for granted, -love or a demon or whatever it be. - -And apropos of "showing signs," do I remember Liva Vesey and Timothy -Toplady, Jr.? I am forced to confess that I remember neither. I recall, -to be sure, that the Topladys had a son, but I had thought of him as a -kind of qualifying clause and it is difficult to conceive of him as the -subject of a new sentence. When I hear of Liva Vesey I get her confused -with a pink gingham apron and a pail of buttermilk which used sometimes -to pass my house with Liva combined. Fancy that pink gingham and that -pail becoming a person! And my neighbour tells me that the Qualifying -Clause and the Pink Gingham are "keeping company," and perhaps are to -determine the cut of indeterminate clauses and aprons, world without -end. - -"The young folks _will_ couple off," says my neighbour; "and," she adds, -in a manner of spontaneous impression, "_I_ think it's nice. And it's -nice for the whole family, too. I've seen families that wouldn't ever -have looked at each other come to be real friends and able to see the -angels in each other just by the young folks pairing off. This whole -town's married crisscross and kittering, family into family. I like it. -It kind o' binds the soil." - -My neighbour told me of other matters current in the village, pleasant -commonplaces having for her the living spirit which the commonplace -holds in hostage. ("I'm breathing," Little Child soberly announced to me -that first day of our acquaintance. And I wonder why I smiled?) My -neighbour slowly crossed her garden and I followed on the walk--these -informal colloquies of no mean length are perfectly usual in the village -and they do not carry the necessity for an invitation within the house -or the implication of a call. The relations of hostess and guest seem -simply to be suspended, and we talk with the freedom of spirits met in -air. Is this not in its way prophetic of the time when we shall meet, -burdened of no conventions or upholstery or perhaps even words, and -there talk with the very freedom of villagers? Meanwhile I am content -with conventions, and passive amid upholstery. But I do catch myself -looking forward. - -Suddenly my neighbour turned to me with such a startled, inquiring -manner that I sent my attention out as at an alarm to see what she -meant. And then I heard what I had not before noted: a thin, wavering -line of singing, that had begun in the street beyond our houses, and now -floated inconsequently to us, lifting, dipping, wandering. I could even -hear the absurd words. - - - "_My_ Mary Anna Mary, what you mean I _never_ know. - You don't make me merry, very, but you make me sorry, oh--" - - -the "oh" prolonged, undulatory, exploring the air. - -To say something was like interrupting my neighbour's expression; so I -waited, and, - -"It's old Cary," she explained briefly. "When he does that it's like -something hurts you, ain't it?" - -I thought that this would be no one of my acquaintance, and I said so, -but tentatively, lest I should be forgetting some inherent figure of the -village. - -"He's come here in the year," she explained--and, save about the obvious -import of old Cary's maudlin song, she maintained that fine, tribal -reticence of hers. "Except for the drinking," she even said, "he seems -to be a quiet, nice man. But it's a shame--for Peter's sake. Peter -Cary," she added, like a challenge, "is the brainiest young man in -_this_ town, say what you want." - -On which she told me something of this young superintendent of the -canning factory who has "tried it in Nebraska," and could not bear to -leave his father here, "this way," and has just returned. "He works -hard, and plays the violin, and is making a man of himself generally," -she told me; "Don't miss him." And I have promised that I will try not -to miss Peter Cary. - -"They live out towards the cemetery way," she added, "him and his -father, all alone. Peter'll be along by here in a minute on his way to -work--it's most quarter to. I set my husband down to his breakfast and -got up his lunch before I come out--I don't have my breakfast till the -men folks get out of the way." - -I never cease to marvel at these splendid capabilities which prepare -breakfasts, put up lunches, turn the attention to the garden, and all, -so to speak, with the left hand; ready at any moment to enter upon the -real business of life--to minister to the sick or bury the dead, or -conduct a town meeting or a church supper or a birth. They have a kind -of goddess-like competence, these women. At any of these offices they -arrive, lacking the cloud, it is true, but magnificently equipped to -settle the occasion. In crises of, say, deafness, they will clap a hot -pancake on a friend's ear with an Æsculapian _savoir faire_, for their -efficiencies combine those of lost generations with all that they hear -of in this, in an open-minded eclecticism. With Puritans and foresters -and courtiers in our blood, who knows but that we have, too, the -lingering ichor of gods and goddesses? Oh--"_don't you wish you had_?" -What a charming peculiarity it would be to be descended from a state of -immortality as well as to be preparing for it, nay, even now to be -entered upon it! - -In a few moments after that piteous, fuddled song had died away on the -other street, Peter Cary came by my neighbour's house. He was a -splendid, muscular figure in a neutral, belted shirt and a hat battered -quite to college exactions, though I am sure that Peter did not know -that. I could well believe that he was making a man of himself. I have -temerity to say that this boy superintendent of a canning factory looked -as, in another milieu, Shelley might have looked, but so it was. It was -not the first time that I have seen in such an one the look, the eyes -with the vision and the shadow. I have seen it in the face of a man who -stood on a step-ladder, papering a wall; I have seen it in a mason who -looked up from the foundation that he mortared; I have seen it often -and often in the faces of men who till the soil. I was not surprised to -know that Peter Cary "took" on the violin. The violin is a way out (for -that look in one's eyes), as, for Nicholas Moor, I have no doubt, is the -ringing of the Catholic bell. And I am not prepared to say that -celluloid, and wall-paper, and mortar, and meadows, and canneries,--run -under good conditions,--may not be a way out as well. At all events, the -look was still in Peter's face. - -Peter glanced briefly at my neighbour, running the risk of finding us -both looking at him, realized the worst, blushed a man's brown blush, -and nodded and smiled after he had looked away from us. - -"You see this grass?" said my neighbour. "Peter keeps it cut, my husband -don't get home till so late. We're awful fond of Peter." - -There is no more tender eulogy. And I would rather have that said of me -in the village than in any place I know. No grace of manner or dress or -mind can deceive anybody. They are fond of you or they are not, and I -would trust their reasons for either. - -My neighbour's husband came out the front door at that moment, and he -and Peter, without greeting, went on together. Her husband did not look -toward us, because, in the village, it seems not to be a husband and -wife ceremonial to say good-by in the morning. I often fall wondering -how it is in other places. Is it possible that men in general go away -to work without the consciousness of family, of themselves as going -forth on the common quest? Is it possible that women see them go and are -so unaware of the wonder of material life that they do not instance it -in, at least, good-by? One would think that even the female bear in the -back of the cave must growl out something simple when her lord leaves -her in the hope of a good kill. - -And when the two men had turned down the brick walk, the maple leaves -making a come-and-go of shadows and sun-patterns on their backs, my -neighbour looked at me with a smile--or, say, with two-thirds of a -smile--as if her vote to smile were unanimous, but she were unwilling by -it to impart too much. - -"It's all Miggy with Peter," she said, as if she were mentioning a -symptom. - -"Miggy?" I said with interest--and found myself nodding to this new -relationship as to a new acquaintance. And I was once more struck with -the precision with which certain simple people and nearly all great -people discard the particularities and lay bare their truths. Could any -amount of elegant phrasing so reach the heart of the thing and show it -beating as did, "It's all Miggy with Peter"? - -"Yes," my neighbour told me, "it's been her with him ever since he come -here." - -Assuredly I thought the better of Miggy for this; and, - -"Is it all Peter with Miggy?" I inquired, with some eagerness. - -Land knows, my neighbour thought, and handed me the hose to hold while -she turned off the water at the hydrant. I remember that a young robin -tried to alight on the curving spray just as the water failed and -drooped. - -"I like to get a joke on a robin that way," said my neighbour, and -laughed out, in a kind of pleasant fellowship with jokes in general and -especially with robins. "It made Miggy's little sister laugh so the -other day when that happened," she added. Then she glanced over at me -with a look in her face that I have not seen there before. - -"Land," she said, "this is the time of day, after my husband goes off in -the morning, when I wish I had a little young thing, runnin' round. -_Now_ almost more than at night. Well--I don't know; both times." - -I nodded, without saying anything, my eyes on a golden robin prospecting -vainly among the green mulberries. I wish that I were of those who know -what to say when a door is opened like this to some shut place. - -"Well," said my neighbour, "now I'll bake up the rest of the batter. -Want a pink?" - -Thus tacitly excused--how true her instinct was, courteously to put the -three fringed pinks in my hand to palliate her leaving!--I have come -back to my house and my own breakfast. - -"Elfa," said I, first thing, "do you think you are going to like the -country?" - -My little maid turned to me with her winning upward look. - -"No'm," she shocked me by saying. And there was another door, opened -into another shut place; and I did not know what to say to that either. - -But I am near to my neighbour; and, in a manner to which Elfa's trimness -and wistfulness never have impressed me, near to Elfa herself, and I am -near, near to the village. As I left the outdoors just now, all the -street was alive: with men and girls going to work, women opening -windows, a wagon or two in from a Caledonia farm, a general, universal, -not to say cosmic air of activity and coffee. All the little houses, set -close together up and down the street, were like a friendly porch party, -on a long, narrow veranda, where folk sit knee to knee with an avenue -between for the ice-cream to be handed. All the little lawns and gardens -were disposed like soft green skirts, delicately embroidered, fragrant, -flowing.... As I looked, it seemed to me that I could hear the faint hum -of the village talk--in every house the intimate, revealing confidences -of the Family, quick with hope or anxiety or humour or passion, -animated by its common need to live. And along the street flooded the -sun, akin to the morning quickening in many a heart. - -The day has become charged for me with something besides daylight, -something which no less than daylight pervades, illumines, comes to meet -me at a thousand points. I wonder if it can be that, unaware, I did get -near to June? - - - - -III - -MIGGY - - -I have never heard the chimes of Westminster cathedral, but when some -time they do sound for me I shall find in them something all my own. For -the old rosewood clock which has told time for me these many years is -possessed of a kind of intelligence because its maker gave to it the -Westminster chimes. Thus, though the clock must by patient ticking teach -the rhythm of duration until the secret monotony of rhythm is confessed, -it has also its high tides of life, rhythmic, too, and at every quarter -hour fills a kind of general creative office: four notes for the -quarter, eight for the half, twelve for the three-quarters, sixteen for -the hour, and then the deep Amen of the strokes. At twelve o'clock it -swells richly to its zenith of expression and almost says something -else. Through even the organ fulness of the cathedral bells I shall hear -the tingling melody of the rosewood clock chimes, for their sweet -incidence has been to me both matins and lullaby and often trembles -within my sleep. I have the clock always with me. It is a little -voice-friend, it is one of those half folk, like flowers and the wind -and an open fireplace and a piano, which are a frail, semi-born race, -wistful of complete life, but as yet only partly overlapping our own -sphere. These fascinate me almost as much as the articulate. That was -why, when my little maid Elfa had brought me the summons to-day, I stood -on the threshold and in some satisfaction watched Miggy, rapt before my -clock in its musical maximum of noon. - -Miggy is as thin as a bough, and her rather large head is swept by an -ungovernable lot of fine brown hair. Her face was turned from me, and -she was wearing a high-necked gingham apron faded to varying values of -brown and faint purple and violet of a quite surprising beauty. When the -last stroke ceased, she turned to me as if I had been there all the -time. - -"I wish I could hear it do that again," she said, standing where she had -stood, arms folded. - -"You will, perhaps, to-morrow," I answered. - -Truly, if it was to be Miggy, then she would hear the chimes to-morrow -and to-morrow; and as she turned, my emotion of finality increased. I -have never loved the tribe of the Headlongs, though I am very sorry for -any one who has not had with them an occasional innocent tribal junket; -but I hold that through our intuitions, we may become a kind of -apotheosis of the Headlongs. Who of us has not chosen a vase, a chair, a -rug, by some motive transcending taste, by the bidding of a -friendly-faithful monitor who, somewhere inside one, nodded a choice -which we obeyed? And yet a vase is a dead thing with no little seeking -tentacles that catch and cling, while in choosing the living it is that -one's friendly-faithful monitor is simply recognizing the monitor of the -other person. I, for one, am more and more willing to trust these two to -avow their own. For I think that this monitor is, perhaps, that silent -Custodian whom, if ever I can win through her elusiveness, I shall know -to be myself. As the years pass I trust her more and more. I find that -we like the same people, she and I! And instantly we both liked Miggy. - -Miggy stood regarding me intently. - -"I saw you go past the Brevy's yesterday, where the crape is on the -door," she observed; "I thought it was you." - -I wonder at the precision with which very little people and very big -people brush aside the minor conventions and do it in such ways that one -nature is never mistaken for the other. - -"The girl who died there was your friend, then?" I asked. - -"No," Miggy said; "I just knew her to speak to. And she didn't always -bother her head to speak to me. I just went in there yesterday morning -to get the feeling." - -"I beg your pardon. To get--what?" I asked. - -"Well," said Miggy, "you know when you look at a corpse you can always -sense your own breath better--like it was something alive inside you. -That's why I never miss seeing one if I can help. It's the only time I'm -real glad I'm living." - -As I motioned her to the chair and took my own, I felt a kind of -weariness. The neurotics, I do believe, are of us all the nearest to the -truth about things, but as I grow older I find myself getting to take a -surpassing comfort in the normal. Or rather, I am always willing to have -the normal thrust upon me, but my neurotics I wish to select for myself. - -"My neighbour tells me," I said merely, "that she thinks you should be -my secretary." (It is a big word for the office, but a little hill is -still a hill.) - -"I think so, too," said Miggy, simply, "I was afraid you wouldn't." - -"Have you ever been anybody's secretary?" I continued. - -"Never," said Miggy. "I never saw anybody before that had a secretary." - -"But something must have made her think you would do," I suggested. "And -what made you think so?" - -"Well," Miggy said, "she thinks so because she wants me to get ahead. -And I think so because I generally think I can do anything--except -mathematics. Has Secretary got any mathematics about it?" - -"Not my secretary work," I told her, reviewing these extraordinary -qualifications for duty; "except counting the words on a page. You could -do that?" - -"Oh, that!" said Miggy. "But if you told me to multiply two fractions -you'd never see me again, no matter how much I wanted to come back. -Calliope Marsh says she's always expecting to find some folks' heads -caved in on one side--same as red and blue balloons. If mine caved, it'd -be on the mathematics corner." - -I assured her that I never have a fraction in my house. - -"Then I'll come," said Miggy, simply. - -But immediately she leaned forward with a look of anxiety, and her face -was pointed and big-eyed, so that distress became a part of it. - -"Oh," she said, "I _forgot_. I meant to tell you first." - -"What is it? Can you not come, after all?" I inquired gravely. - -"I've got a drawback," said Miggy, soberly. "A man's in love with me." - -She linked her arms before her, a hand on either shoulder--arms whose -slenderness amazes me, though at the wrist they taper and in their -extreme littleness are yet round. Because of this frailty she has a kind -of little girl look which at that moment curiously moved me. - -"Who told you that?" I asked abruptly. - -"About it being a drawback? Everybody 'most," said Miggy. "They all -laugh about us and act like it was a pity." - -For a moment I felt a kind of anger as I felt it once when a woman said -to me of a wife of many years whose first little child was coming, that -she was "in trouble." I own that,--save with my neighbour, and Calliope, -and a few more whom I love--here in the village I miss the simple good -breeding of the perception that nothing is nobler than the emotions, and -the simple good taste of taking seriously love among its young. Taking -it seriously, I say. Not, heaven forbid, taking it for granted, as do -the cities. - -"Other things being equal, I prefer folk who are in love," I told Miggy. -Though I observe that I instance a commercialization which I deplore by -not insisting on this secretarial qualification to anything like the -extent with which I insist on, say, spelling. - -Miggy nodded--three little nods which seemed to settle everything. - -"Then I'll come," she repeated. "Anyhow, it isn't me that's in love at -all. It's Peter. But of course I have to have some of the blame." - -So! It was, then, not "all Peter with Miggy." Poor Peter. It must be a -terrific problem to be a Peter to such a Miggy. I must have looked "Poor -Peter," because the girl's face took on its first smile. Such a smile as -it was, brilliant, sparkling, occupying her features instead of -informing them. - -"He won't interfere much," she observed. "He's in the cannery all day -and then he practises violin and tinkers. I only see him one or two -evenings a week; and I never think of him at all." - -"As my secretary," said I, "you may make a mental note for me: remind me -that I wish sometime to meet Peter." - -"He'll be real pleased," said Miggy, "and real scared. Now about my -being your secretary: do I have to take down everything you do?" - -"My dear child!" I exclaimed. - -"Don't I?" said Miggy. "Why, the Ladies' Aid has a secretary and she -takes down every single thing the society does. I thought that was being -one." - -I told her, as well as might be, what I should require of her--not by -now, I own, with any particularity of idea that I had a secretary, but -rather that I had surprisingly acquired a Miggy, who might be of use in -many a little mechanical task. She listened, and, when I had made an -end, gave her three little nods; but her face fell. - -"It's just doing as you're told," she summed it up with a sigh. -"Everything is, ain't it? I thought maybe Secretary was doing your -best." - -"But it is," I told her. - -"No," she said positively, "you can't do your best when you have to do -just exactly what you're told. Your _best_ tells you how to do itself." - -At this naïve putting of the personal equation which should play so -powerful a part in the economics of toil I was minded to apologize for -intending to interfere with set tasks in Miggy's possible duties with -me. She had the truth, though: that the strong creative instinct is the -chief endowment, primal as breath; for on it depend both life and the -expression of life, the life of the race and the ultimate racial -utterance. - -We talked on for a little, Miggy, I observed, having that royal -indifference to time which, when it does not involve indifference to the -time of other people, I delightedly commend. For myself, I can never -understand why I should eat at one or sleep at eleven, if it is, as it -often is, _my_ one and _my_ eleven and nobody else's. For, as between -the clock and me alone, one and eleven and all other o'clocks are mine -and I am not theirs. But I have known men and women living in hotels who -would interrupt a sunset to go to dine, or wave away the stars in their -courses to go to sleep, merely because the hour had struck. It must be -in their blood, poor things, as descendants from the cell, to which time -and space were the only considerations. - -When Miggy was leaving, she paused on the threshold with her first hint -of shyness, a hint which I welcomed. I think that every one to whom I am -permanently drawn must have in his nature a phase of shyness, even of -unconquerable timidity. - -"If I shouldn't do things," Miggy said, "like you're used to having them -done--would you tell me? I know a few nice things to do and I do 'em. -But I'm always waking up in the night and thinking what a lot there must -be that I do wrong. So if I do 'em wrong would you mind not just -squirming and keeping still about 'em--but tell me?" - -"I'll tell you, child, if there is need," I promised her. And I caught -her smile--that faint, swift, solemn minute which sometimes reveals on a -face the childlike wistfulness of every one of us, under the mask, to -come as near as may be to the others. - -I own that when, just now, I turned from her leave-taking, I had that -infrequent sense of emptiness-in-the-room which I have had usually only -with those I love or with some rare being, all fire and spirit and idea, -who has flamed in my presence and died into departure. I cannot see why -we do not feel this sense of emptiness whenever we leave one another. -Would you not think that it would be so with us who live above the abyss -and below the uttermost spaces? It is not so, and there are those from -whose presence I long to be gone in a discomfort which is a kind of -orison of my soul to my body to hurry away. It is so that I long to be -gone from that little Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson, and of this I am -sorely ashamed. But I think that all such dissonance is merely a failure -in method, and that the spirit of this business of being is that we long -for one another to be near. - -Yes, in "this world of visible images" and patterns and schedules and -o'clocks, it is like stumbling on the true game to come on some one who -is not on any dial. And I fancy that Miggy is no o'clock. She is not -Dawn o'clock, because already she has lived so much; nor Noon o'clock, -because she is far from her high moment; nor is she Dusk o'clock, -because she is so poignantly alive. Rather, she is like the chimes of a -clock--which do not tell the time, but which almost say something else. - - - - -IV - -SPLENDOUR TOWN - - -Last night I went for a walk across the river, and Little Child went -with me to the other end of the bridge. - -I would have expected it to be impossible to come to the fourth chapter -and to have said nothing of the river. But the reason is quite clear: -for the setting of the stories of the village as I know them is -preëminently rambling streets and trim dooryards, and neat interiors -with tidy centre-tables. Nature is merely the necessary opera-house, not -the intimate setting. Nature's speech through the trees is most -curiously taken for granted as being trees alone, and she is, as I have -shown, sometimes cut off quite rudely in the midst of an elm or linden -sentence and curtly interrupted by a sidewalk. If a grove of trees is -allowed to remain in a north dooryard it is almost certainly because the -trees break the wind. Likewise, Nature's unfoldings in our turf and -clover we incline to regard as merely lawns, the results of seeds and -autumn fertilizing. Our vines are for purposes of shade, cheaper and -prettier than awnings or porch rollers. With our gardens, where our -"table vegetables" are grown, Nature is, I think, considered to have -little or nothing to do; and we openly pride ourselves on our early this -and our prodigious that, quite as when we cut a dress or build a -lean-to. We admit the rain or the sunny slope into partnership, but what -we recognize is weather rather than the mighty spirit of motherhood in -Nature. Indeed, our flower gardens, where are wrought such miracles of -poppies and pinks, are perhaps the only threshold on which we stand -abashed, as at the sound of a singing voice, a voice that sings -believing itself to be alone. - -These things being so, it is no wonder that the river has been for so -long no integral part of village life. The river is accounted a place to -fish, a place to bathe, a thing to cross to get to the other side, an -objective point--including the new iron bridge--to which to take guests. -But of the everyday life it is no proper part. On the contrary, the -other little river, which strikes out silverly for itself to eastward, -is quite a personality in the village, for on it is a fine fleet of -little launches with which folk take delight. But this river of mine to -the west is a thing of whims and eddies and shifting sand bars, and here -not many boats adventure. So the river is accepted as a kind of pleasant -hermit living on the edge of the village. It draws few of us as Nature -can draw to herself. We know the water as a taste only and not yet as an -emotion. We say that we should enjoy going there if we had the time. I -know, I know. You see that we do not yet _live_ the river, as an ancient -people would live their moor. But in our launches, our camping parties, -our flights to a little near lake for dinner, in a tent here and a swing -there, set to face riverward, there lies the thrill of process, and by -these things Nature is wooing us surely to her heart. Already the Pump -pasture has for us the quality of individuality, and we have picnics -there and speak of the pasture almost as of a host. Presently we shall -be companioned by all our calm stretches of meadow, our brown sand bars, -our Caledonia hills, our quiet lakes, our unnavigable river, as the -Northmen were fellowed of the sea. - -Little Child has at once a wilder and a tamer instinct. She has this -fellowship and the fellowship of more. - -"Where shall we go to-day?" I ask her, and she always says, "Far away -for a party"--in a combination, it would seem, of the blood of shepherd -kings with certain corpuscles of modernity. And when we are in the woods -she instances the same dual quality by, "Now let's sit down in a _roll_ -and wait for a fairy, and be a society." - -We always go along the levee, Little Child and I, and I watch the hour -have its way with her, and I do not deny that occasionally I try to -improve on the hour by a tale of magic or by the pastime of teaching her -a lyric. I love to hear her pretty treble in "Who is Sylvia? What is -she?" and "She dwelt among th' untrodden ways," and "April, April, laugh -thy girlish laughter," and in Pippa's song. Last night, to be sure, the -lyrics rather gave way to some talk about the circus to be to-day, an -unwonted benison on the village. But even the reality of the circus -could not long keep Little Child from certain sweet vagaries, and I love -best to hear her in these fancyings. - -"Here," she said to me last night, "is her sponge." - -I had no need to ask whose sponge. We are always finding the fairy's -cast-off ornaments and articles of toilet. On occasion we have found her -crown, her comb, her scarf, her powder-puff, her cup, her plumed fan, -her parasol--a skirtful of fancies which next day Little Child has -brought to me in a shoe box for safe keeping so that "They" would not -throw the things away: that threatening "They" which overhangs -childhood, casting away its treasures, despoiling its fastnesses, laying -a ladder straight through a distinct and recognizable fairy ring in the -back yard. I can visualize that "They" as I believe it seems to some -children, something dark and beetling and menacing and imminent, less -like the Family than like Fate. Is it not sad that this precious idea of -the Family, to conserve which is one of our chief hopes, should so often -be made to appear to its youngest member in the general semblance of a -phalanx? - -We sat down for a little at the south terminal of the bridge, where a -steep bank and a few desperately clinging trees have arranged a little -shrine to the sunset. It was sunset then. All the way across the bridge -I had been watching against the gold the majestic or apathetic or sodden -profiles of the farmers jogging homeward on empty carts, not one face, -it had chanced, turned to the west even to utilize it to forecast the -weather. Such a procession I want to see painted upon a sovereign sky -and called "The Sunset." I want to have painted a giant carpenter of the -village as I once saw him, his great bare arms upholding a huge white -pillar, while blue figures hung above and set the acanthus capital. And -there is a picture, too, in the dull red of the butcher's cart halted in -snow while a tawny-jerseyed boy lifts high his yellow light to find a -parcel. Some day we shall see these things in their own surprising -values and fresco our village libraries with them--yes, and our drug -stores, too. - -The story that I told Little Child while we rested had the symbolism -which I often choose for her: that of a girl keeping a garden for the -coming of a child. All her life she has been making ready and nothing -has been badly done. In one green room of the garden she has put fair -thoughts, in another fair words, and in the innermost fastnesses of the -garden fair deeds. Here she has laid colour, there sweet sound, there -something magic which is a special kind of seeing. When the child comes, -these things will be first toys, then tools, then weapons. Sometimes the -old witch of the wood tries to blow into the garden a thistle of discord -or bubbles of delight to be followed, and these must be warded away. All -day the spirit of the child to come wanders through the garden, telling -the girl what to do here or here, keeping her from guile or from -idleness-without-dreams. She knows its presence and I think that she has -even named it. If it shall be a little girl, then it is to be Dagmar, -Mother of Day, or Dawn; but if a little boy, then it shall be called for -one whom she has not yet seen. Meanwhile, outside the door of the garden -many would speak with the girl. On these she looks, sometimes she even -leans from her casement, and once, it may be, she reaches out her hand, -ever so swiftly, and some one without there touches it. But at that she -snatches back her hand and bars the garden, and for a time the spirit of -the little child does not come very near. So she goes serenely on -toward the day when a far horn sounds and somebody comes down the air -from heaven, as it has occurred to nobody else to do. And they hear the -voice of the little child, singing in the garden. - -"The girl is me," says little Little Child, as she always says when I -have finished this story. - -"Yes," I tell her. - -"I'd like to see that garden," she says thoughtfully. - -Then I show her the village in the trees of the other shore, roof upon -roof pricked by a slim steeple; for that is the garden. - -"I don't care about just bein' good," she says, "but I'd like to -housekeep that garden." - -"For a sometime-little-child of your own," I tell her. - -"Yes," she assents, "an' make dresses for." - -I cannot understand how mothers let them grow up not knowing, these -little mothers-to-be who so often never guess their vocation. It is a -reason for everything commonly urged on the ground of conduct, a ground -so lifeless to youth. But quicken every desert space with "It must be -done so for the sake of the little child you will have some day," and -there rises a living spirit. Morals, civics, town and home economics, -learning--there is the concrete reason for them all; and the abstract -understanding of these things for their own sakes will follow, -flower-wise, fruit-wise, for the healing of the times. - -I had told to that old Aunt Effie who keeps house for Miggy and Little -Child something of what I thought to do--breaking in upon the old -woman's talk of linoleum and beans and other things having, so to say, -one foot in the universe. - -"Goodness," that old woman had answered, with her worried turn of head, -"I'm real glad you're going to be here. _I dread saying anything._" - -Here too we must look to the larger day when the state shall train for -parenthood and for citizenship, when the schools and the universities -shall speak for the state the cosmic truths, and when by comparison -botany and differential calculus shall be regarded as somewhat less -vital in ushering in the kingdom of God. - -The water reservoir rose slim against the woods to the north; to the -south was a crouching hop house covered with old vines. I said to Little -Child:-- - -"Look everywhere and tell me where you think a princess would live if -she lived here." - -She looked everywhere and answered:-- - -"In the water tower in those woods." - -"And where would the old witch live?" I asked her. - -"In the Barden's hop house," she answered. - -"And where would the spirit of the little child be?" I tested her. - -She looked long out across the water. - -"I think in the sunset," she said at last. And then of her own will she -said over the Sunset Spell I have taught her:-- - - - "I love to stand in this great air - And see the sun go down. - It shows me a bright veil to wear - And such a pretty gown. - Oh, I can see a playmate there - Far up in Splendour Town." - - -I could hardly bear to let her go home, but eight o'clock is very -properly Little Child's bedtime, and so I sent her across the bridge -waving her hand every little way in that fashion of children who, I -think, are hoping thus to save the moment that has just died. I have -known times when I, too, have wanted to wave my hand at a moment and -keep it looking at me as long as possible. But presently the moment -almost always turned away. - -Last night I half thought that the sunset itself would like to have -stayed. It went so delicately about its departure, taking to itself -first a shawl of soft dyes, then a painted scarf, then frail iris wings. -It mounted far up the heavens, testing its strength for flight and -shaking brightness from its garments. And it slipped lingeringly away as -if the riot of colour were after all the casual part, and the real -business of the moment were to stay on with everybody. In the tenuity of -the old anthropomorphisms I marvel that they did not find the sunset a -living thing, tender of mortals, forever loth to step from out one -moment into the cherishing arms of the next. Think! The sunset that the -Greeks knew has been flaming round the world, dying from moment to -moment and from mile to mile, with no more of pause than the human -heart, since sunset flamed for Hero and Helen and Ariadne. - -If the sunset was made for lovers, and in our midland summers lingers on -their account, then last night it was lingering partly for Miggy and -Peter. At the end of the bridge I came on them together. - -Miggy did not flush when she saw me, and though I would not have -expected that she would flush I was yet disappointed. I take an -old-fashioned delight in women whose high spirit is compatible with a -sensibility which causes them the little agonizings proper to this -moment, and to that. - -But Miggy introduced Peter with all composure. - -"This," she said, "is Peter. His last name is Cary." - -"How do you do, Peter?" I said very heartily. - -I thought that Peter did something the rationale of which might have -been envied of courts. He turned to Miggy and said "Thank you." -Secretly I congratulated him on his embarrassment. In a certain milieu -social shyness is as authentic a patent of perception as in another -milieu is taste. - -"Come home with me," I besought them. "We can find cake. We can make -lemonade. We can do some reading aloud." For I will not ask the mere -cake and lemonade folk to my house. They must be, in addition, good or -wise or not averse to becoming either. - -I conceived Peter's evident agony to rise from his need to reply. -Instead, it rose from his need to refuse. - -"I take my violin lesson," he explained miserably. - -"He takes his violin lesson," Miggy added, with a pretty, somewhat -maternal manner of translating. I took note of this faint manner of -proprietorship, for it is my belief that when a woman assumes it she -means more than she knows that she means. - -"I'm awful sorry," said Peter, from his heart; "I was just having to go -back this minute." - -"To-morrow's his regular lesson day," Miggy explained, "but to-morrow -he's going to take me to the circus, so he has his lesson to-night. Go -on," she added, "you'll be late and you'll have to pay just the same -anyway." I took note of this frank fashion of protection of interests, -for it is my belief that matters are advancing when the lady practises -economics in courtship. But I saw that Miggy was manifesting no -symptoms of accompanying Peter, and I begged them not to let me spoil -their walk. - -"It's all right," Miggy said; "he'll have to hurry and I don't want to -go in yet anyway. I'll walk back with you." And of this I took note with -less satisfaction. It was as if Miggy had not come alive. - -Peter smiled at us, caught off his hat, and went away with it in his -hand, and the moment that he left my presence he became another being. I -could see by his back that he was himself, free again, under no bondage -of manner. It is a terrific problem, this enslavement of speech and -trivial conduct which to some of us provides a pleasant medium and for -some of us furnishes fetters. When will they manage a wireless society? -I am tired waiting. For be it a pleasant medium or be it fetters, the -present communication keeps us all apart. "I hope," I said once at -dinner, "that I shall be living when they think they get the first sign -from Mars." "I hope," said my companion, "that I shall be living when I -think I get the first sign from you--and you--and you, about this -table." If this young Shelley could really have made some sign, what -might it not have been? - -"Everybody's out walking to-night," Miggy observed. "There's Liva Vesey -and Timothy Toplady ahead of us." - -"They are going to be married, are they not?" I asked. - -Miggy looked as if I had said something indelicate. - -"Well," she answered, "not out loud yet." - -Then, fearing that she had rebuked me, "He's going to take her to the -circus to-morrow in their new buckboard," she volunteered. And I find in -Friendship that the circus is accounted a kind of official -trysting-place for all sweethearts. - -We kept a little way back of the lovers, the sun making Liva Vesey's -pink frock like a vase-shaped lamp of rose. Timothy was looking down at -her and straightway looking away again when Liva had summoned her -courage to look up. They were extremely pleasant to watch, but this -Miggy did not know and she was intent upon me. She had met Little Child -running home. - -"She's nice to take a walk with," Miggy said; "but I like to walk around -by myself too. Only to-night Peter came." - -"Miggy," said I, "I want to congratulate you that Peter is in love with -you." - -She looked up with puzzled eyes. - -"Why, that was nothing," she said; "he seemed to do it real easy." - -"But it is _not_ easy," I assured her, "to find many such fine young -fellows as Peter seems to be. I hope you will be very happy together." - -"I'm not engaged," said Miggy, earnestly; "I'm only invited." - -"Ah, well," I said, "if I may be allowed--I hope you are not sending -regrets." - -Miggy laughed out suddenly. - -"Married isn't like a party," she said; "I know that much about society. -Party you either accept or regret. Married you do both." - -I could have been no more amazed if the rosewood clock had said it. - -"Who has been talking to you, child?" I asked in distress. - -"I got it out of living," said Miggy, solemnly. "You live along and you -live along and you find out 'most everything." - -I looked away across the Pump pasture where the railway tracks cut the -Plank Road, that comes on and on until it is modified into Daphne -Street. I remembered a morning of mist and dogwood when I had walked -that road through the gateway into an earthly paradise. Have I not said -that since that time we two have been, as it were, set to music and -sung; so that the silences of separation are difficult to beguile save -by the companionship of the village--the village that has somehow taught -Miggy its bourgeoise lesson of doubt? - -My silence laid on her some vague burden of proof. - -"Besides," she said, "I'm not like the women who marry people. Most of -'em that's married ain't all married, anyway." - -"What do you mean, child?" I demanded. - -"They're not," protested Miggy. "They marry like they pick out a way to -have a dress made when they don't admire any of the styles very much, -and they've wore out everything else. Women like some things about -somebody, and that much they marry. Then the rest of him never is -married at all, and by and by that rest starts to get lonesome." - -"But Miggy," I said to all this, "I should think you might like Peter -entirely." - -She surprised me by her seriousness. - -"Anyhow, I've got my little sister to bring up," she said; "Aunt Effie -hasn't anything. And I couldn't put two on him to support." - -I wondered why not, but I said nothing. - -"And besides," Miggy said after a pause, "there's Peter's father. You -know about him?" - -I did know--who in the village did not know? Since my neighbour had told -me of him I had myself seen him singing through the village streets, -shouting out and disturbing the serene evenings, drunken, piteous.... - -"Peter has him all the time," I suggested. - -She must have found a hint of resistance in my voice, for her look -questioned me. - -"I never could stand it to have anybody like that in the house," she -said defensively. "I've told Peter. I've told him both reasons...." -Miggy threw out her arms and stood still, facing the sunset. "Anyway, I -want to keep on feeling all free and liberty-like!" she said. - -This intense individualism of youth, passioning only for far spaces, -taking no account of the common lot nor as yet urgent to share it is, -like the panther grace in the tread of the cat, a survival of the -ancient immunity from accountabilities. To note it is to range down the -evolution of ages. To tame it--there is a task for all the servants of -the new order. - -Miggy was like some little bright creature caught unaware in the net of -living and still remembering the colonnades of otherwhere, renowned for -their shining. She was looking within the sunset, where it was a thing -of wings and doors ajar and fair corridors. I saw the great freedoms of -sunset in her face--the sunset where Little Child and I had agreed that -a certain spirit lived.... Perhaps it was that that little vagrant -spirit signalled to me--and the Custodian understood it. Perhaps it was -that I saw, beneath the freedoms, the woman-tenderness in the girl's -face. In any case I spoke abruptly and half without intention. - -"But you don't want to be free from Little Child. It is almost as if -she were your little girl, is it not?" I said. - -Miggy's eyes did not leave the sunset. It was rather as if she saw some -answer there. - -"Well, I like to pretend she is," she said simply. - -"That," I said quietly, "is pleasant to pretend." - -And now her mood had changed as if some one had come to take her place. - -"But if she _was_--that," she said, "her name, then, would most likely -be Margaret, like mine, wouldn't it?" - -"It would be very well to have it Margaret," I agreed. - -Her step was quickened as by sudden shyness. - -"It's funny to think about," she said. "Sometimes I most think of--her, -till she seems in the room. Not quite my sister. I mean _Margaret_." - -It made my heart beat somewhat. I wondered if anything of my story to -Little Child was left in my mind, and if subconsciously Miggy was -reading it. This has sometimes happened to me with a definiteness which -would be surprising if the supernatural were to me less natural. But I -think that it was merely because Miggy had no idea of the sanctity of -what she felt that she was speaking of it. - -"How does she look?" I asked. - -"Like me," said Miggy, readily; "I don't want her to either. I want her -to be pretty and I'm not. But when I think of her running 'round in the -house or on the street, I always make her look like me. Only little." - -"Running 'round in the house." That was the way my neighbour had put it. -Perhaps it is the way that every woman puts it. - -"Does she seem like you, too?" I tempted her on. - -"Oh, better," Miggy said confidently; "learning to play on the piano and -not much afraid of folks and real happy." - -"Don't you ever pretend about a boy?" I asked. - -She shook her head. - -"No," she said; "if I do--I never can think him out real plain. Margaret -I can most see." - -And this, too, was like the girl in the garden and the spirit of that -one to be called by a name of one whom she had not seen. - -I think that I have never hoped so much that I might know the right -thing to say. And when most I wish this I do as I did then: I keep my -impulse silent and I see if that vague Custodian within, somewhere -between the seeing and the knowing, will not speak for me. I wonder if -she did? At all events, what either she or I said was:-- - -"Miggy! Look everywhere and tell me the most beautiful thing you can -see." - -She was not an instant in deciding. - -"Why, sunset," she said. - -"Promise me," said I--said we!--"that you will remember _Now_. And that -after to-night, when you see a sunset--always, always, till she -comes--you will think about her. About Margaret." - -Because this caught her fancy she promised readily enough. And then we -lingered a little, while the moment gave up its full argosy. I have a -fancy for these times when I say "I will remember," and I am always -selecting them and knowing, as if I had tied a knot in them, that I will -remember. These times become the moments at which I keep waving my hand -in the hope that they will never turn away. And it was this significance -which I wished the hour to have for Miggy, so that for her the sunset -should forever hold, as Little Child had said that it holds, that tiny, -wandering spirit.... - -Liva Vesey and Timothy had lingered, too, and we passed them on the -bridge, he still trying to win her eyes, and his own eyes fleeing -precipitantly whenever she looked up. The two seemed leaning upon the -winged light, the calm stretches of the Pump pasture, the brown sand -bar, the Caledonia hills. And the lovers and the quiet river and the -village, roof upon roof, in the trees of the other shore, and most of -all Miggy and her shadowy Margaret seemed to me like the words of some -mighty cosmic utterance, with the country evening for its tranquil -voice. - - - - -V - -DIFFERENT - - -Those who had expected the circus procession to arrive from across the -canal to-day were amazed to observe it filing silently across the tracks -from the Plank Road. The Eight Big Shows Combined had arrived in the -gray dawn; and word had not yet gone the rounds that, the Fair Ground -being too wet, the performance would "show" in the Pump pasture, beyond -the mill. There was to be no evening amusement. It was a wait between -trains that conferred the circus on Friendship at all. - -Half the country-side, having brought its lunch into town to make a day -of it, trailed as a matter of course after the clown's cart at the end -of the parade, and about noon arrived in the pasture with the -pleasurable sense of entering familiar territory to find it transformed -into unknown ground. Who in the vicinity of the village had not known -the Pump pasture of old? Haunted of Jerseys and Guernseys and orioles, -it had lain expressionless as the hills, for as long as memory. When in -spring, "Where you goin'? Don't you go far in the hot sun!" from -Friendship mothers was answered by, "We're just goin' up to the Pump -pasture for vi'lets" from Friendship young, no more was to be said. The -pasture was as dependable as a nurse, as a great, faithful Newfoundland -dog; and about it was something of the safety of silence and warmth and -night-in-a-trundle-bed. - -And lo, now it was suddenly as if the pasture were articulate. The great -elliptical tent, the strange gold chariots casually disposed, the air of -the hurrying men, so amazingly used to what they were doing--these gave -to the place the aspect of having from the first been secretly familiar -with more than one had suspected. - -"Ain't it the divil?" demanded Timothy Toplady, Jr., ecstatically, as -the glory of the scene burst upon him. - -Liva Vesey, in rose-pink cambric, beside him in the buckboard, looked up -at his brown Adam's apple--she hardly ever lifted her shy eyes as far as -her sweetheart's face--and rejoined:-- - -"Oh, Timmie! ain't it just what you might say _great_?" - -"You'd better believe," said Timothy, solemnly, "that it is that." - -He looked down in her face with a lifting of eyebrows and an honest -fatuity of mouth. Liva Vesey knew the look--without ever having met it -squarely, she could tell when it was there, and she promptly turned her -head, displaying to Timothy's ardent eyes tight coils of beautiful blond -crinkly hair, a little ear, and a line of white throat with a silver -locket chain. At which Timothy now collapsed with the mien of a man who -is unwillingly having second thoughts. - -"My!" he said. - -They drove into the meadow, and when the horse had been loosed and cared -for, they found a great cottonwood tree, its leaves shimmering and -moving like little banners, and there they spread their lunch. The sunny -slope was dotted with other lunchers. The look of it all was very gay, -partly because the trees were in June green, and among them windmills -were whirling like gaunt and acrobatic witches, and partly because it -was the season when the women were brave in new hats, very pink and very -perishable. - -The others observed the two good-humouredly from afar, and once or twice -a tittering group of girls, unescorted, passed the cottonwood tree, -making elaborate detours to avoid it. At which Liva flushed, pretending -not to notice; and Timothy looked wistfully in her face to see if she -wished that she had not come with him. However, Timothy never dared -look at her long enough to find out anything at all; for the moment that -she seemed about to meet his look he always dropped his eyes -precipitantly to her little round chin and so to the silver chain and -locket. And then he was miserable. - -It was strange that a plain heart-shaped locket, having no initials, -could make a man so utterly, extravagantly unhappy. Three months -earlier, Liva, back from a visit in the city, had appeared with her -locket. Up to that time the only personality in which Timothy had ever -indulged was to mention to her that her eyes were the colour of his -sister's eyes, whose eyes were the colour of their mother's eyes and -their father's eyes, and of Timothy's own, and "Our eyes match, mine and -yours," he had blurted out, crimson. And yet, even on these terms, he -had taken the liberty of being wretched because of her. How much more -now when he was infinitely nearer to her? For with the long spring -evenings upon them, when he had sat late at the Vesey farm, matters had -so far advanced with Timothy that, with his own hand, he had picked a -green measuring-worm from Liva's throat. Every time he looked at her -throat he thought of that worm with rapture. But also every time he -looked at her throat he saw the silver chain and locket. And on circus -day, if the oracles seemed auspicious, he meant to find out whose -picture was worn in that locket, even though the knowledge made him a -banished man. - -If only she would ever mention the locket! he thought disconsolately -over lunch. If only she would "bring up the subject," then he could find -courage. But she never did mention it. And the talk ran now:-- - -"Would you ever, ever think this was the Pump pasture?" from Liva. - -"No, you wouldn't, would you? It don't look the same, does it? You'd -think you was in a city or somewheres, wouldn't you now? Ain't it -differ'nt?" - -"Did you count the elephants?" - -"I bet I did. Didn't you? Ten, wa'n't it? Did you count the cages? -Neither did I. And they was too many of 'em shut up. I don't know -whether it's much of a circus or not--" with gloomy superiority--"they -not bein' any calliope, so." - -"A good many cute fellows in the band," observed Liva. For Liva would -have teased a bit if Timothy would have teased too. But Timothy replied -in mere misery:-- - -"You can't tell much about these circus men, Liva. They're apt to be the -kind that carouse around. I guess they ain't much to 'em but their swell -way." - -"Oh, I don't know," said Liva. - -Then a silence fell, resembling nothing so much as the breath of -hesitation following a _faux pas_, save that this silence was longer, -and was terminated by Liva humming a little snatch of song to symbolize -how wholly delightful everything was. - -"My!" said Timothy, finally. "You wouldn't think this was the Pump -pasture at all, it looks so differ'nt." - -"That's so," Liva said. "You wouldn't." - -It was almost as if the two were inarticulate, as the pasture had been -until the strange influences of the day had come to quicken it. - -While Liva, with housewifely hands, put away the lunch things in their -basket, Timothy nibbled along lengths of grass and hugged his knees and -gloomed at the locket. It was then that Miggy and Peter passed them and -the four greeted one another with the delicate, sheepish enjoyment of -lovers who look on and understand other lovers. Then Timothy's look went -back to Liva. Liva's rose-pink dress was cut distractingly without a -collar, and the chain seemed to caress her little throat. Moreover, the -locket had a way of hiding beneath a fold of ruffle, as if it were _her_ -locket and as if Timothy had no share in it. - -"Oh," cried Liva, "_Timmie_! That was the lion roared. Did you hear?" - -Timothy nodded darkly, as if there were worse than lions. - -"Wasn't it the lion?" she insisted. - -Timothy nodded again; he thought it might have been the lion. - -"What you so glum about, Timmie?" his sweetheart asked, glancing at him -fleetingly. - -Timothy flushed to the line of his hair. - -"Gosh," he said, "this here pasture looks so differ'nt I can't get over -it." - -"Yes," said Liva, "it does look differ'nt, don't it?" - -Before one o'clock they drifted with the rest toward the animal tent. -They went incuriously past the snake show, the Eats-'em-alive show, and -the Eastern vaudeville. But hard by the red wagon where tickets were -sold Timothy halted spellbound. What he had heard was:-- - -"Types. Types. Right this way AND in this direction for Types. No, -Ladies, and no, Gents: Not Tin-types. But Photo-types. Photo_graphs_ put -up in Tintype style AT Tintype price. Three for a quarter. The fourth of -a dozen for the fourth of a dollar. Elegant pictures, elegant finish, -refined, up-to-date. Of yourself, Gents, of yourself. Or of any one you -see around you. And WHILE you wait." - -Timothy said it before he had any idea that he meant to say it:-- - -"Liva," he begged, "come on. You." - -When she understood and when Timothy saw the momentary abashment in her -eyes, it is certain that he had never loved her more. But the very next -moment she was far more adorable. - -"Not unless you will, Timmie," she said, "and trade." - -He followed her into the hot little tent as if the waiting chair were a -throne of empire. And perhaps it was. For presently Timothy had in his -pocket a tiny blurry bit of paper at which he had hardly dared so much -as glance, and he had given another blurry bit into her keeping. But -that was not all. When she thanked him she had met his eyes. And he -thought--oh, no matter what he thought. But it was as if there were -established a throne of empire with Timothy lord of his world. - -Then they stepped along the green way of the Pump pasture and they -entered the animal tent, and Strange Things closed about them. There -underfoot lay the green of the meadow, verdant grass and not infrequent -moss, plantain and sorrel and clover, all as yet hardly trampled and -still sweet with the breath of kine and sheep. And three feet above, -foregathered from the Antipodes, crouched and snarled the striped and -spotted things of the wild, with teeth and claws quick to kill, and with -generations of the jungle in their shifting eyes. The bright wings of -unknown birds, the scream of some harsh throat of an alien wood, the -monkeys chattering, the soft stamp and padding of the elephants chained -in a stately central line along the clover--it was certain, one would -have said, that these must change the humour of the pasture as the -companionship of the grotesque and the vast alters the humour of the -mind. That the pasture, indeed, would never be the same, and that its -influence would be breathed on all who entered there. Already Liva and -Timothy, each with the other's picture in a pocket, moved down that tent -of the field in another world. Or had that world begun at the door of -the stuffy little phototype tent? - -It was the cage of bright-winged birds that held the two. Timothy stood -grasping his elbows and looking at that flitting flame and orange. Dare -he ask her if she would wear his phototype in her locket--dare he--dare -he---- - -He turned to look at her. Oh, and the rose-pink cambric was so near his -elbow! Her face, upturned to the birds, was flushed, her lips were -parted, her eyes that matched Timothy's were alight; but there was -always in Timothy's eyes a look, a softness, a kind of speech that -Liva's could not match. He longed inexpressibly to say to her what was -in his heart concerning the locket--the phototype--themselves. And Liva -herself was longing to say something about the sheer glory of the hour. -So she looked up at his brown Adam's apple, and, - -"Think, Timmie," she said, "they're all in the Pump pasture where -nothin' but cows an' robins an' orioles ever was before!" - -"I know it--I know it!" breathed Timothy fervently. "Don't seem like it -could be the same place, does it?" - -Liva barely lifted her eyes. - -"It makes us seem differ'nt, too," she said, and flushed a little, and -turned to hurry on. - -"I was thinkin' that too!" he cried ecstatically, overtaking her. But -all that Timothy could see was tight coils of blond, crinkled hair, and -a little ear and a curve of white throat, with a silver locket chain. - -Down the majestic line of the elephants, towering in the apotheosis of -mere bulk to preach ineffectually that spirit is apocryphal and mass -alone is potent; past the panthers that sniffed as if they guessed the -nearness of the grazing herd in the next pasture; past the cage in which -the lioness lay snarling and baring her teeth above her cubs, so -pathetically akin to the meadow in her motherhood; past unknown -creatures with surprising horns and shaggy necks and lolling tongues--it -was a wonderful progress. But it was as if Liva had found something more -wonderful than these when, before the tigers' cage, she stepped -forward, stooped a little beneath the rope, and stood erect with -shining eyes. - -"Look!" she said. "Look, Timmie." - -She was holding a blue violet. - -"In front of the tigers; it was _growing_!" - -"Why don't you give it to me?" was Timothy's only answer. - -She laid it in his hand, laughing a little at her daring. - -"It won't ever be the same," she said. "Tigers have walked over it. My, -ain't everything in the pasture differ'nt?" - -"Just as differ'nt as differ'nt can be," Timothy admitted. - -"Here we are back to the birds again," Liva said, sighing. - -Timothy had put the violet in his coat pocket and he stood staring at -the orange and flame in the cage: Her phototype and a violet--her -phototype and a violet. - -But all he said, not daring to look at her at all, was:-- - -"I can't make it seem like the Pump pasture to save me." - -There is something, as they have said of a bugle, "winged and warlike" -about a circus--the confusions, the tramplings, the shapes, the keen -flavour of the Impending, and above all the sense of the Untoward, -which is eternal and which survives glamour as his grave survives a man. -Liva and Timothy sat on the top row of seats and felt it all, and -believed it to be merely honest mirth. Occasionally Liva turned and -peered out through the crack in the canvas where the side met the roof, -for the pure joy of feeling herself alien to the long green fields with -their grazing herds and their orioles, and at one with the colour and -music and life within. And she was glad of it all, glad to be there with -Timothy. But all she said was:-- - -"Oh, Timmie, I hope it ain't half over yet. Do you s'pose it is? When I -look outside it makes me feel as if it was over." - -And Timothy, his heart beating, a great hope living in his breast, -answered only:-- - -"No, I guess it'll be quite some time yet. It's a nice show. Nice -performance for the money, right through. Ain't it?" - -When at length it really was over and they left the tent, the wagons -from town and country-side and the "depot busses" had made such a place -of dust and confusion that he took her back to the cottonwood on the -slope to wait until he brought the buckboard round. He left her leaning -against the tree, the sun burnishing her hair and shining dazzlingly on -the smooth silver locket. And when he drove back, and reached down a -hand to draw her up to the seat beside him, and saw her for a moment, -as she mounted, with all the panorama of the field behind her, he -perceived instantly that the locket was gone. Oh, and at that his heart -leaped up! What more natural than to dream that she had taken it off to -slip his phototype inside and that he had come back too soon? What more -natural than to divine the reality of dreams? - -His trembling hope held him silent until they reached the highway. Then -he looked at the field, elliptical tent, fluttering pennons, streaming -crowds, and he observed as well as he could for the thumping of his -heart:-- - -"I kind o' hate to go off an' leave it. To-morrow when I go to town with -the pie-plant, it'll look just like nothin' but a pasture again." - -Liva glanced up at him and dropped her eyes. - -"I ain't sure," she said. - -"What do you mean?" he asked her, wondering. - -But Liva shook her head. - -"I ain't sure," she said evasively, "but I don't think somehow the Pump -pasture'll _ever_ be the same again." - -Timothy mulled that for a moment. Oh, could she _possibly_ mean -because.... - -Yet what he said was, "Well, the old pasture looks differ'nt enough now, -all right." - -"Yes," assented Liva, "don't it?" - -Timothy had supper at the Vesey farm. It was eight o'clock and the -elder Veseys had been gone to prayer-meeting for an hour when Liva -discovered that she had lost her locket. - -"Lost your locket!" Timothy repeated. It was the first time, for all his -striving, that he had been able to mention the locket in her presence. -He had tried, all the way home that afternoon, to call her attention -innocently to its absence, but the thing that he hoped held fast his -intention. "Why," he cried now, in the crash of that hope, "you had it -on when I left you under the cottonwood." - -"You sure?" Liva demanded. - -"Sure," Timothy said earnestly; "didn't--didn't you have it off while I -was gone?" he asked wistfully. - -"No," Liva replied blankly; she had not taken it off. - -When they had looked in the buckboard and had found nothing, Timothy -spoke tentatively. - -"Tell you what," he said. "We'll light a lantern and hitch up and drive -back to the Pump pasture and look." - -"Could we?" Liva hesitated. - -It was gloriously starlight when the buckboard rattled out on the Plank -Road. Timothy, wretched as he was at her concern over the locket, was -yet recklessly, magnificently happy in being alone by her side in the -warm dusk, and on her ministry. She was silent, and, for almost the -first time since he had known her, Timothy was silent too--as if he were -giving his inarticulateness honest expression instead of forcing it -continually to antics of speech. - -From the top of the hill they looked down on the Pump pasture. It lay -there, silent and dark, but no longer expressionless; for instantly -their imagination quickened it with all the music and colour and life of -the afternoon. Just as Timothy's silence was now of the pattern of -dreams. - -He tied the horse, and together they entered the field by the great open -place where the fence had not yet been replaced. The turf was still soft -and yielding, in spite of all the treading feet. The pasture was girdled -by trees--locusts and box-alders outlined dimly upon the sky, -nest-places for orioles; and here and there a great oak or a cottonwood -made a mysterious figure on the stars. One would have said that -underfoot would certainly be violets. A far light pricked out an answer -to their lantern, and a nearer firefly joined the signalling. - -"I keep thinkin' the way it looked here this afternoon," said Liva once. - -"That's funny, so do I," he cried. - -Under the cottonwood on the slope, its leaves stirring like little -banners, Timothy flashed his light, first on tufted grass, then on -red-tasselled sorrel, then--lying there as simply as if it belonged -there--on Liva's silver locket. She caught it from him with a little -cry. - -"Oh," she said, "I'm so glad. Oh, thank you ever so much, Timmie." - -He faced her for a moment. - -"Why are you so almighty glad?" he burst out. - -"Why, it's the first locket I ever had!" she said in surprise. "So of -course I'm glad. Oh, Timmie--thank you!" - -"You're welcome, I'm sure," he returned stiffly. - -She gave a little skipping step beside him. - -"Timmie," she said, "let's circle round a little ways and come by where -the big tent was. I want to see how it'll seem." - -His ill-humour was gone in a moment. - -"That's what we _will_ do!" he cried joyously. - -He walked beside her, his lantern swinging a little rug of brightness -about their feet. So they passed the site of the big red ticket wagon, -of the Eastern vaudeville, of the phototype tent; so they traversed the -length where had stretched the great elliptical tent that had prisoned -for them colour and music and life, as in a cup. And so at last they -stepped along that green way of the pasture where underfoot lay the -grass and the not infrequent moss and clover, not yet wholly trampled to -dust; and this was where there had been assembled bright-winged birds -of orange and flame and creatures of the wild from the Antipodes, and -where Strange Things had closed them round. - -The influence of what the pasture had seen must have been breathed on -all who entered there that night: something of the immemorial freedom of -bright birds in alien woods, of the ancestral kinship of the wild. For -that tranquil meadow, long haunted of Jerseys and Guernseys and orioles, -expressionless as the hills, dependable as a nurse, had that day known -strange breath, strange tramplings, cries and trumpetings, music and -colour and life and the beating of wild hearts--and was it not certain -that these must change the humour of the place as the coming of the -grotesque and the vast alters the humour of the mind? The field bore the -semblance of a place exquisitely of the country and, here in the dark, -it was inarticulate once more. But something was stirring there, -something that swept away what had always been as a wind sweeps, -something that caught up the heart of the boy as ancient voices stir in -the blood. - -Timothy cast down his lantern and gathered Liva Vesey in his arms. Her -cheek lay against his shoulder and he lifted her face and kissed her, -three times or four, with all the love that he bore her. - -"Liva," he said, "all the time--every day--I've meant this. Did you -mean it, too?" - -She struggled a little from him, but when he would have let her go she -stood still in his arms. And then he would have her words and "Did you?" -he begged again. He could not hear what she said without bending close, -close, and it was the sweeter for that. - -"Oh, Timmie," she answered, "I don't know. I don't know if I _did_. But -I do--now." - -Timothy's courage came upon him like a mantle. - -"An' be my wife?" he asked. - -"An' be ..." Liva assented, and the words faltered away. But they were -not greatly missed. - -Timothy looked over the pasture, and over the world. And lo, it was -suddenly as if, with these, he were become articulate, and they were all -three saying something together. - -When they turned, there was the lantern glimmering alight on the trodden -turf. And in its little circle of brightness they saw something coloured -and soft. It was a gay feather, and Timothy took it curiously in his -hand. - -"See, it's from one of the circus birds," he said. - -"No!" Liva cried. "It's an oriole feather. One of the pasture orioles, -Timmie!" - -"So it is," he assented, and without knowing why, he was glad that it -was so. He folded it away with the violet Liva had gathered that -afternoon. After all the strangeness, what he treasured most had -belonged to the pasture all the time. - -"Liva!" he begged. "Will you wear the picture--my picture--in that -locket?" - -"Oh," she said, "Timmie, I'm so sorry. The locket's one I bought cheap -in the city, and it don't open." - -She wondered why that seemed to make him love her more. She wondered a -little, too, when on the edge of the pasture Timothy stood still, -looking back. - -"Liva!" he said, "don't the Pump pasture seem differ'nt? Don't it seem -like another place?" - -"Yes," Liva said, "it don't seem the same." - -"Liva!" Timothy said again, "it ain't the pasture that's so differ'nt. -It's _us_." - -She laughed a little--softly, and very near his coat sleeve. - -"I 'most knew that this afternoon," she answered. - - - - -VI - -THE FOND FORENOON - - -This morning Miggy came by appointment to do a little work for me, and -she appeared in some "best" frock to honour the occasion. It was a blue -silk muslin, cut in an antiquated style and trimmed with tarnished -silver passementerie. In it the child was hardly less distinguished than -she had been in her faded violet apron. It was impossible for her to -seem to be unconscious of her dress, and she spoke of it at once with -her fine directness. - -"I didn't have anything good enough to wear," she said. "I haven't got -any good dress this summer till I get it made myself. I got this out of -the trunk. It was my mother's." - -"It suits you very well, Miggy," I told her. - -"I thought maybe she'd like my wearing it--here," said Miggy, shyly. -"You've got things the way she always wanted 'em." - -We went in my workroom and sat among my books and strewn papers. A -lighted theatre with raised curtain and breathless audience, a room -which one wakens to find flooded by a gibbous moon, these have for me -no greater sorcery than morning in a little book-filled room, with the -day before me. Perhaps it is that I ought to be doing so many things -that I take an idler's delight in merely attending to my own occupation. - -While I wondered at what I should set Miggy, I looked for the spirit of -the minute and tried not to see its skeleton. The skeleton was that I -had here an inexperienced little girl who was of almost no use to me. -The spirit was that whatever I chose to do, my work was delightful to -me, and that to bring Miggy in contact with these things was a kind of -adventure. It is, I find, seldom sufficient to think even of the body of -one's work, which to-day proved to be in my case a search in certain old -books and manuscripts for fond allusions. If one can, so to say, think -in and out till one comes to the spirit of a task, then there will be -evident an indeterminate sense of wings. Without these wings there can -be no expression and no creation. And in the true democracy no work will -be wingless. It will still be, please God, laborious, arduous, even -heart-breaking, but never body-fettered, never with its birdlike spirit -quenched. And in myself I would bring to pass, even now, this fair order -of sweet and willing toil by taking to my hand no task without looking -deep within for its essential life. - -So it was with a sense not only of pleasure but of leisure that I -established Miggy by the window with a manuscript of ancient romances -and told her what to do: to look through them for a certain story, -barely more than a reference, to the love of an Indian woman of this -Middle West for her Indian husband, sold into slavery by the French -Canadians. It is a simple story--you will find small mention made of -it--but having once heard it the romance had haunted me, and I was fain -to come on it again: the story of the wife of Kiala, fit to stand niched -with the great loves of the world. - -The morning sun--it was hardly more than eight o'clock--slanted across -the carpet; some roses that Little Child had brought me before her -breakfast were fresh on my table; and the whole time was like a quiet -cup. In that still hour experience seemed drained of all but fellowship, -the fellowship of Miggy and my books and the darling insistence of the -near outdoors. Do you not think how much of life is so made up, free of -rapture or anxiety, dedicated, in task or in pastime, to serene -companionship? - -I have said that for me there are few greater sorceries than morning, -with the day before me, in a small book-filled room. I wonder if this is -not partly because of my anticipations of the parentheses I shall take? -Not recesses, but parentheses, which can flavour a whole day. I -remember a beloved house in which breakfast and luncheon were daily -observations looked forward to not so much for themselves, as that they -were occasions for the most delightful interruptions. Dinner was a -ceremony which was allowed to proceed; but a breakfast or a luncheon was -seldom got through without one or two of us leaving the table to look up -a stanza, or to settle if two words had the same derivation, or to find -if some obsolete fashion in meanings could not yet be worn with -impunity. It grieved the dear housewife, I remember, and we tried to -tell her how much more important these things were than that our new -potatoes should be buttered while they were hot. But she never could see -it, and potatoes made us think of Ireland, and in no time we were deep -in the Celtic revival and racing off to find "The Love Talker." I -remember but one dinner interruption, and that was when we all left in -the midst of the fish to go in the study and determine if moonlight -shining through stained glass does cast a coloured shadow, as it did on -St. Agnes' eve.... I suppose, in those days, we must have eaten -something, though, save a certain deep-dish cherry pie I cannot remember -what we ate; but those interruptions are with me like so many gifts, and -I maintain that these were the realities. Those days--and especially the -morning when we read through the "Ancient Mariner" between pasting in -two book plates!--taught me the precious lesson that the interruption -and not the task may hold the angel. It was so that I felt that morning -with Miggy; and I know that what we did with that forenoon will persist -somewhere when all my envelopes of clippings are gone to dust. - -After a time I became conscious that the faint rustling of the papers -through which I was looking was absorbed by another sound, rhythmic, -stedfast. I looked out on my neighbour's lawn, and at that moment, -crossing my line of vision through the window before which Miggy was -seated, I saw Peter, cutting my neighbour's grass. I understood at once -that he had chosen this morning for his service in order to be near -Miggy. It all made a charming sight,--Peter, bareheaded, in an -open-throated, neutral shirt, cutting the grass there beyond Miggy in -her quaint dress, reading a romance. I forgot my work for a little, and -watched for those moments of his passing. Miggy read on, absorbed. Then, -for a little, I watched her, pleased at her absorption. - -Sometimes, from my window, I have looked down on the river and the long -yellow sand bar and the mystery of the opposite shore where I have never -been, and I have felt a great pity that these things cannot know that -they are these things. Sometimes, in the middle of a summer night, when -the moon is so bright that one can see well within one's own soul, I -have fancied that I have detected an aroma of consciousness, of definite -self-wonder, in the Out-of-doors. Fleetingly I have divined it in the -surprise of Dawn, the laughter of a blue Forenoon, the girlish shyness -of Twilight. And this morning I wanted self-wonder for Miggy and Peter. -What a pity that they could not see it all as I saw it: the Shelley-like -boy cutting the grass and loving this girl, in her mother's gown. But -you must not suppose, either, that I do not know how that vast -unconsciousness of Nature and Love flows with a sovereign essence almost -more precious than awareness. - -"Miggy," I said presently, "Peter is not at work to-day. That is he -cutting grass." - -She looked out briefly. - -"He's got two days off coming to him," she answered. "It's for overtime. -This must be one of 'em. Have _you_ read these stories?" - -"Yes," I said, "I have. Miggy, don't you want to go and ask Peter to -have lunch with us at twelve?" - -"Oh, no, thank you," she dismissed this. "This isn't the day I see him." - -"But wouldn't you like it?" I pressed the matter curiously. "Just we -three at luncheon alone?" - -She was turning the leaves of the manuscript and she looked up to set -me right. - -"Oh, you know," she said, "I don't know Peter _that_ way at all. I just -know him to have him walk home with me, or call, or go walking. Peter -never eats with me." - -Poor Peter, indeed, to be denied the simple intimacy of sometimes -breaking bread with Miggy. I understood that to invite a man to "noon -lunch" in the village was almost unheard of, but, - -"I think he would eat this noon if he never ate before," said I. To -which Miggy made answer:-- - -"If you have read all these stories will you--wouldn't you--tell me -some, please? I can't bear to think of having to wait to read 'em before -I know 'em!" - -She shut the book and leaned her chin in her hand and looked at me. And -the idea of having Peter with us for lunch drifted out of the room, -unattended. - -I maintain that one who loves the craft of letters for its own sake, one -who loves both those who have followed it and the records that they have -left, and one who is striving to make letters his way of service, must -all have acted in the same way; and that was the way that I took. In -these days when Helen and Juliet are read aloud to children while they -work buttonholes in domestic science class, think of the pure -self-indulgence of coming on a living spirit--I say a _living_ -spirit--who had never heard of the beloved women of the world. I wonder -if we could not find such spirits oftener if we looked with care? When I -see certain women shopping, marketing, jolting about in busses, I am -sometimes moved to wonder if they know anything about Nicolete and, if -they were to be told, whether it would not rest them. - -I love it, I love this going back into old time and bringing out its -sweet elements. I have said that there is a certain conservatism in -which, if I let my taste have its way with me, I would luxuriate, as I -might then indulge my love of the semi-precious stones, or of old -tiling, or of lilies-of-the-valley, all day long. And it is so that my -self-indulgence would lead me to spend my days idling over these shadowy -figures in the old romances and the old biographies. The joy of it never -leaves me. Always from these books drifts out to me the smoke of some -hidden incense that makes the world other. Not that I want the world to -be that way, but I like to pretend. I know now that in a world where one -must give of one's utmost, spend and be spent if one is even to pay for -one's keep, these incense hours must be occasional, not to say stolen. -So that to find a Miggy to whom to play preceptor of romance was like -digging a moonstone out of the river bank. - -What did I tell her? Not of Helen or Cleopatra or Isolde or Heloise or -Guinevere, because--why, I think that you would not have told her of -these, either. Of Beatrice and Brunhilde and Elaine and Enid I told her, -for, though these are so sad, there beat the mighty motives, seeds of -the living heart. Last I told her, of Nicolete and of Griselda and of -Psyche and of the great sun of these loves that broke from cloud. She -listened, wrapt as I was wrapt in the telling. Was it strange that the -room, which had been like a quiet cup for serene companionship, should -abruptly be throbbing with the potent principles of the human heart? I -think that it was not strange, for assuredly these are nearer to us than -breathing, instant to leap from us, the lightning of the soul, electric -with life or with death. We are never very far from strong emotion. Even -while I recounted these things to Miggy, there, without my window, was -Peter, cutting the grass. - -When I had done, "Is there more like that in books?" asked Miggy. - -Oh, yes; thank heaven and the people who wrote them down, there are in -books many more like these. - -"I s'pose lots didn't get into the books at all," said Miggy, -thoughtfully. - -It is seldom that one finds and mourns a bird that is dead. But think of -the choir of little bright breasts whose raptures nobody hears, nobody -misses, nobody remembers. How like them we are, we of the loving -hearts. - -"I wouldn't wonder if there's lots of folks being that way right, right -now," concluded Miggy. - -Who am I that I should doubt this? - -"A tournament," said Miggy, dreamily; "I s'pose that was something like -the Java entertainment is going to be." - -She slipped to one side of the big chair and laid both hands on its arm. - -"Listen," she said. "Would this be one? You know Delly Watson that's -crazy? She was in love with Jem Pitlaw, a school teacher that used to be -here, an' that died, an' that wasn't in love with her even if he had -stayed living, and it did that to her. You know ... she talks about -things that nobody ever heard of, and listens, and laughs at what she -thinks she hears. Ain't that like Elaine?" - -Yes, if poor Delly Watson of the village had had a barge and a dwarf and -a river winding from towered city to towered city, she would not have -been unlike Elaine. - -"And Jerry, that sets up folks's stoves and is so in love with the music -teacher that he joined the chorus and paid his dues and set in the bass -corner all winter to watch her and he can't sing a note. And she don't -even see him when she passes him. Ain't that like Beatrice and the Pale -Man?" - -Jerry is so true and patient, and our young music teacher is so fair, -that no one could find it sacrilege to note this sad likeness. - -"And Mis' Uppers that her husband went out West and she didn't get any -word, and he don't come, and he don't come, and she's selling tickets on -the parlour clock, and she cries when anybody even whistles his -tunes--isn't that some like Brunhilde, that you said about, waiting all -alone on top of the mountain? I guess Brunhilde had money, but I don't -think Mis' Uppers' principal trouble is that she ain't. With both of 'em -the worst of it must 'a' been the waiting." - -And I am in no wise sure that that slow-walking woman in the pointed -gray shawl may not have a heart which aches and burns and passions like -a valkyr's. - -"And Mame Wallace, that her beau died and all she's got is to keep house -for the family, and keep house, and _keep_ house. It seems as if she's -sort of like Psyche, that had such an awful lot of things to do--and her -life all mussed up." - -Perhaps it is so that in that gaunt Mame Wallace, whose homing passion -has turned into the colourless, tidy keeping of her house, there is -something shining, like the spirit of Psyche, that would win back her -own by the tasks of her hand. - -"And then there's Threat Hubbelthwait," said Miggy, "that gets drunk -and sets in his hotel bar fiddling, and Mis' Hubbelthwait shoves him his -meals in on to the cigar show-case and runs before he throws his bow at -her--she's just exactly like those two----" - -"Enid or Griselda?" I recognized them, and Miggy nodded. Poor Mis' -Hubbelthwait! Was she not indeed an Enid, lacking her beauty, and a -Griselda, with no hope of a sweet surprise of a love that but tested -her? Truly, it was as Miggy said: in some form they were all there in -the village, minus the bower and the silken kirtle, but with the same -living hearts. - -And these were not all. - -"Miggy," I said, "what about Liva Vesey and Timothy? Did you count -them?" For Aucassin and Nicolete were happy and so are Liva and Timothy, -and I think that they have all understood meadows. - -Miggy looked startled. One's own generation never seems so typical of -anything as did a generation or two past. - -"Could they be?" she asked. "They got engaged the night of the circus -Liva told me--everybody knows. Could they be counted in?" - -Oh, yes, I assured her. They might be counted. So, I fancy, might all -love-in-the-village, if we knew its authentic essence. - -"Goodness," said Miggy, meditatively, "then there's Christopha and -Allen last winter, that I was their bridesmaid, and that rode off in the -hills that way on their wedding night. I s'pose that was like something, -if we only knew?" - -I could well believe that that first adventure of the young husband and -wife, of whom I shall tell you, was like something sweet and bright and -long ago. - -"And what," I said to Miggy abruptly, "about Peter?" - -"_Peter?_" repeated Miggy. - -Why not Peter? - -She looked out the window at him. - -"Why," she said, "but he's _now_. Peter's now. And he wears black -clothes. And he's cutting grass...." - -True for Peter, to all these impeachments. I told her that, in his day, -Aucassin was _now_, too; and that he wore the clothes of his times, and -that if he did not do the tasks nearest his hand, then Nicolete should -not have loved him. - -"And," said I, "unless I'm very much mistaken, in the same way that all -the ancient lovers loved their ladies, Peter loves you." - -"_That_ way?" said Miggy, laying her hand on the manuscript. - -"That way," said I. And a very good way it was, too. - -Miggy put up both hands with a manner of pointing at herself. - -"Oh, no," she said, "not me." Then her little shoulders went up and she -caught her breath like a child. "_Honest?_" she said. - -I said no more, but sat silent for a little, watching her across the -fallen manuscript of ancient romances. Presently I picked up the sheets, -and by chance my look fell on the very thing for which we had been -searching: the story of the wife of Kiala, a Wisconsin Indian chief who -was sold into slavery and carried to Martinique. And alone, across those -hundreds of miles of pathless snow and sea, the wife of Kiala somehow -followed him to the door of his West Indian owner. And to him she gave -herself into slavery so that she might be with her husband. - -I read the story to Miggy. And because the story is true, and because it -happened so near and because of this universe in general, I was not able -to read it quite so tranquilly as I should have wished. - -"Oh," Miggy said, "is it like _that_?" - -Yes, please God; if the heart is big enough to hold it, it is like that. - -Miggy put her hand down quickly on the blue muslin dress she wore. - -"My mother knew!" she said. - -And that is the most wonderful thing of all: one's mother knew. - -Miggy turned once more and looked out the window at Peter. Bless Peter! -I think that he must have been over that grass with the mower quite -twice--perhaps twice and a half. Almost immediately Miggy looked away -from Peter, and I thought--though perhaps after all it was merely the -faint colour that often hovers in her cheek. I felt, however, that if I -had again suggested to Miggy that we ask Peter to lunch, Peter might -possibly have lunched with us. But now I did not suggest it. No, if ever -it gets to be "all Peter with Miggy," it must be so by divine -non-interference. - -My little voice-friend up there on the shelf, the Westminster chimes, -struck twelve, in its manner of sweet apology for being to blame for -things ending. In the village we lunch at twelve, and so my forenoon was -done and even the simple tasks I had set were not all finished. I -wonder, though, if deep within this fond forenoon we have not found -something--wings, or a light, or a singing--that was of the spirit of -the tasks? I wish that I thought so with reasons which I could give to a -scientist. - -At all events I am richly content. And over our luncheon Miggy has just -flattered me unconscionably. - -"My!" she said, "I should think everybody would want to be Secretary." - - - - -VII - -AFRAID - - -I must turn aside to tell of Allen and Christopha, that young husband -and wife whose first adventure, Miggy thought, was like something sweet -and bright and long ago. It happened this last winter, but I cannot -perceive any grave difference between that winter night and this June. -Believe me, the seasons and the silences and we ourselves are not so -different as we are alike. - -On the night of her wedding, Christopha threw her bouquet from the -dining-room doorway, because there were no front stairs from which to -throw it, but instead only a stairway between walls and to be reached -from the dining room: a mere clerk of a stair instead of a -proprietor-like hall staircase. In the confusion which followed--the -carnations had narrowly missed the blazing white gas burner high in the -room--the bride ran away above stairs, her two bridesmaids following. -Her mother was already there, vaguely busy with vague fabrics. As Miggy -had told me, she herself was one of Christopha's bridesmaids, and it is -from Miggy that I have heard something of the outcome of the story. - -Almost as soon as the door was closed there was a rap at it, a rap -peremptory, confident. - -"Let me in," said Allen; "I'm the groom!" Chris herself opened the door. -Her muslin-wedding gown and the little bells of lilies unfaded in her -blond hair became her wholly, and all her simple prettiness still wore -the mystery and authority of the hour. - -"Allen," she said, "you oughtn't to of." - -"Yes, sir, I ought!" he protested gayly, his voice pleasant with mirth -and with its new, deep note. "I'll never see you a bride again--a real, -weddin'-dress bride. I had to come." - -Christopha's mother looked up from her vague, bright fabrics. - -"I thought you started to take the minister the kodak album," she said -to Allen plaintively. "Has he got anybody to show him any attention? I -should think you might--" - -But the two bridesmaids edged their way into the next room, and on some -pretext of fabrics, took Christopha's mother with them,--as if there -were abroad some secret Word of which they knew the meaning. For Miggy -is sufficiently dramatic to know the Word for another, though she is not -sufficiently simple to know it for herself. - -Allen sat beside his bride on the cretonne-covered skirt box. And after -all, he did not look at her, but only at her warm left hand in his. - -"It is the funniest thing," he said, "when I see you comin' in the -parlour lookin' so differ'nt, I'm blessed if I wasn't afraid of you. -What do you think of that?" - -"You's afraid of my dress," Chris told him, laughing, "not me. You use' -to be afraid of me when we's first engaged, but you ain't now. It's -_me_. I feel afraid of you--Allen. You're--differ'nt." - -He laughed tenderly, confidently. - -"_Boo!_" he said. "Now are you?" - -"Yes," she answered seriously; "now." - -"Chris!" he cried boyishly, "we're married! We're goin' to keep house." - -"Oh," she said, "Allen! Think of the fun of puttin' the presents in the -house--the dishes, and the glass, and the ornaments. There won't be -another dinin' room in town like ours. Sideboard an' plate rail, an' the -rug not tacked down." - -Their thoughts flew to the little house, furnished and waiting, down the -snowy street by the Triangle park: their house. - -"Dinners, and suppers, and breakfas's--just us two by ourselves," Allen -said. "_And_ the presents. My!" - -"Well, and company," she reminded him, "that's what I want. The girls -in to tea in our own house." - -"Yes," he assented. "Right away?" he wanted to know. - -"No," she said, "not right away, Silly! We've got to buy curtains and -things. I never thought I'd have so many presents," she went on happily. -"They's two water pitchers alike. Bess says I can change hers. We'll -take it to the City"--she gave a little bounce on the skirt box--"and -see a show, a really, truly show." - -"Sure we will," said he, magnificently. "And I'll take you to the place -I told you about--where I got picked up." - -The little bride nodded, her eyes softening almost maternally. It was as -if that story were her own, the story of Allen, the little stray child -picked up on the streets of the City by that good woman whom Chris had -never seen. But the name of Sarah Ernestine was like a charm to Chris, -for the woman had been to Allen father and mother both. - -Chris bent down swiftly to his hands, closed over her own, and kissed -them. - -"Oh, Allen," she said, with a curious wistfulness, "will you _always_, -always be just like you are now?" - -"Well, I should say I would," he answered gently. "They's nobody like -you anywheres, Chris. Mis' Chris, Mis' Allen Martin." - -"Don't it scare you to say it?" she demanded. - -"Yes, sir, it does," he confessed. "It's like sayin' your own name over -the telephone. What about you? Will _you_ always, too?" - -"Yes," she said, "always. Only--" - -"Only what?" he repeated anxiously. - -"Oh," she said, "don't let's let any outside things come between us, -Allen--like they do, like with Bess and Opie,--business and -sewin',--that's what I'm afraid of," she ended vaguely. - -"Well," he said, "I guess we ain't much afraid of each other, honey. I -guess we're just afraid of what could come between us." - -A voice, unconvincing, unimportant, a part of the inessential aspect of -alien things, detached itself from the accompaniment in the next room, -saying something responsible and plaintive about only an hour till train -time. - -"An hour," Allen said over, and put his arms about her, with boyish -awkwardness for the sake of the crisp muslin gown that had so terrified -him. She rose and stood beside him, and he waited for a moment looking -up in her face. "Chris," he said, "I'm scared of this one hour even. -Till train time." - -"I'll hurry up and get the hour done as quick as I can," she promised -him gayly. - -"Honestly, now--" said Chris's mother from the vague and indeterminate -region where she moved. - -"Right off, Mis' Mother!" Allen said, and knew that she was in the -doorway, with the bridesmaids laughing beside her. And then he went down -the stairway, his first radiant moment gone by. - -In the dining room the messenger was waiting. The messenger had arrived, -in the clear cold of the night, from a drive across the Caledonia hills, -and some one had sent him to that deserted room to warm himself. But -Allen found him breathing on his fingers and staring out the frosty -window into the dark. It was Jacob Ernestine, brother to the woman who -had brought up Allen and had been kind to him when nobody else in the -world was kind. For years Sarah Ernestine had been "West"--and with that -awful inarticulacy of her class, mere distance had become an impassable -gulf and the Silence had taken her. Allen had not even known that she -meant to return. And now, Jacob told him, she was here, at his own home -back in the hills--Sarah and a child, a little stray boy, whom she had -found and befriended as she had once befriended Allen. And she was -dying. - -"She didn't get your letter, I guess," the old man said, "'bout gettin' -married. She come to-day, so sick she couldn't hold her head up. I see -she didn't know nothin' 'bout your doin's. I didn't let her know. I jus' -drove in, like split, to tell you, when the doctor went. He says she -can't--she won't ... till mornin'. I thought," he apologized wistfully, -"ye'd want to know, anyways, so I jus' drove in." - -"That was all right," Allen said. "You done right, Jacob." - -Then he stood still for a moment, looking down at the bright figures of -the carpet. Jacob lived twelve miles back in the hills. - -"How'd you come?" Allen asked him briefly. - -"I've got the new cutter," the old man answered, with a touch of eager -pride. "I'll drive ye." - -Then some one in the parlour caught sight of the bridegroom, and they -all called to him and came where he was, besieging him with -good-natured, trivial talk. The old man waited, looking out the window -into the dark. He had known them all since they were children, and their -merrymaking did not impress him as wholly real. Neither, for that -matter, did Allen's wedding. Besides, his own sister was dying--somehow -putting an end to the time when he and she had been at home together. -That was all he had thought of during his drive to town, and hardly at -all of Allen and his wedding. He waited patiently now while Allen got -the wedding guests back to the parlour, and then slipped away from them, -and came through the dining room to the stair door. - -"Stay there a minute," Allen bade him shortly, and went back to the -upper floor and to Chris's door again. - -It was her mother who answered his summons this time, and Allen's manner -and face checked her words. Before he had done telling her what had -happened, Chris herself was on the threshold, already in sober brown, as -one who has put aside rainbows and entered on life. She had a little -brown hat in one hand, and for the other hand he groped out and held it -while he told her, as well as he could. - -"I guess I've got to go, Chrissie," he ended miserably. - -She met his eyes, her own soft with sympathy for the plight of the other -woman. - -"Well, yes," she said quietly, "of course we've got to go." - -He looked at her breathlessly. That possibility had not crossed his -mind. - -"You!" he cried. "You couldn't go, dear. Twelve miles out in Caledonia, -cold as it is to-night. You--" - -In spite of her sympathy, she laughed at him then. - -"Did you honestly think I wouldn't?" she asked, in a kind of wonder. - -"Well, I'm sure--" began her mother. But the two bridesmaids manifestly -heard the Word again, for they talked with her both at once. - -"Not with Jacob, though," Chris was saying decisively. "You help father -and the boys get out our cutter, Allen." - -Allen strode past the mother and lifted his wife's face in his hands. - -"Do you mean it?" he demanded. "Will you go--in the cold--all that long -way--" - -"You Silly!" she answered, and drew away from him and set the little -brown hat on her head. - - -The road lay white before them, twelve miles of snow and stars to -Jacob's cottage among the Caledonia hills. Jacob had gone on--from the -crest of the rise by the Corner church they saw him and heard the faint -signalling of his bells. It was a place, that rise by the Corner church -on the edge of the village, where two others in such case might have -drawn rein to look at Everything, stretching before, rhythmic crest and -shallow, and all silent and waiting. But not these two, incurious as the -gods, naïve as the first lovers. Only, though of this they were -unconscious, they saw things a little differently that night. - -"Look!" said the girl, with a sign to the lowlands, expressive with -lights. "So many folks's houses--homes, all started. I s'pose it was -just as big a thing for them. But _theirs_ don't seem like anything, -side of ours!" - -"That's so, too," assented Allen. "And theirs _ain't_ anything side of -ours!" he maintained stoutly. - -"No, sir," she agreed, laughing. - -Then she grew suddenly grave, and fell silent for a little, her eyes -here and there on the valley lights, while Allen calculated aloud the -time of the arrival at Jacob's house. - -"Allen!" she said at last. - -"Here!" he answered. "I'm here, you bet." - -"Just look at the lights," she said seriously, "and then _think_. -There's Bess and Opie--not speakin' to each other. Over there's the -Hubbelthwait farm that they've left for the hotel--an' Threat -Hubbelthwait drunk all the time. An' Howells's, poor and can't pay, and -don't care if they can't, and quarrels so folks can hear 'em from the -road. And the Moneys', that's so ugly to the children, and her findin' -fault, and him can't speak without an oath. That only leaves the -Topladys' over there that's real, regular people. And she kind o' bosses -him." - -"Well, now, that's so, ain't it?" said Allen, looking at the lights with -a difference. - -Chris's right hand was warm in his great-coat pocket, and she suddenly -snuggled close to him, her chin on his shoulder. - -"Oh, Allen," she said, "I'm _afraid_!" - -"What? On the Plank Road?" he wanted to know, missing her meaning. - -"All them folks started out with presents, and a house, like us," she -said, "and with their minds all made up to bein' happy. But just look at -'em." - -"Well," said Allen, reasonably, "we _ain't_ them." - -"We might get like 'em," she insisted. "How can you tell? Folks just do -get that way or they just don't. How can you _tell_?" - -"I s'pose that's so, ain't it?" said Allen, thoughtfully. - -"Mother's got a picture of the Hubbelthwaits when they was married," -Chris pursued. "Her in white an' slippers and bracelets, and him slick -as a kitten's foot. Think of her now, Allen, with _bracelets_. And him -drunk all the time, 'most. How can you tell how things'll turn out? Oh, -Allen, I _am_! I'm afraid." - -He bent to her face and laid his own against hers, glowing and cold and -with fresh, warm lips. - -"Let's just try to be happy and keep ourselves happy," he said. - -The troubled woman was still in her face, but at his touch the fears -went a little away, and the valley lights being already left behind -among the echoes of the bells, they forgot both the lights and their -shadows and drifted back to talk about the new house and the presents, -and the dinners and suppers and breakfasts together. For these were the -stuff of which the time was made. As it was made, too, of that shadowy, -hovering fear for the future, and the tragic pity of their errand, and -of sad conjecture about the little stray child whom Sarah Ernestine had -brought. - -"That ain't it a'ready, is it?" Christopha exclaimed when they saw -Jacob's cottage. - -"It just is--it's 'leven o'clock now," Allen answered, and gave the -horse to the old man; and they two went within. - -The light in the room, like the lights back in the valley, was as if -some great outside influence here and there should part the darkness to -win a little stage for a scene of the tragedy: in the valley, for the -drunkenness at the Hubbelthwaits', the poverty at the Howells', the ill -nature at the Moneys'; and here, in Jacob's cottage, for death. There -was no doubt of the quality of the hour in the cottage. The room was -instinct with the outside touch. Already it was laid upon the woman in -the bed, and with a mystery and authority not unlike that which had come -upon Christopha in her marriage hour and was upon her still. - -The woman knew Allen, smiled at him, made him understand her -thankfulness that he had come. At Christopha she looked kindly and quite -without curiosity. Some way, that absence of curiosity at what was so -vital to him gripped Allen's heart, and without his knowing the process, -showed him the nature of death. The neighbour who had been with the -sick woman slipped outside, and as she went she patted Chris's shoulder; -and Allen felt that she understood, and he was dumbly grateful to her. - -Allen sat by the bed and held the hand of his foster-mother; and Chris -moved about the room, heating water for a little pot of tea. And so it -was Chris who first saw the child. He was sitting at the end of the wood -box, on the floor before the oven--that little stray boy whom Sarah -Ernestine had picked up as she had once picked up Allen. He looked up at -Christopha with big, soft eyes, naïve as the first bird. Almost before -she knew that she meant to do so, Chris stooped, with a wondering word, -and took him in her arms. He clung to her and she sat in the rocking -chair near the window where stood Jacob's carnation plant. And she tried -both to look at the child and to love him, at the same time. - -"See, Allen," she said, "this little boy!" - -The child looked over his shoulder at Allen, his little arms leaning on -Christopha's breast. And very likely because he had felt strange and -lonely and now was taken some account of, he suddenly and beautifully -smiled, and you would have loved him the more for the way he did that. - -The woman, lying with closed eyes, understood and remembered. - -"Allen," she said, "that's little John. You find him--a home -somewheres. If you can...." - -"Why, yes, mother, we'll do that. We can do that, I guess. Don't you -worry any about _him_," said Allen. - -"He's all alone. I donno his name, even.... But you be good to him, -Allen, will you?" she said restlessly. "I found him somewheres." - -"Like me," Allen said. - -She shook her head feebly. - -"Worse," she said, "worse. I knew I couldn't--do much. I just--thought I -could keep him from bein' wicked--mebbe." - -"Like you did me, mother, I guess," the boy said. - -Then she opened her eyes. - -"Allen!" she said clearly. "Oh, if I did! When I think how mebbe I done -that--_I ain't afraid to die_." - -Jacob Ernestine came in the room and stood rubbing one hand on the back -of the other. He saw the kettle's high column of steam and looked -inquiringly at Chris. But she sat mothering the little silent boy, who -looked at her gravely, or smiled, or pulled at her collar, responsive to -her touch as she was thrillingly responsive to his nearness. So Jacob -lifted the kettle to the back of the stove, moved his carnation plant a -little away from the frost of the pane, and settled himself at the -bed's foot to watch. And when, after a long time, the child fell -asleep, Chris would not lay him down. Allen would have taken him, and -Jacob came and tried to do so, but she shook her head and they let her -be. She sat so still, hour after hour, that at last she herself dozed; -and it seemed to her, in a manner of dreaming, that the carnation plant -on the window-sill had lifted and multiplied until something white and -like fragrance filled the room; and this, then, she dreamed, was what -death is, death in the room for the woman. Or might it not be the -perfume of her own bridal bouquet, the carnations which she had carried -that night? But then the child stirred, and Christopha roused a little, -and after all, the sense of flowers in the room was the sense of the -little one in her arms. As if many things mean one thing. - -It was toward dawn that the end came, quite simply and with no manner of -finality, as if one were to pass into another chamber. And after that, -as quickly as might be, Christopha and Allen made ready to drive back to -the village for the last bitter business of all. - -Allen, in the barn with Jacob, wondered what he must do. Allen was -sore-hearted at his loss, grateful for the charge that he had been -given; but what was he to do? The child ought not to stay in Jacob's -cottage. If Chris's mother would take him for a little,--but Allen -knew, without at all being able to define it, her plaintive, burdened -manner, the burdened manner of the irresponsible. Still puzzling over -this, he brought the cutter to the side door; and the side door opened, -and Chris came out in the pale light, leading the little boy--awake, -warmly wrapped, ready for the ride. - -"Where you goin' to take him to, Chrissie?" Allen asked breathlessly. - -"Some of the neighbours, I guess, ain't we?" she answered. "I donno. I -thought we could see. He mustn't be left here--now." - -"No, that's so, ain't it?" said Allen only. "He mustn't." - -The three drove out together into the land lying about the gate of dawn. -A fragment of moon was in the east. There was about the hour something -primitive, as if, in this loneliest of all the hours, the world reverted -to type, remembered ancient savage differences, and fell in the primal -lines. - -"Allen," Chris said, "you'll miss her. I mean miss knowin' she's alive." - -"Yes," the boy said, "I'll miss knowin' she's alive." - -"Well, we must try to settle what to do with the little boy," she -suggested hastily. - -"Yes," he assented, "that's right. We've got to settle that," and at -this they fell silent. - -"There's Hopkins's," Chris said presently, nodding toward the home of -the neighbour who had waited their coming to Jacob's cottage. "But -she'll hev to be over there lots to-day and to-morrow. And she was kep' -up so late it don't hardly seem as if we'd ought to stop and ask her." - -"No," Allen said, "I donno as it does, really." - -"There's Cripps's," she suggested a little farther on, "but they ain't -up yet. I donno's 'twould do to roust 'em up." - -"No," Allen agreed, "best not do that, I guess." Christopha looked over -the great fields. - -"My!" she said, "you'll miss her--miss thinkin' of her bein' somewheres. -Allen! Where do you s'pose she is?" - -"I thought o' that," said Allen, soberly. - -"Goodness!" said Christopha, and shivered, and suddenly drew the child -close to her. He was sleeping again. And it was so, with his little body -between them, that she could no longer keep her hand warm in Allen's -greatcoat pocket. But above the child's head her eyes and Allen's would -meet, and in that hour the two had never been so near. Nearer they were -than in the talk about the new house, and the presents, and the dinners -and suppers and breakfasts together. - -They passed the farmhouses that looked asleep, and the farmhouses that -looked watchfully awake while their owners slept. It would not be well -to knock at these, still and sombre-windowed. And though there were -lights at the Moneys' and at the Howells' and at the Hubbelthwait farm, -and even at Bess and Opie's, their gates, by common consent, were also -passed. Nor did they stop at the Topladys'. - -"They're real, regular people with a grown son," Chris said of them -vaguely, "and it don't seem hardly fair to give 'em little John, too!" - -"Little John," Allen said over wonderingly. When they called him that -the child seemed suddenly a person, like themselves. Their eyes met -above his head. - -"Allen!" Chris said. - -"What? What is it?" he asked eagerly. - -"Could--do you think--could _we_?" she demanded. - -"My!" he answered, "I been a-wishin'--" - -Involuntarily he drew rein. They were on the rise by the Corner church -at the edge of the village. The village, rhythmic crest of wall and -shallow of lawn, lay below them, and near the little Triangle park would -be their waiting house. - -"Did you mean have him live with us?" Allen made sure. - -"Yes, I did," Chris said, "if we had the money." - -"Well!" said the boy, "well, I guess _that'll_ be all right!" - -"How much _she'd_ of liked it," said Chris. - -"Wouldn't she, though," Allen assented; "wouldn't she? And you heard -what she said--that about keepin' him from bein'--wicked? -Chrissie--_could_ we, you and me? This little fellow?" - -Chris lifted her face and nodded. - -"I ain't afraid," she said simply. - -"I ain't either," her husband said. - -As if, in this new future, there were less need of fear than in the -future which had sought to "try to be happy and keep ourselves happy." - -They looked down where their house would be, near the gate of the coming -dawn. And--as two others in such case might have seen--it was as if they -were the genii of their own mysterious future, a future whose solution -trembled very near. For with the charge of the child had come a courage, -even as the dead woman had known, when she thought of her charge of -Allen, that she was not afraid to die. - -"Allen," said Chris, stumblingly, "it don't seem as if we could get like -the Howells' an' the Hubbelthwaits and them. Somehow it don't seem as if -we _could_!" - -"No," said Allen, "we couldn't. That's so, ain't it?" - -Above little John's head their eyes met in a kind of new betrothal, new -marriage, new birth. But when he would have driven on, Allen pulled at -the reins again, and, - -"Chrissie," he said suddenly, "if afterwards--there should be -anybody--else. I mean for us. Would--would you keep on lovin' this -little kiddie, too?" - -She met his eyes bravely, sweetly. - -"Well, you Silly," she said, "of course I would!" - -At which Allen laughed joyously, confidently. - -"Why, Chris," he cried, "we're married! For always an' always. An' -here's this little old man to see to. Who's afraid?" - -Then they kissed each other above the head of the sleeping child, and -drove on toward the village, and toward their waiting house. - - - - -VIII - -THE JAVA ENTERTAINMENT - - -When I opened my door this morning, the Outdoors was like a thing coming -to meet me. I mean that it was like a person coming to meet me--no, it -was like many persons, hand in hand and, so to speak, mind in mind; a -great company of whom straightway I became one. I felt that swift, good -gladness that _now_ was _now_,--that delicate, fleeting Now, that very -coquette of time, given and withdrawn. I remember that I could not soon -go to sleep on the night of the day on which I learned that the Hebrew -tongue has no present tense. They could not catch at that needle-point -of experience, and we can do so. I like to glory in it by myself when no -one else is thinking of it; to think aside, as if _to_ Something, that -now is being now.... And I long for the time when we shall all know it -together, all the time, and understand its potentialities and let it be -breath and pulse to keep the Spirit Future alive and pure. - -It would have been no great wonder if I had been rejoicing past all -reason in the moment. For at that very instant came Calliope Marsh, home -for the Java entertainment which was set for to-night, and driving to my -gate the Sykes's white horse in the post-office store delivery wagon. -And as I saw her, so precisely did she look like herself, that I could -have believed that Now was not Now, but Then, when first I knew her. - -Calliope brought the buckled lines informally over the horse's head and -let them fall about the tie post, and ran to me. I am afraid that I am -not going to tell what we said. But it was full of being once more in -the presence of those whom you love. Do you not think that such being -together is a means of actual life transcending both breath and -perception? - -When our greeting was done, Calliope sat down on the stair in my hall, -and, - -"Hev you got any spare candle-shades an' sherbet glasses, an' pretty -doilies an' lunch cloths an' rugs an' willow chairs an' a statue of -almost anybody an' a meat-chopper with a peanut-butter attachment an' a -cap an' gown like colleges?" she demanded. - -And when I told her that I thought I might have some of these things, - -"Well," Calliope said, "she wants 'em all. Who do I mean by She? Mis' -Oliver Wheeler Johnson, the personal queen of things." - -She leaned forward, hugging her thin little arms, and she looked up at -me from under the brim of her round straw hat. - -"I'm in need of grace," she said shortly. "I never felt like this toward -any human being. But I tell you, when that little Mis' Johnson comes -dilly-nippin' around where I am, noddin' her blue ostrich tip, seems my -spine just stiffens out in me like it was going to strike at her, same -as a stick. Do you know the feelin'?" - -I answered reluctantly, and not as I should wish to answer; for it is -certain that I, too, have seldom seen Mrs. Johnson without an urgency to -be gone from her little fluttering presence. But Calliope! I could not -imagine Calliope shrinking from any one, or knowing herself alien to -another. - -"For sixty years," she answered my thought of her, "I've never known -what it was to couldn't bear anybody, not without I had a reason. They -ain't much of anybody I what you might say don't like, without they're -malicious or ugly a-purpose. Ugly by nature, ugly an' can't help it, -ugly an' don't know it--I can forgive all them. An' Mis' Johnson ain't -ugly at all--she's just a real sweet little slip of a thing, doin' her -hard-workin' best. But when I first see her in church that day, I says -to myself: 'I'll give that little piece two months to carry the sail -she's carryin' here to-day; four months to hev folks tired of her, an' -six months to get herself the cold shoulder all 'round.' An' I hold to -what I said. An' when her baby-blue nineteen-inch feather swings in an' -'round, an' when she tells how things ought to be, I kind o' bristle all -over me. I'm ashamed of it--an' yet, do you know, I like to give in to -it?" Calliope said solemnly. "I donno what's come over me. Hev you heard -where the Java entertainment's put to be?" - -I had not heard, nor was I sure just why it was of Java, save that -Friendship is continually giving entertainments with foreign names and -practising a wild imperialism to carry out an effect of foreign parts. -And since, at the missionary meeting which had projected the affair, -Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had told about _their_ Java entertainment in -_their_ church at home, that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda Toplady, who -was president of the society, had appointed her chairman of the Java -entertainment committee. - -"And," Calliope informed me, "she's picked out the engine-house for it. -Yes, sir,--the fire-engine house. No other place was _quaint_ enough. No -other place lent itself to decoration probabilities--or somethin' like -that. She turned her back flat on the church an' went round to empty -stores, lookin' for _quaint-ity_. One while I thought she'd hev us in -the Chinese laundry, she seemed that took with the tomato-coloured -signs on the walls. But, finally, she lit on the engine-house; an' when -she see the big, bare engine-room, with the big, shinin' engine in it, -an' harnesses hangin' from them rough board beams in a kind of avenoo, -an' the board walls all streaked down, she spatted her hands an' 'lowed -we'd hev our Java there. 'What a dear, quaint place,' s's she,--'so -_flexible_!' She held out about the harnesses bein' so quaintly -picturesque an' the fire-engine a piece o' resistance--or somethin' like -that. An' she rents the room, without ay, yes, no, nor boo. My way of -thinkin', a chairman ought to hev boo for a background, even if she _is_ -chairman. That's where she wants the statue an' the nut butter an' the -cap an' gown. Can we borrow 'em of you?" - -"The engine-house!" I repeated incredulously. "You cannot mean the -fire-engine house, Calliope?" - -"I do," Calliope said firmly, "the quaint, flexible fire-engine house. -They ain't been a fire in Friendship in over two years, so Mis' Johnson -says we ain't got that to think of--an' I donno as we hev. An' they -never use the engine any more, now they've got city water, excep' for -fires in the country, and then nobody ever gets in to give the alarm -till the house is burned down an' no need to bother goin'. Even if they -do get in in some sort of season, the department has to go to the mayor -to get a permit to go outside the city limits. It was so when the -Topladys' barn burned. Timothy told 'em, when they come gallopin' up -after it was most done smokin', that if they had held off a little -longer they could have been a sight of help to him in shinglin' the new -one. Oh, no, they ain't much of any danger of our being disturbed by a -fire in them two hours to-night. Anyhow, they can't be a fire. Mis' -Oliver Wheeler Johnson said so." - -We laughed like children as we loaded my "Java" stuffs on the wagon. -Calliope was a valiant helper to Mrs. Johnson, and so I told her. She -was standing in the wagon box, one arm about my palm, the other free for -driving. - -"I'm the chairman o' the refreshments, too," she confessed. "Oh, well. -Yourself you can boss round, you know," she threw back, smiling; -"anybody can do that. But your feelin's you're some cramped about -runnin'." - -It is certain that Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson was signally unfitted for -a future in Friendship Village. She was a woman of some little world in -which she had moved before she came to us, and in the two worlds she -perceived no difference. Or, where she saw a difference, she sought to -modify it by a touch when a breath would have been too much, and the -only factor of potency would have been a kind of potency of spirit, -which she did not possess. - -The Oliver Wheeler Johnsons had moved to Friendship only three months -before, and nobody had looked for them at church on their first Sunday. -"Movin' so, you want your Sabbath to take some rest in, an' you ain't -expected to dress yourself up an' get out to Sunday service an' face -strangers," the village said--and when the two walked into church while -the responses were being made nearly everybody lost the place. - -They were very young, and they were extremely well dressed. - -"He's got on one o' the long coats," comment ran after church, "an' he's -got a real soft-speakin' voice. But he seems to know how to act." - -And, "I declare, nice white gloves an' a nineteen-inch baby-blue ostrich -feather durin' movin' seems some like puttin' on." - -And, "The back of her dress fits her just like the front, an' I must say -she knows it. No pullin' down the jacket or hitchin' the strings forward -for _her_, when she stands up!" - -As Miggy, who first told me about that day, had said, "That Sunday -morning, Mis' Oliver Wheeler Johnson was the belle of the congregation." - -After service that day, instead of going directly home or waiting to be -addressed, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had spoken to the woman with -whom she had been seated. It was Mis' Postmaster Sykes. - -"Thank you so much," Mrs. Johnson said, "for letting us share your pew. -May I present my husband? We have come to Friendship to live, and we -shall be coming here to church. And I shall want to join your Ladies' -Aid Society and your Missionary Circle and, perhaps, be in the -Sunday-school right away. I--I think I'll be less homesick--" - -"Actually," Mis' Sykes said afterward, "she took my breath clear away -from me. I never heard of such a thing. Of course, we're real glad to -hev our newcomers Christian people, but we want quiet Christians. An' -did you notice how she was when I give her an introduction around? Why, -she up an' out with somethin' to say to everybody. Just a neat little -'How d' do' wouldn't do for her to remark. I always suspicion them -talkative-at-first kind. It's like they'd been on the stage or brought -up in a hotel." - -When she first came to the Ladies' Aid and the missionary meetings, Mrs. -Johnson "said something." She was "up to her feet" three or four times -at each session with suggestion, information, or description of how they -did in her home church. And some way I think that what chiefly separated -her from the village was the way that inevitable nineteen-inch blue -ostrich plume on the little woman's hat bobbed and won attention and was -everywhere at once. Or, perhaps--such creatures of wax we are to our -impressions--it may have been little Mrs. Johnson's mere way of lifting -her small, pointed chin when she talked, and of frowning and -over-emphasizing. Or it may have been that she stood with her hands -clasped behind her in what seemed to Friendship exaggerated ease, or -that she smiled arbitrarily and ingratiatingly as she talked when there -was absolutely nothing at which to smile. I think that these made her -seem as alien to us as, in varied measure, certain moral defects might -have done. - -Moreover, she mentioned with familiarity objects and usages of which -Friendship Village knew nothing: Carriage shoes, a new cake of soap for -each guest, some kind of ice served, it was incredulously repeated, "in -the middle o' the meal!" She innocently let fall that she sent to the -city for her letter-paper. She had travelled in a state-room on a train, -and she said so. She knew a noted woman. She used, we saw from the -street, shaded candles on the table when she and her husband were at -supper alone. She thought nothing of ordering Jimmy Sturgis and the bus -to take her down town to her marketing on a rainy day. She had inclined -to blame the village that Daphne Street was not paved, instead of -joining with the village to blame somebody else. Above all, she tried -to buy our old furniture. I do not know that another might not have done -all these quite without giving offence, and, indeed, rather have left us -impressed with her superior familiarity with an envied world. But by the -time of the Java entertainment Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had -innocently alienated half Friendship Village. And this morning Calliope -merely voiced what I knew to be the sentiment of most of Mrs. Johnson's -neighbours and acquaintances. For these people are the kindly of earth; -but they are of earth, where reign both the centrifugal and centripetal -forces,--and the control is not always so swift as science and the human -heart could wish. - -At five o'clock to-day--the day set for the Java evening -entertainment--I made my way to the engine-house. This was partly -because I wished to be as much as possible with Calliope during her few -days in the village, and partly it was because the affair would belong -to the class of festivity which I am loath to miss, and I think that, -for Friendship's sake, I will never willingly pass by a "hall" in which -is to be found a like diversion. Already on the great room, receiving -its final preparation, had descended something of the excited spirit of -the evening: the heat, the insufficient light, the committee members' -shrill, rollicking children sliding on the floor, the booths which in -all bazaars contain with a precision fairly bewildering the same class -of objects; and the inevitable sense of hurry and silk waists and aching -feet and mustn't-take-your-change-back. But to all these things the Java -engine-house affair would add an element of novelty, almost a flavour of -romance. Certainly the room lent itself to "decoration probabilities," -as Calliope had vaguely quoted; it had been a roller-skating rink, -utilized by the fire-department on the decline of the pastime, and there -was, as Mrs. Johnson's _pièce de résistance_, the fire-engine. - -I had never before been in the engine-house--you know how there will be -commonplace enough spots in your own town to which you never go: the -engine-house, the church belfry, the wood yard, upstairs over this store -and that, and grocery cellars whose sloping trap-doors, open now and -then to the walk, are as alien as the inside of the trunks of your -trees. When I stepped in the engine-house, it seemed insistently a place -in which I had never been before. And this may have been partly because -the whole idea of a village fire-department is to me singular: the -waiting horses and ladders and hose, whose sole reason for being is -merely ameliorative, and never human and preventive; that pealing of the -sharp, peculiar, terrifying alarm and summons first imprinting something -on the very air, stabbing us with _Halt_ while we count the bell -strokes for the ward, and then clanging the wild fury of the -quick-stroke command to help. - -To-day the great glittering fire-engine, flanked by hose-cart and -hook-and-ladder wagon, occupied almost wonderingly the head of the room -which had been invaded, and an inspired committee had garlanded the -engine with paper roses and American flags. The flag of the Netherlands, -copied from a dictionary and wrought in red-white-and-blue cambric with -a silver crown, drooped meditatively from the smoke-stack; a scarlet fez -and a peacock-feather fan hung on the supply hose; and on the -tongue-bracer was fixed a pink sofa cushion from Mis' Amanda Toplady's -parlour, with an olive Indian gentleman in a tinsel zouave jacket -stamped on the cover. On the two big sliding doors, back of which stood -the fire company's horses, were tacked innumerable Javanese trifles more -picturesque than authentic; and on outlying booths and tables there were -others. Directly before the engine was to be the tea-table, where Mis' -Postmaster Sykes was to serve Java tea from a Java canister, loaned by -the Post-office store. - -As soon as I entered I sought out Calliope's booth, a huge affair -constructed of rugs whose red-tongued, couchant dogs and bounding fawns -somewhat marred the Eastern effect. And within, I found myself in a -circle of the Friendship women whom I know best--all of them tired with -that deadly tiredness born of a day's work at a church fair of any -nation. But at once I saw that it was not merely fatigue which was -disquieting them. - -Calliope was leaning against a bit of Bagelen blue, loaned by the new -minister's wife. And she said to me as if, I thought, in explanation of -what I was to hear,--"I guess we're all pretty tired. Most of us look -like we wanted to pant. I'm all of a shake, myself." - -When Mis' Postmaster Sykes spoke unsmilingly, I understood:-- - -"It ain't the bein' tired," she disclaimed; "tired I can stand an' hev -stood since my own birth. But it's the bein' commanded 'round--me, -_commanded_--by that little I'm-the-one-an'-you-do-as-I-say out there!" - -"Land-a-livin' an' a-dyin'!" said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "I -declare if I know whether I'm on foot or on horseback. It's bad enough -to hev to run a fair, without you've got to be run yourself, too. Ain't -it enough for Mis' Johnson to be made chairman without her wantin' to -boss besides? She might as well say to me, 'Mis' Holcomb, you do -everything the opposite way from the way you've just done it,' an' hev -it over with." - -Mis' Amanda Toplady--even that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda--shook her -head. - -"Mis' Johnson surely acts used to bein' bowed down to," she admitted; -"she seems fair bent on lordin' it. My land, if she wasn't bound to -borrow my Tea rose plant that's just nearin' ready to bud." - -Calliope laughed, a little ruefully, and wholly in sympathy. - -"Honest," she said, "I guess what's the matter with all of us ain't so -much what she does as the particular way she does it. It's so with some -folks. They just seem to sort of _set_ you all over, when you come near -'em--same as the cold does to gravy. We'd all ought to wrostle with the -feelin', I expect." - -"I expect we had," said Mis' Holcomb, "but you could wrostle all your -days with vinegar an' it'd pucker your mouth same way." - -"Funny part," Calliope observed, "everybody feels just alike about her. -When she skips around so sort o' momentous, we all want to dodge. I felt -sorry for her, first, because I thought she was in for nervous -prostration. But after a while I see it wasn't disease--it was just her -feelin' so up an' down significant, you might say." - -"I donno," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "but it's part the way -she says her _a_'s. That real _a_-soundin' _a_ kind," she explained -vaguely. - -"She's so right an' left cuffy--I guess that's the whole thing," -Calliope put it in her rich idiom. - -"Well," said Mis' Amanda, sadly, "there must be somethin' we could like -her for, even if it was only her husband." - -"He ain't what I'd call much, either," Calliope dismissed Mr. Oliver -Wheeler Johnson positively; "he's got too soft-speakin' a voice. I like -a man's voice to rumble up soft from his chest an' not slip down thin -from his brain." - -I remember that I listened in a great wonder to these women whom I had -seen at many an office of friendliness to strangers and aliens. Yet as I -looked across the floor at that little Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson--who, -in the hat with the blue plume, was everywhere, directing, altering, -objecting, arranging, commanding and, especially, doing over--I most -unwillingly felt much as they felt. If only Mrs. Johnson had not -continually lifted her little pointed chin. If only she had not -perpetually and ingratiatingly smiled when there was nothing at which to -smile at all. - -Then Abigail Arnold hurried up to us with a tray of cups for the Java -tea. - -"Calliope," she said to the chairman of the refreshments, "Mis' Johnson -jus' put up her little chin an' says, 'What! ain't we no lemons for the -tea?'" - -Calliope compressed her lips and lifted their thin line tight and high. - -"Lemins," she replied, "ain't necessarily found in Java. I've a good big -mind to go home to bed." - -Then we saw little Mrs. Johnson's blue linen dress hurrying toward us -with the waving line of the blue feather above her, like a last little -daring flourish by the artist of her. She was really very pretty and -childish, with a manner of moving in wreaths and lines and never in -solids. Her little feet twinkled along like the signature to the pretty -picture of her. But yet she was not appealing. She was like an -overconfident child whom you long to shut in a closet. Yes, I understand -that I sound like a barbarian in these days of splendid corrective -treatment of children who are studied and not stormed at. And in this -treatment I believe to the uttermost. And yet, overconfidence in a child -is of all things the most--I will amend what I said: Mrs. Oliver Wheeler -Johnson was like an overconfident child whom you long to shut in a -closet because of your ignorance of what else on earth to do. No doubt -there is a better way, but none of us knew it. And she came toward us -intent, every one felt, on some radical change in arrangements, though -the big room was now in the pink of appointment and ready to be left -while the committee went home to sup on "just sauce and -bread-and-butter," and to don silk waists. - -We saw little Mrs. Johnson hurrying toward us, upon a background of the -great, patient room, all-tolerant of its petty bedizening. And then Mrs. -Johnson, we in Calliope's booth, the sliding, rollicking children, and -all the others about stood still, at the sharp, peculiar terrifying -alarm and summons which seemed to imprint something on the very air, -stabbing us with _Halt_ that we might count the bell strokes for the -ward, and clanging a wild fury of the quick-stroke command to help. For -the first time in two years the Friendship fire alarm was sounding from -the tower above our heads. - -There was a panting sweep and scurry for the edges of the room, as -instantly a gong on the wall sounded with the alarm, and the two big -sliding doors went back, scattering like feathers the innumerable -Javanese trifles that had been tacked there. Forward, down the rug-hung -vista, plunged the two big horses of the department. We saw the Java -tea-table borne to earth, the Javanese exhibits adorning outlying -counters swept away, and all the "decoration probabilities" vanish in -savage wreck. Then the quaintly picturesque harnesses fell to the -horses' necks, their hoofs trampled terrifyingly on the loose boards of -the floor, and forth from the yawning doors the horses pounded, dragging -the _pièce de résistance_, with garlands on its sides, the pink zouave -cushion crushed beneath it, and the flag of the Netherlands streaming -from the stack. Horses rushed thither in competition, came thundering at -the doors, and galloped to place before the two carts. I think not a -full minute can have been consumed. But the ruin of the Java -entertainment committee's work was unbelievably complete. Though there -had been not a fire in Friendship Village in two years, that night, of -all nights, Jimmy Sturgis's "hay-barn," for the omnibus horses, "took it -on itself," it was said, "to go to work an' burn up." And Jimmy's barn -is outside the city limits, so that the _pièce de résistance_ had to be -used. And Jimmy is in the fire-department, so that the company galloped -informally to the rescue without the benefit of the mayor's authority. - -As the last of the department disappeared, and the women of the -committee stood looking at one another--tired with the deadly tiredness -of a day such as theirs--a little blue linen figure sprang upon a chair -and clasped her hands behind her, and a blue ostrich feather lifted and -dipped as she spoke. - -"Quickly!" Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson cried. "All hands at work now! -Mrs. Sykes, will you set up the tea-table? You can get more dishes from -my house. Mrs. Toplady, this booth, please. You can make it right in no -time. Mrs. Holcomb, you will have to do your booth entirely over--you -can get some things from my house. Miss Marsh--ah, Calliope Marsh, you -must go to my house for my lace curtains--" - -She smiled ingratiatingly and surely arbitrarily, for we all knew full -well that there was absolutely nothing to smile at. And with that -Calliope's indignation, as she afterward said, "kind of crystallized and -boiled over." I remember how she stood, hugging her thin little arms and -speaking her defiance. - -"I donno how you feel, Mis' Johnson," she said dryly, "but, _my_ idea, -Bedlam let loose ain't near quaint enough for a Java entertainment. Nor -I don't think it's what you might say real Java, either. Things here -looks to me too flexible. I'm goin' home an' go to bed." - -There was no doubt what the rest meant to do. With one impulse they -turned toward the door as Calliope turned, and silently they took the -way that the _pièce de résistance_ had taken before them. Little Mrs. -Johnson stood on her chair making many gestures; but no one went back. - -Calliope looked straight before her. - -"My feet ache like I done my thinkin' with 'em," she said, "an' my head -feels like I'd stood on it. An' what's it all for?" - -"Regular clock performance," Mis' Postmaster Sykes assented. "We've -ticked hard all day long an' ain't got a thing out of it. I often think -it's that way with my housework, but I did think the Ladies' Missionary -could tick, when it _did_ tick, for eternity. I'm tuckered to the bone." - -"Nobody knows," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was Mame-Bliss, "how my poor neck -aches. It's there I suffer first an' most." - -Mis' Amanda Toplady, who was walking behind the rest, took three great -steps and caught us up and spoke, a little breathlessly:-- - -"Land, land," she said, "I guess I'll go home an' pop some corn. Seems -to me it'd smell sort of cosy an' homelike an' soothin' down. It's a -grand thing to smell when you're feelin' far off from yourself." - -Calliope laughed a little then. - -"Well," she said, "anyhow I ain't got my silk waist to get into--and I -didn't hev a nice one to put on anyway. I was wishin' I had, and now my -wish has come true by bein' took away from me, bodily--like they will. -But just the same--" - -She turned on the walk and faced us, and hugged her thin little arms. - -"A while ago," she said, "I give that little woman there six months to -get herself the cold shoulder all around. Well, the time ain't up -yet--but both my shoulders feels stone cold!" - - - - -IX - -THE COLD SHOULDER - - -There is something more about Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson. - -Did you ever look through an old school-book of your own and, say, on -the history picture of Vesuvius in eruption impose your own memory of -Pompeii, visited in these twenty years since you studied about it; and -have you not stared hard at the time between and felt yourself some one -other than that one who once dreamed over the Vesuvius picture? Or, -years after you read the Letters, you have made a little mark below -Cicero's cry from exile, "Oh, that I had been less eager for life!" and -you look at the cry and at the mark, and you and one of these become an -anachronism--but you are not sure which it is that so becomes. So now, -in reading over these notes some while after I have set them down, I am -minded here to give you my look ahead to the end of the summer and to -slip in some account of what happened as a closing of the tale. And I -confess that something about me--perhaps it is the Custodian -herself--likes this way of pretending a freedom from time and of looking -upon its fruit to say which seeds have grown and which have not. - -Friendship Village is not superstitious, but when curious coincidences -occur we do, as we say, "take down note." And it did seem like a -judgment upon us that, a little time after the Java fiasco, and while -indignation was yet at high noon, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson fell ill. - -At first I think we affected not to know it. When she did not appear at -church, none of us mentioned it for a Sunday or two. Then when some one -casually noted her absence we said, "Oh, wasn't she? Got little cold, -likely." That we saw her no more down town or "brushing up" about her -door we facilely laid to chance. When the village heard that her -maid--who always offended by talking almost in a whisper--had once or -twice excused her mistress to callers, every one shut lips and hardened -hearts and said some folk acted _very_ funny about their calling duties. -But when, at the twelve o'clock breakfast of the new minister's -wife--("Like enough breakfast at noon was a real Bible custom," the -puzzled devotees solved that amazing hour), Mrs. Johnson did not appear, -the village was forced to admit that something must be wrong. - -Moreover, against its will the behaviour of young Mr. Johnson was -gravely alarming Friendship. Mr. Johnson was in real estate and -insurance in the city, and this did not impress the village as a serious -business. "Because, what does he _sell_!" as Abigail Arnold said. "We -know he don't own property. He rents the very house they live in. A -doctor's a doctor an' he gives pills, an' a store's a store with the -kind o' thing you need. But it don't seem like that man could make a -real good livin' for her, dealin' vague in nothin' that way." His -income, it was felt, was problematical, and the village had settled it -that what the Oliver Wheeler Johnsons' had was chiefly wedding presents -"an' high-falutin' tastes." But, in the face of the evidence, every -afternoon at three o'clock the young husband ordered a phaëton from -Jimmy Sturgis and came home from the city to take his wife to drive. -Between shutters the village saw that little Mrs. Johnson's face did -look betrayingly pale, and the blue ostrich plume lay motionless on her -bright hair. - -"I guess Mis' Johnson's real run down," her acquaintances said to one -another uneasily. Still we did not go to see her. The weeks went by -until, one morning, Calliope met the little new Friendship doctor on the -street and asked him about his patient. - -"I up an' ask' him flat out," Calliope confessed afterward; "not that I -really cared to be told, but I hated to know I was heathenish. You don't -like the feelin'. To know they ain't heathens is all that keeps some -folks from _bein_' 'em. Well, so I ask' him. 'Doctor Heron,' s'I, 'is -that Mis' Johnson real sick, or is she just sickish?' He looks at me -an'--'Looks pretty sick, don't she?' s'e. 'Well,' s'I, 'I've seen folks -look real rich that wa'n't it by right-down pocketbook evidence.' 'Been -to see her?' s'e. 'No,' s'I, short. 'Might drop in,' s'e, an' walks off, -lookin' cordial. That little Doctor Heron is that close-mouthed I -declare if I don't respect him same as the minister an' the pipe-organ -an' the skippin' hills." - -So, as midsummer passed and found the little woman still ailing, I -obeyed an idle impulse and went one evening to see her. I recall that as -soon as I had crossed her threshold the old influence came upon me, and -I was minded to run from the place in sheer distaste of the overemphasis -and the lifted, pointed chin and the fluttering importances of her -presence. I was ashamed enough that this should be so, but so it was; -and I held my ground to await her coming to the room only by a measure -of will. - -I sat with Mrs. Johnson for an hour that evening. And it would seem -that, as is the habit of many, having taken my own way I was straightway -possessed to draw others after me. There are those who behave similarly -and who set cunningly to work to gain their own ends, as, for example, I -did. For one night soon I devised a little feast, which I have always -held to be a good doorway to any enterprise, and, at the -Friendship-appointed supper hour of six, I made my table as fair as -possible, as has been done in like case ever since butter was first -served "in a lordly dish." And my guests were Calliope, without whom no -festival is wholly in keeping, and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and -Mis' Postmaster Sykes, and that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda Toplady. - -Because they had arrived so unsuspectingly I own myself to have felt -guilty enough when, in that comfortable half-hour after a new and -delectable dessert had been pronounced upon, I suggested with what -casualness I might summon that we five pay a visit that night to Mrs. -Oliver Wheeler Johnson. - -"Land!" said Mis' Holcomb, "I've thought I would an' then I've thought I -wouldn't till I feel all two-faced about myself. I donno. Sometimes I -think one way an' sometimes I think the other. Are you ever like that?" - -"I s'pose," said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, majestically, "that them in our -position ought to overlook. I donno's 'twould hurt us any to go," she -added graciously. - -Calliope's eyes twinkled. - -"That's it," she said; "let them that's got the social position to -overlook things be Christian an' overlook 'em." - -That great Mis' Amanda Toplady folded her hands, dimpled like a baby -giant's. - -"I'd be glad to go," she said simply; "I've got some grape jell that -looks to me like it wasn't goin' to keep long, an' I'd be thankful to be -on terms with her so's I could carry it in to her. They ain't a single -other invalid in Friendship." - -Calliope sprang to her feet and crossed her little arms, a hand hugging -either shoulder. - -"Well said!" she cried; "do let's go! I'm sick to death of slidin' off -the subject whenever it comes up in my mind." - -So, in the fair October dusk, we five went down the Plank Road--where -Summer lingers late. The air was gentle with the soft, impending dark. I -wonder why the colonnade of sweet influences, down which we stepped, did -not win us to themselves. But I remember how, instead, our imminent -visit drew us back to the days of Mrs. Johnson's coming, so that -presently we were going over the incident of the Java entertainment, -and, as Calliope would have put it, "crystallizing and boiling over" -again in the old distaste. - -But when we reached the little cottage of the Johnsons, our varied -motives for the visit were abruptly merged in a common anxiety. For -Doctor Heron's buggy stood at the gate and the little one-story cottage -was dark save for a light in what we knew to be a corner bedroom. The -hallway was open to the night, but though we could distinctly hear the -bell jingle in the kitchen no one answered the summons. Then, there -being somewhere about a murmur of voices, Calliope stepped within and -called softly:-- - -"Doctor, Doctor Heron--you there? Is they anything we can do?" - -The doctor came momentarily to the lighted doorway down the hall. - -"That you, Calliope?" he said. "You might come here, will you? Tell the -rest to sit down somewheres. And you tell Mr. Johnson he can come." - -On which, from out the dark living room, some one emerged very swiftly -and without a word pushed by us all where we were crowded in the passage -and strode down to the little lighted chamber. Calliope hurried after -him, and we four shrank back in sudden dread and slipped silently into -the room which the young husband had left, and stood together in the -dimness. Was she so sick? In that room he must have heard the door-bell -as we had heard it, and yet he had not answered. Was it possible that we -had come too late? - -While we waited we said nothing at all, save that great Mis' Amanda -Toplady, who said three times or four, "Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'm always -waitin' till somethin's too late--either me or the other thing." It -seemed very long before we heard some stir, but it can have been only a -few minutes until the doctor came down the little hall and groped into -the room. In answer to all that we asked he merely occupied himself in -lighting a match and setting it deliberately to the candles on the table -and adjusting their shades. They were, we noted afterward, the same -candles whose presence we had detected and derided at those long ago -tête-à-tête suppers in that house. The light glowed on the young -doctor's pale face as he looked at us, each in turn, before he spoke. -And when he had done with his slow scrutiny--I think that we cannot -wholly have fancied its accusation--he said only:-- - -"Yes, she's pretty sick. I can't tell yet." - -Then he turned and closed the outer door and stood leaning against it, -looking up the hall. - -"Miss Marsh!" he called. - -But why did the man not tell us something, we wondered; and there -flashed in my mind Calliope's reference to the pipe-organ and the -skipping hills. At all events, Calliope would tell us. - -And so she did. We heard her step in the hall, coming quickly and yet -with a manner of exceeding care. I think that with the swift sense which -wings before intelligence, the others understood before they saw her, -even as I understood. Calliope stopped in the doorway as if she could -trust herself to go no farther. And she was holding something in her -arms. - -"Calliope," we said; "Calliope...." - -She looked down at that which she held, and then she looked at us. And -the tears were in her eyes, but her face was brighter than I have ever -known it. - -"It's a baby," she said, "a little bit of a baby. _Her_ baby. An' it -makes me feel--it makes me feel--oh," she broke off, "don't it make you -feel that way, too?" - -We looked at one another, and avoided one another's look, and then -looked long at the baby. I do not remember that we said anything at all, -or if we did so, that it bore a meaning. But an instant after Calliope -gave the baby to the nurse who appeared in the doorway, we all tiptoed -down to the kitchen by common consent. And it was plain that Mrs. -Johnson's baby made us feel that way, too. - -In our desire to be of tardy service we did the most absurd things. We -took possession of the kitchen, rejoicing that we found the supper -dishes uncared for, and we heated a great kettle of water, and washed -and wiped and put away, as softly as we could; and then we "brushed up -around." I think that only the need of silence kept us from cleaning -windows. When the nurse appeared--who had arrived that day unknown of -Friendship--we sprang as one to do her bidding. We sent the little maid -to bed, we tidied the living room, walking tiptoe, and then we went back -through the kitchen and sat down on the little side "stoop." And all -this time we had addressed one another only about the tasks which we had -in hand. - -After a little silence, - -"The milkman was quite late this morning," observed Mis' Holcomb. - -"Well, he's begun to deliver in cans instead o' bottles," Mis' Sykes -explained; "it takes him some longer to get around. He says bottles -makes his wife just that much more to do." - -Then we fell silent again. - -It was Calliope, sitting on the porch step outside, where it was dark, -who at last had the courage to be articulate. - -"I hope--I _hope_," she said, "she's goin' to be all right." - -Mis' Sykes shaded her eyes from the bracket lamp within. - -"I'll go bail," she said, "that little you-do-as-I-say chin'll carry her -through. I'm glad she's got it." - -Just then we heard the thin crying of the child and we could divine -Calliope, that on the step where she sat she was hugging her arms and -rocking somewhat, to and fro. - -"Like enough," she said, "oh, like enough--folks ain't so cramped about -runnin' their own feelin's as they think they are!" - -To this we murmured something indefinite in sound but positive enough in -sense. And we all knew what we all knew. - -"Let's go out around the house to the front gate," said that great Mis' -Amanda Toplady, abruptly. "Have any of you ladies got two -handkerchiefs?" - -"I've got two," said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, "an' I ain't used either -one. Do you want the one with essence or the one without?" - -"I ain't partial," said Mis' Amanda. - -We rose and stumbled along the grassy path that led round the house. At -the gate we met Doctor Heron. - -"Well," he said slowly, "well." And after a moment, "Will--will any of -you be here in the morning?" he asked. - -"Yes," we all said simply. - -"That's good," he commented shortly, "I didn't know." - -We five had to separate at the first corner to go our home ways, and we -stood for a moment under the gas-light. I remember how, just then, -Peter's father came singing past us, like one of the Friendship family -who did not understand his kinship. Even as we five had not understood -ours. - -"You haven't got a shawl, hev you?" Mis' Sykes said to me solicitously. - -"The nights have been some chilly on a person's shoulders for a day or -two now," said Mis' Holcomb. - -Calliope put her hand up quickly to her throat. - -"Quit," she said. "All of you. Thank God. An' shake hands. I tell you, -after this I bet I'll run my own feelin's about folks or I'll bring down -the sky an' make new feelin's! Oh," said Calliope, "don't her--an' -_now_--an' the baby--an'--oh, an' that bright star winkin' over that -hitchin' post, make things seem--easy? Good night. I can't stand out -here any longer." - -But when we had gone away a few steps, Calliope called us back. And as -we turned again, - -"To bring down the sky," she repeated, "I bet that's the way God meant -us to do. They ain't any of us got enough _to_ us to piece out without -it!" - - - - -X - -EVENING DRESS - - -I have said that Daphne Street has been paved within the past year, but -I had not heard of the manner in which the miracle had been wrought -until the day when Calliope's brief stay in the village ended and she -came to tell me good-by--and, more than incidentally, to show me some -samples of a dress which she might have, and a dress which she wouldn't -have, and a dress which she had made up her mind to have. - -"We don't dress much here in Friendship Village," she observed. "Not but -what we'd like to, but we ain't the time nor the means nor the places to -wear to. But they was one night--" - -She looked at me, as always when she means to tell a story, somewhat -with the manner of asking a permission. - -"None of the low-neck' fashion-plates used to seem real to us," she -said. "We used to look at 'em pinned up in Lyddy Ember's dressmakin' -windows, ah-ahing in their low pink an' long blue, an' we'd look 'em -over an' think tolerant enough, like about sea-serpents. But neither the -one nor the other bit hold rill vital, because the plates was so young -an' smilin' an' party-seemin', an' we was old an' busy, like you get, -an' considered past the dressin' age. Still, it made kind of a nice -thing to do on the way home from the grocery hot forenoons--draw up -there on the shady side, where the street kitters some into a curve, an' -look at Lyddy's plates, an' choose, like you was goin' to get one. - -"Land knows we needed some oasises on that street from the grocery up -home. Daphne Street, our main street, didn't always use' to be what it -is now--neat little wooden blocks an' a stone curb. You know how it use' -to be--no curb an' the road a sight, over your shoe-tops with mud in the -wet, an' over your shoe-tops with sand when it come dry. We ladies used -to talk a good deal about it, but the men knew it meant money to hev it -fixed, an' so they told us hevin' it fixed meant cuttin' the trees down, -an' that kept us quiet--all but the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery -Improvement Sodality. - -"Mis' Postmaster Sykes was president o' the Sodality last year, you -know,--she's most always president of everything,--an' we'd been -workin' quite hard all that winter, an' had got things in the cemetery -rill ship-shape--at least I mean things _on_ the cemetery was. An' at -one o' the July meetin's last summer Mis' Sykes up an' proposed that we -give over workin' for the dead an' turn to the livin', an' pave the main -street of Friendship Village. - -"'True,' she says, 'our constitution states that the purpose of our -Sodality shall be to keep up the graves of our townspeople an' make 'em -attractive to others. But,' says she, 'when they ain't enough of us dead -to occupy all the time, the only Christian way to remedy that is to work -for folks before they die, while we're waitin' for their graves.' - -"This seemed reasonable, an' we voted unanimous to pave Daphne Street. -An' on the way home Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Timothy Toplady an' I see -Timothy Toplady settin' in the post-office store, an' we went in to tell -him an' Silas Sykes about it. But before we could start in, Silas says, -eyebrows all eager, 'Ain't you heard?' - -"'Heard what?' says his wife, kind o' cross, bein' he was her wedded -husband an' she _hadn't_ heard. - -"''Bout Threat Hubbelthwait,' says Silas, lookin' at Mis' Toplady an' -me, bein's Mis' Sykes was his wife. 'Drunk again,' says Silas, 'an' -fiddlin' for dear life, an' won't let anybody into the hotel. Mis' -Hubbelthwait has gone over to her mother's, an' the hired girl with -her; an' Threat's settin' in the bar an' playin' all the hymn tunes he -knows.' - -"It wasn't the first time it had happened, you know. Threat an' his wife -an' the hired girl keep the only hotel in Friendship Village--when -Threat is sober. When he isn't, he sometimes closes up the house an' -turns out whoever happens to be there, an' won't let a soul in--though, -of course, not much of anybody ever comes to Friendship anyway, excep' -now an' then an automobile on its way somewheres. An' there Threat will -set in the bar, sometimes most of one week, sometimes most of two, an' -scrape away on the only tunes he knows--all hymns, 'Just As I Am,' an' -'Can A Little Child Like Me?' Threat don't mean to be sacrilegious; he -shows that by never singin' them two hymns in church, when they're give -out. - -"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, when Silas got through, 'what men are!' - -"'We ain't so much as woman, lemme tell you,' says Silas, right crisp. -Which wasn't what he meant, an' we all laughed at him, so he was a -little mad to start with. - -"'The Sodality's decided to pave Daphne Street,' Mis' Sykes mentions -then, simple. - -"'Pave _what_?' shouts Silas--Silas always seems to think the more you -do in sound the more you'll do in sense. - -"'Do _what_ to Daphne Street?' says Timothy, whirlin' from the peanut -roaster. - -"'Pave Daphne Street,' says Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' me, -wonderin'. - -"Silas wrapped his arms around his own shoulders. - -"'When,' says he, lettin' his head lurch with his own emphasizin', 'did -the Common Council hear about this?' - -"'They ain't heard, about it,' says Mis' Sykes, 'no more'n we ever hear -anything about them.' - -"Silas an' Timothy is both aldermen, an' rill sensitive over it. I guess -the Common Council always _is_ a delicate subject, ain't it? - -"Mebbe it wasn't a rill diplomatic way to begin, but it hadn't entered -the Sodality's head that the town wouldn't be glad to hev the pavin' -done if the Sodality was willin' to do it. Ain't it a hard thing to -learn that it ain't all willingness, nor yet all bein' capable, that -gets things done in the world? It's part just edgin' round an' edgin' -round. - -"What did the Common Council do that night but call a special meetin' -an' vote not to order any city pavin' done that present year. Every -member was there but Threat Hubbelthwait, who was fiddlin', an' every -vote was switched by Silas an' Timothy to be unanimous, excep' Eppleby -Holcomb's vote. Eppleby, we heard afterwards, said that when a pack o' -women made up their minds to pave, they'd pave if it was to pave--some -place that Eppleby hadn't ought to 'a' mentioned; an' he was goin' to be -on the pavin' side. But then, Eppleby is the gentlest husband in -Friendship Village, an' known to be. - -"Sodality met special next day, not so much to do anything as to let it -be known that we'd took action. This we done by votin' to lay low till -such time as we could order the wooden blocks. We preferred to pave -peaceable, it bein' hot weather. - -"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss an' -Mis' Mayor Uppers an' I walked home together from that meetin'. It was a -blisterin' July afternoon--one of them afternoons that melts itself out -flat, same as a dropped pepp'mint on a brick walk, an' you're left -stickin' in it helpless as a fly, an' generally buzzin'. I rec'lect we -was buzzin'--comin' down Daphne Street in that chokin' dust an' no -pavement. - -"'It's a dog's life, livin' in a little town--in some respects,' I -remember Mis' Sykes says. - -"'Well,' says Mis' Toplady, tolerant, 'I know. I know it is. But I'd -rather live in a little town an' dog it out than go up to the city an' -turn wolf, same as some.' - -"An' yet we all felt the same, every one of us. They ain't a woman -livin' in a little place that don't feel the same, now and again. It's -quiet an' it's easy housework, an' you get to know folks well. But oh, -none of it what you might say _glitters_. An' they ain't no woman -whatever--no matter how good a wife an' mother an' Christian an' even -housekeeper she is--that don't, 'way down deep in her heart, feel that -hankerin' after some sort o' _glitter_. - -"So it was natural enough that we should draw up at Lyddy's dressmakin' -window an' rest ourself. An' that afternoon we'd have done so, anyway, -for she hed been pinnin' up her new summer plates--Lyddy don't believe -in rushin' the season. An' no sooner had we got a good look at 'em--big -coloured sheets they was, with full-length pictures--than Mis' Toplady -leaned 'way forward, her hands on her knees, an' stood lookin' at 'em -the way you look at the parade. - -"'Well, look-a-there,' she says. 'Look at that one.' - -"The one she meant was a woman with her hair all plaited an' fringed an' -cut bias, an' with a little white hat o' lilacs 'bout as big as a cork; -an' her dress--my land! Her dress was long an' rill light blue, an' -seemed like it must have been paper, it was so fancy. It didn't seem -like cloth goods at all, same as we hed on. It was more like we was -wearin' meat an' vegetable dresses, an' this dress was dessert--all -whipped cream an' pink sugar an' a flower on the plate. - -"'Dear land!' says Mis' Toplady, lookin' 'round at us strange, 'do they -do it when they get gray hair? I didn't know they done it when their -hair was gray.' - -"We all looked, an' sure enough, the woman's hair was white. 'Afternoon -Toilette for Elderly Woman,' it said underneath, plain as plain. Always -before the plates hed all been young an' smilin' an' party-seemin', an' -we'd thought of all that as past an' done for, with us, along with all -the other things that didn't come true. But here was a woman grayer than -any of us, an' yet lookin' as live as if she'd been wearin' a housework -dress. - -"'Why,' says Mis' Sykes, starin', 'that must be a new thing this season. -I never heard of a woman well along in years wearin' anything but brown -or navy blue or gray,--besides black.' Mis' Sykes is terribly dressy, -but even she never yet got anywheres inside the rainbow, except in a bow -at the chin. - -"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, wistful, 'wouldn't it seem -like heaven to be able to wear colours without bein' talked about?' - -"An' Mis' Mayor Uppers--her that her husband grew well off bein' mayor, -an' never'd been back to Friendship Village since he was put out of -office, she says low:-- - -"'You ladies that has husbands to keep thinkin' well of you, I should -think you'd think about this thing. Men,' she says, 'loves the light -shades.' - -"At that Mis' Toplady turned around on us, an' we see her eyes -expressin' i-dees. - -"'Ladies,' says she, impressive, 'Mis' Uppers is right. We hadn't ought -to talk back or show mad. We ladies of the Sodality had ought to be able -to get our own way peaceable, just by takin' it, the way the Lord give -women the weapons to do.' - -"We see that somethin' was seethin' in her mind, but we couldn't work -our way to what it was. - -"'Ladies,' says she, an' stepped up on the wooden step to Lyddy's -dressmakin' shop, 'has the husbands of any one of us seen us, for twenty -years, dressed in the light shades?' - -"I didn't hev any husband to answer for, but I could truthfully say of -the rest that you'd think black an' brown an' gray an' navy had -exhausted the Lord's ingenuity, for all the attention they'd paid to any -other colour He'd wove with. - -"'Let's the Sodality get up an evenin' party, an' hev it in post-office -hall, an' invite our husbands an' buy new dresses--light shades an' some -lace,' says Mis' Toplady, lettin' the i-dee drag her along, main -strength. - -"Mis' Sykes was studyin' the fashion-plate hungry, but she stopped an' -stepped up side o' Mis' Toplady. - -"'Well, sir,' she said, 'I donno but 'twould help us to work the pavin' -of Daphne Street. Why, Silas Sykes, for one, is right down soft-hearted -about clothes. He always notices which one of their waists the choir's -got on. I heard him say once he wasn't goin' to church again till they -bought somethin' new.' - -"Mis' Holcomb nodded. 'Five years ago,' she said, 'I went up to the city -with Eppleby. An' I saw him _turn around_ to look after a woman. I'll -never forget the sensation it give me--like I was married to a man that -wasn't my husband. The woman had on a light pink dress. I know I come -home an' bought a pink collar; I didn't think I could go any farther, -because she was quite young. Do you s'pose....' - -"Mis' Toplady pointed at Lyddy's fashion-plate. 'I should go,' she says, -'just as far as my money would let me go.' - -"Mis' Uppers stood lookin' down to the walk. 'The mayor,' she says--she -calls him 'the mayor' yet--'was terrible fond o' coloured neckties. He -was rill partial to green ones. Mebbe I didn't think enough about what -that meant....' - -"Mis' Toplady came down off the step. 'Every man is alike,' says she, -decided. 'Most of us Friendship ladies thinks if we give 'em a clean -roller towel we've done enough towards makin' things pretty; an' I -think it's time, as wives, we took advantage of the styles.' - -"'An',' says Mis' Sykes, the president, rill dreamy for her, but firm, -'I think so, too.' - -"I tell you, we all walked home feelin' like we'd hed a present--me too, -though I knew very well I couldn't hev a light dress, an' I didn't hev -any husband. You start out thinkin' them are the two principal things, -but you get a-hold o' some others, if you pay attention. Still, I judged -the ladies was on the right track, for men is men, say what who will. -All but Threat Hubbelthwait. We passed the hotel an' heard him settin' -in there by the bar scrapin' away on 'Can A Little Child Like Me?' We -took shame to him, an' yet I know we all looked at each other sort of -motherly, like he _was_ some little shaver, same as he sung, an' -performin' most fool. - -"It don't take us ladies long to do things, when our minds is made. -Especially it don't when Mis' Timothy Toplady is chairman of the -Entertainment Committee, or the Doin' Committee of whatever happens, -like she was that time. First, we found out they was plenty enough nun's -veilin' in the post-office store, cheap an' wide an' in stock an' all -the light shades; an' I bought all the dresses, noons, of the clerk, so -Silas wouldn't suspect--me not hevin' any husband to inquire around, -like they do. Then we hired the post-office hall, vague, without sayin' -for what--an' that pleased Silas that gets the rent. An' then we give -the invitations, spectacular, through the _Friendship Daily_ to the -Sodality's husbands, for the next Tuesday night. We could do it that -quick, not bein' dependent on dressmakers same as some. The ladies was -all goin' to make their dresses themselves, an' the dresses wa'n't much -to do to make. Nobody bothered a very great deal about how we should -make 'em, the principal thing bein' the colour; Mis' Toplady's was blue, -like the fashion-plate; Mis' Holcomb's pink, like the woman in the city; -Mis' Uppers' green, like the mayor's necktie, an' so on. I made me up a -dress out o' the spare-room curtains--white, with a little blue flower -in it, an' a new blue ribbon belt. But Mis' Sykes, she went to work an' -_rented_ a dress from the city, for that one night. That much she give -out about it, an' would give out no more. That woman loves a surprise. -She's got a rill pleasant mind, Mis' Sykes has, but one that does enjoy -jerkin' other people's minds up, an most anything'll do for the string. - -"For all we thought we hed so much time, an' it was so easy to do, the -afternoon o' the party we went 'most crazy. We'd got up quite a nice -little cold supper--Mis' Hubbelthwait had helped us, she bein' still at -large, an' Threat fiddlin'. We planned meat loaf an' salad an' pickles -an' jelly, an' scalloped potatoes for the hot dish, an' ice cream an' -cake, enough in all for thirty folks: fifteen husbands an' fifteen -Sodality, or approximatish. An' we planned to go to the hall in the -afternoon an' take our dresses there, an' sly em' up and leave 'em, an' -put 'em on after we'd got there that night, so's nobody's husbands -should suspect. But when we all came in the afternoon, an' the -decoratin' with greens an' festoons of cut paper an' all was to do, -there Mis' Toplady, that was to make scalloped potatoes, hadn't got her -sleeves in yet, an' she was down to the hall tryin' to do both; an' Mis' -Holcomb, that was to make the salad dressing, had got so nervous over -her collar that she couldn't tell which edge she'd cut for the top. But -the rest of us was ready, an' Mis' Sykes's dress had come from the city, -an' we all, Mis' Toplady an' Mame too, hed our dresses in boxes in the -post-office hall kitchen cupboards. An' we done the decoratin', an' it -looked rill lovely, with the long tables laid ready at each side, an' -room for bein' a party left in between 'em. - -"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb left the hall about five -o'clock to go home an' lay out Silas's an' Timothy's an' Eppleby's best -clothes for 'em--the rest hed done it at noon. Mis' Hubbelthwait was -goin' over to the hotel to get some dishes out, an' I went with her to -help. The bar was to the back, where Threat set an' slep' an' fiddled, -an' Mis' Hubbelthwait was goin' to slip in still an' sly the dishes out -to me. A good many of the hotel dishes was her individual weddin' -presents, so she didn't think wrong of her conscience. - -"We was all five hurryin' along together, rehearsin' all we'd got to do -before six-thirty, when we heard a funny sound. We listened, an' we -thought they must be testin' the hose. But when we got to Lyddy's shop, -where the street kitters off some in a curve, we looked ahead an' we see -it wasn't that. - -"It's an automobile," says Mis' Toplady. 'My land,' she says, 'it ain't -only one. It's two.' - -"An' we see it was. There come the two of 'em, ploughin' along through -the awful sand of Daphne Street, that was fit for no human locomotive, -unless ostriches. When the Proudfits are here, that's the only one in -the village with an automobile, they understand the sand, and they'd put -on the whole steam and tear right along through it. But strangers would -go careful, for fear they'd get stuck, an' so they got it, like you do. -An' them two big red cars was comin' slow, the dust like cloaks an' -curtains billowin' up behind. They looked quite wild, includin' the -seven folks in each one that was laughin' an' callin' out. An' by the -time they'd come up to us, us four ladies of the Sodality an' Mis' -Hubbelthwait was lined up on the walk watchin' 'em. They stopped an' -one of 'em hailed us, leanin' past his driver. - -"'I beg your pardon,' he says, 'is this the street to the best hotel?' - -"It was Mis' Toplady that answered him, rill collected. 'They's only one -street in town,' says she, 'an' they's only one hotel, an' that they -ain't now.' - -"'Can you tell me how soon there will be one?' says the man. 'By -dinner-time, I hope.' - -"We all felt kind of delicate about answerin' this, an' so Mis' -Hubbelthwait herself spoke up. 'Threat's drunk an' fiddlin', she says. -'They's no tellin' when Friendship Village will ever hev a hotel again.' - -"Both automobiles was listenin' by then, an' though some of 'em laughed -out sort o' rueful, not many of 'em see the funny. - -"'Gad,' one of the men says, 'how about the bird an' the bottle we were -to send back to Bonner, sittin' by his tire in the desert, a ways back? -Don't tell us there's no place,' he says, 'where we can find dinner, -twenty-one of us and the three chauf--' that word. - -"Mis' Toplady shook her head. 'They ain't a place big enough to seat -twenty-one, even if they was the food to feed 'em--' she begun, an' then -she stopped an' looked 'round at us, as though she was thinkin' -somethin'. - -"'Oh, come now,' says the man,--he was good-lookin' an' young, an' -merry-seemin',--'Oh, come now,' he said, 'I am sure that the ladies of -Friendship could cook things such as never man yet ate. We are -sta-arving,' he says, humorous. 'Can't you do something for us? We'll -give you,' he winds up, genial, 'two dollars a plate for a good, -home-cooking dinner for the twenty-four of us. What do you say?' - -"Mis' Toplady whirled toward us sort o' wild. 'Is two dollars times -twenty-four, forty-eight dollars?' says she, low. - -"An' we see it was, though Mis' Holcomb was still figurin' it out in the -palm of her other hand, while we stood gettin' glances out of each -other's eyes, an' sendin' 'em, give for take. We see, quick as a flash, -what Mis' Toplady was thinkin' about. An' it was about that hall, all -festooned with greens an' cut paper, an' the two long tables laid ready, -an' the veal loaf an' scalloped potatoes an' ice-cream for thirty. An' -when Mis' Sykes, that usually speaks, stood still, an' didn't say one -word, but just nodded a little bit, sort o' sad, Mis' Toplady, that was -chairman o' the Entertainment Committee, done like she does -sometimes--she took the whole thing into her own hands an' just settled -it. - -"'Why, yes,' she says to 'em, rill pleasant, 'if you want to come up to -post-office hall at half-past six,' she says, 'the Friendship Married -Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality will serve you your supper, nice -as the nicest, for two dollars a head.' - -"'Good!' the men all sings out, an' the women spats their hands soft, -an' one of 'em says somethin' to the merry-seemin' man. - -"'Oh, yes,' he says then, 'couldn't we all break into this hotel an' -floss up a bit before dinner?' - -"Mis' Hubbelthwait stepped out towards 'em. - -"'I was thinkin' of that,' says she. 'My husband,' she says, dignified, -'is settin' in the bar--practisin' his violin. He--he does that -sometimes, an' we--don't bother him. But the bar is at the back. I can -let you in, still, the front way to the rooms, if you want. An' I'll be -there myself to wait on you.' - -"An' that was what they done, somebody takin' one o' the cars back for -the other car, an' the rest of us fair breakin' into a run toward -post-office hall. - -"'My land,' says Mis' Toplady, almost like a groan, 'what _hev_ we -done?' - -"It _was_ a funny thing to do, we see it afterward. But I tell you, you -can't appreciate the influence o' that forty-eight dollars unless you've -tried to earn money in a town the size o' Friendship Village. Sodality -hardly ever made more than five dollars to its ten-cent -entertainments--an' that for a big turn-out on a dry night. An' here was -the price of about nine such entertainments give us outright, an' no -extra work, an' rill feet-achin' weather. I say it was more than flesh -an' blood _or_ wives could stand. We done it automatic, like you -contradict when it's necessary. - -"But there _was_ the men to reckon with. - -"'What'll Timothy--an' Silas--an' Eppleby....' Mis' Toplady says, an' -stops, some bothered an' some rill pained. - -"I judged, not havin' any husband to be doin' the inquirin', it wasn't -polite for me to laugh. But I couldn't hardly help it, thinkin' o' them -fifteen hungry men an' the supper et away from 'em, just William Nilly. - -"Mis' Sykes, we remembered afterwards, never said a word, but only kep' -up with us back to the hall. - -"Back to the hall, where the rest o' the Sodality was, we told 'em what -we'd done--beginnin' with the forty-eight dollars, like some kind o' -weapon. But I tell you, we hadn't reckoned without knowin' our -hostesses, head an' heart. An' they went in pell mell, pleased an' glad -as we was, an' plannin' like mad. - -"The first need was more food to make up that supper to somewheres near -two dollars' worth--feedin' your husband is one thing an' gettin' up a -two-dollar meal is another. But we collected that all in pretty sudden: -leg o' lamb, left from the Holcombs' dinner an' only cut off of one -side; the Sykes's roast o' veal, the same; three chickens for soup the -Libertys hed just dressed for next day company dinner; big platter of -devilled eggs chipped in from Mis' Toplady; a jar o' doughnuts, a -steamer o' cookies, a fruit-cake a year old--we just made out our list -an' scattered to empty out all our pantries. - -"By six o'clock we was back in the hall, an' all the food with us. But -nobody hed met nobody's husband yet, an' nobody wanted to. We didn't -quite know how we was goin' to do, I guess--but done is done, an' to do -takes care of itself. - -"'Hadn't we ought to 'a' sent word to the men?' says Mis' Holcomb, for -the third or fourth time. 'I sneaked around so's not to pass Eppleby's -office, but I declare I feel mean. He'll hev to eat sauce an' plain -bread-an'-butter for his supper. An' most o' the men-folks the same. -'Seems though somebody'd ought to send 'em word an' not let 'em come up -here, all washed an' dressed.' - -"'Well,' says Mis' Toplady, cuttin' cake with her lips shut tight an' -talkin' anyway, 'I kind o' thought--leave 'em come up. I bet they'd -rather be in it than out of it, every one of 'em, an' who knows they -might be some supper left? An' we can all--' - -"An' at that Mis' Toplady faces round from cuttin' the cake: 'My land, -my land,' she says, sort o' hushed, 'why, doin' this, we can't none of -us wear our new dresses!' - -"An' at that we looked at each other, each one sort of accusin', an' I -guess all our hearts givin' one o' them sickish thumps. An' Mis' Sykes, -her that hed been so still, snaps back:-- - -"'I wondered what you thought I'd rented my dress from the city for at -_Three Dollars a night_.' - -"I tell you, that made a hush in the middle of the plannin'. We'd forgot -all about our own dresses, an' that was bad enough, with the hall all -hired an' everything all ready, an' every chance in the world of -everybody's husband's findin' out about the dresses before we could get -up another Sodality party, same way. But here was Mis' Sykes, three -dollars out, an mebbe wouldn't be able to rent her dress again at all. - -"'I did want Silas,' Mis' Sykes says then, wistful, 'to see me in that -dress. Silas an' I have been married so long,' she says, 'that I often -wonder if I seem like a person to him at all. But in that dress from the -city, I think I would.' - -"We was each an' all ready to cry, an' I dunno but we would hev done -it--though we was all ready to serve, too: coffee made, potatoes pipin' -hot, veal an' lamb het up an' smellin' rich, chicken soup steamin', an' -all. But just that very minute we heard some of 'em comin' in the -hall--an' the one 'ready' conquered the other 'ready,' like it will, an' -we all made a rush, part curious an' part nerves, to peek through the -little servin' window from the kitchen. - -"_What_ do you think we saw? It was the automobile folks, hungry an' got -there first. In they'd come, women laughin', men jokin', all makin' a -lark out o' the whole thing. An' if the women wasn't, every last one of -'em, wearin'--not the clothes they hed come in, but light pink an' light -blue an' white an' flowered things, an' all like that. - -"Mis' Hubbelthwait burst in on us while we was lookin'. 'They hed things -in their trunk at the back o' the automobile,' says she. 'They says they -wanted to floss up for dinner, an' floss up they hev. They look like -Lyddy's fashion sheets, one an' all.' - -"At that Mis' Sykes, a-ceasin' to peek, she drops her tray on the bare -floor an' begun untyin' her apron. 'Quick!' she raps out, 'Mis' -Hubbelthwait, you go an' set 'em down. An' every one o' you--into them -togs of ours! Here's the chance to wear 'em--here an' _now_,' she says, -'an' leave them folks see we know how to do things here in Friendship -Village as good as the best.' - -"Well, bein' as she had rented the dress, an' three dollars hed to be -paid out anyhow, an' bein' as she was president, an' bein' as we was all -hankerin' in our hearts, we didn't need much urgin'. We slammed the -servin' window shut an' set chairs against both doors, an' we whisked -out of our regular dresses like wild. - -"'Oh, land--my land, the sleeves--the sleeves ain't in mine!' says Mis' -Toplady, sort o' glazed, an' speakin' in a wail. But we encouraged her -up to pin 'em in, which she done, an' it couldn't be told from stitches. -Poor Mame Holcomb's collar that wasn't on yet we turned in for her -V-shape, so's her dress was low, like the best. An' Mis' Uppers, that -was seasonin' the chicken soup like none of us could, her we took turns -in dressin' in her green. An' I'd got into my spare-room curtains, -somehow, just as Mis' Hubbelthwait come shoving at that door. - -"'The men--the men!' says she, painful. 'They're all out here--Silas an' -Timothy an' Eppleby an' all. They've all heard about it--the automobiles -went to the post-office for their mail, an' Silas told 'em enjoyable -about Threat, an' the automobiles told him where they was goin' to eat. -An' they've come, thinkin' they's enough for all, an' they're out here -now.' - -"Mis' Toplady groaned a little, agonized an' stifled, but rill firm. -'Tell 'em, then,' says she, 'to come back up here, like men, an' -_help_.' - -"Then we heard a little rustle, soft an' silky an' kind o' -pink-soundin', an' we looked around, an' there, from where she had been -dressin' herself over behind the kitchen boiler all alone, Mis' -Postmaster Sykes stepped out. My land, if she wasn't in a white dress, a -little low in the neck, an' elbow sleeves, an' all covered solid as -crust with glitterin' silver spangles. - -"'Let's tell 'em ourselves,' she says, 'come on--all of you. Let's take -out the first course, an' tell the men what we want 'em to do.' - -"We made Mis' Sykes go first, carryin' high the tureen of chicken soup. -An' on one side of her walked Mis' Timothy Toplady, in blue, with the -wafers, an' on the other Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, in pink, with -the radishes. An' neither one of 'em could hardly help lookin' at Mis' -Sykes's dress all the way out. An' back of 'em went the rest o' the -ladies, all in pink an' blue an' white an' pale green nun's veilin' that -they'd made, an' carryin' the water-pitchers an' ice an' celery an' like -that. An' me, I hung back in the kitchen watchin' an' lovin' 'em every -one--an' almost lovin' Timothy Toplady an' Silas Sykes an' Eppleby when -they looked on an' saw. - -"Mis' Sykes set the soup down in front o' the merry-seemin' man for him -to serve it. An' then she crossed over an' spoke to Silas, an' swep' up -ahead of him in that spangly dress, the other ladies followin' an' -noddin' bright when they passed the men, an' motionin' 'em toward the -back o' the hall. An' back the men all come into the kitchen, followin' -as they was asked to do, an' orderly through bein' dazed. Silas an' -Timothy an' Eppleby was first, an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' Mame -went up to 'em together. - -"I'll never forget that minute. I thought the men was goin' to burst out -characteristic an' the whole time be tart, an' I shut both doors an' the -servin' window careful. An' instead o' that, them three men stood there -just smilin' a little an lookin' surprised an' agreeable; an' the other -husbands, either takin' the cue or feelin' the same, done likewise, too. -An' when Mame Bliss says, sort o' tremblin'--Eppleby bein' the gentlest -husband in Friendship Village, an' known to be: 'How do you like us, -Eppleby?' Eppleby just nods an' wrinkles up his eyes an' smiles at her, -like he meant lots more. An' he says, 'Why didn't you never wear that -dress before, Mame?' - -"An' 'Well, Timothy?' says Mis' Toplady, sort o' masterful, an' fully -expectin' to hev to master. But Timothy Toplady, he just rubs his hands -an' looks at her sort o' wonderin', an' he says, 'Blisterin' Benson, -you look as good as the city folks, Amandy--all light, an' loose made, -an' stylish--' - -"But Silas Sykes, he just stood lookin' at his wife an' lookin'. Of -course she _did_ hev the advantage, bein' her spangles shone so. An' -Silas looked at her an' looked, just as if her bein' his wife didn't -make him admire her any the less. An' Mis' Sykes, she was rill pink an' -pleased an' breathless, an' I guess she could see she seemed like a -person to Silas, the way she'd wanted to. - - -"It all went off splendid. The men stayed an' dished in the kitchen an' -helped carry away from the tables--the forty-eight dollars completin' -their respect--an' we ladies done the servin'. An' I tell you, we served -'em with an air, 'count o' bein' well dressed, like they was, an' -knowin' it. An' we knew the automobile folks appreciated it--we could -tell by the way they kep' lookin' at us. But of course we all understood -Mis' Sykes looked the best, an' we let her do all the most prominent -things--bringin' in the first dish of everything an' like that, so's -they could hev a good look. - -"When it was over, the merry-seemin' man stood up an' made a little -speech o' thanks, rill courteous an' sweet, an' like he knew how to act. -An' when he was through we, one an' all, nudged Mis' Sykes to reply, an' -she done so, the two tables listenin', an' the Sodality standin' in -between, an' the Sodality's husbands crowdin' in both kitchen doors to -listen. - -"Mis' Sykes says, rill dignified, an' the light catchin' in her -spangles: 'We're all very much obliged, I'm sure, for our forty-eight -dollars clear. An' we think perhaps you'd like to know what the money is -goin' toward. It's goin',' she says, 'towards the pavin' of the main -street of our little city.' - -"Silas Sykes was lookin' out the servin' window like it was a box. -'What's that?' says he, more of him comin' out of the window, 'what's -_that_ you say?' - -"An' they was a little wave o' moves an' murmurs all around him like -when somethin' is goin' to happen an' nobody knows what; an' I know the -Sodality caught its breath, for, as Mis' Toplady always says, the dear -land knows what men _will_ do. - -"With that up springs the merry-seemin' man, his face all beamin', an' -he says loud an' clear an' drowndin' out everything else: 'Hear, hear! -Likewise, here an' now. I move that we as one man, an' that man's -automobile having lately come up the main street of Friendship -Village--do ourself contribute to this most worthy end. Get to work,' -says he. 'Think civic thoughts!' - -"He slid the last roll off its plate, an' he laid somethin' in paper -money on it, an' he started it down the table. An' every man of 'em -done as he done. An' I tell you, when we see Mis' Hubbelthwait's bread -plate pilin' with bills, an' knew what it was for, we couldn't help--the -whole Sodality couldn't help--steppin' forwards, close to the table, an' -standin' there an' holdin' our breaths. An' the men, back there in the -kitchen, they hushed up when they see the money, an' they kep' hushed. -Land, land, it was a great minute! I like to think about it. - -"An' when the plate come back to the merry-seemin' man, he took it an' -he come over towards us with it in his hand, an' we nudged Mis' Sykes to -take the money. An' she just lifted up the glitter part of her skirt an' -spread it out an' he dropped the whole rustlin' heap on to the spangles. -An' the rest of us all clapped our hands, hard as we could, an' right -while we was doin' it we heard somethin' else--deeper an' more manly -than us. An' there was the men streamin' out o' the kitchen doors, an' -Silas Sykes high in the servin' window--an' every one of 'em was -clappin', too. - -"I tell you, we was glad an' grateful. An' we was grateful, too, when -afterwards they was plenty enough supper left for the men-folks. An' -when we all set down together around that table, Mis' Sykes at the head -an' the plate o' bills for a centrepiece, Mis' Toplady leaned back, hot -an' tired, an' seein' if both her sleeves was still pinned in place, -an' she says what we was all thinkin':-- - -"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'we can pave streets an' dress in the light -shades even if we ain't young, like the run o' the fashion-plates. Ain't -it like comin' to life again?' she says." - - - - -XI - -UNDERN - - -I have a guest who is the best of the three kinds of welcome guests. Of -these some are like a new rug which, however fine and unobtrusive it be, -at first changes the character of your room so that when you enter you -are less conscious of the room than of the rug. Some guests are like -flowers on the table, leaving the room as it was save for their sweet, -novel presence. And some guests are like a prized new book, unread, from -which you simply cannot keep away. Of these last is my guest whom my -neighbour calls the New Lady. - -My neighbour and Elfa and Miggy and Little Child and I have all been -busy preparing for her. Elfa has an almost pathetic fondness for -"company,"--I think it is that she leads such a lonely life in the -little kitchen-prison that she welcomes even the companionship of -more-voices-in-the-next-room. I have tried to do what I can for Elfa, -but you never help people very much when you only try to do what you -can. It must lie nearer the heart than that. And I perfectly understand -that the magazines and trifles of finery which I give to her, and the -flowers I set on the kitchen clock shelf, and the talks which, since my -neighbour's unconscious rebuke, I have contrived with her, are about as -effectual as any merely ameliorative means of dealing with a social -malady. For Elfa is suffering from a distinct form of the social malady, -and not being able to fathom it, she knows merely that she is lonely. So -she has borrowed fellowship from her anticipation of my guest and of -those who next week will come down from the town; and I know, though she -does not know, that her jars of fresh-fried cakes and cookies, her fine -brown bread and her bowl of salad-dressing, are her utmost expression of -longing to adjust the social balance and give to herself companionship, -even a kind of household. - -Little Child to-day came, bringing me a few first sweet peas and -Bless-your-Heart, Bless-your-Heart being her kitten, and as nearly pink -as a cat can be and be still a cat. - -"To lay in the New Lady's room," she remarked, bestowing these things -impartially upon me. - -Later, my neighbour came across the lawns with a plate of currant tarts -and a quarter of a jelly cake. - -"Here," she said, "I don't know whether you like tarts or not. They're -more for children, I always think. I always bake 'em, and the little -round child fried cakes, too, and I put frosting faces on the cookies, -and such things. It makes my husband and I seem more like a family," she -explained, "and that's why I always set the dining-room table. As long -as we ain't any little folks running around, I always tell him that him -and I would be eating meat and potatoes on the kitchen drop-leaf like -savages if I didn't pretend there was more of us, and bake up for 'em." - -Miggy alone does not take wholly kindly to the New Lady idea, though I -assure her that our mornings are to remain undisturbed. - -"Of course," she observed, while in the New Lady's honour she gathered -up strewn papers, "I know I'll like her because she's your friend. But I -don't know what folks want to visit for. Don't you s'pose that's why the -angels don't come back--because they know everything, and they know what -a lot of extra work they'd make us?" - -In Miggy the tribal sense seems to have run itself out. Of the sanctity -of the individual she discerns much; but of the wider sanctities she has -no clear knowledge. Most relationships she seems to regard, like the -love of Peter, as "drawbacks," save only her indefinite consciousness of -that one who is "not quite her sister"--the little vague Margaret. And -this, I think, will be the leaven. Perhaps it is the universal leaven, -this consciousness. - -I was glad that the New Lady was to arrive in the afternoon. Sometimes -I think that the village afternoon is the best time of all. It is no -wonder that they used to call that time "undern." If they had not done -so, the word must have grown of its own will--perhaps it did come to -life with no past, an immaculate thing, so like its meaning that it -could not help being here among us. I know very well that Sir John -Mandeville and others used "undern" to mean the third hour, or about -nine in the morning, but that may have been because at first not every -one recognized the word. Many a fairy thing wanders for a long time on -earth, patiently putting up with other connotations than its own. -Opportunism, the subconscious mind, personality, evolution itself,--all -these are still seeking their full incarnations in idea. No wonder -"undern" was forced for a long while to mean morning. But nine o'clock -in the morning! How, after all, was that possible? You have only to say -it over--undern, undern, undern,--to be heavenly drowsy with summer -afternoon. The north of England recognized this at last and put the word -where it belongs; and I have, too, the authority of the lady of Golden -Wing:-- - - - "Undern cometh after noon, - Golden Wings will be here soon...." - - -One can hardly stop saying that, once one is started. I should like to -go on with it all down the page. - -I was thinking of these things as I drove to the station alone to meet -the New Lady. The time had taken on for me that pleasant, unlike-itself -aspect which time bears in any mild excitement, so that if in the moment -of reading a particularly charming letter one can remember to glance up -and look the room in the face, one may catch its _other_ expression, the -expression which it has when one is not looking. So now I caught this -look in the village and an air of -Something-different-is-going-to-happen, such as we experience on -holidays. Next week, when the New Lady's friends come down to us for two -days, I dare say, if I can remember to look for it, that the village -will have another expression still. Yet there will be the same quiet -undern--though for me it is never a commonplace time. Indeed, usually I -am in the most delighted embarrassment how to spend it. In the mornings -now--Miggy being willing--I work, morning in the true democracy being -the work time; afternoon the time for recreation and the more -specialized forms of service _and_ a little rest; the evening for -delight, including the delight of others. Not every one in the village -accepts my afternoon and evening classifications. I am constantly coming -on people making preserves after mid-day, and if I see a light in a -kitchen window after nine at night I know that somebody is ironing in -the cool of the day. But usually my division of time is the general -division, save that--as in the true democracy--service is not always -recognized as service. Our afternoons may be spent in cutting carpet -rags, or in hemming linen, or sewing articles for an imminent bazaar, -and this is likely to be denominated "gettin' through little odd jobs," -and accounted in a measure a self-indulgence. And if evening delight -takes the form of gardening and later a flame of nasturtiums or dahlias -is carried to a friend, nobody dreams that this is not a pleasant -self-indulgence too, and it is so regarded. With these things true is it -not as if a certain hope abroad in the world gave news of itself? - -Near the Pump pasture I came on Nicholas Moor--who rings the Catholic -bell and is interested in celluloid--and who my neighbour had told me -would doubtless come to me, bringing his little sheaf of "writin's." I -had not yet met him, though I had seen in the daily paper a vagrant poem -or two over his name--I remember a helpless lyric which made me think of -a gorgeous green and gold beetle lying on its back, unable to recover -its legs, but for all that flashing certain isolated iridescent colours. -My heart ached for Nicholas, and when I saw him now going across the -pasture his loneliness was like a gap in things, one of the places where -two world-edges do not quite meet. There are so many pleasant ways to do -and the boy seemed to know how to do none of them. How can he be lonely -in the village? For myself, if I decide of an afternoon to take my work -and pay a visit, I am in a pleasant quandary as to which way to turn. If -I go to the west end of Daphne Street, there are at least five families -among whom to choose, the other four of whom will wonder why I did not -come to them. Think of knowing five families in two blocks who would -welcome one's coming and even feel a little flattering bitterness if one -chose the other four! If I take a cross street, I am in the same -difficulty. And if I wish to go to the house of one of my neighbours, my -motives clash so seriously that I often sit on my porch and call to -whoever chances to be in sight to come to me. Do you wonder that, in -town, the moment I open my address book I feel smothered? I recover and -enjoy town as much as anybody, but sometimes in a stuffy coupé, hurrying -to get a half-dozen of the pleasantest calls "done," I surprise a -companion by saying: would now that it were undern on Daphne Street! - -I told this to the New Lady as we drove from the station. The New Lady -is an exquisite little Someone, so little that it is as if she had been -drawn quickly, in a single delicate curving line, and then left, lest -another stroke should change her. She understands the things that I say -in the way that I mean them; she is the way that you always think the -people whom you meet are going to be, though they so seldom are; like -May, she is expectation come alive. What she says fits in all the -crannies of what you did not say and have always known, or else have -never thought of before and now never can forget. She laughs when she -should laugh, and never, never when somebody else should laugh alone. -When you tell her that you have walked eight miles and back, she says -"_And back!_" with just the proper intonation of homage. She never tells -a story upon the heels of your own little jest so swiftly that it cannot -triumphantly escape. When you try to tell her something that you have -not quite worked out, she nods a little and you see that she meant it -before you did. She enters every moment by its gate and not over its -wall, though she frequently wings her way in instead of walking. Also, -she is good to look at and her gowns are as meet as the clouds to the -sky--and no less distracting than the clouds are at their very best. -There is no possible excuse for my saying so much about her, but I like -to talk of her. And I like to talk to her as I did when we left the -station and I was rambling on about undern. - -The New Lady looked about with a breath of content. - -"No wonder," she said, "you like to pretend Birthday, in New York." - -It is true that when I am there where, next to the village, I like best -to live, I am fond of this pretence. It is like the children's game of -"Choosing" before shop windows, only it is extensive and not, as cream -puffs and dolls and crumpets in the windows dictate to the children, -purely intensive. Seeing this man and that woman in the subway or the -tea-room or the café or the car, I find myself wondering if it is by any -chance their birthdays; and if it is, I am always wishing to deal out -poor little gifts at which I fancy they would hardly look. To the lithe -idle blond woman, elbows on table; to the heavy-lidded, -engagement-burdened gentlewoman; to the busy, high-eyebrowed man in a -cab; to the tired, slow-winking gentleman in his motor; to the -thick-handed labourer hanging to his strap, I find myself longing to -distribute these gifts: a breakfast on our screened-in porch in the -village, with morning-glories on the table; a full-throated call of my -oriole--a June call, not the isolated reminiscent call of August; an -hour of watering the lawn while robins try to bathe in the spray; a -morning of pouring melted paraffin on the crimson tops of moulds of -currant jelly; a yellow afternoon of going with me to "take my work and -stay for supper." I dare say that none of my chosen beneficiaries would -accept; but if I could pop from a magic purse a crop of caps and fit -folk, willy nilly, I wonder if afterward, even if they remembered -nothing of what had occurred, they might not find life a little -different. - -"If it was my birthday," said the New Lady, "I would choose to be driven -straight away through that meadow, as if I had on wings." - -That is the way she is, the New Lady. Lacking wings of her own she gives -them to many a situation. Straightway I drove down into the Pump pasture -and across it, springy soil and circus-trodden turf and mullein stalks -and ten-inch high oak trees. - -"Let's let down the bars," said the New Lady, "and drive into that next -meadow. If it _is_ a sea, as it looks, it will be glad of your company." - -It was not a sea, for as we drove through the lush grass the yellow and -purple people of the meadow came marching to meet us, as dignified as -garden flowers, save that you knew, all the time, that wild hearts were -beating beneath the rainbow tassels. It was a meadow with things to say, -but with finger on lip--as a meadow should be and as a spirit must be. -The meadow seemed to wish to say: "It is all very pleasant for you there -in the village to admire one another's wings, but the real romance is in -the flight." I wondered if it were not so that it had happened--that one -day a part of the village had got tired waiting, and had broken off and -become something free, of which the meadow was the body and its secret -was the spirit. But then the presence of the New Lady always sets me -wondering things like this. - -"Why," I said to her suddenly, "spring has gone! I wonder how that -happened. I have been waiting really to get hold of spring, and here it -is June." - -"June-and-a-half," assented the New Lady, and touched the lines so that -we came to a standstill in the shade of a cottonwood. - -"This way," she said--and added softly, as one who would not revive a -sadness, her own idea of the matter. - - - "Where did Spring die? I did not hear her go - Down the soft lane she painted. All flower still - She moved among her emblems on the hill - Touching away their burden of old snow. - Was it on some great down where long winds flow - That the wild spirit of Spring went out to fill - The eyes of Summer? Did a daffodil - Lift the pale urn remote where she lies low? - - "Oh, not as other moments did she die, - That woman-season, outlined like a rose. - Before the banner of Autumn's scarlet bough - The Summer fell; and Winter, with a cry, - Wed with March wind. Spring did not die like those; - But vaguely, as if Love had prompted, 'Now.'" - - -The New Lady's theory does not agree with that of Little Child. I am in -doubt which to accept. But I like to think about both. - -And when the New Lady had said the faint requiem, we drove on again and -the next moment had almost run down Nicholas Moor, lying face downward -in the lush grass. - -I recognized him at once, but of course the New Lady did not do so, and -she leaned from the cart, thoroughly alarmed at the boy's posture and, -as he looked up, at his pallor. - -"Oh, what is the matter?" she cried, and her voice was so heavenly -pitying that one would have been willing to have most things the matter -only to hear her. - -Nicholas Moor scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and stood abashed, -looking as strangely detached from the moment as if he had fallen from a -frame and left the rest of the picture behind. - -"Nothing. I just like to be here," he was surprised into saying. - -The New Lady sat down and smiled. And her smile was even more -captivating than had been her late alarm. - -"So do I," she told him heartily. "So do I. What do you like about it, -_best_?" - -I do not think that any one had ever before spoken to Nicholas so -simply, and he answered, chord for chord. - -"I guess--I guess I like it just on account of its being the way it is," -he said. - -"That is a very, very nice reason," the New Lady commented. "Again, so -do I." - -We left him, I remember, looking about as if he were seeing it all for -the first time. - -As we drove away I told my New Lady about Nicholas, and she looked along -her own thought and shook her head. - -"There must be hundreds of them," she said, "and some are poets. But -most of them are only lonesome. I wonder which Nicholas is?" - -We lingered out-of-doors as long as we might, because the touch of the -outdoors was so companioning that to go indoors was a distinct good-by. -Is it so with you that some Days, be they never so sunny, yet walk with -you in a definite reserve and seem to be looking somewhere else; while -other Days come to you like another way of being yourself and will not -let you go? I know that some will put it down to mood and not to the Day -at all; but, do what I will, I cannot credit this. - -It was after five o'clock when we drove into the village, and all Daphne -Street was watering its lawns. Of those who were watering some pretended -not to see us, but I understood that this they accounted the etiquette -due to a new arrival. Some bowed with an excess of cordiality, and this -I understood to be the pleasant thought that they would show my guest -how friendly we all are. And some laid down the hose and came to the -sidewalk's edge to meet the New Lady then and there. - -Of these were Mis' Postmaster Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss -and my neighbour. - -"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," Mis' Postmaster Sykes said graciously -to the New Lady. "I must say it seems good to see a strange face now an' -then. I s'pose you feel all travel dust an' mussed up?" - -And at Mis' Holcomb's hitching post:-- - -"Pleased to meet you," said Mis' Holcomb. "I was saying to Eppleby that -I wondered if you'd come. Eppleby says, 'I donno, but like enough -they've went for a ride somewheres.' Lovely day, ain't it? Been to the -cemetery?" - -I said that we had not been there yet, and, - -"Since it's kept up it makes a real nice thing to show folks," Mis' -Holcomb said. "I s'pose you wouldn't come inside for a bite of supper, -would you?" - -My neighbour--bless her!--had on a black wool dress to do honour to my -guest. - -"It's nice for the neighbours to see company comin' and goin'," she said -cordially, "though of course we don't have any of the extra work. But I -guess everybody likes extra work of _this_ kind." - -And as we drove away:-- - -"Good-by," she cried, "I hope you'll have a good night's rest and a -good breakfast." - -When I looked at the New Lady I saw her eyes ever so slightly misted. - -"Spring didn't die," she said--as Little Child had said. "Spring knew -how to keep alive. It got down in these people's hearts." - -Yes, the New Lady is a wholly satisfactory guest. She even pretended not -to notice Peter's father who, as we alighted, came singing by, and bowed -to us, his barren old face lighted with a smile, as a vacant room is -lighted, revealing the waste. If I had some one staying with me who had -smiled at Peter's father or--at any one, or who did not see the village -as it is, I think I should be tempted to do as my neighbour did to me -that morning: pick three carnation pinks for her and watch her go away. - - - - -XII - -THE WAY THE WORLD IS - - -Was it not inevitable that poor, lonely Nicholas Moor should have sought -out my New Lady? A night or two after her arrival he saw her again, at a -supper in the church "lecture-room." He was bringing in a great freezer -of ice-cream and when she greeted him he had all but dropped the -freezer. Then a certain, big obvious deacon whose garden adjoined my own -had come importantly and snatched the burden away, and the boy had -stood, shamefast, trying to say something; but his face was lighted as -at a summons. So the New Lady had divined his tragedy, the loneliness -which his shyness masked as some constant plight of confusion. - -"Come and see me sometime," she had impulsively bidden him. "Do you know -where I am staying?" - -Did he know that! Since he had seen her in the meadow had he known -anything else? And after some days of hard trying he came one night, -arriving within the dusk as behind a wall. Even in the twilight, when he -was once under the poplars, he did not know what way to look. To seem -to look straight along the road was unnatural. To seem to look out -across the opposite fields was hypocrisy. To look at the house which -held the New Lady was unthinkable. So, as he went in at the gate and up -the fern-bordered walk, he examined the back of his hand--near, and then -a little farther away. As he reached the steps he was absorbedly -studying his thumb. - -From a place of soft light, shed through a pink box shade on the table, -and of scattered willow chairs and the big leaves of plants, the New -Lady came toward him. - -"You did come!" she said. "I thought you wouldn't, really." - -With the utmost effort Nicholas detached one hand from his hat brim and -gave it her. From head to foot he was conscious, not of the touch of her -hand, little and soft, but of the bigness and coarseness of his own -hand. - -"I hated to come like everything," he said. - -At this of course she laughed, and she went back to her willow chair and -motioned him to his. He got upon it, crimson and wretched. - -"As much as that!" she observed. - -"You know I wanted to come awfully, too," he modified it, "but I dreaded -it--like sixty. I--I can't explain...." he stumbled. - -"Don't," said the New Lady, lightly, and took pity on him and rang a -little bell. - -She thought again how fine and distinguished he was, as he had seemed to -her on the day when she had first spoken to him. He sat staring at her, -trying to realize that he was on the veranda with her, hearing the sound -of the little bell she had rung. He had wanted something like this, -wistfully, passionately. Miserable as he was, he rested in the moment as -within arms. And the time seemed distilled in that little silver -bell-sound and the intimacy of waiting with her for some one to come. - -He knew that some one with a light footfall did come to the veranda. He -heard the New Lady call her Elfa. But he saw only her hands, plump and -capable and shaped like his own, moving among the glasses. After which -his whole being became absorbed in creditably receiving the tall, cool -tumbler on the tray which the capable hands held out to him. A period of -suspended intelligence ensued, until he set the empty glass on the -table. Then the little maid had gone, and the New Lady, sipping her own -glass, was talking to him. - -"You were lying on the grass that day," she said, "as if you understood -grass. Not many do understand about grass, and almost nobody understands -the country. People say, 'Come, let us go into the country,' and when -they get there is it the country they want at all? No, it is the -country sports, the country home,--everything but the real country. They -play match games. They make expeditions, climb things in a stated time, -put in a day at a stated place. I often think that they must go home -leaving the country aghast that they could have come and gone and paid -so little heed to it. Presently we are going to have some charming -people out here who will do the same thing." - -So she talked, asking him nothing, even her eyes leaving him free. It -seemed to him, tense and alert and ill at ease as he listened, that he, -too, was talking to her. From the pressing practicalities, the -self-important deacon, the people who did not trouble to talk to him, -his world abruptly escaped, and in that world he walked, an escaped -thing too, forgetful even of the little roll of verses which he had -dared to bring. - -Yet when she paused, he looked out at her shrinkingly from under his -need to reply. He did not look at her face, but he looked at her hands, -so little that each time he saw them they were a new surprise and alien -to him. He looked away from them to the friendliness of her smile. And -when he heard himself saying detached, irrelevant things, he again fell -to studying one of his own hands, big and coarse and brown. Oh, he -thought, the difference between her and him was so hopelessly the -difference in their hands. - -In an absurdly short time the need to be gone was upon him; but of this -he could not speak, and he sat half unconscious of what she was saying, -because of his groping for the means to get away. Clearly, he must not -interrupt her to say that he must go. Neither could he reply to what she -said by announcing his intention. And yet when he answered what she -said, straightway her exquisite voice went on with its speech to him. -How, he wondered, does anybody ever get away from anywhere? If only -something would happen, so that he could slip within it as within doors, -and take his leave. - -Something did happen. By way of the garden, and so to a side door, there -arrived those whose garden adjoined,--the big, obvious, self-important -deacon, and behind him Three Light Gowns. The little maid Elfa came -showing them through the house, in the pleasant custom of the village. -And when the New Lady, with pretty, expected murmurings, rose to meet -them, Nicholas got to his feet confronting the crisis of saying good-by, -and the moment closed upon him like a vise. He heard his voice falter -among the other voices, he saw himself under the necessity to take her -hand and the deacon's hand, and the hands, so to speak, of the Three -Light Gowns; and this he did as in a kind of unpractised bewildering -minuet. - -And then he found his eyes on a level with eyes that he had not seen -before--blue eyes, gentle, watching, wide--and a fresh, friendly little -face under soft hair. It was Elfa, taking away the empty glasses. And -the boy, in his dire need to ease the instant, abruptly and inexplicably -held out his hand to her too. She blushed, sent a frightened look to the -New Lady, and took the hand in hers that was plump and capable, with its -strong, round wrist. And the little maid, being now in an embarrassment -like his own, the two hands clung for a moment, as if they had each the -need. - -"Good night," she said, trembling. - -"Good night," said the New Lady, very gently. - -"Oh, _good night_!" burst from the boy as he fled away. - - -It was Elfa who admitted him at his next coming. The screened porch was -once more in soft light from the square rose shade, and the place had -the usual pleasant, haunted air of the settings of potentialities. As if -potentiality were a gift of enchantment to human folk. - -The New Lady was not at home, Elfa told him, in her motherly little -heart pitying him. And at the news he sat down, quite simply, in the -chair in which he had sat before. He must see her. It was unthinkable -that she should be away. To-night he had meant to have the courage to -leave with her his verses. - -On the willow table lay her needlework. It was soft and white beyond the -texture of most clouds, and she had wrought on it a pattern like the -lines on a river. As his eyes rested on it, Nicholas could fancy it -lying against her white gown and upon it her incomparable hands. Some -way, she seemed nearer to him when he was not with her than when, with -her incomparable hands and her fluent speech, she was in his presence. -When she was not with him, he could think what to say to her. When he -stood before her--the thought of his leave-taking on that veranda seized -upon him, so that he caught his breath in the sharp thrust of mortified -recollection, and looked away and up. - -His eyes met those of Elfa, who was quietly sitting opposite. - -"How they must all have laughed at me. You too!" he said. - -"Why?" she asked. - -"That last time I was here. Shaking hands that way," he explained. - -"I didn't laugh," she unexpectedly protested; "I cried." - -He looked at her. And this was as if he were seeing her for the first -time. - -"_Cried?_" he repeated. - -"Nobody ever shakes hands with me," Elfa told him. - -He stared at her as she sat on the edge of her chair, her plump hands -idle on her apron. - -"No," he admitted, "no, I don't suppose they do. I didn't think--" - -But he had not thought of her at all. - -"By the door all day I let in hand-shakes," she said, "an' then I let -'em out again. But I don't get any of 'em for me." - -That, Nicholas saw, was true enough. Even he had been mortified because -he had taken her hand. - -"Once," Elfa said, "I fed a woman at the back door. An' when she went -she took hold o' my hand, thankful. An' then you done it too--like it -was a mistake. That's all, since I worked out. I don't know folks -outside much, only some that don't shake hands, 'count of seemin' -ashamed to." - -"I know," said Nicholas. - -"Sometimes," she went on, "folks come here an' walk in to see _her_ an' -they don't shake. Ain't it funny--when folks can an' don't? When they -come from the city to-morrow, the whole house'll shake hands, but me. -Once I went to prayer-meetin' an' I hung around waitin' to see if -somebody wouldn't. But they didn't--any of 'em. It was rainin' outside -an' I guess they thought I come with somebody's rubbers." - -Nicholas looked at her a little fearfully. It had seemed to him that in -a great world of light he had always moved in a little hollow of -darkness and detachment. Were there, then, other hollows like that? -Places to which outstretched hands never penetrate? A great -understanding possessed him, and he burst out in an effort to express -it. - -"You're a funny girl," he said. - -She flushed, and suddenly lifted one hand and looked at it. Nicholas -watched her now intently. She studied the back of her hand, turned it, -and sat absorbedly examining her little thumb. And Nicholas felt a -sudden sense of understanding, of gladness that he understood. As he -felt when he was afraid and wretched, so Elfa was feeling now. - -He leaned toward her. - -"Don't feel afraid," he said gently. - -She shook her head. - -"I don't," she said; "I don't, truly. I guess that's why I stayed here -now. She won't be back till ten--I ought to have said so before. -You--you won't want to wait so long." - -He rose at once. And now, being at his ease, his head was erect, his -arms naturally fallen, his face as confident and as occupied by his -spirit as when he lay alone in the meadows. - -"Well, sir," he said, "let's shake hands again!" - -She gave him her hand and, in their peculiarly winning upward look, her -eyes--blue, wide, watchful, with that brooding mother watchfulness of -some women, even in youth. And her hand met his in the clasp which is -born of the simple, human longing of kind for kind. - -"Good-by," she answered his good-by, and they both laughed a little in a -shyness which was a way of delight. - -In the days to follow there flowed in the boy's veins a tide of novel -sweetness. And now his thoughts eluded one another and made no chain, so -that when he tried to remember what, on that first evening, the New Lady -and he had talked about, there came only a kind of pleasure, but it had -no name. Everything that he had to do pressed upon him, and when he -could get time he was away to the meadow, looking down on the chimneys -of that house, and swept by a current that was like a singing. And -always, always it was as if some one were with him. - -There came a night when he could no longer bear it, when his wish took -him to itself and carried him with it. Those summer dusks, warm yellow -with their moon and still odorous of spring, were hard to endure alone. -Since the evening with her, Nicholas had not seen the New Lady save -when, not seeing him, she had driven past in a phaëton. At the sight of -her, and once at the sight of Elfa from that house, a faintness had -seized him, so that he had wondered at himself for some one else, and -then with a poignancy that was new pain, new joy, the new life, had -rejoiced that he was himself. So, when he could no longer bear it, he -took his evening way toward the row of poplars, regretting the moonlight -lest by it they should see him coming. And to-night he had with him no -verses, but only his longing heart. - -He had no intimation of the guests, for the windows at that house were -always brightly lighted, and until he was within the screened veranda -the sound of voices did not reach him. Then from the rooms there came a -babel of soft speech and laughter, and a touch of chords; and when he -would have incontinently retreated, the New Lady crossed the hall and -saw him. - -She came to the doorway and greeted him, and Nicholas looked up in the -choking discomfort of sudden fear. She was in a gown that was like her -needlework, mysteriously fashioned and intricate with shining things -which made her infinitely remote. The incomparable little hands were -quite covered with jewels. It was as if he had come to see a spirit and -had met a woman. - -"How good of you to come again," she said. "Come, I want my friends to -meet you." - -Her friends! That quick crossing of words within there, then, meant the -presence of her friends from the city. - -"I couldn't! I came for a book--I'll get it some other time. I've got to -go now!" Nicholas said. - -Then, "Bettina--Bettina!" some one called from within, and a man -appeared in the hallway, smiled at sight of the New Lady, dropped his -glass at sight of Nicholas, bowed, turned away--oh, how should he know -that her name was Bettina when Nicholas had not known! - -This time he did not say good night at all. This time he did not look at -his great hand, which was trembling, but he got away, mumbling -something, his retreat graciously covered by the New Lady's light words. -And, the sooner to be gone and out of the moonlight that would let them -see him go, he struck blindly into the path that led to the side gate of -the garden. The mortification that chains spirit to flesh and tortures -both held him and tortured him. For a breath he imagined himself up -there among them all, his hands holding his hat, imagined having to -shake hands with them: and somehow this way of fellowship, this meeting -of hands outstretched for hands, seemed, with them, the supreme ordeal, -the true symbol of his alien state from them and from the New Lady. No -doubt she understood him, but for the first time Nicholas saw that this -is not enough. For the first time he saw that she was as far away from -him as were the others. How easy, Nicholas thought piteously, those -people in her house all found it to act the way they wanted to! Their -hands must be like her hands.... - -He got through the garden and to the side gate. And now the old -loneliness was twofold upon him because he had known what it is to reach -from the dark toward the light; yet when he saw that at the gate some -one was standing, he halted in his old impulse to be on guard, hunted by -the fear that this would be somebody alien to him. Then he saw that it -was no one from another star, but Elfa. - -"Oh...." he said, and that, too, was what she said, but he did not hear. -Not from another star she came, but from the deep of the world where -Nicholas felt himself alone. - -"I--was just going away," he explained. - -For assent she stepped a little back, saying nothing. But when Nicholas -would have passed her it was as if the immemorial loneliness and the -seeking of forgotten men innumerable stirred within him in the ache of -his heart, in the mere desperate wish to go to somebody, to be with -somebody, to have somebody by the hand. - -He turned upon Elfa almost savagely. - -"Shake hands!" he said. - -Obediently she put out her hand, which of itself stayed ever so briefly, -within his. He held it, feeling himself crushing it, clinging to it, -being possessed by it. Her hand was, like his, rough from its work, and -it was something alive, something human, something that answered. And -instantly it was not Elfa alone who was there companioning him, but the -dark was quick with presences, besieging him, letting him know that no -one alive is alone, that he was somehow one of a comrade company, -within, without, encompassing. And the boy was caught up by the sweet -will outside his own will and he never knew how it was that he had Elfa -in his arms. - -"Come here. Come here...." he said. - -To Elfa, in her loneliness threaded by its own dream, the moment, -exquisite and welcome as it was, was yet as natural as her own single -being. But to the boy it was not yet the old miracle of one world built -from another. It was only the answer to the groping of hands for hands, -the mere human call to be companioned. And the need to reassure her came -upon him like the mantle of an elder time. - -"Don't feel afraid," he said. - -Her eyes gave him their winning upward look, and it was as if their -mother watchfulness answered him gravely:-- - -"I don't. I don't, truly." - -And at this she laughed a little, so that he joined her; and their -laughter together was a new delight. - -Across the adjoining lawn Nicholas could see in the moonlight the moving -figure of the big deacon, a Light Gown or two attending. A sudden -surprising sense of safety from them overswept the boy. What if they did -come that way! What, he even thought, if those people in the house were -to come by? Somehow, the little hollow of dark in which he had always -walked in the midst of light was as light as the rest of the world, and -he was not afraid. And all this because Elfa did not stir in his arms, -but was still, as if they were her harbour. And then Nicholas knew what -they both meant. - -"Elfa!" he cried, "do you...?" - -"I guess I must...." she said, and knew no way to finish that. - -"Love me?" said Nicholas, bold as a lion. - -"I meant that too," Elfa said. - -Between the New Lady's house and the big, obvious deacon's lawn the boy -stood, silent, his arms about the girl. So this was the way the world -is, people bound together, needing one another, wanting one another, -stretching out their hands.... - -"Why, it was _you_ I wanted!" Nicholas said wonderingly. - - - - -XIII - -HOUSEHOLDRY - - -"After supper" in the village is like another room of the day. On these -summer nights we all come out to our porches to read the daily paper, or -we go to sit on the porch of a neighbour, or we walk about our lawns in -excesses of leisure, giving little twitches to this green and to that. -"In our yards" we usually say. Of these some are so tiny that the -hammocks or the red swinging-chairs find room on the planting spaces -outside the walks, and there men smoke and children frolic and call -across the street to one another. And this evening, as I went down -Daphne Street to post my letters, I saw in process the occasional -evening tasks which I have noted, performed out-of-doors: at the -Sykeses' cucumbers in preparation for to-morrow's pickles; a bushel of -over-ripe cherries arrived unexpectedly at the Herons' and being pitted -by hand; a belated needle-task of Mis' Holcomb's finishing itself in the -tenuous after-light. This fashion of taking various employments into the -open delights me. If we have peas to shell or beans to string or corn to -husk, straightway we take them to the porch or into the yard. This -seems to me to hold something of the grace of the days in the Joyous -Garde, or on the grounds of old châteaux where they embroidered or wound -worsted in woodland glades, or of colonial America, where we had out our -spinning wheels under the oaks. When I see a great shining boiler of -gasoline carried to the side yard for the washing of delicate fabrics, I -like to think of it as done out-of-doors for the charm of it as much as -for the safety. So Nausicaa would have cleansed with gasoline! - -It was sight of the old Aunt Effie sewing a seam in Mis' Holcomb's -dooryard which decided me to go to see Miggy. For I would not willingly -be where Aunt Effie is, who has always some tragedy of gravy-scorching -or dish-breaking to tell me. I have been for some time promising to go -to see Miggy in her home, and this was the night to do so, for the New -Lady went home to-day and I have been missing her sorely. There is a -kind of minus-New Lady feeling about the universe. - -At the same moment that I decided for Miggy, Peter rose out of the -ground. I wonder if he can have risen a very little first? But that is -one of those puzzles much dwelt upon by the theologians, and I will not -decide. Perhaps the thought of Miggy is a mighty motive on which Peter's -very being is conditioned. Anyway, there he was, suddenly beside me, -and telling me some everyday affair of how little use in the cannery -were Shorty Burns and Tony Thomas and Dutchie Wade, whose houses we were -passing. And to his talk of shop I responded by inviting him to go with -me to see Miggy. Would he go? He smiled his slow smile, with that little -twist of mouth and lifting of brow. - -"This is like finding an evening where there wasn't one before," he -said. - -The little house where Miggy lives has a copper beech in the -dooryard--these red-leaved trees seem to be always in a kind of hush at -their own difference. The house is no-colour, with trimmings of another -no-colour for contrast, and the little front porch looks like something -that has started to run out the front door and is being sternly snatched -backward. The door stood ajar--no doubt for the completion of this -transaction--and no one was about. We rapped, for above the bell push -was a legend of Aunt Effie's inscribing, saying: "Bell don't ring." For -a moment our summons was unanswered. Then Miggy called from upstairs. - -"I'll be down in a minute," she said. "Go right in, both of you, and -wait for me--will you?" - -To take the cards of one's visitors from a butler of detached -expression or from a maid with inquisitive eyelashes is to know nothing -of the charm of this custom of ours of peeping from behind an upper -curtain where we happen to be dressing, and alone in the house, at the -ringing of the doorbell, and of calling down to a back which we -recognize an informal "Oh, go right in and wait for me a minute, will -you?" In this habit there is survival of old tribal loyalties and -hospitalities; for let the back divined below be the back of a stranger, -that is to say, of a barbarian, and we stay behind our curtains, silent, -till it goes away. - -In the sitting room at Miggy's house a little hand lamp was burning, the -fine yellow light making near disclosures of colour and form, and -farther away formulating presences of shadow. Aunt Effie had been at her -sewing, and there were yards of blue muslin billowing over a sunken -arm-chair and a foam of white lining on the Brussels-covered couch. The -long blue cotton spread made the big table look like a fat Delft sugar -bowl, and the red curtains were robbed of crude colour and given an -obscure rosy glow. A partly finished waist disguised the gingerbread of -the what-not, one forgot the carpet, the pictures became to the neutral -wall what words which nobody understands are to ministering music. And -on the floor before the lounge lay Little Child and Bless-your-Heart, -asleep. - -At first I did not see the child. It was Peter who saw her. He stooped -and lifted her, the kitten still in her arms, and instead of saying any -of the things a woman might have said, Peter said _"Well...._" with a -tenderness in his voice such as women can give and more. For a man's -voice-to-a-child gets down deeper than happiness. I suppose it is that -the woman has always stayed with the child in the cave or the tent or -the house, while the man has gone out to kill or to conquer or to trade; -and the ancient crooning safety is still in the woman's voice, and the -ancient fear that he may not come back to them both is in the voice of -the man. When Peter lifted Little Child in his arms, I wished that Miggy -had been there to hear. - -"What's it dreaming about?" Peter said. - -"'Bout Miggy," said Little Child sleepily, and she snuggled in Peter's -coat collar. - -"Dream about Peter too!" Peter commanded. - -"Well, _I_ will," promised Little Child o' Dreams, and drifted off. - -Peter sank awkwardly down to the floor and held her so, and he sat there -stroking Bless-your-Heart and looking as if he had forgotten me, save -that, "Shorty Burns and Tony Thomas and Dutchie Wade that I was telling -you about," he remarked once irrelevantly, "_they've_ each got a kiddie -or so." - -Miggy came downstairs and, "I'm a surprise," she said in the doorway, -and stood there in a sheer white frock--a frock which said nothing to -make you look, but would not let you look away; and it had a little -rhyme of lace on this end and on that. It was the frock that she had -made herself--she told me so afterward, but she did not mention it -before Peter, and I liked her the better for that. When I hear women -boast of these things I always wonder why, then and there, I should not -begin to recite a sonnet I have turned, so as to have a hand in things. -To write an indifferent sonnet is much less than to make a frock which -can be worn, but yet I should dislike infinitely to volunteer even so -little as a sonnet or a quatrain. In any case, it would be amazing taste -for me to do so; while "I made it myself" I hear everywhere in the -village, especially in the presence of the Eligible. But I dare say that -this criticism of mine is conditioned by the fact that my needle-craft -cell got caught in the primal protozoan ooze and did not follow me. - -"Miggy! Oh, Miggery!" said Peter, softly. He had made this name for a -sort of superlative of her. - -"Like me?" inquired Miggy. I wonder if even the female atom does not -coquette when the sun strikes her to shining in the presence of her atom -lord? - -You know that low, emphatic, unspellable thing which may be said by the -throat when a thing is liked very much? When one makes it, it feels like -a vocal dash in vocal italics. Peter did that, very softly. - -"Well," said Miggy, "I feel that dressed-up that I might be cut out of -paper. What _are_ you doing down there, Peter?" - -He glanced down mutely, and Miggy went round the table and saw what he -held. - -"Why," she said, "that great heavy girl, Peter. Give her to me." - -Miggy bent over Peter, with her arms outstretched for the child. And -Peter looked up at her and enjoyed the moment. - -"She's too heavy for you to lift," he said, with his occasional quiet -authority. "I'll put her where you want her." - -"Well, it's so hot upstairs," Miggy hesitated. "It's past her bedtime, -but I hate to take her up there." - -"Undress her down here," said I. "The Delft sugar bowl shuts you off a -fine dressing-room. And let her sleep for a while on the couch." - -So Miggy went for the little nightgown, and Peter, with infinite pains, -got to his feet, and detached Bless-your-Heart and deposited her on the -table, where she yawned and humped her back and lay down on an -unfinished sleeve and went to sleep again. And when Miggy came down, -she threw a light quilt and a pillow near the couch and sat behind the -table and held out her arms. - -"Now!" she said to Peter, and to me she said, "I thought maybe you'd -spread her up a bed there on the couch." - -"Let Peter," said I. "I've another letter I ought to have written. If I -may, I'll write that here while you undress her." - -"Well," said Miggy, "there's some sheets of letter-paper under the cover -of the big Bible. And the ink--I guess there's some in the bottle--is on -top of the organ. And the pen is there behind the clock. And you'd ought -to find a clean envelope in that pile of newspapers. I think I saw one -there the other day. You spread up her bed then, Peter." - -I wrote my letter, and Peter went at the making up of the lounge, and -Miggy sat behind the table to undress Little Child. And Little Child -began waking up. It touched me infinitely that she who in matters of -fairies and visionings is so wise and old should now, in her sleepyhood, -be just a baby again. - -"I--_won't_--go--bed," she said. - -"Oh," said Miggy, "yes. Don't you feel all the little wingies on your -face? They're little dream wings, and the dreams are getting in a hurry -to be dreamed." - -"I do' know those dreams," said Little Child, "I do' _want_ those -dreams. Where's Bless-your-Heart?" - -"Dreaming," said Miggy, "all alone. Goodness, I believe you've got a -little fever." - -Peter stopped flopping the quilt aimlessly over the lounge and turned, -and Miggy laid the back of her hand on Little Child's cheek and beneath -her chin. The man watched her anxiously as, since the world began, -millions of men have looked down at this mysterious pronouncement of the -woman. - -"She has?" he said. "She'd ought not to have any milk, then, had she?" -he added vaguely. It seemed to me that Miggy must have paused for a -moment to like Peter for this wholly youthful, masculine eagerness to -show that he knew about such things. - -"I'll fix her something to take," said Miggy, capably. "No, dear. The -other arm. Straighten elbow." - -"I want my shoes an' stockin's on in bed," Little Child observed. She -was sitting up, her head drooping, her curls fastened high with a -hairpin of Miggy's. "An' I want my shirtie on. An' _all_ my clothes. I -won't go bed if you don't." - -Miggy laughed. "Bless-your-Heart hasn't got her clothes on," she -parried. - -"Ain't she got her furs on any more?" demanded Little Child, opening -her eyes. "She has, too. She has not, too, took a bath. An' I won't have -no bath," she went on. "I'm too old for 'em." - -At that she would have Bless-your-Heart in her arms, and there was some -argument arising from her intention to take the kitten in one hand all -the way through her nightgown sleeve. And by this time sleepyhood tears -were near. - -"_Don't_ curl your toes under so," said Miggy, struggling with a shoe. -"Peter, do go on. You'll never have it done." - -Whereat Peter flapped the quilt again; and-- - -"I will curl my toes up. That's what I want to do. I _want_ to curl 'em -up!" said Little Child. And now the sleepyhood tears were very near. - -"Goodness," said Miggy, suddenly, "to-morrow is Sunday. I'll have to do -her hair up for curls. Peter!" she cried, "stop waving that quilt, and -tear me off a strip of that white lining there." - -"Yes, _I'll_ have curls," said Little Child, unexpectedly, "because that -is so becunning to me." - -But she was very sleepy, and when Peter had been sent for the brush from -the kitchen shelf, her head was on Miggy's shoulder, and Miggy looked at -Peter helplessly. - -"Give her to me," said Peter, and took the child and laid the kitten at -large upon the floor; and then, holding Little Child's head in the -hollow of his arm, he sat down before Miggy, leaning toward her, and -all the child's soft brown hair lay on his sleeve. - -I should have liked to watch them then. And I should have liked Calliope -and Mis' Toplady and my neighbour to see them--those three who of all -the village best understood mystery. I know that Peter did not take his -eyes from Miggy's face as she brushed and wound the curls. How could -he?--and Miggy, "sweet as boughs of May" in that white frock, her look -all motherly intent upon her task. She was very deft, and she had that -fine mother-manner of caring for the child with her whole hand instead -of tipsifingers. I would see a woman infinitely delicate in the touching -of flowers or tea-cups or needlework, but when she is near a child, I -want her to have more than delicacy. I was amazed at Miggy's gentleness -and her pretty air of accustomedness. And when Little Child stirred, -Miggy went off into some improvised song about a little black dog that -got struck with a wagon and went Ki--yi--ki--yi--_ad infinitum_, and -Miggy seemed to me to have quite the technical mother-air of tender -abstraction. - -"How dark her hair is growing," she said. - -"It's just the colour of yours," said Peter, "and the little curls on -the edges. They're like yours, too." - -"My hair!" Miggy said deprecatingly. "You've got rather nice hair, -Peter, if _only_ it wouldn't stick up that way at the back." - -"I know it sticks up," Peter said contritely. "I do every way to make it -stay down. But it won't." - -"It makes you look funny," observed Miggy, frankly. - -"Well," he told her, "if you wouldn't ever make me go 'way from you, you -wouldn't ever need to see the back of my head." - -"That would be just what would turn your head," she put it positively. -"Peter, doesn't your arm ache, holding her so?" - -He looked down at his arm to see, and, "I wouldn't care if it did," he -replied, in some surprise. "No. It feels good. Oh, Miggy--do you do this -every night?" - -"I don't always curl her hair," said Miggy, "but I always put her to -bed. If ever Aunt Effie undresses her, she tells her she _may_ die -before morning, so she'd better say her prayer, pretty. Goodness, she -hasn't said her prayer yet, either." - -"Isn't she too sleepy?" asked Peter. - -"Yes," Miggy answered; "but she feels bad in the morning if she doesn't -say it. You know she thinks she says her prayer to mother, and that -mother waits to hear her...." - -Miggy looked up fleetingly at her mother's picture on the wall--one of -those pale enlargements of a photograph which tell you definitely that -the subject is dead. - -"I do' want any other curls on me," announced Little Child, suddenly. - -"Just one more, dear," Miggy told her, "and then we're through. Turn her -head a little, Peter." - -"No," said Little Child. "Now I'm all curly." - -And, "Yes, Precious. Be still on Peter's arm just a minute more," said -Miggy at the same time. - -And, "If you say anything more, I'll kiss you," said Peter, to whom it -might concern. - -"Kiss _me_?" said Little Child. "I won't be." - -"Somebody's got to be," said Peter, with decision. - -"Now, our prayer," ruled Miggy suddenly, and rose. "Come, dear." - -Peter looked up in Miggy's face. - -"Let her be here," he said. "Let her be here." - -He lifted Little Child so that she knelt, and her head drooped on his -shoulder. He had one arm about her and the other hand on the pink, -upturned soles of her feet. The child put out one hand blindly for -Miggy's hand. So Miggy came and stood beside Peter, and together they -waited for the little sleepy voice. - -It came with disconcerting promptness. - -"Now--I--lay--me--down--to--sleep--for--Jesus'--sake--Amen," prayed -Little Child in one breath. - -"No, sweetheart," Miggy remonstrated, with her alluring emphasis on -"sweet." "Say it right, dear." - -"Now I lay me--is Bless-your-Heart sayin' hers?" demanded Little Child. - -"Couldn't you get along without her, when you're so sleepy?" Miggy -coaxed. - -"Mustn't skip nights," Little Child told her. "Bless-your-Heart might -die before morning." - -So Miggy found Bless-your-Heart under the couch, and haled her forth, -and laid her in Little Child's arms. And Peter put his face close, close -to Little Child's, and shut his eyes. - -"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I -should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take who'll I bless -to-night?" said Little Child. - -"Aunt Effie," Miggy prompted. - -"Bless Aunt Effie," said Little Child, "and Miggy and Bless-your-Heart -and New Auntie" (she meant me. Think of her meaning me!) "and the man -that gave me the peanuts, and bless Stella's party and make 'em have -ice-cream, and bless my new shoes and my sore finger. For Jesus' sake, -Amen." - -Little Child drew a long breath and stirred to get down, but Peter did -not move. - -"And bless Peter," Miggy said. - -"No," said Little Child, "He needn't. Peter's nice 'nuff." - -Peter got to his feet with Little Child in his arms, and his face was -glowing, and he looked at Miggy as if she were what he meant whenever he -said "universe." But Miggy had gone to the couch, and was smoothing the -quilt that Peter had wrinkled in all directions, and patting the pillow -that Peter had kneaded into a hard ball. - -"You lay her down," she said. - -Peter did so, setting the kitten on the floor, and then bending low over -the couch, looking in the upturned face as the little dark head touched -the pillow and sought its ease, and her hand fell from where it had -rested on his shoulder. And he stooped and kissed her cheek more gently -than he had ever done anything. - -"I want my drink o' water," said Little Child, and opened her eyes; and -now from the couch she could see me. "Tell me a story," she commanded -me, drowsily. - -I did not go to her, for who am I that I should have broken that trio? -But when Miggy and Peter took the lamp and went away to the kitchen for -the drink of water and for some simple remedy for the fever which Miggy -had noted or fancied, I sat beside Little Child and said over something -that had been persistently in my mind as I had watched Miggy with her:-- - - - "I like to stand in this great air - And see the sun go down; - It shows me a bright veil to wear - And such a pretty gown. - Oh, I can see a playmate there - Far up in Splendour Town!" - - -Little Child began it with me, but her voice trailed away. I thought -that in the darkness were many gentle presences--Little Child's tender -breathing, the brushing wings of hurrying dreams, and perhaps that -other--"not quite my sister," but a shadowy little Margaret. - -Afterward, Miggy and Peter and I sat together for a little while, but -Peter had fallen in a silence. And presently Aunt Effie came home, and -on the porch--which seemed not yet to have escaped--she told us about -having broken her needle and left her shears at her neighbour's. While -Peter ran over to Mis' Holcomb's for the shears, I had a word with -Miggy. - -"Miggy!" I said, "don't you see?" - -"See what?" she wanted to know, perversely. - -"How Peter would love to have Little Child, too?" I said. - -She laughed a little, and was silent; and laughed again. - -"He was funny and nice," she admitted; "and wasn't Little Child funny -not to bless him?" - -"Because he is nice enough," I reminded her. - -Miggy laughed once more--I had never seen her in so tender and feminine -a mood. And this may have been partly due to the new frock, though I -cannot think that it was entirely this. But abruptly she shook her head. - -"Peter's father went by just before you came in," she said. -"He--couldn't hardly walk. What if I was there to get supper for him -when he got home? I never could--I never could...." - -By the time Peter and I were out alone on Daphne Street again, the -sitting rooms in all the houses were dark, with a look of locked front -doors--as if each house had set its lips together with, "We are a home -and you are not." - -Peter looked out on all this palpable householdry. - -"See the lights upstairs," he said; "everybody's up there, hearing their -prayers and giving 'em fever medicine. Yes, sir, Great Scott! Shorty -Burns and Tony Thomas and Dutchie Wade--they ain't good for a thing in -the cannery. And yet they know...." - - - - -XIV - -POSTMARKS - - -Between church service and Sunday School we of the First church have so -many things to attend to that no one can spare a moment. - -"Reverent things, not secular," Calliope explains, "plannin' for church -chicken-pie suppers an' Christmas bazaars and like that; but not a word -about a picnic, not even if they was to be one o' Monday sunrise." - -To be sure, this habit of ours occasionally causes a contretemps. As -when one morning Mis' Toplady arrived late and, in a flurry, essayed to -send up to the pulpit by the sexton a Missionary meeting notice to be -read. Into this notice the minister plunged without the precaution of -first examining it, and so delivered aloud:-- - - - "See Mis' Sykes about bringing wiping cloths and dish-rags. - "See Abigail about enough forks for her table. - "Look around for my rubbers. - "Dun Mame Holcomb for her twenty cents." - - -Not until he reached the fourth item was the minister stopped by the -agonized rustle in a congregation that had easily recognized Mis' -Toplady's "between services" list of reminder, the notice of the -forthcoming meeting being safe in her hymn book. - -Still we persist in our Sabbath conferences when "everybody is there -where you want 'em an' everybody can see everybody an' no time lost an' -no party line listening"; and it is then that those who have been for -some time away from the village receive their warmest welcome. I am not -certain that the "I must get down to church and see everybody" of a -returned neighbour does not hold in fair measure the principles of -familyhood and of Christ's persuadings to this deep comradeship. - -It was in this time after church that we welcomed Calliope one August -Sunday when she had unexpectedly come down from town on the Saturday -night. And later, when the Sunday-school bell had rung, I waited with -her in the church while she looked up her Bible, left somewhere in the -pews. When she had found it, she opened it in a manner of eager haste, -and I inadvertently saw pasted to the inside cover a sealed letter, -superscription down, for whose safety she had been concerned. I had -asked her to dine with me, and as we walked home together she told me -about the letter and what its sealed presence in her Bible meant. - -"I ain't ever read it," Calliope explained to me wistfully. "Every one -o' the Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle has got one, an' none of us has -ever read 'em. It ain't my letter, so to say. It's one o' the Jem Pitlaw -collection. The postmark," she imparted, looking up at me proudly, "is -Bombay, India." - -At my question about the Jem Pitlaw collection she laughed -deprecatingly, and then she sighed. ("Ain't it nice," she had once said -to me, "your laughs hev a sigh for a linin', an' sighs can hev laughin' -for trimmin'. Only trouble is, most folks want to line with trimmin's, -an' they ain't rill durable, used that way.") - -"Jem Pitlaw," Calliope told me now, "used to be schoolmaster here--the -kind that comes from Away an' is terrible looked up to on that account, -but Jem deserved it. He knew all there was _to_ know, an' yet he thought -we knew some little things, too. We was all rill fond of him, though he -kept to himself, an' never seemed to want to fall in love, an' not many -of us knew him well enough to talk to at all familiar. But when he went -off West on a vacation, an' didn't come back, an' never come back, an' -then died, Friendship Village mourned for him,--sincere, though no -crape,--an' missed him enormous. - -"He'd had a room at Postmaster Sykes's--that was when he was postmaster -first an' they was still humble an' not above the honest penny. An' Jem -Pitlaw left two trunks an' a sealed box to their house. An' when he -didn't come back in two years, Silas Sykes moved the things out of the -spare room over to the post-office store loft. An' there they set, three -years on end, till we got word Jem was dead--the very week o' the -Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle's Ten Cent Tropical Fête. Though, -rilly, the Tropical Fête wasn't what you might say 'tropical.' It was -held on the seventeenth of January, an' that night the thermometer was -twenty-four degrees below on the bank corner. Nor it wasn't rilly what -you might say a Fête, either. But none o' the Circle regretted them -lacks. A lack is as good as a gift, sometimes. - -"We'd started the Foreign Missionary Circle through Mis' Postmaster -Sykes gettin' her palm. I donno what there is about palms, but you know -the very name makes some folks think thoughts 'way outside their heads, -an' not just stuffy-up inside their own brains. When I hear 'palm,' I -sort o' feel like my i-dees got kind o' wordy wings an' just went it -without me. An' that was the way with more than me, I found out. Nobody -in Friendship Village hed a palm, but we'd all seen pictures an' -hankered--like you do. An' all of a sudden Mis' Sykes got one, like she -gets her new hat, sometimes, without a soul knowin' she's thinkin' -'hat' till she flams out in it. Givin' surprise is breath an' bread to -that woman. She unpacked the palm in the kitchen, an' telephoned around, -an' we all went over just as we was an' set down there an' looked at it -an' thought 'Palm'! You can't realize how we felt, all of us, if you -ain't lived all your life with nothin' but begonias an' fuchsias from -November to April, an' sometimes into May. But we was all mixed up about -'em, now we see one. Some hed heard dates grew on palms. Others would -have it it was cocoanuts. Still more said they was natives of the -equator, an' give nothin' but shade. So it went. But after a while Mis' -Timothy Toplady spoke up with that way o' comin' downstairs on her words -an' rilly gettin' to a landin':-- - -"'They's quite a number o' things,' she says, 'that I want to do so much -it seems like I can't die without doin' 'em. But I guess prob'ly I will -die without. Folks seems to drop off leavin' lots of doin's undone. An' -one o' my worst is, I want to see palm trees growin' in hot lands--big -spiky leaves pointin' into the blue sky _like fury_. 'Seems if I could -do that,' s'she, 'I'd take in one long breath that'd make me all lungs -an' float me up an' off.' - -"We all laughed, but we knew what she meant well enough, because we all -felt the same way. I think most North folks do--like they was cocoanuts -an' dates in our actions, 'way back. An' so we was all ready for Mis' -Toplady's idee when it come--which is the most any idee can expect:-- - -"'I tell you what,' s'she, 'le's hev a Ladies' Foreign Missionary -Circle, an' get read up on them tropical countries. The only thing I -really know about the tropics is what comes to me unbeknownst when I -smell my tea rose. I've always been meanin' to take an interest in -missions,' says she. - -"So we started it, then an' there, an' she an' I was the committee to -draw out a constitution an' decide what officers should be elected an' -do the general creatin'. We made it up that Mis' Sykes should be the -president--that woman is a born leader, and, as a leader, you can depend -on the very back of her head. An' at last we went off to the minister -that then was to ask him what to take up. - -"'Most laudable,' s'he, when he'd heard. 'Well, now, what country is it -you're most interested in?' he says. 'Some island of the sea, I s'pose?' -he asks, bright. - -"'We're interested in palms,' Mis' Timothy Toplady explained it to him -frank, 'an' we want to study about the missionaries in some country -where they's dates an' cocoanuts an' oaseses.' - -"He smiled at that, sweet an' deep--I know it seemed to me as if he knew -more about what we wanted than we knew ourselves. Because they's some -ministers that understands that Christianity ain't all in the bottle -labelled with it. Some of it is labelled 'ointment,' an' some 'perfume,' -an' some just plain kitchen flavourin'. An' a good deal of it ain't -labelled at all. - -"I forget what country it was we did study. But they was nine to ten of -us, an' we met every week, an' I tell you the time wa'n't wasted. We -took things in lavish. I know Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss said that -after belongin' to the Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle she could never -feel the same absent-minded sensation again when she dusted her parlour -shells. An' Mis' Toplady said when she opened her kitchen cabinet an' -smelt the cinnamon an' allspice out o' the perforated tops, 'most -always, no matter how mad she was, she broke out in a hymn, like 'When -All Thy Mercies,' sheer through knowin' how allspice was born of God an' -not made of man. An' Mis' Sykes said when she read her Bible, an' it -talked about India's coral strand, it seemed like, through knowin' what -a reef was, she was right there on one, with her Lord. I felt the same -way, too--though I'd always felt the same way, for that matter--I always -did tip vanilla on my handkerchief an' pretend it was flowers an' that -I'd gone down South for the cold months. An' it got so that when the -minister give out a text that had geography in it, like the Red Sea, or -Beer-elim, or 'a place called The Fair Haven,' the Ladies Foreign -Missionary Circle would look round in our seats an' nod to each other, -without it showin', because we knew that we knew, extra special, just -what God was talkin' about. I tell you, knowledge makes you alive at -places where you didn't know there was such a place. - -"In five months' time we felt we owed so much to the Ladies' Foreign -Missionary Circle that it was Mis' Sykes suggested we give the Ten Cent -Tropical Fête, an' earn five dollars or so for missions. - -"'We know a great deal about the tropics now,' she says, 'an' I propose -we earn a missionary thank-offering. Coral an' cocoanuts an' dates an' -spices isn't all the Lord is interested in, by any means,' s'she. 'An' -the winter is the time to give a tropic fête, when folks are thinkin' -about warm things natural.' - -"We voted to hev the fête to Mis' Sykes's because it was too cold to -carry the palm out. We went into it quite extensive--figs an' dates an' -bananas an' ginger for refreshments, an' little nigger dolls for -souvenirs, an' like that. It was quite a novel thing for Friendship, an' -everybody was takin' an interest an' offerin' to lend Japanese umbrellas -an' Indian baskets an' books on the South Sea, an' a bamboo chair with -an elephant crocheted in the tidy. An' then, bein' as happenin's always -crowd along in flocks, what come that very week o' the fête but a letter -from an old aunt of Jem Pitlaw's, out West. An' if Jem hadn't been dead -almost ever since he left Friendship! an' the aunt wrote that we should -sell his things to pay for keepin' 'em, as she was too poor to send for -'em an' hadn't any room if she wasn't. - -"I donno whether you know what rill excitement is, but if you don't, -you'd ought to drop two locked trunks an' a sealed box into a town the -size o' Friendship Village, an' leave 'em there goin' on five years, an' -then die an' let 'em be sold. That'll show you what a pitch true -interest can get het up to. All of a sudden the Tropical Fête was no -more account than the telephone ringin' when a circus procession is -going by. Some o' the Ladies' Missionary was rill indignant, an' said -we'd ought to sue for repairin' rights, same as when you're interfered -with in business. Mis' Sykes, she done her able best, too, but nothin' -would do Silas but he must offer them things for sale on the instant. -'The time,' s'he, firm, 'to do a thing is now, while the interest is up. -An' in this country,' s'he, '"now" don't stay "now" more'n two minutes -at a time.' - -"So he offered for sale the contents of them three things--the two -trunks an' the sealed box--unsight, unseen, on the day before the Fête -was to be. Only one thing interfered with the 'unsight, unseen' -business: the sealed box had got damp an' broke open, an' what was -inside was all showin'. - -"Mis' Sykes an' I saw it on the day o' the sale. Most o' the Circle was -to her house finishin' up the decorations for the Fête so's to leave the -last day clear for seein' to the refreshments, an' her an' I run over to -the post-office store for some odds an' ends. Silas had brought the two -trunks an' the box down from the loft so to give 'em some advertisin'. -An' lookin' in the corner o' the broke box we could see, just as plain -as plain, was _letters_. Letters in bunches, all tied up, an' letters -laid in loose--they must 'a' been full a hundred of 'em, all lookin' -mysterious an' ready to tell you somethin', like letters will. I know -the looks o' the letters sort o' went to my head, like the news of Far -Off. An' I hated seein' Jem's trunks there, with his initials on, -appearin' all trustin' an' as if they thought he was still alive. - -"But that wasn't the worst. They was three strangers there in the -store--travellin' men that had just come in on the Through, an' they was -hangin' round the things lookin' at 'em, as if they had the right to. -This town ain't very much on the buy, an' we don't hev many strangers -here, an' we ain't rill used to 'em. An' it did seem too bad, I know we -thought, that them three should hev happened in on the day of a private -Friendship Village sale that didn't concern nobody else but one, an' -him dead. An' we felt this special when one o' the men took a-hold of a -bunch o' the letters, an' we could see the address of the top one, to -Jem Pitlaw, wrote thin an' tiny-fine, like a woman. An' at that Mis' -Sykes says sharp to her husband:-- - -"'Silas Sykes, you ain't goin' to sell them letters?' - -"'Yes, ma'am, I am,' Silas snaps, like he hed a right to all the letters -on earth, bein' he was postmaster of Friendship Village. 'Letters,' -Silas give out, 'is just precisely the same as books, only they ain't -been through the expense of printin'. No differ'nce. No -differ'nce!'--Silas always seems to think repeatin' a thing over'll get -him somewheres, like a clock retickin' itself. 'An',' he says, 'I'm -goin' to sell 'em for what they'll bring, same as the rest o' the -things, an' you needn't to say one word.' An' bein' as Silas was -snappin', not only as a postmaster but as a husband, Mis' Sykes, she -kep' her silence. Matrimony an' politics both in one man is too much for -any woman to face. - -"Well, we two went back to Mis' Sykes's all het up an' sad, an' told the -Circle about Jem Pitlaw's letters. An' we all stopped decoratin' an' set -down just where we was an talked about what an awful thing it seemed. I -donno as you'll sense it as strong as we did. It was more a feelin' than -a wordin'. _Letters_--bein' sold an' read out loud an' gettin' known -about. It seemed like lookin' in somebody's purse before they're dead. - -"'I should of thought,' Mis' Sykes says, 'that Silas regardin' bein' -postmaster as a sacred office would have made him do differ'nt. An' I -know he talked that right along before he got his appointment. "Free -Private Secretary to the People," an' "Trusted Curator of Public -Communication," he put it when he was goin' around with his petition,' -says she, grievin'. - -"'Well,' says Mis' Amanda Toplady--I rec'lect she hed been puttin' up a -big Japanese umbrella, an' she looked out from under it sort o' sweet -an' sincere an' dreamy--'you've got to be a woman an' you've got to live -in a little town before you know what a letter really is. I don't think -these folks that hev lots o' mail left in the front hall in the -mornin'--an' sometimes get one that same afternoon--_knows_ about -letters at all. An' I don't believe any man ever knows, sole except when -he's in love. To sense what a letter is you've got to be a woman without -what-you-may-say much to enjoy; you've got to hear the train whistle -that might bring you one; you've got to calculate how long it'll take -'em to distribute the mail, an' mebbe hurry to get your bread mixed, or -your fried-cakes out o' the lard, or your cannin' where you can leave -it--an' then go change your shoes an' slip on another skirt, an' poke -your hair up under your hat so's it won't show, an' go down to the -post-office in the hot sun, an' see the letter through the glass, there -in your own box, waitin' for you. That minute, when your heart comes up -in your throat, I tell you, is gettin' a letter.' - -"We all knew this is so--every one of us. - -"'It's just like that when you write 'em, only felt differ'nt,' says -Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I do mine to my sister a little at a -time--I keep it back o' the clock in the kitchen an' hide the pencil -inside the clock door, so's it won't walk off, the way pencils do at our -house. An' then, right in the midst of things, be it flour or be it -suds, I can scratch down what comes in my head, till I declare sometimes -I can hardly mail it for readin' it over an' thinkin' how she'll like to -get it.' - -"'My, my!' says Mis' Sykes, reminiscent, ''specially since Silas has -been postmaster an' we've had so much to do with other people's letters, -I've been so hungry for letters of my own that I've wrote for samples. I -can do that with a level conscience because, after all, you do get a new -dress now an' then. But I couldn't answer advertisements, same as some, -when I didn't mean true--just to get the letters back. That don't seem -to me rill honest.' - -"An' then I owned up. - -"'Last week, when I paid my taxes,' I says, 'I whipped out o' the -clerk's office quick, sole so's he'd hev to mail me my tax receipt. But -he didn't do it. He sent it over by their hired girl that noon. I love -letters like I do my telephone bell an' my friends,' I know I says. - -"An' there was all that hundred letters or so--letters that somebody had -put love in for Jem Pitlaw, an' that he'd read love out of an' saved -'em--there they was goin' to be sold for all Friendship Village to read, -includin' some that hadn't even known him, mebbe more than to speak to. - -"We wasn't quite through decoratin' when supper time come, so we stayed -on to Mis' Sykes's for a pick-up lunch, et in the kitchen, an' finished -up afterwards. Most of 'em could do that better than they could leave -their work an' come down again next mornin'--men-folks can always get -along for supper, bein' it's not a hot meal. - -"'Ain't it wonderful,' says Mis' Toplady, thoughtful, 'here we are, -settin' 'round the kitchen table at Mis' Postmaster Sykes's in -Friendship Village. An' away off in Arabia or Asia or somewhere that I -ain't sure they is any such place, is somebody settin' that never heard -of us nor we of him, an' he's goin' to hev our five dollars from the -Tropical Fête to-morrow night, an' put it to work doin' good.' - -"'It makes sort of a connection, don't it?' says Mis' -Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'There they are an' here we are. Ain't it -strange? 'Seems like our doin' this makes us feel nearer to them places. -I donno but that,' says she, noddin', 'is the start of what it means -about the lion and the lamb layin' down together.' - -"'Oh!'says Mis' Toplady, 'I tell you the Foreign Missionary Circle has -been next best to _goin'_. 'Seems sometimes as if I've 'most been -somewheres an' seen palms a-growin' an' a-wavin' an' a red sky back. -Don't it to you? I've dreamed o' them places all my life, an' I ain't -never had anything but Friendship Village, an' I don't know now that -Arabia an' Asia an' India is rilly fitted in, the way they look on the -map. An' so with some more. But if so be they are, then,' she says, 'we -owe it to the Foreign Missionary Circle that we've got that far towards -seein' 'em.' - -"An' we all agreed, warm, excep' Mis' Sykes, who was the hostess an' too -busy to talk much; but we knew how she felt. An' we said some more about -how wonderful things are, there in Mis' Sykes's kitchen while we et. - -"Well, when we got done decoratin' after supper, we all walked over to -the post-office store to the sale--the whole Circle of us. Because, of -course, if the letters was to be sold there wasn't any harm in seein' -who got 'em, an' in knowin' just how mean who was. Then, too, we was -interested in what was in the two trunks. We was quite early--early -enough to set along on the front rows of breakfast-food boxes that was -fixed ready. An' in the very frontmost one was Mis' Sykes an' Mis' -Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, an' me. - -"But we see, first thing when we got into the store, that they was -strangers present. The three travellin' men that Mis' Sykes an' I had -noticed that afternoon was still in town, of course, an' there they was -to the sale, loungin' along on the counter each side o' the cheese. We -couldn't bear their bein' there. It was our sale, an' they wasn't rill -sure to understand. To us Mr. Pitlaw hed been Mr. Pitlaw. To them he was -just somebody that hed been somebody. I didn't like it, nor they didn't -none o' the Ladies' Missionary like it. We all looked at each other an' -nodded without it showin', like we do, an' we could see we all felt the -same. - -"Silas was goin' to officiate himself--that man has got the idee it's -the whistle that runs the boat. They had persuaded him to open the -trunks an' sell the things off piecemeal, an' he see that was rilly the -only way to do it. So when the time come he broke open the two trunks -an' he wouldn't let anybody touch hasp or strap or hammer but himself. -It made me sort of sick to see even the trunk things of Mr. Pitlaw's -come out--a pepper an' salt suit, a pair of new suspenders, a collar -an' cuff case--the kind that you'd recognize was a Christmas present; a -nice brush an' comb he'd kept for best an' never used, a cake of -pretty-paper soap he'd never opened, a bunch o' keys, an' like that. You -know how it makes you feel to unpack even your own things that have been -put away a good while; it's like thinkin' over forgot thoughts. Well, -an' this was worse. Jem Pitlaw, that none of us had known well enough to -mention familiar things to, was dead--he was _dead_; an' here we were, -lookin' on an' seein' the things that was never out of his room before, -an' that he'd put in there, neat an' nice, five years back, to be took -out, he thought, in a few weeks. Quite a lot of us felt delicate, but -some got behind the delicate idee an' made it an excuse for not buyin' -much. They's all kinds to a sale--did you ever notice? Timothy Toplady, -for instance--I donno but he's all kinds in his single self. 'Seems he -couldn't bring himself to bid on a thing but Jem Pitlaw's keys. - -"'Of course nobody knows what they'll fit,' says he, disparagin', 'so to -buy 'em don't seem like bein' too familiar with Mr. Pitlaw,' s'he, rill -pleased with himself. - -"But Mis' Sykes whispers to me:-- - -"'Them keys'll go dirt cheap, an' Timothy knows it, an' a strange key -may come in handy any minute. Timothy's reasons never whip to a froth,' -s'she, cold. - -"But I guess she was over-critical because of gettin' more fidgety, like -we all did, the nearer Silas got to the letters. He hed left the letters -till the last. An' what with folks peekin' in the box since he'd brought -it down, an' what with handlin' what was ready to spill out, most of 'em -by then was in plain sight. An' there I see more o' them same -ones--little thin writin', like a woman's. We 'most all noticed it. An' -I couldn't keep my eyes off of 'em. 'Seemed like she might be somebody -with soft ways that ought to be there, savin' the letters, wardin' off -the heartache for Mr. Pitlaw an' mebbe one for herself. - -"An' right while I was lookin' Silas turned to the box and cleared his -throat, important as if he was the whistle for New York City, an' he -lifted up the bunch of the letters that had the little fine writin' on -top, just the way Mr. Pitlaw had tied 'em up with common string. - -"'Oh!' says Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes, each side of me, the one 'oh!' -strong an' the other low, but both 'oh's' meanin' the same thing. - -"'Now, what,' says Silas, brisk, 'am I bid for this package of nice -letters here? Good clear writin', all in strong condition, an' no holes -in, just as firm an' fresh,' s'he, 'as the day they was dropped into -the mail. What am I bid for 'em?' he asks, his eyebrows rill expectant. - -"Not one of the travellin' men had bid a thing. They had sat still, just -merely loungin' each side the cheese, laughin' some, like men will, -among each other, but not carin' to take any part, an' we ladies felt -rill glad o' that. But all of a sudden, when Silas put up the bunch o' -letters, them three men woke up, an' we see like lightnin' that this was -what they hed been waitin' for. - -"'Twenty-five cents!' bids one of 'em, decisive. - -"There was a movement of horror spread around the Missionary Circle at -the words. Sometimes it's bad enough to hev one thing happen, but often -it's worse to hev another occur. Even Silas looked a little doubtful, -but to Silas the main chance is always the main thing, an' instantly he -see that these men, if they got in the spirit of it, would run them -letters up rill high just for the fun of it. An' Silas was like some -are: he felt that money is money. - -"So what did he do but begin cryin' the goods up higher--holdin' the -letters in his hands, that little, thin writin' lookin' like it was -askin' somethin'. - -"'Here we hev letters,' says Silas, 'letters from Away. Not just -business letters, to judge by the envelopes--an' I allow, gentlemen,' -says Silas, facetious, 'that, bein' postmaster of Friendship Village, -I'm as good a judge of letters as there is a-goin'. Here we hev some -intimate personal letters offered for sale legitimate by their heiress. -What am I bid?' asks he. - -"'Thirty-five cents!' - -"'Fifty cents!' says the other two travellin' gentlemen, quick an' in -turn. - -"'Seventy-five cents!' cries out the first, gettin' in earnest--though -they was all laughin' at hevin' somethin' inspirin' to do. - -"But Silas merely caught a-hold of the mood they was in, crafty, as if -he'd been gettin' the signers to his petition while they was feelin' -good. - -"'One moment, gentlemen!' s'he. 'Do you know what you're biddin' on? I -ain't told you the half yet,' s'he. 'I ain't told you,' s'he, 'where -these letters come from.' - -"With that he hitches his glasses an' looked at the postmarks. An' he -read 'em off. Oh, an' what do you guess them postmarks was? I'll never -forget the feelin' that come over me when I heard what he was sayin', -turnin' back in under the string to see. For the stamps on the letters -was foreign stamps. The postmarks was foreign postmarks. An' what Silas -read off was: Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Singapore--oh, I can't begin to -remember all the names nor to pronounce 'em, but I think they was all in -India, or leastwise in Asia. Think of it! in Asia, that none of the -Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle hed been sure there was such a place. - -"I know how we all looked around at each other sudden, with the same -little jump in the chest as when we remember we've got bread in the oven -past the three-quarters, or when we've left the preserves on the blaze -while we've done somethin' else an' think it's burnin', or when we've -cut out both sleeves for one arm an' ain't got any more cloth. I mean it -was that intimate, personal jump, like when awful, first-person things -have happened. An' I tell you what, when the Ladies' Missionary feels a -thing, they feel it strong an' they act it sudden. It's our way, as a -Circle. An' in that look that went round among us there was hid the nod -that knows what each other means. - -"'One dollar!' shouts one o' the travellin' men. - -"An' with that we all turned, like one solid human being, straight -towards Mis' Postmaster Sykes, that was our president an' a born leader -besides, an' the way we looked at her resembled a vote. - -"Mis' Sykes stood up, grave an' scairt, though not to show. An' we was -sure she'd do the right thing, though we didn't know what the right -thing was; but we felt confidence, I know, in the very pattern on the -back of her shawl. An' she says, clear:-- - -"'I'd like to be understood to bid for the whole box o' Mr. Pitlaw's -letters, includin' the bunch that's up. An' I bid five dollars.' - -"Of course we all knew in a minute what that meant: Mis' Sykes was -biddin' with the proceeds of the Ten Cent Tropical Fête that was to be. -But we see, too, that this was a missionary cause if there ever was one, -an' they wa'n't one of us that thought it irregular, or grudged it, or -looked behind. - -"I don't know whether you know how much five dollars rilly is--like you -sense it when you've spoke it to a sale, or put it on a subscription -paper in Friendship. There wasn't a sound in that store, everybody was -so dumfounded. But none was so much as Silas Sykes. Silas was so -surprised that he forgot that he was in public. - -"'My King!' says he, unexpected to himself. 'What you sayin', Huldy? You -ain't biddin' that out o' your allowance, be you?' says he. Silas likes -big words in the home. - -"'No, sir,' says she, crisp, back, 'I ain't. I can't do miracles out of -nothin'. But I bid, an' you'll get your money, Silas. An' I may as well -take the letters now.' - -"With that she rose up an' spread out her shawl almost broodin', an' -gathered that box o' Jem Pitlaw's into her two arms. An' with one motion -all the rest o' the Ladies' Missionary got up behind her an' stalked out -of the store, like a big bid is sole all there is to an auction. An' -they let us go. Why, there wasn't another thing for Silas Sykes to do -but let be as was. Them three men over by the cheese just laughed, an' -said out somethin' about no gentleman outbiddin' a lady, an' shut up, -beat, but pretendin' to give in, like some will. - -"Just before we all got to the door we heard somebody's feet come down -off'n a cracker-barrel or somethin', an' Timothy Toplady's voice after -us, shrill-high an' nervous:-- - -"'Amanda,' s'he, 'you ain't calculatin' to help back up this -tomfoolishness, I hope?' - -"An' Mis' Amanda says at him, over her shoulder: - -"'If I was, that'd be between my hens an' me, Timothy Toplady,' says -she. - -"An' the store door shut behind us--not mad, I remember, but gentle, -like 'Amen.' - -"We took the letters straight to Mis' Sykes's an' through the house to -the kitchen, where there was a good hot fire in the range. It was bitter -cold outdoors, an' we set down around the stove just as we was, with the -letters on the floor in front o' the hearth. An' when Mis' Sykes hed got -the bracket lamp lit, she turned round, her bonnet all crooked but her -face triumphant, an' took off a griddle of the stove an' stirred up the -coals. An' we see what was in her mind. - -"'We can take turns puttin' 'em in,' she says. - -"But I guess it was in all our minds what Mis' -Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss says, wistful:-- - -"'Don't you think,' she says, 'or _do_ you think, it'd be wrongin' Mr. -Pitlaw if we read over the postmarks out loud first?' - -"We divided up the bunches an' we set down around an' untied the -strings, an', turn in an' turn out, we read the postmarks off. 'Most -every one of 'em was foreign--oh, I can't begin to tell you where. It -was all mixed up an' shinin' of names we'd never heard of before, an' -names we had heard in sermons an' in the Bible--Egypt an' Greece an' -Rome an' isles o' the sea. Mis' Toplady stopped right in the middle o' -hers. - -"'Oh, I can't be sure I'm pronouncin' 'em right,' she says, huntin' for -her handkerchief, 'but I guess you ladies get the _feel_ o' the places, -don't you?' - -"An' that was just it: we did. We got the feel of them far places that -night like we never could hev hed it any other way. An' when we got all -through, Mis' Toplady spoke up again--but this time it was like she flew -up a little way an' lit on somethin'. - -"'It ain't likely,' she says, 'that we'll ever, any of us, hev a letter -of our own from places like these. We don't get many letters, an' what -we do get come from the same old towns, over an' over again, an' quite -near by. Do you know,' she says, 'I believe this Writin' here'--she held -out the tiny fine writing that was like a woman with soft ways--'would -understand if we each took one of her letters an' glued it together here -an' now an' carried it home an' pasted it in our Bibles. _She_ went -travellin' off to them places, an' she must have wanted to; an' she -would know what it is to want to go an' yet never get there.' - -"I think Mis' Amanda was right--we all thought so. An' we done what she -mentioned, an' made our choice o' postmarks. I know Mis' Amanda took -Cairo. - -"''Count of the name sort o' picturin' out a palm tree a-growin' an' -a-wavin' against a red sky,' she says, when she was pinnin' her shawl -clear up over her hat to go out in the cold. 'Think of it,' she says; -'she might 'a' passed a palm the day she wrote it. Ain't it like seein' -'em grow yourself?' - -... "Mebbe it all wasn't quite regular," Calliope added, "though we made -over five dollars at the Ten Cent Fête. But the minister, when we told -him, he seemed to think it was all right, an' he kep' smilin', sweet an' -deep, like we'd done more'n we _had_ done. An' I think he knew what we -meant when we said we was all feelin' nearer, lion an' lamb, to them -strange missionary countries. Because--oh, well, sometimes, you know," -Calliope said, "they's things that makes you feel nearer to faraway -places that couldn't hev any postmark at all." - - - - -XV - -PETER - - -Last night in my room there was no sleeping, because the moon was there. -It is a south room, and when the moon shines on the maple floor with its -white cotton rugs and is reflected from the smooth white walls, to step -within is like entering an open flower. Who could sleep in an open -flower? I might sleep in a vast white petunia, because petunias do not -have as much to say to me as do some other flowers. But in the bell of a -lily, as in the bell of the sky or in my moonlit room, I should wish my -thought to stay awake and be somebody. Be Somebody. On these nights, it -is as if one had a friend in one's head conferring with one. And I think -of this comrade as Her, the Custodian of me, who lives deep within and -nearly comes outside to this white porch of the moon. - -I like to light my candle and watch its warm rays mix with the -blue-white beams from without. There would have been a proper employment -for a wizard: to diffuse varying insubstantialities, such as these, and -to look within them, as within a pool--a pool free of its basin and -enjoying the air. Yes, they were an unimaginative race, wizards. When -will the era of white art come, with æsthetic witches and wizards who -know our modern magics of colour and form and perception as a mere basis -for their sorceries? Instead of pottering with thick, slab gruel and -mediæval newts' eyes, think what witches they will be! Sometimes I think -that they are already arriving. The New Lady told me the most delightful -thing about a Thought of hers that she saw ... but it was such an -elusive thing to tell and so much of it I had to guess, because words -have not yet caught up with fancies, that it is hard to write down. -Besides, perhaps you know. And if you did not know, you would skip this -part anyway. So I merely mention that _she_ mentioned the coming alive -of a thought of hers which helped her spirit to grow, quite without her -will. Very likely you understand other wizardries. An excellent place to -think them out must be the line where candle rays meet moonbeams, but -there is no such discoverable line, just as there is no discoverable -line between the seeing and the knowing, where the Custodian dwells.... -By all of which I am merely showing you what the moon can do to one's -head and that it is no great wonder that one cannot sleep. - -"Ain't the moon kind of like a big, shinin' brain," Calliope said once, -"an' moonlight nights it gets in your head and thinks for you." - -So last night when I went in my room I did not try to sleep; nor did I -even light my candle. I went straight to a window and opened it--the one -without a screen. I would not live in a house that did not have certain -windows which one could open to let in the moon, or the night, or the -living out-of-doors, with no screens to thwart their impulse. Suppose -that sometime Diana--well, suppose what you will that is sensible, no -moon can shine through a screen. Really, it cannot do its best through -even an open window. And this was why I gave up trying to make it do so -and went downstairs again--which is the earthly and rational of floating -out into that utter beauty as I wanted to float. - -Of going out into such a night I would like to write for a long time, as -I would like to keep on breathing lilies-of-the-valley and never have -done. I think, though, that "into" such a night is not the word; to go -out _upon_ the night is the essential experience. For, like a June day, -a moonlit night of itself will not let us inside. We must know some -other way of entrance. And I suspect that some of us never quite find -the way--I wonder if we are missed? - -I stepped round the house to the open ocean of light that broke on soft -shores of leaf and line, solemnizing, magnifying. It was like a glimpse -into something which, afterward and afterward, is going to be. The -definiteness of its premonitory message was startling. As when on seeing -once that something had happened on my birthday, 1500, I felt as if I -had heard from a kind of twin-time, so now I understood that this night -was the birthday of far-off, immortal moments of my own, yet to be lived -... so friendly near we are to the immeasurable kindred. - -And there, from the shadow of the flowering currant bush, which just now -is out of flower and fallen in meditative quiet--a man arose. My sharp -fear, as savage a thing as if the world were ten thousand years younger, -or as if I were a ptarmigan and he a cougar--was only momentary. For the -cougar began to apologize and I recognized him. - -"Why," I said, "Peter." - -"Yes'm," said he, "I couldn't help being here--for a little while." - -"Neither could I, Peter," I told him. - -These were remarkable admissions of ours, for a large part of evening in -the village is an uninhabitable part of day and, no matter in what -splendour of sky it comes, is a thing to be shut outside experience. If -we relate being wakened by something that goes bang, we begin it, "In -the middle of the night, about twelve o'clock;" and, "They have a light -in their house 'most every night till midnight," is a bit of sharp -criticism not lightly to be lived down. But now it was as if Peter were -a part of the time itself, and outlaw too, if the evening was outlaw. -"I'm glad I saw you," Peter said--as if we were here met by chance in -the usual manner. "I wanted to see you and tell you: I'm going away--to -be gone right along." - -"Why," I said again, "Peter!" - -"You'd go too," he said simply. - -"I should want to go," I told him, "but I doubt if I would go. Where are -you going?" - -"They want to put in a cannery at Marl. It'd be a branch. I'd run it -myself." - -I did not miss the implication of the conditional mood. And _Marl_. What -wonderful names they give to some of the towns of this world. That word -makes a picture all of white cornices and white wings of buildings and -bright façades. I dare say from the railroad track the real town of Marl -shows an unpainted livery barn and a blue barber shop, but the name -sounds like the name of a chapter of travel, beginning: To-day we drove -to Marl to see the queen. Or the cataract. Or the porch of the morning. - -"Why are you going, Peter?" I drove in the peg for him. - -"I guess you know," he said. "It's all Miggy with me." - -I knew that he wanted before all else to tell somebody, to talk to -somebody, to have somebody know. - -"Tell me, Peter," I said. - -And now Peter told me how things were with him. If I should repeat what -he said you would be scornful, for it was so little. It was broken and -commonplace and set with repetition. It was halting and unfinished, like -the unformed writing of a boy. But in his words I felt the movings of -life and destiny and death more than I feel them when I think about the -rushing of the stars. He loved her, and for him the world became a -transparent plane wherein his soul moved as simply as his body. Here was -not only a boy longing for a girl. Here was not only a man, instinct -with the eager hope of establishing a home. Here was something not -unlike this very moon-washed area won from the illimitable void, this -area where we stood and spoke together, this little spot which alone was -to us articulate with form and line and night sounds. So Peter, -stumbling over his confession of love for Miggy, was like the word -uttered by destiny to explicate its principle. It mattered not at all -what the night said or what Peter said. Both were celestial. - -These moments when the soul presses close to its windows are to be -understood as many another hint at the cosmic--Dawn, May, the firmament, -radio-activity, theistic evolution, a thousand manifestations of the -supernal. In this cry of enduring spirit it was as if Peter had some -intimacy with all that has no boundaries. I hardly heard his stumbling -words. I listened to him down some long avenue of hearths whose -twinkling lights were like a corridor of stars. - -And all this bright business was to be set at naught because Miggy would -have none of it. - -"She seems to like me," Peter said miserably, "but I guess she'd like me -just as well if I wasn't me. And if I was right down somebody else, I -guess she'd like me a good deal better. She--don't like my hands--nor -the way my hair sticks up at the back. She thinks of all such things. I -wouldn't care if she said all her words crooked. I'd know what she -meant." - -I knew the difference. To him she was Miggy. To her he was an -individual. He had never in her eyes graduated from being a person to -being himself. - -"Calliope says," I told him, "that she likes almond extract better than -any other kind, but that she hardly ever gets a bottle of almond with -which she does not find fault. She says it's the same way with people -one loves." - -Peter smiled--he is devoted to Calliope, who alone in the village has -been friendly with his father. _Friendly._ The rest of the village has -only been kind. - -"Well," he tried to put it, "but Miggy never seems to be thinking of me -as _me_, only when she's finding fault with me. If she'd only think -about me, even a little, the way I think about her. If she'd only miss -me or want me or wonder how the house would seem if we were married. But -she don't care--she don't care." - -"She says, you know," I ventured, "that she can't ask you to support -Little Child too." - -"Can't she see," he cried, "that the little thing only makes me love her -more? Don't she know how I felt the other night--when she let me help -her that way? She must know. It's just an excuse--" - -He broke off and his hands dropped. - -"Then there's her other reason," he said, "I guess you know that. I -can't blame her for it. But even with that, it kind of seems as if,--if -she loved me--" - -"Yes," I said, "Peter, it does seem so." - -And yet in my heart I am certain that the reason is not at all that -Miggy cannot love him--I remember the woman-softening of her face that -forenoon when she found the spirit of the old romances in the village. I -am not even certain that the reason is that she does not love Peter -now--I remember how tender and feminine she was the other night with -Peter and Little Child. I think it is only that the cheap cynicism of -the village--which nobody means even when it is said!--has taught her -badly; and that Life has not yet touched her hand, has not commanded -"Look at me," has not bidden her follow with us all. - -I looked into the bright bowl of the night which is alternately with one -and against one in one's mood of emprise; the bright bowl of the night -inverted as if some mighty genii were shaking the stars about like -tea-leaves to fortune the future. What a pastime _that_ for a wizard! - -"Oh, Peter," I said, "_if_ one were a wizard!" - -"I didn't understand," said Peter. - -"How pleasant it would be to make folk love folk," I put it. - -He understood that. "Wouldn't it, though?" he assented wistfully. So -does everybody understand. Wouldn't it, though! Oh, _don't you wish you -could_? - -In the silence which fell I kept on looking at those starry tea-leaves -until I protest that a thought awoke in my mind as if it wanted to be -somebody. Be Somebody. It was as if it came alive, quite without my -will, so that almost I could see it. It was a friend conferring in my -head. Perhaps it was the Custodian herself, come outside to that white -porch of the moon. - -"Peter," I said, "I think I'm going to tell you a story." - -For I longed to make him patient with Miggy, as men, who understand -these things first, are not always patient with women, who often and -often understand too late. - -He listened to the story as I am setting it down here--the story of the -New Village. But in it I could say nothing of how, besides by these -things celestial, cosmic, I was touched by the simple, human entreaty of -the big, baffled man and that about his hands and the way his hair -sticks up at the back. - - - - -XVI - -THE NEW VILLAGE - - -Once upon a time there was a village which might have been called -The-Way-Certain-Folk-Want-It-Now. That, however, was not its name--it -had a proper, map-sounding name. And there every one went to and fro -with a fervour and nimbleness which proved him to be skilfully intent -upon his own welfare. - -The village had simple buildings and white walls, lanes and flowering -things and the flow of pure air. But the strange thing about the town -was that there each inhabitant lived alone. Every house had but one -inmate and he well content. He liked everything that he owned and his -taste was all-sufficient and he took his pleasure in his own walls and -loved best his own ways. The day was spent in lonely selling or lonely -buying, each man pitted against all others, and advantage and -disadvantage were never equal, but yet the transactions were dreary, -lacking the picturesqueness of unlicensed spoliation. The only greeting -which folk exchanged in passing was, "Sir, what do you do for -yourself?" There were no assemblings of the people. The town kept itself -alive by accretion from without. When one died another appeared and took -his place gladly, and also others arrived, like precept added to precept -and not like a true flowering. There were no children. And the village -common was overgrown and breast-high with weeds. When the day was done -every one retired to his own garden and saw his flowers blossoming for -him and answering to the stars which came and stood over his head. There -was in the town an epidemic of the intensive, only the people thought of -it as the normal, for frequently epidemics are so regarded. - -In one soul the contagion did not prevail. The soul was the lad Matthew, -whose body lived on the town's only hill. When others sat at night in -their gardens Matthew was wont to go up an airy path which he had made -to the upper spaces and there wander conjecturing about being alive. For -this was a detail which he never could take wholly for granted, in the -manner in which he had become wonted to door-mats, napkin-rings, -oatmeal, and mirrors. Therefore he took his thought some way nearer to -the stars, and there he found so much beauty that he longed to fashion -it to something, to create of it anew. And as he opened his heart he -began to understand that there is some one of whom he was the -offspring. As he was companioned by this idea, more and more he longed -for things to come nearer. Once, in his walking a hurrying bird brushed -his face, grew confused, fluttered at his breast, and as he would have -closed it in his hands he found that the bird was gone and his hands -were empty, but beneath them his own heart fluttered and throbbed like a -thing apart. - -One night, so great was the abstraction of the boy, that instead of -taking the upper path he fared down into the town. It was a curious way -to do--to go walking in the town as if the thing were common property, -but then the walls were very high and the gates were fast closed and -bound round with creeping things, which grow very quickly. Matthew -longed to enter these gardens, and he wondered who lived in the houses -and what might be in their hearts. - -Amazingly, at the turn of a white wall, a gate was opened and she who -had opened it leaned into the night as if she were looking for -something. There was a fluttering in the breast of Matthew so that he -looked down to see if the bird had come back. But no bird was there. And -it smote him that the lady's beauty, and surely her goodness, were great -enough so that of them something might be created, as he would fain have -created marvels from the sky. - -"I would like to make your beauty into something other," he said to -her. "I cannot think whether this would be a song or a picture or a -vision." - -She looked at him with as much pleasure as if he had been an idea of her -own. - -"Tell me about my beauty," she bade him. "What thing is that?" - -"Nay, that will take some while," Matthew said. "If I do that, I must -come in your garden." - -Now, such a thing had never happened in the town. And as this seemed why -it never happened, it seemed likely to go on never happening -indefinitely. But loneliness and the longing to create and the -conjecture about life have always been as potent as battles; and beauty -and boredom and curiosity have had something to do with history as well. - -"Just this once, then," said the lady, and the gate closed upon the two. - -Here was a garden like Matthew's own, but indefinitely atmosphered -other. It spoke strangely of a wonted presence, other than his own. In -his own garden he fitted as if the space for him were niched in the air, -and he went as a man accustomed will go without thinking. But here he -moved free, making new niches. And whereas on his own walks and plots he -looked with lack-lustre eye as a man looks on his own gas-jet or rain -pipe, now Matthew looked on all that he saw as on strange flame and -sweet waters. And it was not the shrubs and flowers which most -delighted him, but it was rather on a garden bench the lady's hat and -gloves and scissors. - -"How pleasing!" said he, and stopped before them. - -"Do you find them so?" asked the lady. - -And when he told her about her beauty, which was more difficult to do -than he had imagined and took a longer time, she said:-- - -"There can be no other man in the world who would speak as you speak." - -On which he swore that there was no man who would not speak so, and -likewise that no man could mean one-half what he himself meant. And he -looked long at her house. - -"In those rooms," he said, "you go about. I wish that I could go about -there." - -But that frightened her a little. - -"In there," he said, "are the lamps you light, the plates you use, the -brush that smooths your hair. How strange that is." - -"Does it seem strange?" she asked. - -"Sometime I will go there," said he, and with that he thought that the -bird once more was fluttering at his breast. And again there was no -bird. - -When the time was come that he must leave her, this seemed the most -valiant thing to do that ever he had done. It was inconceivable to -accept that though now she was with him, breathing, sentient, yet in -another moment he would be out alone in the empty night. Alone. For the -first time the word became a sinister thing. It meant to be where she -was not. - -"How is this to go on," he said, "I living where you do not live?" - -But she said, "Such things have never been any other way," and closed -the gate upon him. - -It is a mighty thing when one who has always lived alone abruptly finds -himself to have a double sense. Here is his little box of ideas, neatly -classified, ready for reference, which have always methodically bobbed -out of their own will the moment they were mentioned. Here are his own -varieties of impression ready to be laid like a pattern upon whatever -presents itself to be cut out. Here are his tastes, his sentiments, his -beliefs, his longings, all selected and labelled and established. And -abruptly ideas and impressions and tastes are thrown into rapt disorder -while he wonders what this other being would think, and his sentiment -glows like a lamp, his belief embraces the world, his longing becomes -only that the other being's longing be cast in counterpart. When he -walks abroad, the other's step accompanies him, a little back, and -invisible, but as authentic as his own. When he thinks, his thought, -without his will, would share itself. All this is a new way of -consciousness. All this makes two universes where one universe had -previously been competent to support life. - -Back on his hill Matthew went through his house as if he were seeing it -for the first time. There was the garden that he had planted, and she -was not walking there. There was his window, and she was not looking -from it; his table, and she was not sitting beside it; his book which he -could not read for wondering if she had read. All the tools of his home, -what could they not become if she touched them? The homely tasks of the -cupboard, what joy if she shared them? But what to do? He thought that -it might be something if they exchanged houses, so that he could be -where she had been, could use what she had used, could think of her in -her setting. But yet this did not wholly delight him, either. - -And now his house stifled him, so that he rushed out upon that airy path -of his that he had made to reach the upper spaces, and he fled along, -learning about being alive. Into the night he went, farther than ever he -had gone before, till the stars looked nearer to him than houses -commonly look, and things to think about seemed there waiting for him. - -So it adventured that he came abruptly upon the New Village. It lay upon -the air as lightly as if strong, fair hands were uniting to bear it up, -and it was not far from the stars and the clear places. Before he -understood its nearness, the night was, so to say, endued with this -village, and he entered upon its lanes as upon light. - -This was a town no larger than his own and no more fortuned of Nature. -Here were buildings not too unlike, and white walls and flowering things -and the flow of pure air. But here was also the touch of bells. And he -saw that every one went to and fro in a manner of quiet purpose that was -like a garment. - -"Sir, what do you do for yourself?" he asked courteously of one who was -passing. - -The citizen gave him greeting. - -"I make bread for my family," said he, "and, it may be, a dream or two." - -Matthew tried hard to perceive, and could make nothing of this. - -"Your family," he said, "what thing is that?" - -The citizen looked at him narrowly. - -"I see that you rebuke me," said he, gently; "but I, too, labor for the -community, so that the day shall become a better day." - -"Community," said Matthew. "Now I know not at all what that may be, -either." - -Then the man understood that here was one who would learn about these -things, and in the New Village such a task is sacred and to be assumed -on the moment by any to whom the opportunity presents. So the man took -Matthew with him. - -"Come," he said, "this is the day when we meet together." - -"Together," said Matthew, and without knowing why he liked what he felt -when he said that. - -They went first to the market-place, trodden of many feet, and about it -a fair green common planted in gracious lines. Here Matthew found men in -shops that were built simply and like one another in fashion, but with -pleasant devices of difference, and he found many selling together and -many buying, and no one was being robbed. - -"How can these things be?" he asked. "Here every man stands with the -others." - -"Inside of all things," the citizen answered, "you will find that it is -so written." - -On the common many were assembled to name certain projects and purposes: -the following of paths to still clearer spaces, the nurturing of certain -people, ways of cleanliness, purity of water, of milk, wide places for -play, the fashioning of labour so that the shrines within be not -foregone, the freeing of fountains, the planting of green things. - -"Why will all this be?" asked Matthew. "For these things a man does in -his own garden or for his own house, and no other interferes." - -"Nay, but look deep within all things, Friend," the citizen said, "and -you will never find it written so." - -"Friend," repeated Matthew, "_friend_...." - -Then the citizen went to his own house, and Matthew with him. The wall -was no wall, but a hedge, and the garden was very beautiful. And lo, -when they went in, there came tumbling along the path little beings made -in the image of the citizen himself. And with them a woman of exceeding -beauty and power, which the little ones also bore. As if the citizen had -chosen her beauty and power to make them into something other. - -It was as it had been when the bird was fluttering and beating at the -boy's breast, but he did not even heed. - -"Tell me!" he cried. "These--do they live here with you? Are they -yours?" - -"We are one another's," said the citizen. - -Matthew sat among them, and to pleasure him they did many sweet tasks. -They brought him to eat and drink in the garden. The woman gave quiet -answers that had in them something living, and alive, too, some while -after she had spoken. ("So _she_ could answer," Matthew thought, "and -better, too, than that.") And the children brought him a shell, a pretty -stone, a broken watch, and a little woolly lamb on three wheels, and the -fourth wheel missing. The lamb had a sound to make by squeezing, and -this sound Matthew made a great many times, and every time the children -laughed. And when they did that Matthew could think of nothing to say -that seemed a thing to be said, but he was inscrutably elated, and did -the trick again. - -And when he rose to take his leave:-- - -"Is it for them that you make bread and a dream or two?" he asked. - -He knew that he should always like to remember the citizen's smile as he -answered. - -They stood at the opening of the hedge and folk were going by. - -"Are they not jealous of you?" Matthew asked. - -"They have families and bread and dreams of their own," said the -citizen. "Every house is filled with them." - -Matthew looked breathlessly along the street of the New Village, and he -saw men, as they went, giving one another greeting: "Friend, is much -accomplished?" or, "Peace to you, Friend." And they talked together, and -entered gardens where were those who came to meet them or who waited -within. They were a fine company, moving as to some secret way of being, -and as if they had all looked deep within to see how it is written. And -as he watched, something in Matthew would have cried out that he, too, -was offspring of their Father, that for all this had he too been -created, and that for this would he live, joying and passioning and -toiling in the common destiny. But when he spoke, all that he could say -was:-- - -"Every man, then, may sit down now with a lamb with three wheels and the -fourth wheel missing...." - -On which he ceased for very shame. But the citizen understood and smiled -once more, and said to him: "Come you here again, Brother." - -With that word Matthew was off, down from the clear upper spaces, to -where, lonely on its hill, his own house stood among its lonely -neighbours. And Matthew strode shouting down the deserted streets and -calling at every gate; and, it being now day, every one came forth to -his lonely toil. - -Matthew went and stood on the common where the weeds were high, and so -amazed were the folk that they came about him, each suspecting the other -of secret connivance in this strange business. For nothing had ever been -done so. - -"Men and brothers," cried Matthew, "it is not so that it was meant. I -pray you look deep within, and see how the meaning was written. Is it -that you should live, each pitted against another, wounding the other, -advantaging himself? Join now each his hand with that of a neighbour. -_His neighbour._ Make the thing of which, it seems, the world is made; -a family. Let the thing come alive which is greater than the family: the -community. Oh, my comrades, let us work together for the coming of the -kingdom of God." - -In the murmur that rose were the words which have been spoken since time -began:-- - -"It is not so that it was done in the old time...." - -"It is not seemly that we change...." - -"If every one did this ... but we cannot do it alone." - -"Have you thought what will become of our business?" - -And again and yet again: "It is not so that it was done in the old -time." - -And when the most would have none of it, Matthew made his way sadly -through the throng--of whom were many who smiled (kindly!)--to the edge -of the common, where stood a woman, trembling. - -"Come," he said. - -She went with him, and she with many little frightened breaths, but he -had no pity, for he read deep within and saw that it was written that -she wanted none. When they reached her own house, she would have -entered. - -"Go we in here," she besought him, "I will show you the rooms where I go -about and the lamps that I light." - -"We are past all that now," said Matthew, gently, "I will not go on -living where you do not live." - -He took her to his own house, through the garden that he had planted. He -made her look from his window, sit by his table, open his books; and he -bade her to a little task at the cupboard and laughed for joy that she -performed it. - -"Oh, come away," he cried. "And now we will go quickly to the New -Village, that one which I have found or another, where men know all this -happiness and more." - -But she stood there by Matthew's cupboard and shook her head. - -"No," she said gravely, "here we will stay, you and I, in your house. -Here we will live--and it may be there is a handful of others who -understand. And here we will do what we can." - -"But I must show you," Matthew cried, "the way the others live--the -things they strive for: the following of paths to clearer spaces, the -freeing of shrines." - -"All that," she said, "we will do here." - -"But," he urged, "you must see how else they do--the shell, the pretty -stone, the watch, the woolly lamb on three wheels and one wheel -missing...." - -"All that," she said, "is in my heart." - -Matthew looked in her face and marvelled, for he saw that beside her -beauty there was her power, and to that he bowed himself as to a far -voice. And again it was as when the bird was at his breast, but now he -knew what this would be. - -So they live there in Matthew's house. And a handful besides understand -and toil for the fairer order. And this will come; and then that New -Village, in the clear upper spaces, will hang just above every -village--nay, will come down to clothe it like a garment. - - -When I had done, - -"Peter," I said--I nearly called him Matthew!--"these are the things -that Miggy does not understand. And that she will understand." - -He knew. He said nothing; but he knew how it is written. - -"Peter," I said, "I suppose Miggy will never have been to your house?" - -I knew that she could not have been there. - -"Some day soon," I said--"before you go away--ask us to come there. I -should like her to sit by your table and look from your window." - -For how can one be sure that divine non-interference is always divine? - -Peter drew his breath long. - -"Would you?" he said; "would you? So many times I've thought maybe that -would make her think of me as if I _was_ me." - -Yes, that might help. If only Miggy knew how to shake hands as Elfa -shook hands with Nicholas Moor, that might help, too. How did it begin, -this pride of individualism in a race which does not know its own -destiny save as the great relationships, human and divine, can reveal -that destiny? But Peter knows! And the hope of the world is that so many -do know. - -Since he said his grateful good night and rushed away, I have been -trying to readjust my impression of Peter. For I can no longer think of -him in connection with Miggy and the cannery and my neighbour's lawn and -the village. Now he is a figure ranging the ample intervals of a field -fraternal to the night and to the day. Fraternal, too, to any little -moon-washed area, won from the void, where it is easy to be in -conference with the spirit without and within. Truly, it is as if the -meaning of the universe were passioning for the comradeship of hearts -that can understand. - - - - -XVII - -ADOPTION - - -The big window of my sitting room is an isle of sirens on whose shore -many of my bird neighbours are continually coming to grief. For, from -without, the window makes a place of soft skies and seductive leaves -where any bird might think to wing a way. And in that mirrored deep -there is that curious atmosphere which makes In-a-looking-glass a better -thing than the room which it reflects--an elusive sense which Little -Child might call Isn't-any-such-placeness. I think that I might call it -so too. And so, evidently, the birds would call it, for they are always -trying to find there some path of flight. - -A morning or two ago, when I heard against the pane the soft thud of an -eager little body, I hurried out to see lying under the window an -oriole. It was too terrible that it should have been an oriole. For days -I had seen him hanging here and there, back downward, on this limb and -that, and heard his full-throated note ringing from the innermost air, -so that the deeps of air could never again be wholly alien to me. And -now he lay, his wings outstretched, his eyes dim, his breast hardly -moving. I watched him, hoping for the breath to begin to flutter and -labour. But though the great Nature was with him, herself passioning in -all the little fibres to keep life pulsing on, yet her passion was not -enough; and while I looked the little life went out. - -... I held the tiny body in my hand, and it was almost as if the -difference between living and not living slipped through my fingers and -was gone. If only that one within me, who watches between the seeing and -the knowing, had been a little quicker, I might almost have -understood.... - -"Them little things go out like a match," said my neighbour. - -She was standing on the other side of the box hedge, and I caught a look -on her face that I had seen there once or twice before, so that my heart -had warmed to her; and now, because of that look, she fitted within the -moment like the right word. - -"It don't seem like anybody could _mean_ 'em to die before their time," -she said. "Ain't it almost as if it happened when Everything somehow -couldn't help it?" - -It was this, the tragedy of the Unfulfilled Intention, that was in my -mind while I hollowed the little grave under the hedge. And when we had -finished, my neighbour, who had stepped informally over the box to help -me, looked up with a return of that fleeting expression which I had -noted. - -"I guess we've found one now for sure," she said. - -"Found one?" I puzzled. - -"I thought you knew," she told me. "I thought everybody knew--we've been -looking for one so long. For a baby." - -She never had told me and no one had told me, but I loved her for -thinking that all the world knew. There are abroad a multitude of these -sweet suspicions as well as the sad misgivings of the hunted. She had -simply let me know, that early morning in the garden, her sorrow that -there was "no little thing runnin' round." And now she told me for how -long they had been trying to find one to adopt, consciously serving no -social need, but simply hungering for a child whom they could "take to." -It was a story of fruitless visits to the homes in the city, the news -sent of this little waif or that, all proving too old or of too sad an -inheritance. To me it would seem that the more tragic the inheritance -the more poignantly sounds the cry for foster-folk. And this may be -extreme, I know, but virtue, I find, does not lie exclusively in the -mean, either. It lies partly in one's taste in extremes. However, this -special extreme I find not generally believed in as I believe in it; and -my neighbour, not sharing it, had waited on with empty arms. - -And now, after all the long hoping, she had found a baby--a baby who -filled all the requirements and more. First of all, he was a boy; -second, he was of healthful Scotch parentage; third, he was six weeks -old; and, fondest I could see in my neighbour's heart, he was good to -look at. When she told me this she produced, from beneath her apron, a -broken picture post-card. The baby was lying on a white blanket spread -on the grass, and he was looking up with the intentness of some little -soul not yet embodied; or as if, having been born, some shadow-thing, -left over from his source of shadows, yet detained his attention. -"William," it said beneath the picture. - -"But I shall call him Kenneth," my neighbour said; "I've always meant -to. I don't want he should be called after his father, being he isn't -ours, you might say. But he is ours," she added in a kind of challenge. -"_He's_ going after him to-morrow to the city"--and now "he" meant her -husband, in that fine habit of use by these husbands and wives of the -two third persons singular to mean only each other, in a splendid, -ultimate, inevitable sense, authentic as the "we" of a sovereign, no -more to be mistaken. "I'd go too," she added, "but we're adopting the -baby with the egg money--we've saved it for years for when the time -come. And one fare to the city and back is a lot of eggs. I thought I'd -rather wait for him here and have the ticket money to spend on the -clothes." - -She was on her way, I thought I guessed, to carry her good news to our -friends in the village, for she bore that same air which I have noted, -of being impermanent and subject to flight. And as she left me she -turned to give me one of those rare compliments which are priceless. - -"You come over this afternoon," she said, "and I'll show you what little -things I've made." - -I remember another compliment. It was when, in town, a charming little -woman, a woman all of physical curves and mental tangents, had been -telling a group of us about a gay day in a four-in-hand. She had not -looked at me because for that sort of woman, as well as for others, I -lack all that which would make them take account of my presence; but -when in the four-in-hand she came to some mention of the road where the -accident had nearly occurred ("Oh, it was a beautiful road," she said, -"the river on one side, and the highlands, and a whole _mob_ of trees,") -she turned straight upon me through her description as consistently as -she had neglected me when she described the elbow-bits of the leaders -and the boots of the woman on the box-seat. It may have been a chance, -but I have always hugged it to me. - -My neighbour's house is small, and her little upstairs rooms are the -half-story with sloping ceilings and windows which extend from the floor -to the top of one's head. It gives me a curious sense of -over-familiarity with a window to be as tall as it is. I feel that I -have it at advantage and that I am using it with undue intimacy. When I -was a little girl I used to creep under the dining-room table and sit -there, looking up, transfixed at the difference. A new angle of material -vision, the sight of the other side of the shield, always gives me this -pause. But whereas this other aspect of things used to be a delight, -now, in life, I shrink a little from availing myself of certain -revelations. I have a great wish to know things, but I would know them -otherwise than by looking at their linings. I think that even a window -should be sanctioned in its reticences. - -Before a black walnut commode my neighbour knelt that afternoon, and I -found that it was filled with the things which she had made for the -baby, when they should find him. These she showed to me--they were -simple and none too fine, and she had made them on her sewing-machine in -the intervals of her busy life. For three years she had wrought at them, -buying them from the egg money. I wondered if this secret pastime of -garment-making might not account for my impression of her that she must -always be off to engage in something other. Perhaps it was this -occupation, always calling her, which would not let her appear fixed at -garden-watering or festival. I think that it may be so of any who are -"pressed in the spirit" to serve, to witness to any truth: that is their -vocation and every other is an avocation, a calling away from the real -business of life. For this reason it is my habit to think of the social -workers in any division of the service, family or town or state or -church, as Vocationists. It is they who are following the one great -occupation. The rest of us are avocationists. In my neighbour I -perceived one of the great comrade company of the Vocationists, -unconscious of her banner, but because of some sweet, secret piping, -following, following.... - -"I've always thought I'd get to do a little embroidering on a yoke or -two," she said, "but so far I couldn't. Anyway I thought I could do the -plain part and running the machine before he came. The other I could sit -by the crib and do. Embroidery seems sort o' baby-watchin' work, don't -it?" - -When I left her I walked across the lawns to my home in a sense of -security and peace. With increasing thousands consciously striving and -passioning to help, and thousands helping because of the unconscious -spirit within them, are there not many windows in the walls? - -"He" was to go by the Accommodation early next morning to bring home the -baby. Therefore when, just before seven o'clock, I observed my -neighbour's husband leave his home and join Peter at his gate as usual, -I went at once to see if something was amiss. - -My neighbour was having breakfast as her custom was "after the men-folks -were out of the way." At all events she was pretending to eat. I saw in -her eyes that something was troubling her, but she greeted me -cheerfully. I sat by the sewing-machine while she went on with her -pretence at breakfast. - -"The little thing's sick," she said. "Last night we got the despatch. -'Baby in hospital for day or two. Will advise often,' it had in it. I'm -glad they put that in. I'll feel better to know they'll get good -advice." - -I sat with her for a long time, regardless of my work or that Miggy was -waiting for me. I was struck by the charm of matter-of-fact hopefulness -in my neighbour, not the deliberate forcing of hope, but the simple -expectation that nothing tragic would occur. But for all that she ate no -breakfast, and I knew well the faint, quite physical sickness that she -must have endured since the message came. - -"I'm going to get his basket ready to-day," she said. "I never did that, -two reasons. One was, it seemed sort of taking too much for granted, -like heating your spider before the meat wagon drives up. The other -reason was I needed the basket for the clothes." - -I stayed with her while she made ready the clothes-basket, lining it -with an old muslin curtain, filling it with pillows, covering it with -the afghan from the parlour couch. Then, in a shoe box edged with the -curtain's broad ruffle, she put an array of little things: the brush -from the spare-room bureau, the pincushion from her own work-basket, a -sachet bag that had come with a last year's Christmas gift, a cake of -"nice soap" which she had kept for years and never unwrapped because it -was so expensive. And then she added a little glass-stoppered bottle of -white pills. - -"I don't know what they're for," she said. "I found them when I -housecleaned, and there was so many of 'em I hated to throw 'em away. Of -course I'll never use 'em, but they look sort of nice in there--so white -and a glass cork--don't you think so?" - -She walked with me across the lawn and stood brooding, one hand across -her mouth, looking down at the disturbance--so slight!--in the grass -where we had laid the bird. And on her face was the look which, each -time that I saw it there, drew me nearer to her. - -"'Seems as if I'd ought to be there to the hospital," she said, "doing -what I can. Do you s'pose they'll take good care of him? I guess they -know more about it than I do. But if I could get hold of him in my arms -it seems as if I could help 'em." - -I said what I could, and she went away to her house. And for the first -time since I had known her she did not seem put upon to be back at some -employment. These times of unwonted idleness are terrible to witness. I -remember a farmer whom I once saw in the afternoon, dressed in his best, -waiting in the kitchen for the hour of his daughter's wedding, and I -wondered that the great hands did not work of their own will. The lost -aspect of certain men on holidays, the awful inactivity of the day of a -funeral, the sad idleness of old age, all these are very near to the -tragedy of negation. Work, the positive, the normal, the joyous, is like -an added way of being. I thought that I would never again marvel at my -neighbour for being always on the edge of flight to some pressing -occupation. Why should she not be so?--with all that there is to be -done. Whether we rush about, or conceal the need and rush secretly, is a -detail of our breeding; the need is to get things done, to become by -doing. And while for myself I would prefer the accomplishment of not -seeming to hurry, as another is accomplished at the harp, yet I own that -I would cheerfully forego the pretty grace rather than find myself -without some slight degree of the robust proficiency of getting things -done. - -"If you're born a picture in a book," Calliope once said, "it's all very -well to set still on the page an' hold your hands. But if you're born -anyways human at all, stick up your head an' start out for somewhere." - -My neighbour rarely comes to my house. And therefore, though she is to -me so familiar a figure in her garden, when next morning I found her -awaiting me in my sitting room, she seemed strange to me. Perhaps, too, -she was really strange to me that day. - -"My baby died," she said. - -She stood there looking at me, and I knew that what she said was true, -but it seemed to me for a moment that I could not have it so. - -"He died yesterday in the evening," she told me. "I just heard this -morning, when the telegraph office opened. I dressed myself to go after -him, but _he's_ gone." - -"To go after him?" I repeated. - -She nodded. - -"He was in the charity part. I was afraid they'd bury him in the -potter's field and they wouldn't mark--it, and that I couldn't never -tell which one it was. So I want to get him and have him buried here. -_He_ didn't want I should go--he thought it'd be too much for me. But I -was bound to, so he says he'd go. They'd ought to get here on the Five -o'Clock this afternoon. Oh, if I'd went yesterday, do you think it would -'a' been any different?" - -There I could comfort her. I did not think it would have been different. -But when I tried to tell her how much better it was this way than that -the baby should first have come to her and then have sickened, she would -have none of it. - -"I've never held him once," she said. "Do you s'pose anything could be -worse than that? I'd rather have got hold of him once, no matter what." - -It touched me unutterably, the grief of this mother who was no mother. I -had no knowledge what to say to her. But I think that what she wanted -most was companionship. She went to one and another and another of our -neighbours to whom she had shown so happily the broken post-card -picture, and to them in the same way she took the news:-- - -"My baby died." - -And I was amazed to find how in this little time, the tentacles of her -heart having fastened and clung, she had made for herself, without ever -having seen the child, little things to tell about him: His eyes were so -bright; the sun was shining and the picture was made out-of-doors, yet -the eyes were opened wide. They were blue eyes--had she told us? Had we -noticed the hands in the picture? And the head was a beautiful shape.... -All this seemed to me marvellous. For I saw that no woman ever mourns -for any child dumbly, as a bird mourns a fledgling, but even if she -never sees it, she will yet contrive some little tender ways to give it -personality and to cherish it. - -They did their best to comfort her, the women of the village. But many -of them had lost little children of their own, and these women could not -regard her loss as at all akin to theirs. I think that this my neighbour -felt; and perhaps she dimly felt that to me her grief, hardly less than -theirs, brimmed with the tragic disaster of the unfulfilled and bore, -besides, its own peculiar bitterness. In any case I was of those who, -that afternoon, went out to the cemetery to await the coming of my -neighbour and "him" and their little burden. Calliope was there, and -Mis' Amanda Toplady and Miggy; and when it was time to go Little Child -was with me, so she went too. For I am not of those who keep from -children familiarity with death. Familiarity with the ways of death I -would spare them, but not the basic things, primal as day. - -"I don't want to give a real funeral," my neighbour had said. "I just -want the few that I tell to happen out there to the cemetery, along -about five. And then we'll come with him. It seems as if it'll hurt -less that way. I couldn't bear to see a whole line driving along, and -me look back and know who it was for." - -The cemetery had the dignity and serenity of a meadow, a meadow still -somewhat amazed that it had been for a while distracted from its ancient -uses, but, after all, perceiving no permanent difference in its -function. I am never weary of walking down these grassy streets and of -recounting their strangenesses. As that of the headstone of David -Bibber's wives, one stone extending across the heads of the two graves -and at either end of the stone two Gothic peaks from whose inner slopes -reach two marble hands, clasped midway, and, - - - SACRED TO THE WIVES OF DAVID BIBBER - - -inscribed below, the wifely names not appearing in the epitaph. And that -of Mark Sturgis who, the village said, had had the good luck to marry -two women named Dora; so he had erected a low monument to "Dora, Beloved -Wife of Mark Sturgis, Jr." ("But how mixin' it must be to the ghosts!" -Calliope said.) And of the young girl of a former Friendship family of -wealth, a girl who sleeps beneath a monument on which stands a great -figure of a young woman in a white marble dress made with three -flounces. ("Honest," Calliope had put it, "you can't hardly tell -whether it's a tomb or a valentine.") - -But these have for me an interest less of the bizarre than of the human, -and nothing that is human was alien to that hour. - -We waited for them by the new little grave, the disturbance--so -slight!--in the earth where we would lay the stranger baby. Our hands -were filled with garden flowers--Calliope had drawn a little hand cart -laden with ferns and sweet-brier, and my dear Mis' Amanda Toplady had -cut all the half-blown buds from her loved tea rose. - -"It seems like a little baby wasn't real dead that I hadn't helped lay -out," said that great Mis' Amanda, trying to find her handkerchief. "Oh, -I wish't it was alive. It seems like such a little bit of comin' alive -to ask the Lord!" - -And as the afternoon shadows drew about us with fostering arms, - -"Out-Here knows we feel bad more than Down Town, don't it?" said Little -Child. - -I have always thought very beautiful that village custom of which I have -before spoken, which provides that the father and mother of a little -baby who dies may take it with them in a closed carriage to the grave. -It was so that my neighbour and her husband brought their baby to the -cemetery from the station, with the little coffin on their knees. - -On the box beside the driver Peter was riding. We learned afterward -that he had appeared at the station and had himself taken that little -coffin from the car. "So then it didn't have to be on the truck at all," -my neighbour noted thankfully when she told me. I think that it must be -this living with only a street or two between folk and the open country -which gives these unconscious sharpenings of sensibility often, -otherwhere, bred only by old niceties of habit. - -So little Kenneth was buried, who never had the name save in unreality; -whom my neighbour had never tended; who lived for her only in dream and -on that broken post-card and here in the hidden dust. It made her grief -so sad a thing that her arms did not miss him; nor had he slipped from -any usage of the day; nor was any link broken with the past; only the -plans that had hung in air had gone out, like flames which had kindled -nothing. Because of this she sorrowed from within some closed place at -which her husband could only guess, who stood patiently without in his -embarrassed concern, his clumsy anxiety to do what there was to be done, -his wondering distress at his wife's drooping grief. But her sorrow was -rooted in the love of women for the "little young thing, runnin' round," -for which she had long passioned. - -"Oh, God, who lived in the spirit of the little Lord Jesus, live Thou -in this child's spirit, and it in Thee, world without end," Doctor June -prayed. And Little Child whispered to me and then went to let fall a -pink in the grave. "So if the flower gets to be an angel flower, then -they can go round together," she explained. - -When I looked up there were in the west the first faint heraldings of -rose. And against it stood Miggy and Peter, side by side, looking down -this new way of each other's lives which took account of sorrow. He said -something to her, and she nodded, and gave him her white hollyhocks to -lay with the rest. And as they turned away together Little Child -whispered to me, pulling herself, by my arm, to high tiptoe:-- - -"That little child we put in the sunset," she said, nodding to the west, -"it's there now. It's there now!" - -Perhaps it was that my heart was filled with the tragedy of the -unfulfilled intention, perhaps it was that I thought that Little Child's -whispering was true. In any case I hastened my steps, and as we passed -out on the road I overtook Miggy and Peter. - -"Peter," said I, "may Miggy and I come to pay you that visit now, on the -way back?" - -Miggy looked startled. - -"It's supper time," she objected. - -Who are we that we should interrupt a sunset, or a situation, or the -stars in their courses, merely to sup? Neither Miggy nor I belong to -those who do so. Besides, we had to pass Peter's very door. I said so, -and all the time Peter's face was glowing. - -"Hurry on ahead," I bade him, "and Miggy and Little Child and I will -come in your house to call." - -He looked at me gratefully, and waited for good night to my neighbour, -and went swiftly away down the road toward the sunset. - -"Oh, goody grand, goody grand," Little Child went on softly, in an -invocation of her own to some secret divinity of her pleasure. "Oh, that -little child we put there, it's talkin' to the sky, an' I guess that -makes sunset be!" - -My neighbour was looking back across the tranquil meadow which might -have been deep with summer hay instead of mounded to its sad harvest. - -"I wish," she said, "I could have had his little grave in my garden, -same as you would a bird. Still I s'pose a cemet'ry is a cemet'ry and -had ought to be buried in. But oh, I can't tell you how glad I am to -have him here in Friendship Village. It's better to think about, ain't -it?" - -But the thing that gripped my heart was to see her, beside her husband, -go down the road and not hurry. All that bustling impermanence was -fallen from her. I think that now I am becoming thankful for every one -who goes busily quickening the day with a multitude, yes, even with a -confusion, of homely, cheerful tasks. - -Miggy slipped her hand within my arm. - -"Did you think of it?" she said. "I've been, all the time. It's most the -same with her as it would be to me if I'd lost _her_. You know ... that -little Margaret. I mean, if she should never be." - -As when one hears the note of an oriole ringing from the innermost air, -so now it seems to me that after these things the deeps of air can never -again be wholly alien to me. - - - - -XVIII - -AT PETER'S HOUSE - - -I wondered somewhat that Peter did not come out of his house to fetch -us. He was not even about the little yard when we went up the walk, -though he knew that we must arrive but a few moments after he did. -Little Child ran away to pick Bouncing Bet and Sweet Clover in the long, -rank grass of the unkept garden. And Miggy and I went and stood on the -porch before Peter's door, and I knew what I intended. - -"Rap!" I said to Miggy. - -She looked at me in surprise--I have not often commanded her like that. -But I wanted to see her stand at Peter's door asking for admission. And -I think that Peter had wanted it too and that this was why he had not -come to the gate to fetch us. I guessed it by the light on his face -when, in the middle of Miggy's knock, he caught open the door. I like to -remember his face as it looked at that moment, with the little twist of -mouth and lifting of brow which gave him a peculiar sweetness and -naïveté, curiously contradicted by the way his eyes were when they met -Miggy's. - -"How long it took you," he said. "Come in. _Come in._" - -We went in, and I looked at Miggy. For I did not want her to step in -that house as she would have stepped in a house that was just a house. -Is it not wonderful how some front doors are Front Doors Plus? I do not -know plus what--that is one of those good little in-between things which -we know without always naming. But there are some front doors which are -to me boards and glass and a tinkling cymbal bell; while other doors of -no better architecture let me within dear depths of homes which are to -houses what friends are to inhabitants. It was so that I would have had -Miggy go within Peter's house,--not as within doors, but as within arms. - -We entered directly from the porch into the small parlour--the kind of -man's parlour that makes a woman long to take it on her lap and tend it. -There were no curtains. Between the windows was a big table filled with -neat piles of newspapers and weeklies till there should be time to look -them over. The shelf had a lamp, not filled, a clock, not going, and a -pile of seed catalogues. On two walls were three calendars with big -hollyhocks and puppies and ladies in sunbonnets. The entire inner wall -was occupied by a map of the state--why does a man so cherish a map of -something, hung up somewhere? On the organ was a row of blue books--what -is it that men are always looking for in blue books? In a corner, on the -floor, stood a shotgun. The wood stove had been "left up" all summer to -save putting it up in the fall--this business of getting a stove on -rollers and jacking it up and remembering where it stood so that the -pipe will fit means, in the village, a day of annual masculine sacrifice -to the feminine foolishness of wanting stoves down in summer. There was -nothing disorderly about the room; but it was dressed with no sash or -hair ribbon or coral beads, as a man dresses his little girl. - -"We don't use this room much," Peter said. "We sit in here sometimes in -summer, but I think when a man sits in his parlour he always feels like -he was being buried from it, same as they're used for." - -"Why--" said Miggy, and stopped. What she was going to say it was not -important to know, but I was glad that she had been going to say it. -Something, perhaps, about this being a very pretty room if there were -somebody to give it a touch or two. - -Peter was obviously eager to be in the next room, and that, he -explained, would have been the dining room, only he had taken it for -his own, and they ate in the kitchen. I think that I had never heard him -mention his father at all, and this "we" of his now was a lonelier thing -than any lonely "I." - -"This is my room," he said as we entered it. "It's where I live when I'm -not at the works. Come and let me show you." - -So Peter showed Miggy his room, and he showed it to me, too, though I do -not think that he was conscious of that. It was a big room, bare of -floor and, save for the inescapable flowery calendar, bare of walls. -There was a shelf of books--not many, but according to Peter's nature -sufficiently well-selected to plead for him: "Look at us. Who could love -us and not be worth while?"--bad enough logic, in all conscience, to -please any lover. Miggy hardly looked at the books. She so -exasperatingly took it for granted that a man must be everything in -general that it left hardly anything for him to be in particular. But -Peter made her look, and he let me look too, and I supplied the comments -and Miggy occasionally did her three little nods. The writing table -Peter had made from a box, and by this Miggy was equally untouched. All -men, it appeared, should be able to make writing tables from boxes. With -the linen table cover it was a little different--this Peter's mother had -once worked in cross-stitch for his room, and Miggy lifted an end and -looked at it. - -"She took all those stitches for you!" she said. "There's one broken," -she showed him. - -"I can mend that," Peter said proudly, "I'll show you my needle kit." - -At this she laughed out suddenly with, "_Needle kit!_ What a real -regular old bachelor you are, aren't you?" - -"I can't help that," said Peter, with "and the same cannot be said for -you" sticking from the sentence. - -On the table lay the cannery account books, and one was open at a full -page of weary little figures. - -"Is this where you sit nights and do your work and read?" Miggy -demanded. - -"Right here," Peter told her, "every night of the year, 'most. Except -when I come to see you." - -Miggy stood looking at the table and the wooden chair. - -"That's funny," she remarked finally, with an air of meditative -surprise; "they know you so much better than I do, don't they?" - -"Well," Peter said gravely, "they haven't been thought about as much as -you have, Miggy--that's one thing." - -"Thinking's nothing," said Miggy, merrily; "sometimes you get a tune in -your head and you can't get it out." - -"Sit down at the table," said Peter, abruptly. "Sit down!" he repeated, -when her look questioned him. "I want to see you there." - -She obeyed him, laughing a little, and quite in the woman's way of -pretending that obedience is a choice. Peter looked at her. It is true -that he had been doing nothing else all the while, but now that she sat -at the table--his table--he looked more than before. - -"Well," he said, "well, well." As a man says when he has a present and -has no idea what to say about it. - -Peter's photographs were on the wall above the table, and Peter suddenly -leaned past Miggy and took down the picture of his mother and put it in -her hand, without saying anything. For the first time Miggy met his -eyes. - -"Your mother," she said, "why, Peter. She looked--oh, Peter, she looked -like you!" - -Peter nodded. "Yes, I do look like she did," he said; "I'm always so -glad." - -"She knew you when you were a little bit of a baby, Peter," Miggy -advanced suddenly. - -Peter admitted it gravely. She had. - -"Well," said Miggy, as Peter had said it. "Well." - -There was a picture of Peter's father as a young man,--black, -curly-haired, black-moustached, the cheeks slightly tinted in the -picture, his hands laid trimly along his knees. The face was weak, -empty, but it held that mere confidence of youth which always gives a -special sting to the grief of unfulfilment. Over this they passed, -saying nothing. It struck me that in the delicacy of that silence it was -almost as if Miggy shared something with Peter. Also, it struck me -pleasantly that Miggy's indifference to the personalities of divers -aunts in straight bangs and long basques was slightly exaggerated, -especially when, "I never thought about your having any aunts," she -observed. - -And then Peter took down a tiny picture of the sort we call in the -village "card size," and gave it to her. - -"Guess who," he said. - -It was a little boy of not more than five, in a straight black coat -dress, buttoned in the front and trimmed with broad black velvet strips, -and having a white scalloped collar and white cuffs. One hand was -resting on the back of a camp-chair and the other held a black helmet -cap. The shoes had double rows of buttons, and for some secret reason -the photographer had had the child laboriously cross one foot -negligently over the other. The fine head, light-curled, was resting in -the horns of that ex-device that steadied one out of all semblance to -self. But in spite of the man who had made the picture, the little boy -was so wholly adorable that you wanted to say so. - -"Peter!" Miggy said, "It's _you_." - -I do not know how she knew. I think that I would not have known. But -Miggy knew, and her knowing made me understand something which evidently -she herself did not understand. For she looked at the picture and looked -at it, a strange, surprised smile on her face. And, - -"Well, well, _well_," she said again. "I never thought about that -before. I mean about you. _Then._" - -"Would--would you want that picture, Miggy?" Peter asked; "you can have -it if you do." - -"Can I really?" said Miggy. "Well, I do want it. Goodness...." - -"I always kind of thought," Peter said slowly, "that when I have a son -he'll look something like that. He might, you know." - -Peter was leaning beside her, elbows on the table, and Miggy looked up -at him over the picture of the child, and made her three little nods. - -"Yes," she said, "you would want your little boy to look like you." - -"And I'd want him named Peter. It's a homely old name, but I'd want him -to have it." - -"Peter isn't a homely name," said Miggy, in a manner of surprise. "Yes, -of course you'd want him--" - -The sentence fell between them unfinished. And I thought that Miggy's -face, still somewhat saddened by the little Kenneth and now tender with -its look for the picture, was lightly touched with a glowing of colour. -But then I saw that this would be the light of the sunset on her cheeks, -for now the West was become a glory of rose and yellow, so that it held -captive her eyes. It is too frail a thing for me to have grasped by -sense, but the Moment seemed to say--and could give no reason--that our -sunset compact Miggy kept then without remembering the compact. - -It almost startled me when out in the unkept garden Little Child began -to sing. We had nearly forgotten her and we could not see her, so that -she might have been any other little child wandering in the sweet -clover, or merely a little voice coming in with the western light:-- - - - "I like to stand in this great air - And see the sun go down. - It shows me a bright veil to wear - And such a pretty gown. - Oh, I can see a playmate there - Far up in Splendour Town!" - - -"Look here," said Peter to Miggy; and I went over to the sunset window -and let them go on alone. - -He led her about the room, and she still had the little picture in her -hand. From the bureau, with its small array of cheap brushes and boxes, -she turned abruptly away. I think that she may have felt as I felt -about the splash of rose on the rose-breasted grosbeak's throat--that I -ought not to have been looking. Beyond was a little old dry-goods box -for odds and ends, a box which must have known, with a kind of feminine -intelligence, that it ought to be covered with cretonne. On this box -Miggy knelt to read Peter's high school diploma, and she stopped before -a picture of the house where he was born. "Was it there?" she asked. -"Doesn't that seem funny?" Which manifestly it did not seem. "Is _that_ -where your violin lives?" she asked, when they came to its -corner--surely a way of betrayal that she had thought of it as living -somewhere else. And all the while she carried the picture in her hand, -and the sunset glorified the room, and Little Child was singing in the -garden. - -"Peter," said Miggy, "I don't believe a man who can play the violin can -sew. Give me the needle kit. I'm going to mend the table cover--may I?" - -Might she! Peter, his face shining, brought out his red flannel -needle-book--he kept it on the shelf with his shaving things!--and, his -face shining more, sat on a creaking camp-chair and watched her. - -"Miggy," he said, as she caught the threads skilfully together, "I don't -believe I've ever seen you sew. I know I never have." - -"This isn't sewing," Miggy said. - -"It's near enough like it to suit me," said Peter. - -He drew a breath long, and looked about him. I knew how he was seeing -the bare room, lamp-lighted, and himself trying to work in spite of the -longing that teased and possessed him and bade him give it up and lean -back and think of her; or of tossing on the hard couch in the tyranny of -living his last hour with her and of living, too, the hours that might -never be. And here she was in this room--his room. Peter dropped his -head on his hand and his eyes did not leave her face save to venture an -occasional swift, ecstatic excursion to her fingers. - -Simply and all quietly, as Nature sends her gifts, miracles moved toward -completion while Miggy sewed. The impulse to do for him this trifling -service was like a signal, and when she took up the needle for him I -think that women whose hands had long lain quiet stirred within her -blood. As for Peter--but these little housewifely things which enlighten -a woman merely tease a man, who already knows their import and longs for -all sweet fragments of time to be merged in the long possession. - -Miggy gave the needle back to Peter and he took it--needle, red book, -and hand. - -"Miggy!" he said, and the name on his lips was like another name. And it -was as if she were in some place remote and he were calling her. - -She looked at him as if she knew the call. Since the world began, only -for one reason does a man call a woman like that. - -"What is it you want?" she said--and her voice was very sweet and very -tired. - -"I want more of _you_!" said Peter Cary. - -She may have tried to say something, but her voice trembled away. - -"I thought it would be everything--your coming here to-day," Peter said. -"I've wanted it and wanted it. And what does it amount to? Nothing, -except to make me wild with wanting you never to go away. I dread to -think of your leaving me here--shutting the door and being gone. If it -was just plain wanting you I could meet that, and beat it, like I do the -things down to the works. But it isn't that. It's like it was something -big--bigger than me, and outside of me, and it gets hold of me, and it's -like it asked for you without my knowing. I can't do anything that you -aren't some of it. It isn't fair, Miggy. I want more of you--all of -you--all the time, Miggy, all the time...." - -I should have liked to see Miggy's face when she looked at Peter, whose -eyes were giving her everything and were asking everything of her; but I -was studying the sunset, glory upon glory, to match the glory here. And -the singing of Little Child began again, like that of a little voice -vagrant in the red west.... - - - "Oh, I can see a playmate there, - Far up in Splendour Town!" - - -Miggy heard her, and remembered. - -"Peter, Peter!" she cried, "I couldn't--I never could bring us two on -you to support." - -Peter gave her hands a little shake, as if he would have shaken her. I -think that he would have shaken her if it had been two or three thousand -years earlier in the world's history. - -"You two!" he cried; "why, Miggy, when we marry do I want--or do you -want--that it should stay just you and me? We want children. I want you -for their mother as much as I want you for my wife." - -It was the voice of the paramount, compelling spirit, the sovereign -voice of the Family, calling through the wilderness. Peter knew,--this -fine, vital boy seeking his own happiness; he gropingly understood this -mighty thing, and he was trying his best to serve it. And, without -knowing that she knew, Miggy knew too ... and the seal that she knew was -in what was in the sunset. And as far removed from these things as the -sunset itself was all Miggy's cheap cynicism about love and all the -triviality of her criticism of Peter. - -Miggy stood motionless, looking at Peter. And then, like an evil spell -which began to work, another presence was in the room.... - -Somewhile before I had begun to hear the sound, as a faint undercurrent -to consciousness; an unimportant, unpleasant, insisting sound that -somehow interfered. Gradually it had come nearer and had interfered more -and had mingled harshly with the tender treble of Little Child. Now, -from Peter's gate the sound besieged my ears and entered the room and -explained itself to us all-- - - - "My Mary Anna Mary, what you mean I _never_ know, - You don't make me merry, very, but you make me sorry, oh--" - - -the "oh" prolonged, undulatory, exploring the air.... - -I knew what it was, and they knew. At the sound of his father's voice, -drunken, piteous, Peter dropped Miggy's hands and his head went down and -he stood silent, like a smitten thing. My own heart sank, for I knew -what Miggy had felt, and I thought I knew what she would feel now. So -here was another unfulfilled intention, another plan gone astray in an -unperfected order. - -Peter had turned somewhat away before he spoke. - -"I'll have to go now," he said quietly, "I guess you'll excuse me." - -He went toward the kitchen door ashamed, miserable, all the brightness -and vitality gone from him. I am sorry that he did not see Miggy's face -when she lifted it. I saw it, and I could have sung as I looked. Not for -Peter or for Miggy, but for the sake of something greater than they, -something that touched her hand, commanded "Look at me," bade her follow -with us all. - -Before Peter reached the door she overtook him, stood before him, put -her hands together for a moment, and then laid one swiftly on his cheek. - -"Peter," she said, "that don't make any difference. That don't make any -difference." - -No doubt he understood her words, but I think what he understood best -was her hand on his cheek. He caught her shoulders and looked and -looked.... - -"Honest--honest, don't it?" he searched her. - -You would not have said that her answer to that was wholly direct. She -only let fall her hand from his cheek to his shoulder, and, - -"Peter," she said, "_is it like this_?" - -"Yes," he said simply, "it's like this." - -And then what she said was ever so slightly muffled, as if at last she -had dropped her head in that sweet confusion which she had never seemed -to know; as if at last she was looking at Peter as if he _was_ Peter. - -"Then I don't ever want to be any place where you aren't," she told him. - -"Miggy!" Peter cried, "take care what you say. Remember--he'd live with -us." - -She made her three little nods. - -"So he will," she answered, "so he will. He--and my little sister--and -all of us." - -Peter's answer was a shout. - -"Say it out!" he cried, "say you will. Miggy! I've _got_ to hear you say -it out!" - -"Peter, Peter," she said, "I want to marry you." - -He took her in his arms and in the room was the glory upon glory of the -west, a thing of wings and doors ajar. And strong as the light, there -prevailed about them the soul of the Family, that distributes burdens, -shares responsibilities, accepts what is and what is to come. Its voice -was in the voice of Little Child singing in the garden, and of old Cary -babbling at the gate. Its heart was the need of Peter and Miggy, each -for the other. I saw in their faces the fine freedoms of the sunset, -that sunset where Miggy and Little Child and I had agreed that a certain -spirit lives. And it did but tally with the momentous utterance of these -things and of the evening when Miggy spoke again. - -"Go now--you go to him," she said, "we'll wait. And--Peter--when you -come back, I want to see everything in the room again." - - - - -XIX - -THE CUSTODIAN - - -When the river is low, a broad, flat stone lying a little way from shore -at the foot of our lawn becomes an instrument of music. In the day it -plays now a rhapsody of sun, now a nocturne of cloud, now the last -concerto, Opus Eternal. In the night it becomes a little friendly -murmur, a cradle song, slumber spell, neighbour to the Dark, the alien -Dark who very likely grows lonely, being the silent sister, whereas the -Light goes on blithely companioned of us all. But if I were the Dark and -owned the stars, and the potion which quickens conscience, and the sense -of the great Spirit brooding, brooding, I do not know that I would -exchange and be the Light. Still, the Light has rainbows and toil and -the sun and laughter.... After all, it is best to be a human being and -to have both Light and Darkness for one's own. And it is concerning this -conclusion that the river plays on its instrument of music, this shallow -river - - - "--to whose falls - Melodious birds sing madrigals." - - -I have heard our bank cat-birds in the willows sing madrigals to the -stone-music until I wanted to be one of them--cat-bird, madrigal, -shallows, or anything similar. But the human is perhaps what all these -are striving to express, and so I have been granted wish within wish, -and life is very good. - -Life was very good this summer afternoon when half the village gathered -on our lawn above the singing stone, at Miggy's and Peter's -"Announcement Supper." To be sure, all Friendship Village had for -several days had the news and could even tell you when the betrothal -took place and where; but the two were not yet engaged, as Miggy would -have said, "out loud." - -"What _is_ engaged?" asked Little Child, who was the first of my guests -to arrive, and came bringing an offering of infinitesimal flowers which -she finds in the grass where I think that they bloom for no one else. - -"It means that people love each other very much--" I began, and got no -further. - -"Oh, goody grand," cried Little Child. "Then I'm engaged, aren't I? To -everybody." - -Whenever she leads me in deep water, I am accustomed to invite her to a -dolphin's back by bidding her say over some song or spell which I have -taught her. This afternoon while we waited on the lawn and her little -voice went among the charmed words, something happened which surely -must have been due to a prank of the dolphin. For when she had taken an -accurate way to the last stanza of "Lucy," Little Child soberly -concluded:-- - - - "'She lived unknown, and few could know - When Lucy ceased to be; - But she is in her grave, and what's - The difference to me!'" - - -But, even so, it was charming to have had the quiet metre present. - -I hope that there is no one who has not sometime been in a company on -which he has looked and looked with something living in his eyes; on a -company all of whom he holds in some degree of tenderness. It was so -that I looked this afternoon on those who came across the lawn in the -pleasant five o'clock sun, and I looked with a difference from my manner -of looking on that evening of my visit to the village, when I first saw -these, my neighbours. Then I saw them with delight; now I see them with -delight-and-that-difference; and though that difference is, so to say, -partly in my throat, yet it is chiefly deep in my understanding. There -came my Mis' Amanda Toplady, with her great green umbrella, which she -carries summer and winter; Mis' Postmaster Sykes, with the full-blooming -stalk of her tuberose pinned on her left shoulder; Mis' -Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss in the pink nun's veiling of the Post-office -hall supper; and my neighbour, who had consented to come, with: "I -donno as that little thing would want I should stay home. Oh, but do you -know, that's the worst--knowin' that the little thing never saw me and -can't think about me at all!" And there came also those of whom it -chances that this summer I have seen less than I should have wished: the -Liberty sisters, in checked print. "It don't seem so much of a jump out -of mournin' into wash goods as it does into real dress-up cloth," gentle -Miss Lucy says. And Abigail Arnold, of the Home Bakery, who sent a great -sugared cake for to-day's occasion. "Birthday cakes is correct," she -observed, "an' weddin' cake is correct. Why ain't engagement cakes -correct--especially when folks get along without the ring? I donno. I -always think doin' for folks is correct, whether it's the style or -whether it ain't." And Mis' Photographer Sturgis, with a new and -upbraiding baby; Mis' Fire Chief Merriman in "new black, but not true -mournin' now, an' anyway lit up by pearl buttons an' a lace handkerchief -an' plenty o' scent." And Mis' "Mayor" Uppers who, the "mayor" not -returning to his home and the tickets for the parlour clock having all -been sold, to-day began offering for sale tickets on the "parlour -'suit,' brocade' silk, each o' the four pieces a differ'nt colour and -all as bright as new-in-the-store." And though we all understood what -she was doing and she knew that we all knew, she yet drew us aside, one -after another, to offer the tickets for sale privately, and we slipped -the money to her beneath our handkerchiefs or our fans or our sewing. - -We all had our sewing--even I have become pleasantly contaminated and -have once or twice essayed eyelets. Though there was but an hour to -elapse before supper-time and the arrival of the "men-folks," we settled -ourselves about the green, making scallops on towels, or tatting for -sheet hems, or crocheted strips for the hems of pillow-slips. Mis' Sykes -had, as she almost always does have, new work which no one had ever seen -before, and new work is accounted of almost as much interest as a new -waist and is kept for a surprise, as a new waist should be kept. Little -Child, too, had her sewing; she was buttonhole-stitching a wash-cloth -and talking like a little old woman. I think that the little elf -children like best to pretend in this way, as regular, arrant witches -feign old womanhood. - -"Aunt Effie is sick," Little Child was telling Mis' Toplady; "she is -sick from her hair to her slippers." - -I had a plan for Little Child and for us all; that after supper she -should have leaves in her hair and on her shoulders and should dance on -the singing stone in the river. And Miggy, whose shy independence is now -become all shyness, was in the house, weaving the leaves, and had not -yet appeared at her party at all. - -Then one of those charming things happened which surely have a kind of -life of their own and wake the hour to singing, as if an event were a -river stone, and more, round which all manner of faint music may be set -stirring. - -"Havin' a party when I ain't lookin'!" cried somebody. "My, my. I don't -b'lieve a word of what's name--this evolution business. I bet you -anything heaven is just _gettin' back_." - -And there was Calliope, in her round straw hat and tan ulster, who in -response to my card had hastened her imminent return. - -"Yes," she said, when we had greeted her and put her in a chair under -the mulberry tree, "my relation got well. At least, she ain't sick -enough to be cross, so 'most anybody could take care of her now." - -Calliope laughed and leaned back and shut her eyes. - -"Land, land," she said, "I got so much to tell you about I don't know -where to begin. It's all about one thing, too--somethin' I've found -out." - -Mis' Amanda Toplady drew a great breath and let fall her work and looked -round at us all. - -"Goodness," she said, "ain't it comfortable--us all settin' here -together, nobody's leg broke, nobody's house on fire, nor none of us -dead?" - -"'Us all settin' here together,'" Calliope repeated, suddenly grave -amid our laughter, "that's part of what I'm comin' to. I wonder," she -said to us, "how you folks have always thought of the City? Up till I -went there to stay this while I always thought of it as--well, as the -City an' not so much as folks at all. The City always meant to me big -crowds on the streets--hurryin', hurryin', eatin', eatin', and not -payin' much attention to anything. One whole batch of 'em I knew was -poor an' lookin' in bakery windows. One whole batch of 'em I knew was -rich an' sayin' there has to be these distinctions. And some more I knew -was good--I always see 'em, like a pretty lady, stoopin' over, givin'. -And some more I knew was wicked an' I always thought of them climbin' in -windows. And then there was the little bit o' batch that knows the -things I want to know an' talks like I'd like to talk an' that I'd -wanted an' wanted to go up to the City an' get with. - -"Well, then I went. An' the first thing, I see my relative wa'n't rich -nor poor nor bad nor good nor--the way I mean. Nor her friends that come -to see her, they wan't either. The ones I took for rich talked economy, -an' the ones I thought was poor spent money, an' the good ones gossiped, -an' they all jabbered about music and pictures that I thought you -couldn't talk about unless you knew the 'way-inside-o'-things, like -they didn't know. The kinds seemed all mixed up, and all of 'em far away -an' formal, like--oh, like the books in a library when you can't think -up one to draw out. I couldn't seem to get near to anything. - -"Then one night I done what I'd always wanted to do. I took two dollars -an' went to the theatre alone an' got me a seat. I put on the best I -had, an' still I didn't feel like I was one of 'em, nor one of much of -anybody. The folks on the car wasn't the way I meant, an' I felt mad at -'em for bein' differ'nt. There was a smilin' young fellow, all dressed -black an' expensive, an' I thought: 'Put you side of Peter Cary an' -there wouldn't be anybody there but Peter.' And when I got inside the -theatre, it was just the same: one awful collection of dressed-up hair -an' dressed-down backs an' everybody smilin' at somebody that wasn't me -and all seemin' so sure of themselves. Specially the woman in front of -me, but I guess it always is specially the woman in front of you. She -was flammed out abundant. She had trimmin's in unexpected places, an' a -good many colours took to do it, an' a cute little chatter to match. It -come to me that she was more than different from me: she was the -_otherest_ a person can be. An' I felt glad when the curtain went up. - -"Well, sir," Calliope said, "it was a silly little play--all about -nothin' that you could lay much speech to. But oh, they was somethin' -in it that made you get down on your hands and knees in your own heart -and look around in it, and _look_. They was an old lady and a young -mother and a child and a man and a girl--well, that don't sound like -much special, does it? And that's just it: it wasn't much special, but -yet it was all of everything. It made 'em laugh, it made 'em cry, it -made _me_ laugh and cry till I was ashamed and glad and grateful. And -when the lights come up at the end, I felt like I was kind of the mother -to everything, an' I wanted to pick it up an' carry it off an' keep care -of it. And it come over me all of a sudden how the old lady and the -young mother an' man an' girl, man an' girl, _man an' girl_ was right -there in the theatre, near me, over an' over again; an' there I'd been -feelin' mad at 'em for seemin' far off. But they wasn't far off. They'd -been laughin' and cryin', too, an' they knew, just like I knew, what was -what in the world. My, my. If it'd been Friendship I'd have gone from -house to house all the way home, shakin' hands. An' as it was, I just -_had_ to speak to somebody. An' just then I see the flammed-out woman in -front of me, that her collar had come open a little wee bit up top--not -to notice even, but it give me an excuse. And I leaned right over to her -and I says with all the sympathy in me:-- - -"'Ma'am, your neck is peepin'." - -"She looked around su'prised and then she smiled--smiled 'most into -laughin'. And she thanked me sweet as a friend an' nodded with it, an' I -thought: 'Why, my land, you may have a baby home.' I never had thought -of that. An' then I begun lookin' at folks an' lookin'. An' movin' up -the aisles, there wasn't just a theatre-lettin'-out. They was _folks_. -And all over each one was the good little things they'd begun -rememberin' now that the play was over, or the hurt things that had come -back onto 'em again.... An' out on the street it was the same. The folks -had all got alive and was waitin' for me to feel friendly to 'em. -_Friendly._ The young fellows in the cars was lovers, just like Peter. -An' everybody was just like me, or anyhow more alike than differ'nt; and -just like Friendship, only mebbe pronouncin' their words some differ'nt -an' knowin' more kinds of things to eat. It seems to me now I could go -anywhere an' find folks to be nice to. I don't love Friendship Village -any the less, but I love more things the same way. Everything, 'most. -An' I tell you I'm glad I didn't die before I found it out--that we're -all one batch. _Do_ you see what I mean--deep down inside what I say?" -Calliope cried. "Does it sound like anything to you?" - -To whom should it sound like "anything" if not to us of Friendship -Village? We know. - -"Honestly," said that great Mis' Amanda Toplady, trying to wipe her -eyes on her crochet work, "Whoever God is, I don't believe He wants to -keep it a secret. He's always 'most lettin' us know. I 'most knew Who He -is right then, while Calliope was talkin'." - -"I 'most knew Who He is right then, while Calliope was talkin'." ... I -said the words over while the men crossed the lawn, all arriving -together in order to lighten the trial of guesthood: Dear Doctor June, -little Timothy Toplady, Eppleby Holcomb, Postmaster Sykes, Photographer -Jimmie Sturgis, Peter, and Timothy, Jr., and the others. Liva Vesey was -already in the kitchen with Miggy and Elfa, and I knew that, somewhere -invisible, Nicholas Moor was hovering, waiting to help dish the -ice-cream. When the little tables, each with its bright, strewn -nasturtiums, were set about the lawn, Miggy reluctantly appeared from -the kitchen. She was in the white frock which she herself had made, and -she was, as I have said, a new Miggy, not less merry or less elfin, but -infinitely more human. It was charming, I thought, to see how she and -Peter, far from tensely avoiding each other, went straight to each -other's side. With them at table were Liva and Timothy, Jr., now meeting -each other's eyes as simply as if eyes were for this purpose. - -"I 'most knew Who He is right then, while Calliope was talkin'" ... I -thought again as we stood in our places and Doctor June lifted his hands -to the summer sky as if He were there, too. - -"Father," he said, "bless these young people who are going to belong to -each other--Thou knowest their names and so do we. Bless our being -together now in their honour, and be Thou in our midst. And bless our -being together always. Amen." - -And that was the announcement of Miggy's and Peter's betrothal, at their -Engagement Party. - -Little Child, who was sitting beside Calliope, leaned toward her. - -"How long will it take for God to know," she asked, "after Doctor June -sent it up?" - -Calliope put her arm about her and told her. - -"Then did He get here since Doctor June invited Him?" Little Child -asked. - -"You think, 'way deep inside your head, an' see if He isn't here," I -heard Calliope say. - -Little Child shut her eyes tightly, and though she did open them briefly -to see what was on the plate which they set before her, I think that she -found the truth. - -"I 'most know," she said presently. "Pretty near I know He is. I guess -I'm too little to be sure nor certain. When I'm big will I know sure?" - -"Yes," Calliope answered, "then you'll know sure." - -"I 'most knew Who He is while Calliope was talkin'" ... I said over once -more. And suddenly in the words and in the homely talk and in the happy -comradeship I think that I slipped between the seeing and the knowing, -and for a moment stood very near to the Custodian--Himself. The -Custodian Who is in us all, Who speaks, now as you, now as I, most -clearly in our human fellowship, in our widest kinship, in the universal -_togetherness_. Truly, it is not as my neighbour once said, for I think -that God has many and many to "neighbour with," if only we would be -neighbours. - -Presently, as if it knew that it belonged there, the sunset came, a -thing of wings and doors ajar. Then Miggy fastened the leaves in Little -Child's hair and led her down to dance on the broad, flat stone which is -an instrument of music. Above the friendly murmur of the shallows the -little elf child seemed beckoning to us others of the human voices on -the shore. And in that fair light it was as if the river were some clear -highway, leading from Friendship Village to Splendour Town, where -together we might all find our way. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Friendship Village Love Stories, by Zona Gale - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 54676-8.txt or 54676-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/6/7/54676/ - -Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Friendship Village Love Stories - -Author: Zona Gale - -Release Date: May 7, 2017 [EBook #54676] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES *** - - - - -Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="center"><a name="cover.jpg" id="cover.jpg"></a><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p> - -<h1>FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE<br />LOVE STORIES</h1> - -<p class="bold space-above">BY</p> - -<p class="bold2">ZONA GALE</p> - -<p class="bold">AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "THE LOVES<br />OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE," ETC.</p> - -<p class="bold space-above">NEW YORK<br />GROSSET & DUNLAP<br />PUBLISHERS</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1909,<br /> -<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br />——<br /> -Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1909. Reprinted<br />November, 1909; April, 1912.</p> - -<p class="center space-above"><i>Norwood Press<br /> -J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br />Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> - -<p class="center">To<br />MY FRIENDS IN PORTAGE<br />WISCONSIN</p> - -<hr /> - -<blockquote><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p><p>Certain of the following chapters have appeared in <i>Everybody's</i>, <i>The -American Magazine</i>, <i>The Outlook</i>, <i>The Woman's Home Companion</i>, and -<i>The Delineator</i>. Thanks are due to the editors for their courteous -permission to reprint these chapters, and to Messrs. Harper Brothers for -permission to reprint the sonnet in Chapter XI.</p></blockquote> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table summary="CONTENTS"> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="left"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td> - <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>I.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Open Arms</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>II.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Inside June</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>III.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Miggy</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>IV.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Splendour Town</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>V.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Different</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>VI.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">The Fond Forenoon</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>VII.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Afraid</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>VIII.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">The Java Entertainment</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>IX.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">The Cold Shoulder</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>X.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Evening Dress</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XI.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Undern</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XII.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">The Way the World Is</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XIII.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Householdry</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XIV.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Postmarks</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XV.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Peter</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XVI.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">The New Village</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XVII.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">Adoption</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XVIII.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">At Peter's House</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XIX.</td> - <td class="left"> <span class="smcap">The Custodian</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">Friendship Village Love Stories</p> - -<h2><span>I</span> <span class="smaller">OPEN ARMS</span></h2> - -<p>Although it is June, the Little Child about whom I shall sometimes write -in these pages this morning brought me a few violets. June violets. They -sound unconvincing and even sentimental. However, here they are in their -vase; and they are all white but one.</p> - -<p>"Only one blue one," said Little Child, regretfully; "May must be 'most -dead by mistake."</p> - -<p>"Don't the months die as soon as they go away?" I asked her, and a -little shocked line troubled her forehead.</p> - -<p>"Oh, no," she said; "they never die at all. They wait and show the next -months how."</p> - -<p>So this year's May is showing June how. As if one should have a kind of -pre-self, who kept on, after one's birth, and told one what to live and -what not to live. I wish that I had had a pre-self and that it had kept -on with me to show me how. It is what one's mother is, only one is so -occupied in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> being one's born self that one thinks of her worshipfully -as one's mother instead. But this young June seems to be chiefly May, -and I am glad: for of all the months, May is to me most nearly the -essence of time to be. In May I have always an impulse to date my -letters "To-morrow," for all the enchantment of the usual future seems -come upon me. The other months are richly themselves, but May is all the -great premonitory zest come true; it is expectation come alive; it is -the Then made Now. Conservatively, however, I date my May letters merely -"To-morrow," and it is pleasant to find a conservative estimate which no -one is likely to exceed. For I own that though there is a conservatism -which is now wholly forbidden to me, yet I continue to take in it a -sensuous, stolen pleasure, such as I take in certain ceremonies; and I -know that if I were wholly pagan, extreme conservatism would be my chief -indulgence.</p> - -<p>This yet-May morning, then, I have been down in the village, gardening -about the streets. My sort of gardening. As in spring another looks -along the wall for her risen phlox and valley-lilies, or for the -upthrust of the annuals, so after my year's absence I peered round this -wall and that for faces and things in the renascence of recognition, or -in the pleasant importance of having just been born. Many a gate and -façade and well-house, of which in my absence I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> have not thought even -once, has not changed a whit in consequence. And when changes have come, -they have done so with the prettiest preening air of accomplishment: "We -too," they say, "have not been idle."</p> - -<p>Thus the streets came unrolling to meet me and to show me their -treasures: my neighbour's new screened-in porch "with a round extension -so to see folks pass on the cross street"; in the house in which I am to -live a former blank parlour wall gravely regarding me with a magnificent -new plate glass eye; Daphne Street, hitherto a way of sand, now become a -thing of proud macadam; the corner catalpas old enough to bloom; a white -frame cottage rising like a domestic Venus from a once vacant lot of -foam-green "Timothy"; a veranda window-box acquired, like a bright -bow-knot at its house's throat; and, farther on, the Herons' freshly -laid cement sidewalk, a flying heron stamped on every block. I fancy -they will have done that with the wooden heron knocker which in the -kitchen their grandfather Heron himself carved on sleepless nights. -("Six hundred and twenty hours of Grandpa Heron's life hanging on our -front door," his son's wife said; "I declare I feel like that bird could -just about lay.") To see all these venturesome innovations, these -obscure and pleasant substitutions, is to be greeted by the very annuals -of this little garden as a real <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>gardener in green lore might be -signalled, here by a trembling of new purple and there by a yellow -marching line of little volunteers.</p> - -<p>I do not miss from their places many friends. In this house and that I -find a new family domiciled and to be divined by the subtle changes -which no old tenant would ever have made: the woodpile in an -unaccustomed place, the side shed door disused and strung for vines, a -wagon now kept by a north and south space once sacred to the sweet-pea -trench. Here a building partly ruined by fire shows grim, returned to -the inarticulate, not evidently to be rebuilt, but to be accepted, like -any death. But these variations are the exception, and only one -variation is the rule, and against that one I have in me some special -heritage of burning. I mean the felling of the village trees. We have -been used wantonly to sacrifice to the base and the trivial, trees -already stored with years of symmetry when we of these Midlands were the -intruders and not they—and I own that for me the time has never wholly -passed. They disturb the bricks in our walks, they dishevel our lawns -with twigs, they rot the shingles on our barns. It has seemed to occur -to almost nobody to pull down his barn instead. But of late we, too, are -beginning to discern, so that when in the laying of a sidewalk we meet a -tree who was there before we were anywhere at all, though we may not -yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> recognize the hamadryad, we do sacrifice to her our love of a -straight line, and our votive offering is to give the tree the -walk—such a slight swerving is all the deference she asks!—and in -return she blesses us with balms and odours.... For me these signs of -our mellowing are more delightful to experience than might be the -already-made quietudes of a nation of effected and distinguished -standards. I have even been pleased when we permit ourselves an -elemental gesture, though I personally would prefer not to be the one to -have made the gesture. And this is my solace when with some -inquisitioner I unsuccessfully intercede for a friend of mine—an -isolated silver cottonwood, or a royally skirted hemlock: verily, I say, -it was so that we did here in the old days when there were forests to -conquer, and this good inquisitioner has tree-taking in his blood as he -has his genius for toil. And I try not to remember that if in America we -had had plane trees, we should almost certainly have cut them into -cabins.... But this morning even the trees that I missed could not make -me sad. No, nor even the white crape and the bunch of garden flowers -hanging on a street door which I passed. All these were as if something -elementary had happened, needless wounds, it might be, on the plan of -things, contortions which science has not yet bred away, but, as truly -as the natural death from age, eloquent of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the cosmic persuading to -shape in which the nations of quietude and we of strivings are all in -fellowship.</p> - -<p>In fellowship! I think that in this simple basic emotion lies my joy in -living in this, my village. Here, this year long, folk have been -adventuring together, knowing the details of one another's lives, -striving a little but companioning far more than striving, kindling to -one another's interests instead of practising the faint morality of mere -civility; and I love them all—unless it be only that little Mrs. Oliver -Wheeler Johnson, newly come to Friendship; and perhaps my faint liking -for her arises from the fact that she has not yet lived here long enough -to be understood, as Friendship Village understands. The ways of these -primal tribal bonds are in my blood, for from my heart I felt what my -neighbour felt when she told me of the donation party which the whole -village has just given to Lyddy Ember:—</p> - -<p>"I declare," she said, "it wasn't so much the stuff they brought in, -though that was all elegant, but it was the <i>Togetherness</i> of it. I -couldn't get to sleep that night for thinkin' about God not havin' -anybody to neighbour with."</p> - -<p>It was no wonder, therefore, that when in the middle of Daphne Street my -neighbour met me this morning, for the first time since my return, and -held out her arms, I walked straight into them. Here is the secret, as -more of us know than have the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> wisdom to acknowledge: fellowship, -comradeship, kinship—call it what you will. My neighbour and I will -understand.</p> - -<p>"I heard you was here," my neighbour said—bless her, her voice -trembled. I suppose there never was such a compliment as that tremor of -her voice.</p> - -<p>I am afraid that I am not going to tell what else she said. But it was -all about our coming to Friendship Village to live; and that is a thing -which, as I feel about it, should be set to music and sung in the -wind—where Thoreau said that some apples are to be eaten. As for me, I -nodded at my neighbour, and could do no more than that—as is the custom -of mortals when they are face to face with these sorceries of Return and -Meeting and Being Together.</p> - -<p>I am not yet wonted to the sweetness of our coming to Friendship Village -to live, the Stranger and I. Here they still call him the Stranger; and -this summer, because of the busts and tablets which he must fashion in -many far places, so do I. Have I said that that Stranger of mine is a -sculptor? He is. But if anyone expects me to write about him, I tell you -that it is impossible. Save this: That since he came out of the mist one -morning on the Plank Road here in Friendship Village, we two have kept -house in the world, shared in the common welfare,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> toiled as we might -for the common good, observed the stars, and thanked God. And this: that -since that morning, it is as if Someone had picked us up and set us to -music and sung us to the universal piping. And we remember that once we -were only words, and that sometime we shall be whatever music is when it -is free of its body of sound, and for that time we strive. But I repeat -that these vagrant notes are not about this great Stranger, absent on -his quests of holy soul prisoned in this stone and that marble, nor yet -about our life together. Rather, I write about our Family, which is this -loved town of ours. For we have bought Oldmoxon House, and here, save -for what flights may be about and over-seas, we hope that we may tell -our days to their end.</p> - -<p>My neighbour had both my hands, there in the middle of Daphne Street, -and the white horse of the post-office store delivery wagon turned out -for us as if he knew.</p> - -<p>"If I'd thought of seeing you out so early I'd have put on my other -hat," my neighbour said, "but I'm doing up berries, an' I just run down -for some rubbers for my cans. Land, fruit-jar rubbers ain't what they -used to be, are they? One season an' they lay down life. I could jounce -up an' down I'm so glad to see you. I heard you'd been disappointed -gettin' somebody to help you with your writin'.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> I heard the girl that -was comin' to help you ain't comin' near."</p> - -<p>My secretary, it is true, has disappointed me, and she has done the -disappointing by telegraph. I had almost said, publicly by telegraph. -But I protest that I would rather an entire village should read my -telegrams and rush to the rescue, than that a whole city should care -almost nothing for me or my telegrams either. And if you please, I would -rather not have that telegram-reading criticised.</p> - -<p>"Well," said my neighbour, with simplicity, "I've got you one. She'll be -up to talk to you in a day or two—I saw to that. It's Miggy. She can -spell like the minister."</p> - -<p>I had never heard of Miggy, but I repeated her name with something of -that sense of the inescapable to which the finality of my neighbour -impressed me. As if I were to have said, "So, then, it is to be Miggy!" -Or was it something more than that? Perhaps it was that Miggy's hour and -mine had struck. At all events, I distinctly felt what I have come to -call the emotion of finality. I suppose that other people have it: that -occasional prophetic sense which, when a thing is to happen, expresses -this futurity not by words, but by a consciousness of—shall I -say?—brightness; a mental area of clearness; a quite definite physical -emotion of yes-ness. But if the thing will not happen this says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> itself -by a complementary apprehension of dim, down-sloping, vacant negation. I -have seldom known this divination to fail me—though I am chary of using -it lest I use it up! And then I do not always wish to know. But this -morning my emotion of finality prevailed upon me unaware: I <i>knew</i> that -it would be Miggy.</p> - -<p>"What a curious name," I said, in a manner of feebly fending off the -imminent; "<i>why</i> Miggy?" For it seemed to me one of those names instead -of which any other name would have done as well and perhaps better.</p> - -<p>"Her name is Margaret," my neighbour explained, "and her mother was a -real lady that come here from Off and that hard work killed her because -she <i>was</i> a lady. The father was bound there shouldn't be any lady about -Miggy, but he couldn't seem to help himself. Margaret was her mother's -name and so he shaved it and shrunk it and strained it down to Miggy. -'No frills for nobody,' was his motto, up to his death. Miggy and her -little sister lives with her old Aunt Effie that dress-makes real French -but not enough to keep 'em alive on. Miggy does odd jobs around. So when -I heard about your needin' somebody, I says to myself, 'Miggy!'—just -like I've said it to you."</p> - -<p>It was not the name, as a name, which I would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> have said could be -uppermost in my mind as I walked on that street of June—that May was -helping to make fair. And I was annoyed to have the peace of my return -so soon invaded. I fell wondering if I could not get on, as I usually -do, with no one to bother. I have never wanted a helper at all if I -could avoid it, and I have never, never wanted a helper with a -personality. A personality among my strewn papers puts me in a fever of -embarrassment and misery. Once such an one said to me in the midst of a -chapter: "Madame, I'd like to ask you a question. What do <i>you</i> think of -your hero?" In an utter rout of confusion I owned that I thought very -badly of him, indeed; but I did not add the truth, that she had -effectually drugged him and disabled me for at least that day. My taste -in helpers is for one colourless, noiseless, above all intonationless, -usually speechless, and always without curiosity—some one, save for the -tips of her trained fingers, negligible. As all this does sad violence -to my democratic passions, I usually prefer my negligible self. So the -idea of a Miggy terrified me, and I said to myself that I would not have -one about. As I knew the village, she was not of it. She was not a part -of my gardening. She was no proper annual. She was no doubt merely a -showy little seedling, chance sown in the village.... But all the time, -moving within me, was that serene area of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> brightness, that clear -certainty that, do what I could, it would still be Miggy.</p> - -<p>... It is through this faint soothsaying, this conception which is -partly of sight and partly of feeling, that some understanding may be -won of the orchestration of the senses. I am always telling myself that -if I could touch at that fluent line where the senses merge, I should -occasionally find there that silent Custodian who is myself. I think, -because emotion is so noble, that the Custodian must sometimes visit -this line where the barrier between her and me is so frail. Her presence -seems possible to me only for a moment, only, it may be, for the -fraction of a second in which I catch the romance, the <i>idea</i> of -something old and long familiar. And when this happens, I say: She has -just been there, between the seeing and the feeling, or between the -seeing and the knowing. Often I am sure that I have barely missed her. -But I am never quick enough to let her know....</p> - -<p>When I finished my walk and stepped under the poplars before my gate, I -caught a faint exclamation. It was that Little Child, who had been -waiting for me on my doorstep and came running to meet me and bring me -the violets. When she saw me, she said, "Oh!" quickly and sweetly in her -throat, and, as I stood still to taste the delight of having her run -toward me, I felt very sorry for every one who has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> not heard that -involuntary "Oh!" of a child at one's coming. Little Child and I have -met only once before, and that early this morning, at large, on the -village street, as spirits met in air, with no background of names nor -auxiliary of exchange of names; but we had some talk which for me -touched on eternal truth and for her savoured of story-telling; and we -are friends. So now when she gave me the violets and explained to me Who -was showing June how, I accepted this fair perception of the motherhood -of May, this childish discernment of the familyhood of things, and,</p> - -<p>"Will you come some day soon to have another story?" I asked her.</p> - -<p>"Prob'ly I can," said Little Child. "I'll ask Miggy."</p> - -<p>"Miggy! But is it your Miggy, too?" I demanded.</p> - -<p>"It's my sister," said Little Child, nodding.</p> - -<p>I thought that the concreteness of her reply to my ill-defined query was -almost as if she remembered how to understand without words. You would -think that children would need to have things said out, but they are -evidently closer to a more excellent way.</p> - -<p>So when I entered the house just now, I brought in with me a kind of -premonitory Miggy, one of those ghostly, anticipatory births which we -are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>constantly giving to those whom we have not met. As if every one -had for us a way of life without the formality of being seen. As if we -are a big, near family whether we want to be so or not. Verily, it is -not only May and June, or Little Child and Miggy, who are found -unexpectedly to be related; it is the whole world, it seems, and he is -wise who quickens to many kinships. I like to think of the comrade -company that already I have found here: June and Little Child and -Miggy-to-be and my neighbour and Daphne Street and the remembered faces -of the village and the hamadryads. I think that I include the very -herons in the cement sidewalk. Like a kind of perpetual gift it is, this -which my neighbour called <i>Togetherness</i>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>II</span> <span class="smaller">INSIDE JUNE</span></h2> - -<p><i>The difficulty with a June day is that you can never get near enough to -it. This month comes within few houses, and if you want it you must go -out to it. When you are within doors, knowing that out-of-doors it is -June, the urge to be out there with it is resistless. But though you -wade in green, steep in sun, breast wind, and glory in them all, still -the day itself eludes you. It would seem, in June, that there should be -a specific for the malady of being oneself, so that one might get to be -a June day outright. However, if one were oneself more and more, might -not one finally become a June day?...</i></p> - -<p>Or something of this sort. I am quoting, as nearly as may be, from the -Book of Our Youth, your youth and mine. Always the Book of Youth will -open at a page like this. And occasionally it is as if we turned back -and read there and made a path right away through the page.</p> - -<p>This morning a rose-breasted grosbeak wakened me, singing on a bough of -box-elder so close to my window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> that the splash of rose on his throat -almost startled me. It was as if I ought not to have been looking. And -to turn away from out-of-doors was like leaving some one who was saying -something. But as soon as I stepped into the day I perceived my old -problem: <i>The difficulty with a June day is that you can never get near -enough</i>.</p> - -<p>I stood for a little at the front gate trying soberly to solve the -matter—or I stood where the front gate should have been; for in our -midland American villages we have few fences or hedges, and, alas, no -stone walls. Though undoubtedly this lack comes from an insufficient -regard for privacy, yet this negative factor I am inclined to condone -for the sake of the positive motive. And this I conceive to be that we -are wistful of more ample occupation than is commonly contrived by our -fifty-feet village lots, and so we royally add to our "yards" the -sidewalk and the planting space and the road and as much of our -neighbour's lawn as our imagination can annex. There seems to me to be -in this a certain charming pathos; as it were, a survival in us of the -time when we had only to name broad lands our own and to stay upon them -in order to make them ours in very fact. And now it is as if this serene -pushing back of imaginary borders were in reality an appending, a kind -of spiritual taking up of a claim.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p><p>How to get nearer to June? I admit that it is a question of the veriest -idler. But what a delightful company of these questions one can -assemble. As, How to find one's way to a place that <i>is</i> the way it -seems Away Across a Meadow. How to meet enough people who hear what one -says in just the way that one means it. How to get back at will those -fugitive moments when one almost <i>knows</i> ... what it is all about. And -with this question the field of the idler becomes the field of the wise -man; and, indeed, if one idles properly—or rather, if the proper person -idles—the two fields are not always on opposite sides of the road. To -idle is by no means merely to do nothing. It is an avocation, a calling -away, nay, one should say, a piping away. To idle is to inhibit the body -and to let the spirit keep on. Not every one can idle. I know estimable -people who frequently relax, like chickens in the sun; but I know only a -few who use relaxation as a threshold and not as a goal, and who idle -until the hour yields its full blessing.</p> - -<p>I wondered if to idle at adventure might not be the way to June, so I -went out on the six o'clock street in somewhat the spirit in which -another might ride the greenwood. Almost immediately I had an encounter, -for I came on my neighbour in her garden. Not my neighbour who lives on -the other side of me, and who is a big and obvious deacon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> with a -family of a great many Light Gowns; but My Neighbour. She was watering -her garden. These water rules and regulations of the village are among -its spells. To look at the members of the water commission one would -never suspect them of romance. But if they have it not, why have they -named from five until nine o'clock the only morning hours when one may -use the city water for one's lawn and garden? I insist that it cannot be -a mere regard for the municipal resources, and that the commissioners -must see something of the romance of getting up before five o'clock to -drench one's garden, and are providing for the special educational value -of such a custom. Or, if I do not believe this, I wish very much that I -did, with the proper grounds.</p> - -<p>To tell the truth, however, I do not credit even my neighbour with -feeling the romance of the hour and of her occupation. She is a still -woman of more than forty, who does not feel a difference between her -flower and her vegetable gardens, but regards them both as a part of her -life in the kind of car-window indifference and complacency of certain -travellers. She raises foxgloves and parsley, and the sun shines over -all. I must note a strange impression which my neighbour gives me: she -has always for me an air of personal impermanence. I have the fancy, -amounting to a sensation, that she is where she is for just a moment, -and that she must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> rush back and be at it again. I do not know at what. -But whether I see her in church or at a festival, I have always all I -can do to resist saying to her, "How <i>did</i> you get away?" It was so that -she was watering her flowers; as if she were intending at any moment to -hurry off to get breakfast or put up the hammock or mend. And yet before -she did so she told me, who was a willing listener, a motion or two of -the spirit of the village.</p> - -<p>There is, I observe, a nicety of etiquette here, about the -Not-quite-news, Not-quite-gossip shared with strangers and -semi-strangers. The rules seem to be:—</p> - -<p>Strangers shall be told only the pleasant occurrences and conditions.</p> - -<p>Half strangers may discuss the unpleasant matters which they themselves -have somehow heard, but only pleasant matters may be added by accretion.</p> - -<p>The rest of society may say whatever it "has a mind." But this mind, as -I believe, is not harsh, since nobody ever gossips except to people who -gossip back.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady told me last night that Calliope Marsh is coming home for -the Java entertainment, next week," my neighbour imparted first. And -this was the best news that she could have given me.</p> - -<p>It has been a great regret to me that this summer Calliope is not in the -village. She has gone to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> city to nurse some distant kinswoman more -lonely than she, and until ill-health came, long forgetful of Calliope. -But she is to come back now and again, to this and to that, for the -village interests are all her own. I have never known any one in whom -the tribal sense is so persistently alive as in Calliope.</p> - -<p>I asked my neighbour what this Java entertainment would be, which was to -give back Calliope, and she looked her amazement that I did not know. It -would be, it appeared, one of those great fairs which the missionary -society is always projecting and carrying magnificently forward.</p> - -<p>"It's awful feet-aching work," said my neighbour, reflectively; "but -honestly, Calliope seems to like it. I donno but I do, too. The Sodality -meant to have one when they set out to pave Daphne Street, but it turned -out it wasn't needed. Well, big affairs like that makes it seem as if -we'd been born into the whole world and not just into Friendship -Village."</p> - -<p>My neighbour told me that a new public library had been opened in a -corner of the post-office store, and that "a great crowd" was drawing -books, though for this she herself cannot vouch, since the library is -only open Saturday evenings, and "Saturday," she says with decision, "is -a bad night." It is, in fact, I note, very difficult to find a free -night in the village, save only Tuesday. Monday, because of its obvious -duties and incident fatigue, is as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>impossible as Sunday; Wednesday is -club day; Thursday "is prayer-meeting"; Friday is sacred to church -suppers and entertainments and the Ladies' Aid Society; and Saturday is -invariably denominated a bad night and omitted without question. We are -remote from society, but Tuesday is literally our only free evening.</p> - -<p>"Of course it won't be the same with you about books," my neighbour -admits. "You can send your girl down to get a book for you. But I have -to be home to get out the clean clothes. How's your girl going to like -the country?" she asked.</p> - -<p>I am to have here in the village, I find, many a rebuke for habits of -mine which lag behind my theories. For though I try to solve my share of -a tragic question by giving to my Swedish maid, Elfa, the self-respect -and the privilege suited to a human being dependent on me, together with -ways of comfort and some leisure, yet I find the homely customs of the -place to have accomplished more than my careful system. And though, when -I took her from town I scrupulously added to the earnings of my little -maid, I confess that it had not occurred to me to wonder whether or not -she would like Friendship Village. We seem so weary-far from the -conditions which we so facilely conceive. Especially, I seem far. I am -afraid that I engaged Elfa in the first place with less attention to her -economic fitness than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> that she is so trim and still and wistful, with -such a peculiarly winning upward look; and that her name is Elfa. I told -my neighbour that I did not know yet, whether Elfa would like it here or -not; and for refuge I found fault with the worms on the rose bushes. -Also I made a note in my head to ask Elfa how she likes the country. But -the spirit of a thing is flown when you make a note of it in your head. -How does Elfa like the town, for that matter? I never have asked her -this, either.</p> - -<p>"She'll be getting married on your hands, anyway," my neighbour -observed; "the ladies here say that's one trouble with trying to keep a -hired girl. They <i>will</i> get married. But I say, let 'em."</p> - -<p>At least here is a matter in which my theory, like that of my -neighbour's, outruns those of certain folk of both town and village. For -I myself have heard women complain of their servants marrying and -establishing families, and deplore this shortsightedness in not staying -where there is "a good home, a nice room, plenty to eat, and all the -flat pieces sent to the laundry."</p> - -<p>"Speaking of books," said my neighbour, "have you seen Nicholas Moor?"</p> - -<p>"I see almost no new books," I told her guiltily.</p> - -<p>"Me either," she said; "I don't mean he's a book. He's a boy. Nicholas -Moor—that does a little writin' himself? I guess you will see him. -He'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> be bringin' some of his writing up to show you. He took some to -the new school principal, I heard, and to the invalid that was here from -the city. He seems to be sort of lonesome, though he <i>has</i> got a good -position. He's interested in celluloid and he rings the Catholic bell. -Nicholas must be near thirty, but he hasn't even showed any signs."</p> - -<p>"Signs?" I hazarded.</p> - -<p>"Of being in love," she says simply. And I have pondered pleasantly on -this significant ellipsis of hers which takes serenely for granted the -basic business of the world. Her elision reminds me of the delicate -animism of the Japanese which says, "When the rice pot speaks with a -human voice, then the demon's name is Kanjo." One can appraise a race or -an individual by the class of things which speech takes for granted, -love or a demon or whatever it be.</p> - -<p>And apropos of "showing signs," do I remember Liva Vesey and Timothy -Toplady, Jr.? I am forced to confess that I remember neither. I recall, -to be sure, that the Topladys had a son, but I had thought of him as a -kind of qualifying clause and it is difficult to conceive of him as the -subject of a new sentence. When I hear of Liva Vesey I get her confused -with a pink gingham apron and a pail of buttermilk which used sometimes -to pass my house with Liva combined. Fancy that pink gingham and that -pail becoming a person! And my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>neighbour tells me that the Qualifying -Clause and the Pink Gingham are "keeping company," and perhaps are to -determine the cut of indeterminate clauses and aprons, world without -end.</p> - -<p>"The young folks <i>will</i> couple off," says my neighbour; "and," she adds, -in a manner of spontaneous impression, "<i>I</i> think it's nice. And it's -nice for the whole family, too. I've seen families that wouldn't ever -have looked at each other come to be real friends and able to see the -angels in each other just by the young folks pairing off. This whole -town's married crisscross and kittering, family into family. I like it. -It kind o' binds the soil."</p> - -<p>My neighbour told me of other matters current in the village, pleasant -commonplaces having for her the living spirit which the commonplace -holds in hostage. ("I'm breathing," Little Child soberly announced to me -that first day of our acquaintance. And I wonder why I smiled?) My -neighbour slowly crossed her garden and I followed on the walk—these -informal colloquies of no mean length are perfectly usual in the village -and they do not carry the necessity for an invitation within the house -or the implication of a call. The relations of hostess and guest seem -simply to be suspended, and we talk with the freedom of spirits met in -air. Is this not in its way prophetic of the time when we shall meet, -burdened of no conventions or upholstery or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> perhaps even words, and -there talk with the very freedom of villagers? Meanwhile I am content -with conventions, and passive amid upholstery. But I do catch myself -looking forward.</p> - -<p>Suddenly my neighbour turned to me with such a startled, inquiring -manner that I sent my attention out as at an alarm to see what she -meant. And then I heard what I had not before noted: a thin, wavering -line of singing, that had begun in the street beyond our houses, and now -floated inconsequently to us, lifting, dipping, wandering. I could even -hear the absurd words.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"<i>My</i> Mary Anna Mary, what you mean I <i>never</i> know.</div> -<div>You don't make me merry, very, but you make me sorry, oh—"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>the "oh" prolonged, undulatory, exploring the air.</p> - -<p>To say something was like interrupting my neighbour's expression; so I -waited, and,</p> - -<p>"It's old Cary," she explained briefly. "When he does that it's like -something hurts you, ain't it?"</p> - -<p>I thought that this would be no one of my acquaintance, and I said so, -but tentatively, lest I should be forgetting some inherent figure of the -village.</p> - -<p>"He's come here in the year," she explained—and, save about the obvious -import of old Cary's maudlin song, she maintained that fine, tribal -reticence of hers. "Except for the drinking," she even said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> "he seems -to be a quiet, nice man. But it's a shame—for Peter's sake. Peter -Cary," she added, like a challenge, "is the brainiest young man in -<i>this</i> town, say what you want."</p> - -<p>On which she told me something of this young superintendent of the -canning factory who has "tried it in Nebraska," and could not bear to -leave his father here, "this way," and has just returned. "He works -hard, and plays the violin, and is making a man of himself generally," -she told me; "Don't miss him." And I have promised that I will try not -to miss Peter Cary.</p> - -<p>"They live out towards the cemetery way," she added, "him and his -father, all alone. Peter'll be along by here in a minute on his way to -work—it's most quarter to. I set my husband down to his breakfast and -got up his lunch before I come out—I don't have my breakfast till the -men folks get out of the way."</p> - -<p>I never cease to marvel at these splendid capabilities which prepare -breakfasts, put up lunches, turn the attention to the garden, and all, -so to speak, with the left hand; ready at any moment to enter upon the -real business of life—to minister to the sick or bury the dead, or -conduct a town meeting or a church supper or a birth. They have a kind -of goddess-like competence, these women. At any of these offices they -arrive, lacking the cloud, it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> true, but magnificently equipped to -settle the occasion. In crises of, say, deafness, they will clap a hot -pancake on a friend's ear with an Æsculapian <i>savoir faire</i>, for their -efficiencies combine those of lost generations with all that they hear -of in this, in an open-minded eclecticism. With Puritans and foresters -and courtiers in our blood, who knows but that we have, too, the -lingering ichor of gods and goddesses? Oh—"<i>don't you wish you had</i>?" -What a charming peculiarity it would be to be descended from a state of -immortality as well as to be preparing for it, nay, even now to be -entered upon it!</p> - -<p>In a few moments after that piteous, fuddled song had died away on the -other street, Peter Cary came by my neighbour's house. He was a -splendid, muscular figure in a neutral, belted shirt and a hat battered -quite to college exactions, though I am sure that Peter did not know -that. I could well believe that he was making a man of himself. I have -temerity to say that this boy superintendent of a canning factory looked -as, in another milieu, Shelley might have looked, but so it was. It was -not the first time that I have seen in such an one the look, the eyes -with the vision and the shadow. I have seen it in the face of a man who -stood on a step-ladder, papering a wall; I have seen it in a mason who -looked up from the foundation that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>mortared; I have seen it often -and often in the faces of men who till the soil. I was not surprised to -know that Peter Cary "took" on the violin. The violin is a way out (for -that look in one's eyes), as, for Nicholas Moor, I have no doubt, is the -ringing of the Catholic bell. And I am not prepared to say that -celluloid, and wall-paper, and mortar, and meadows, and canneries,—run -under good conditions,—may not be a way out as well. At all events, the -look was still in Peter's face.</p> - -<p>Peter glanced briefly at my neighbour, running the risk of finding us -both looking at him, realized the worst, blushed a man's brown blush, -and nodded and smiled after he had looked away from us.</p> - -<p>"You see this grass?" said my neighbour. "Peter keeps it cut, my husband -don't get home till so late. We're awful fond of Peter."</p> - -<p>There is no more tender eulogy. And I would rather have that said of me -in the village than in any place I know. No grace of manner or dress or -mind can deceive anybody. They are fond of you or they are not, and I -would trust their reasons for either.</p> - -<p>My neighbour's husband came out the front door at that moment, and he -and Peter, without greeting, went on together. Her husband did not look -toward us, because, in the village, it seems not to be a husband and -wife ceremonial to say good-by in the morning. I often fall wondering -how it is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> other places. Is it possible that men in general go away -to work without the consciousness of family, of themselves as going -forth on the common quest? Is it possible that women see them go and are -so unaware of the wonder of material life that they do not instance it -in, at least, good-by? One would think that even the female bear in the -back of the cave must growl out something simple when her lord leaves -her in the hope of a good kill.</p> - -<p>And when the two men had turned down the brick walk, the maple leaves -making a come-and-go of shadows and sun-patterns on their backs, my -neighbour looked at me with a smile—or, say, with two-thirds of a -smile—as if her vote to smile were unanimous, but she were unwilling by -it to impart too much.</p> - -<p>"It's all Miggy with Peter," she said, as if she were mentioning a -symptom.</p> - -<p>"Miggy?" I said with interest—and found myself nodding to this new -relationship as to a new acquaintance. And I was once more struck with -the precision with which certain simple people and nearly all great -people discard the particularities and lay bare their truths. Could any -amount of elegant phrasing so reach the heart of the thing and show it -beating as did, "It's all Miggy with Peter"?</p> - -<p>"Yes," my neighbour told me, "it's been her with him ever since he come -here."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>Assuredly I thought the better of Miggy for this; and,</p> - -<p>"Is it all Peter with Miggy?" I inquired, with some eagerness.</p> - -<p>Land knows, my neighbour thought, and handed me the hose to hold while -she turned off the water at the hydrant. I remember that a young robin -tried to alight on the curving spray just as the water failed and -drooped.</p> - -<p>"I like to get a joke on a robin that way," said my neighbour, and -laughed out, in a kind of pleasant fellowship with jokes in general and -especially with robins. "It made Miggy's little sister laugh so the -other day when that happened," she added. Then she glanced over at me -with a look in her face that I have not seen there before.</p> - -<p>"Land," she said, "this is the time of day, after my husband goes off in -the morning, when I wish I had a little young thing, runnin' round. -<i>Now</i> almost more than at night. Well—I don't know; both times."</p> - -<p>I nodded, without saying anything, my eyes on a golden robin prospecting -vainly among the green mulberries. I wish that I were of those who know -what to say when a door is opened like this to some shut place.</p> - -<p>"Well," said my neighbour, "now I'll bake up the rest of the batter. -Want a pink?"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p><p>Thus tacitly excused—how true her instinct was, courteously to put the -three fringed pinks in my hand to palliate her leaving!—I have come -back to my house and my own breakfast.</p> - -<p>"Elfa," said I, first thing, "do you think you are going to like the -country?"</p> - -<p>My little maid turned to me with her winning upward look.</p> - -<p>"No'm," she shocked me by saying. And there was another door, opened -into another shut place; and I did not know what to say to that either.</p> - -<p>But I am near to my neighbour; and, in a manner to which Elfa's trimness -and wistfulness never have impressed me, near to Elfa herself, and I am -near, near to the village. As I left the outdoors just now, all the -street was alive: with men and girls going to work, women opening -windows, a wagon or two in from a Caledonia farm, a general, universal, -not to say cosmic air of activity and coffee. All the little houses, set -close together up and down the street, were like a friendly porch party, -on a long, narrow veranda, where folk sit knee to knee with an avenue -between for the ice-cream to be handed. All the little lawns and gardens -were disposed like soft green skirts, delicately embroidered, fragrant, -flowing.... As I looked, it seemed to me that I could hear the faint hum -of the village talk—in every house the intimate, revealing confidences -of the Family, quick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> with hope or anxiety or humour or passion, -animated by its common need to live. And along the street flooded the -sun, akin to the morning quickening in many a heart.</p> - -<p>The day has become charged for me with something besides daylight, -something which no less than daylight pervades, illumines, comes to meet -me at a thousand points. I wonder if it can be that, unaware, I did get -near to June?</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>III</span> <span class="smaller">MIGGY</span></h2> - -<p>I have never heard the chimes of Westminster cathedral, but when some -time they do sound for me I shall find in them something all my own. For -the old rosewood clock which has told time for me these many years is -possessed of a kind of intelligence because its maker gave to it the -Westminster chimes. Thus, though the clock must by patient ticking teach -the rhythm of duration until the secret monotony of rhythm is confessed, -it has also its high tides of life, rhythmic, too, and at every quarter -hour fills a kind of general creative office: four notes for the -quarter, eight for the half, twelve for the three-quarters, sixteen for -the hour, and then the deep Amen of the strokes. At twelve o'clock it -swells richly to its zenith of expression and almost says something -else. Through even the organ fulness of the cathedral bells I shall hear -the tingling melody of the rosewood clock chimes, for their sweet -incidence has been to me both matins and lullaby and often trembles -within my sleep. I have the clock always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> with me. It is a little -voice-friend, it is one of those half folk, like flowers and the wind -and an open fireplace and a piano, which are a frail, semi-born race, -wistful of complete life, but as yet only partly overlapping our own -sphere. These fascinate me almost as much as the articulate. That was -why, when my little maid Elfa had brought me the summons to-day, I stood -on the threshold and in some satisfaction watched Miggy, rapt before my -clock in its musical maximum of noon.</p> - -<p>Miggy is as thin as a bough, and her rather large head is swept by an -ungovernable lot of fine brown hair. Her face was turned from me, and -she was wearing a high-necked gingham apron faded to varying values of -brown and faint purple and violet of a quite surprising beauty. When the -last stroke ceased, she turned to me as if I had been there all the -time.</p> - -<p>"I wish I could hear it do that again," she said, standing where she had -stood, arms folded.</p> - -<p>"You will, perhaps, to-morrow," I answered.</p> - -<p>Truly, if it was to be Miggy, then she would hear the chimes to-morrow -and to-morrow; and as she turned, my emotion of finality increased. I -have never loved the tribe of the Headlongs, though I am very sorry for -any one who has not had with them an occasional innocent tribal junket; -but I hold that through our intuitions, we may become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> a kind of -apotheosis of the Headlongs. Who of us has not chosen a vase, a chair, a -rug, by some motive transcending taste, by the bidding of a -friendly-faithful monitor who, somewhere inside one, nodded a choice -which we obeyed? And yet a vase is a dead thing with no little seeking -tentacles that catch and cling, while in choosing the living it is that -one's friendly-faithful monitor is simply recognizing the monitor of the -other person. I, for one, am more and more willing to trust these two to -avow their own. For I think that this monitor is, perhaps, that silent -Custodian whom, if ever I can win through her elusiveness, I shall know -to be myself. As the years pass I trust her more and more. I find that -we like the same people, she and I! And instantly we both liked Miggy.</p> - -<p>Miggy stood regarding me intently.</p> - -<p>"I saw you go past the Brevy's yesterday, where the crape is on the -door," she observed; "I thought it was you."</p> - -<p>I wonder at the precision with which very little people and very big -people brush aside the minor conventions and do it in such ways that one -nature is never mistaken for the other.</p> - -<p>"The girl who died there was your friend, then?" I asked.</p> - -<p>"No," Miggy said; "I just knew her to speak to. And she didn't always -bother her head to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> speak to me. I just went in there yesterday morning -to get the feeling."</p> - -<p>"I beg your pardon. To get—what?" I asked.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Miggy, "you know when you look at a corpse you can always -sense your own breath better—like it was something alive inside you. -That's why I never miss seeing one if I can help. It's the only time I'm -real glad I'm living."</p> - -<p>As I motioned her to the chair and took my own, I felt a kind of -weariness. The neurotics, I do believe, are of us all the nearest to the -truth about things, but as I grow older I find myself getting to take a -surpassing comfort in the normal. Or rather, I am always willing to have -the normal thrust upon me, but my neurotics I wish to select for myself.</p> - -<p>"My neighbour tells me," I said merely, "that she thinks you should be -my secretary." (It is a big word for the office, but a little hill is -still a hill.)</p> - -<p>"I think so, too," said Miggy, simply, "I was afraid you wouldn't."</p> - -<p>"Have you ever been anybody's secretary?" I continued.</p> - -<p>"Never," said Miggy. "I never saw anybody before that had a secretary."</p> - -<p>"But something must have made her think you would do," I suggested. "And -what made you think so?"</p> - -<p>"Well," Miggy said, "she thinks so because she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> wants me to get ahead. -And I think so because I generally think I can do anything—except -mathematics. Has Secretary got any mathematics about it?"</p> - -<p>"Not my secretary work," I told her, reviewing these extraordinary -qualifications for duty; "except counting the words on a page. You could -do that?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, that!" said Miggy. "But if you told me to multiply two fractions -you'd never see me again, no matter how much I wanted to come back. -Calliope Marsh says she's always expecting to find some folks' heads -caved in on one side—same as red and blue balloons. If mine caved, it'd -be on the mathematics corner."</p> - -<p>I assured her that I never have a fraction in my house.</p> - -<p>"Then I'll come," said Miggy, simply.</p> - -<p>But immediately she leaned forward with a look of anxiety, and her face -was pointed and big-eyed, so that distress became a part of it.</p> - -<p>"Oh," she said, "I <i>forgot</i>. I meant to tell you first."</p> - -<p>"What is it? Can you not come, after all?" I inquired gravely.</p> - -<p>"I've got a drawback," said Miggy, soberly. "A man's in love with me."</p> - -<p>She linked her arms before her, a hand on either<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> shoulder—arms whose -slenderness amazes me, though at the wrist they taper and in their -extreme littleness are yet round. Because of this frailty she has a kind -of little girl look which at that moment curiously moved me.</p> - -<p>"Who told you that?" I asked abruptly.</p> - -<p>"About it being a drawback? Everybody 'most," said Miggy. "They all -laugh about us and act like it was a pity."</p> - -<p>For a moment I felt a kind of anger as I felt it once when a woman said -to me of a wife of many years whose first little child was coming, that -she was "in trouble." I own that,—save with my neighbour, and Calliope, -and a few more whom I love—here in the village I miss the simple good -breeding of the perception that nothing is nobler than the emotions, and -the simple good taste of taking seriously love among its young. Taking -it seriously, I say. Not, heaven forbid, taking it for granted, as do -the cities.</p> - -<p>"Other things being equal, I prefer folk who are in love," I told Miggy. -Though I observe that I instance a commercialization which I deplore by -not insisting on this secretarial qualification to anything like the -extent with which I insist on, say, spelling.</p> - -<p>Miggy nodded—three little nods which seemed to settle everything.</p> - -<p>"Then I'll come," she repeated. "Anyhow, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> isn't me that's in love at -all. It's Peter. But of course I have to have some of the blame."</p> - -<p>So! It was, then, not "all Peter with Miggy." Poor Peter. It must be a -terrific problem to be a Peter to such a Miggy. I must have looked "Poor -Peter," because the girl's face took on its first smile. Such a smile as -it was, brilliant, sparkling, occupying her features instead of -informing them.</p> - -<p>"He won't interfere much," she observed. "He's in the cannery all day -and then he practises violin and tinkers. I only see him one or two -evenings a week; and I never think of him at all."</p> - -<p>"As my secretary," said I, "you may make a mental note for me: remind me -that I wish sometime to meet Peter."</p> - -<p>"He'll be real pleased," said Miggy, "and real scared. Now about my -being your secretary: do I have to take down everything you do?"</p> - -<p>"My dear child!" I exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Don't I?" said Miggy. "Why, the Ladies' Aid has a secretary and she -takes down every single thing the society does. I thought that was being -one."</p> - -<p>I told her, as well as might be, what I should require of her—not by -now, I own, with any particularity of idea that I had a secretary, but -rather that I had surprisingly acquired a Miggy, who might be of use in -many a little mechanical task. She listened,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> and, when I had made an -end, gave her three little nods; but her face fell.</p> - -<p>"It's just doing as you're told," she summed it up with a sigh. -"Everything is, ain't it? I thought maybe Secretary was doing your -best."</p> - -<p>"But it is," I told her.</p> - -<p>"No," she said positively, "you can't do your best when you have to do -just exactly what you're told. Your <i>best</i> tells you how to do itself."</p> - -<p>At this naïve putting of the personal equation which should play so -powerful a part in the economics of toil I was minded to apologize for -intending to interfere with set tasks in Miggy's possible duties with -me. She had the truth, though: that the strong creative instinct is the -chief endowment, primal as breath; for on it depend both life and the -expression of life, the life of the race and the ultimate racial -utterance.</p> - -<p>We talked on for a little, Miggy, I observed, having that royal -indifference to time which, when it does not involve indifference to the -time of other people, I delightedly commend. For myself, I can never -understand why I should eat at one or sleep at eleven, if it is, as it -often is, <i>my</i> one and <i>my</i> eleven and nobody else's. For, as between -the clock and me alone, one and eleven and all other o'clocks are mine -and I am not theirs. But I have known men and women living in hotels who -would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> interrupt a sunset to go to dine, or wave away the stars in their -courses to go to sleep, merely because the hour had struck. It must be -in their blood, poor things, as descendants from the cell, to which time -and space were the only considerations.</p> - -<p>When Miggy was leaving, she paused on the threshold with her first hint -of shyness, a hint which I welcomed. I think that every one to whom I am -permanently drawn must have in his nature a phase of shyness, even of -unconquerable timidity.</p> - -<p>"If I shouldn't do things," Miggy said, "like you're used to having them -done—would you tell me? I know a few nice things to do and I do 'em. -But I'm always waking up in the night and thinking what a lot there must -be that I do wrong. So if I do 'em wrong would you mind not just -squirming and keeping still about 'em—but tell me?"</p> - -<p>"I'll tell you, child, if there is need," I promised her. And I caught -her smile—that faint, swift, solemn minute which sometimes reveals on a -face the childlike wistfulness of every one of us, under the mask, to -come as near as may be to the others.</p> - -<p>I own that when, just now, I turned from her leave-taking, I had that -infrequent sense of emptiness-in-the-room which I have had usually only -with those I love or with some rare being, all fire and spirit and idea, -who has flamed in my presence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> and died into departure. I cannot see why -we do not feel this sense of emptiness whenever we leave one another. -Would you not think that it would be so with us who live above the abyss -and below the uttermost spaces? It is not so, and there are those from -whose presence I long to be gone in a discomfort which is a kind of -orison of my soul to my body to hurry away. It is so that I long to be -gone from that little Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson, and of this I am -sorely ashamed. But I think that all such dissonance is merely a failure -in method, and that the spirit of this business of being is that we long -for one another to be near.</p> - -<p>Yes, in "this world of visible images" and patterns and schedules and -o'clocks, it is like stumbling on the true game to come on some one who -is not on any dial. And I fancy that Miggy is no o'clock. She is not -Dawn o'clock, because already she has lived so much; nor Noon o'clock, -because she is far from her high moment; nor is she Dusk o'clock, -because she is so poignantly alive. Rather, she is like the chimes of a -clock—which do not tell the time, but which almost say something else.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>IV</span> <span class="smaller">SPLENDOUR TOWN</span></h2> - -<p>Last night I went for a walk across the river, and Little Child went -with me to the other end of the bridge.</p> - -<p>I would have expected it to be impossible to come to the fourth chapter -and to have said nothing of the river. But the reason is quite clear: -for the setting of the stories of the village as I know them is -preëminently rambling streets and trim dooryards, and neat interiors -with tidy centre-tables. Nature is merely the necessary opera-house, not -the intimate setting. Nature's speech through the trees is most -curiously taken for granted as being trees alone, and she is, as I have -shown, sometimes cut off quite rudely in the midst of an elm or linden -sentence and curtly interrupted by a sidewalk. If a grove of trees is -allowed to remain in a north dooryard it is almost certainly because the -trees break the wind. Likewise, Nature's unfoldings in our turf and -clover we incline to regard as merely lawns, the results of seeds and -autumn fertilizing. Our vines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> are for purposes of shade, cheaper and -prettier than awnings or porch rollers. With our gardens, where our -"table vegetables" are grown, Nature is, I think, considered to have -little or nothing to do; and we openly pride ourselves on our early this -and our prodigious that, quite as when we cut a dress or build a -lean-to. We admit the rain or the sunny slope into partnership, but what -we recognize is weather rather than the mighty spirit of motherhood in -Nature. Indeed, our flower gardens, where are wrought such miracles of -poppies and pinks, are perhaps the only threshold on which we stand -abashed, as at the sound of a singing voice, a voice that sings -believing itself to be alone.</p> - -<p>These things being so, it is no wonder that the river has been for so -long no integral part of village life. The river is accounted a place to -fish, a place to bathe, a thing to cross to get to the other side, an -objective point—including the new iron bridge—to which to take guests. -But of the everyday life it is no proper part. On the contrary, the -other little river, which strikes out silverly for itself to eastward, -is quite a personality in the village, for on it is a fine fleet of -little launches with which folk take delight. But this river of mine to -the west is a thing of whims and eddies and shifting sand bars, and here -not many boats adventure. So the river is accepted as a kind of pleasant -hermit living on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> edge of the village. It draws few of us as Nature -can draw to herself. We know the water as a taste only and not yet as an -emotion. We say that we should enjoy going there if we had the time. I -know, I know. You see that we do not yet <i>live</i> the river, as an ancient -people would live their moor. But in our launches, our camping parties, -our flights to a little near lake for dinner, in a tent here and a swing -there, set to face riverward, there lies the thrill of process, and by -these things Nature is wooing us surely to her heart. Already the Pump -pasture has for us the quality of individuality, and we have picnics -there and speak of the pasture almost as of a host. Presently we shall -be companioned by all our calm stretches of meadow, our brown sand bars, -our Caledonia hills, our quiet lakes, our unnavigable river, as the -Northmen were fellowed of the sea.</p> - -<p>Little Child has at once a wilder and a tamer instinct. She has this -fellowship and the fellowship of more.</p> - -<p>"Where shall we go to-day?" I ask her, and she always says, "Far away -for a party"—in a combination, it would seem, of the blood of shepherd -kings with certain corpuscles of modernity. And when we are in the woods -she instances the same dual quality by, "Now let's sit down in a <i>roll</i> -and wait for a fairy, and be a society."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>We always go along the levee, Little Child and I, and I watch the hour -have its way with her, and I do not deny that occasionally I try to -improve on the hour by a tale of magic or by the pastime of teaching her -a lyric. I love to hear her pretty treble in "Who is Sylvia? What is -she?" and "She dwelt among th' untrodden ways," and "April, April, laugh -thy girlish laughter," and in Pippa's song. Last night, to be sure, the -lyrics rather gave way to some talk about the circus to be to-day, an -unwonted benison on the village. But even the reality of the circus -could not long keep Little Child from certain sweet vagaries, and I love -best to hear her in these fancyings.</p> - -<p>"Here," she said to me last night, "is her sponge."</p> - -<p>I had no need to ask whose sponge. We are always finding the fairy's -cast-off ornaments and articles of toilet. On occasion we have found her -crown, her comb, her scarf, her powder-puff, her cup, her plumed fan, -her parasol—a skirtful of fancies which next day Little Child has -brought to me in a shoe box for safe keeping so that "They" would not -throw the things away: that threatening "They" which overhangs -childhood, casting away its treasures, despoiling its fastnesses, laying -a ladder straight through a distinct and recognizable fairy ring in the -back yard. I can visualize that "They" as I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> believe it seems to some -children, something dark and beetling and menacing and imminent, less -like the Family than like Fate. Is it not sad that this precious idea of -the Family, to conserve which is one of our chief hopes, should so often -be made to appear to its youngest member in the general semblance of a -phalanx?</p> - -<p>We sat down for a little at the south terminal of the bridge, where a -steep bank and a few desperately clinging trees have arranged a little -shrine to the sunset. It was sunset then. All the way across the bridge -I had been watching against the gold the majestic or apathetic or sodden -profiles of the farmers jogging homeward on empty carts, not one face, -it had chanced, turned to the west even to utilize it to forecast the -weather. Such a procession I want to see painted upon a sovereign sky -and called "The Sunset." I want to have painted a giant carpenter of the -village as I once saw him, his great bare arms upholding a huge white -pillar, while blue figures hung above and set the acanthus capital. And -there is a picture, too, in the dull red of the butcher's cart halted in -snow while a tawny-jerseyed boy lifts high his yellow light to find a -parcel. Some day we shall see these things in their own surprising -values and fresco our village libraries with them—yes, and our drug -stores, too.</p> - -<p>The story that I told Little Child while we rested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> had the symbolism -which I often choose for her: that of a girl keeping a garden for the -coming of a child. All her life she has been making ready and nothing -has been badly done. In one green room of the garden she has put fair -thoughts, in another fair words, and in the innermost fastnesses of the -garden fair deeds. Here she has laid colour, there sweet sound, there -something magic which is a special kind of seeing. When the child comes, -these things will be first toys, then tools, then weapons. Sometimes the -old witch of the wood tries to blow into the garden a thistle of discord -or bubbles of delight to be followed, and these must be warded away. All -day the spirit of the child to come wanders through the garden, telling -the girl what to do here or here, keeping her from guile or from -idleness-without-dreams. She knows its presence and I think that she has -even named it. If it shall be a little girl, then it is to be Dagmar, -Mother of Day, or Dawn; but if a little boy, then it shall be called for -one whom she has not yet seen. Meanwhile, outside the door of the garden -many would speak with the girl. On these she looks, sometimes she even -leans from her casement, and once, it may be, she reaches out her hand, -ever so swiftly, and some one without there touches it. But at that she -snatches back her hand and bars the garden, and for a time the spirit of -the little child does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> come very near. So she goes serenely on -toward the day when a far horn sounds and somebody comes down the air -from heaven, as it has occurred to nobody else to do. And they hear the -voice of the little child, singing in the garden.</p> - -<p>"The girl is me," says little Little Child, as she always says when I -have finished this story.</p> - -<p>"Yes," I tell her.</p> - -<p>"I'd like to see that garden," she says thoughtfully.</p> - -<p>Then I show her the village in the trees of the other shore, roof upon -roof pricked by a slim steeple; for that is the garden.</p> - -<p>"I don't care about just bein' good," she says, "but I'd like to -housekeep that garden."</p> - -<p>"For a sometime-little-child of your own," I tell her.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she assents, "an' make dresses for."</p> - -<p>I cannot understand how mothers let them grow up not knowing, these -little mothers-to-be who so often never guess their vocation. It is a -reason for everything commonly urged on the ground of conduct, a ground -so lifeless to youth. But quicken every desert space with "It must be -done so for the sake of the little child you will have some day," and -there rises a living spirit. Morals, civics, town and home economics, -learning—there is the concrete reason for them all; and the abstract -understanding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> of these things for their own sakes will follow, -flower-wise, fruit-wise, for the healing of the times.</p> - -<p>I had told to that old Aunt Effie who keeps house for Miggy and Little -Child something of what I thought to do—breaking in upon the old -woman's talk of linoleum and beans and other things having, so to say, -one foot in the universe.</p> - -<p>"Goodness," that old woman had answered, with her worried turn of head, -"I'm real glad you're going to be here. <i>I dread saying anything.</i>"</p> - -<p>Here too we must look to the larger day when the state shall train for -parenthood and for citizenship, when the schools and the universities -shall speak for the state the cosmic truths, and when by comparison -botany and differential calculus shall be regarded as somewhat less -vital in ushering in the kingdom of God.</p> - -<p>The water reservoir rose slim against the woods to the north; to the -south was a crouching hop house covered with old vines. I said to Little -Child:—</p> - -<p>"Look everywhere and tell me where you think a princess would live if -she lived here."</p> - -<p>She looked everywhere and answered:—</p> - -<p>"In the water tower in those woods."</p> - -<p>"And where would the old witch live?" I asked her.</p> - -<p>"In the Barden's hop house," she answered.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p><p>"And where would the spirit of the little child be?" I tested her.</p> - -<p>She looked long out across the water.</p> - -<p>"I think in the sunset," she said at last. And then of her own will she -said over the Sunset Spell I have taught her:—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"I love to stand in this great air</div> -<div>And see the sun go down.</div> -<div>It shows me a bright veil to wear</div> -<div>And such a pretty gown.</div> -<div>Oh, I can see a playmate there</div> -<div>Far up in Splendour Town."</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>I could hardly bear to let her go home, but eight o'clock is very -properly Little Child's bedtime, and so I sent her across the bridge -waving her hand every little way in that fashion of children who, I -think, are hoping thus to save the moment that has just died. I have -known times when I, too, have wanted to wave my hand at a moment and -keep it looking at me as long as possible. But presently the moment -almost always turned away.</p> - -<p>Last night I half thought that the sunset itself would like to have -stayed. It went so delicately about its departure, taking to itself -first a shawl of soft dyes, then a painted scarf, then frail iris wings. -It mounted far up the heavens, testing its strength for flight and -shaking brightness from its garments. And it slipped lingeringly away as -if the riot of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> colour were after all the casual part, and the real -business of the moment were to stay on with everybody. In the tenuity of -the old anthropomorphisms I marvel that they did not find the sunset a -living thing, tender of mortals, forever loth to step from out one -moment into the cherishing arms of the next. Think! The sunset that the -Greeks knew has been flaming round the world, dying from moment to -moment and from mile to mile, with no more of pause than the human -heart, since sunset flamed for Hero and Helen and Ariadne.</p> - -<p>If the sunset was made for lovers, and in our midland summers lingers on -their account, then last night it was lingering partly for Miggy and -Peter. At the end of the bridge I came on them together.</p> - -<p>Miggy did not flush when she saw me, and though I would not have -expected that she would flush I was yet disappointed. I take an -old-fashioned delight in women whose high spirit is compatible with a -sensibility which causes them the little agonizings proper to this -moment, and to that.</p> - -<p>But Miggy introduced Peter with all composure.</p> - -<p>"This," she said, "is Peter. His last name is Cary."</p> - -<p>"How do you do, Peter?" I said very heartily.</p> - -<p>I thought that Peter did something the rationale of which might have -been envied of courts. He turned to Miggy and said "Thank you." -Secretly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> I congratulated him on his embarrassment. In a certain milieu -social shyness is as authentic a patent of perception as in another -milieu is taste.</p> - -<p>"Come home with me," I besought them. "We can find cake. We can make -lemonade. We can do some reading aloud." For I will not ask the mere -cake and lemonade folk to my house. They must be, in addition, good or -wise or not averse to becoming either.</p> - -<p>I conceived Peter's evident agony to rise from his need to reply. -Instead, it rose from his need to refuse.</p> - -<p>"I take my violin lesson," he explained miserably.</p> - -<p>"He takes his violin lesson," Miggy added, with a pretty, somewhat -maternal manner of translating. I took note of this faint manner of -proprietorship, for it is my belief that when a woman assumes it she -means more than she knows that she means.</p> - -<p>"I'm awful sorry," said Peter, from his heart; "I was just having to go -back this minute."</p> - -<p>"To-morrow's his regular lesson day," Miggy explained, "but to-morrow -he's going to take me to the circus, so he has his lesson to-night. Go -on," she added, "you'll be late and you'll have to pay just the same -anyway." I took note of this frank fashion of protection of interests, -for it is my belief that matters are advancing when the lady practises -economics in courtship. But I saw that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Miggy was manifesting no -symptoms of accompanying Peter, and I begged them not to let me spoil -their walk.</p> - -<p>"It's all right," Miggy said; "he'll have to hurry and I don't want to -go in yet anyway. I'll walk back with you." And of this I took note with -less satisfaction. It was as if Miggy had not come alive.</p> - -<p>Peter smiled at us, caught off his hat, and went away with it in his -hand, and the moment that he left my presence he became another being. I -could see by his back that he was himself, free again, under no bondage -of manner. It is a terrific problem, this enslavement of speech and -trivial conduct which to some of us provides a pleasant medium and for -some of us furnishes fetters. When will they manage a wireless society? -I am tired waiting. For be it a pleasant medium or be it fetters, the -present communication keeps us all apart. "I hope," I said once at -dinner, "that I shall be living when they think they get the first sign -from Mars." "I hope," said my companion, "that I shall be living when I -think I get the first sign from you—and you—and you, about this -table." If this young Shelley could really have made some sign, what -might it not have been?</p> - -<p>"Everybody's out walking to-night," Miggy observed. "There's Liva Vesey -and Timothy Toplady ahead of us."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>"They are going to be married, are they not?" I asked.</p> - -<p>Miggy looked as if I had said something indelicate.</p> - -<p>"Well," she answered, "not out loud yet."</p> - -<p>Then, fearing that she had rebuked me, "He's going to take her to the -circus to-morrow in their new buckboard," she volunteered. And I find in -Friendship that the circus is accounted a kind of official -trysting-place for all sweethearts.</p> - -<p>We kept a little way back of the lovers, the sun making Liva Vesey's -pink frock like a vase-shaped lamp of rose. Timothy was looking down at -her and straightway looking away again when Liva had summoned her -courage to look up. They were extremely pleasant to watch, but this -Miggy did not know and she was intent upon me. She had met Little Child -running home.</p> - -<p>"She's nice to take a walk with," Miggy said; "but I like to walk around -by myself too. Only to-night Peter came."</p> - -<p>"Miggy," said I, "I want to congratulate you that Peter is in love with -you."</p> - -<p>She looked up with puzzled eyes.</p> - -<p>"Why, that was nothing," she said; "he seemed to do it real easy."</p> - -<p>"But it is <i>not</i> easy," I assured her, "to find many such fine young -fellows as Peter seems to be. I hope you will be very happy together."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p><p>"I'm not engaged," said Miggy, earnestly; "I'm only invited."</p> - -<p>"Ah, well," I said, "if I may be allowed—I hope you are not sending -regrets."</p> - -<p>Miggy laughed out suddenly.</p> - -<p>"Married isn't like a party," she said; "I know that much about society. -Party you either accept or regret. Married you do both."</p> - -<p>I could have been no more amazed if the rosewood clock had said it.</p> - -<p>"Who has been talking to you, child?" I asked in distress.</p> - -<p>"I got it out of living," said Miggy, solemnly. "You live along and you -live along and you find out 'most everything."</p> - -<p>I looked away across the Pump pasture where the railway tracks cut the -Plank Road, that comes on and on until it is modified into Daphne -Street. I remembered a morning of mist and dogwood when I had walked -that road through the gateway into an earthly paradise. Have I not said -that since that time we two have been, as it were, set to music and -sung; so that the silences of separation are difficult to beguile save -by the companionship of the village—the village that has somehow taught -Miggy its bourgeoise lesson of doubt?</p> - -<p>My silence laid on her some vague burden of proof.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>"Besides," she said, "I'm not like the women who marry people. Most of -'em that's married ain't all married, anyway."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean, child?" I demanded.</p> - -<p>"They're not," protested Miggy. "They marry like they pick out a way to -have a dress made when they don't admire any of the styles very much, -and they've wore out everything else. Women like some things about -somebody, and that much they marry. Then the rest of him never is -married at all, and by and by that rest starts to get lonesome."</p> - -<p>"But Miggy," I said to all this, "I should think you might like Peter -entirely."</p> - -<p>She surprised me by her seriousness.</p> - -<p>"Anyhow, I've got my little sister to bring up," she said; "Aunt Effie -hasn't anything. And I couldn't put two on him to support."</p> - -<p>I wondered why not, but I said nothing.</p> - -<p>"And besides," Miggy said after a pause, "there's Peter's father. You -know about him?"</p> - -<p>I did know—who in the village did not know? Since my neighbour had told -me of him I had myself seen him singing through the village streets, -shouting out and disturbing the serene evenings, drunken, piteous....</p> - -<p>"Peter has him all the time," I suggested.</p> - -<p>She must have found a hint of resistance in my voice, for her look -questioned me.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p><p>"I never could stand it to have anybody like that in the house," she -said defensively. "I've told Peter. I've told him both reasons...." -Miggy threw out her arms and stood still, facing the sunset. "Anyway, I -want to keep on feeling all free and liberty-like!" she said.</p> - -<p>This intense individualism of youth, passioning only for far spaces, -taking no account of the common lot nor as yet urgent to share it is, -like the panther grace in the tread of the cat, a survival of the -ancient immunity from accountabilities. To note it is to range down the -evolution of ages. To tame it—there is a task for all the servants of -the new order.</p> - -<p>Miggy was like some little bright creature caught unaware in the net of -living and still remembering the colonnades of otherwhere, renowned for -their shining. She was looking within the sunset, where it was a thing -of wings and doors ajar and fair corridors. I saw the great freedoms of -sunset in her face—the sunset where Little Child and I had agreed that -a certain spirit lived.... Perhaps it was that that little vagrant -spirit signalled to me—and the Custodian understood it. Perhaps it was -that I saw, beneath the freedoms, the woman-tenderness in the girl's -face. In any case I spoke abruptly and half without intention.</p> - -<p>"But you don't want to be free from Little Child.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> It is almost as if -she were your little girl, is it not?" I said.</p> - -<p>Miggy's eyes did not leave the sunset. It was rather as if she saw some -answer there.</p> - -<p>"Well, I like to pretend she is," she said simply.</p> - -<p>"That," I said quietly, "is pleasant to pretend."</p> - -<p>And now her mood had changed as if some one had come to take her place.</p> - -<p>"But if she <i>was</i>—that," she said, "her name, then, would most likely -be Margaret, like mine, wouldn't it?"</p> - -<p>"It would be very well to have it Margaret," I agreed.</p> - -<p>Her step was quickened as by sudden shyness.</p> - -<p>"It's funny to think about," she said. "Sometimes I most think of—her, -till she seems in the room. Not quite my sister. I mean <i>Margaret</i>."</p> - -<p>It made my heart beat somewhat. I wondered if anything of my story to -Little Child was left in my mind, and if subconsciously Miggy was -reading it. This has sometimes happened to me with a definiteness which -would be surprising if the supernatural were to me less natural. But I -think that it was merely because Miggy had no idea of the sanctity of -what she felt that she was speaking of it.</p> - -<p>"How does she look?" I asked.</p> - -<p>"Like me," said Miggy, readily; "I don't want her to either. I want her -to be pretty and I'm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> not. But when I think of her running 'round in the -house or on the street, I always make her look like me. Only little."</p> - -<p>"Running 'round in the house." That was the way my neighbour had put it. -Perhaps it is the way that every woman puts it.</p> - -<p>"Does she seem like you, too?" I tempted her on.</p> - -<p>"Oh, better," Miggy said confidently; "learning to play on the piano and -not much afraid of folks and real happy."</p> - -<p>"Don't you ever pretend about a boy?" I asked.</p> - -<p>She shook her head.</p> - -<p>"No," she said; "if I do—I never can think him out real plain. Margaret -I can most see."</p> - -<p>And this, too, was like the girl in the garden and the spirit of that -one to be called by a name of one whom she had not seen.</p> - -<p>I think that I have never hoped so much that I might know the right -thing to say. And when most I wish this I do as I did then: I keep my -impulse silent and I see if that vague Custodian within, somewhere -between the seeing and the knowing, will not speak for me. I wonder if -she did? At all events, what either she or I said was:—</p> - -<p>"Miggy! Look everywhere and tell me the most beautiful thing you can -see."</p> - -<p>She was not an instant in deciding.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p><p>"Why, sunset," she said.</p> - -<p>"Promise me," said I—said we!—"that you will remember <i>Now</i>. And that -after to-night, when you see a sunset—always, always, till she -comes—you will think about her. About Margaret."</p> - -<p>Because this caught her fancy she promised readily enough. And then we -lingered a little, while the moment gave up its full argosy. I have a -fancy for these times when I say "I will remember," and I am always -selecting them and knowing, as if I had tied a knot in them, that I will -remember. These times become the moments at which I keep waving my hand -in the hope that they will never turn away. And it was this significance -which I wished the hour to have for Miggy, so that for her the sunset -should forever hold, as Little Child had said that it holds, that tiny, -wandering spirit....</p> - -<p>Liva Vesey and Timothy had lingered, too, and we passed them on the -bridge, he still trying to win her eyes, and his own eyes fleeing -precipitantly whenever she looked up. The two seemed leaning upon the -winged light, the calm stretches of the Pump pasture, the brown sand -bar, the Caledonia hills. And the lovers and the quiet river and the -village, roof upon roof, in the trees of the other shore, and most of -all Miggy and her shadowy Margaret seemed to me like the words of some -mighty cosmic utterance, with the country evening for its tranquil voice.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>V</span> <span class="smaller">DIFFERENT</span></h2> - -<p>Those who had expected the circus procession to arrive from across the -canal to-day were amazed to observe it filing silently across the tracks -from the Plank Road. The Eight Big Shows Combined had arrived in the -gray dawn; and word had not yet gone the rounds that, the Fair Ground -being too wet, the performance would "show" in the Pump pasture, beyond -the mill. There was to be no evening amusement. It was a wait between -trains that conferred the circus on Friendship at all.</p> - -<p>Half the country-side, having brought its lunch into town to make a day -of it, trailed as a matter of course after the clown's cart at the end -of the parade, and about noon arrived in the pasture with the -pleasurable sense of entering familiar territory to find it transformed -into unknown ground. Who in the vicinity of the village had not known -the Pump pasture of old? Haunted of Jerseys and Guernseys and orioles, -it had lain expressionless as the hills,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> for as long as memory. When in -spring, "Where you goin'? Don't you go far in the hot sun!" from -Friendship mothers was answered by, "We're just goin' up to the Pump -pasture for vi'lets" from Friendship young, no more was to be said. The -pasture was as dependable as a nurse, as a great, faithful Newfoundland -dog; and about it was something of the safety of silence and warmth and -night-in-a-trundle-bed.</p> - -<p>And lo, now it was suddenly as if the pasture were articulate. The great -elliptical tent, the strange gold chariots casually disposed, the air of -the hurrying men, so amazingly used to what they were doing—these gave -to the place the aspect of having from the first been secretly familiar -with more than one had suspected.</p> - -<p>"Ain't it the divil?" demanded Timothy Toplady, Jr., ecstatically, as -the glory of the scene burst upon him.</p> - -<p>Liva Vesey, in rose-pink cambric, beside him in the buckboard, looked up -at his brown Adam's apple—she hardly ever lifted her shy eyes as far as -her sweetheart's face—and rejoined:—</p> - -<p>"Oh, Timmie! ain't it just what you might say <i>great</i>?"</p> - -<p>"You'd better believe," said Timothy, solemnly, "that it is that."</p> - -<p>He looked down in her face with a lifting of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>eyebrows and an honest -fatuity of mouth. Liva Vesey knew the look—without ever having met it -squarely, she could tell when it was there, and she promptly turned her -head, displaying to Timothy's ardent eyes tight coils of beautiful blond -crinkly hair, a little ear, and a line of white throat with a silver -locket chain. At which Timothy now collapsed with the mien of a man who -is unwillingly having second thoughts.</p> - -<p>"My!" he said.</p> - -<p>They drove into the meadow, and when the horse had been loosed and cared -for, they found a great cottonwood tree, its leaves shimmering and -moving like little banners, and there they spread their lunch. The sunny -slope was dotted with other lunchers. The look of it all was very gay, -partly because the trees were in June green, and among them windmills -were whirling like gaunt and acrobatic witches, and partly because it -was the season when the women were brave in new hats, very pink and very -perishable.</p> - -<p>The others observed the two good-humouredly from afar, and once or twice -a tittering group of girls, unescorted, passed the cottonwood tree, -making elaborate detours to avoid it. At which Liva flushed, pretending -not to notice; and Timothy looked wistfully in her face to see if she -wished that she had not come with him. However, Timothy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> never dared -look at her long enough to find out anything at all; for the moment that -she seemed about to meet his look he always dropped his eyes -precipitantly to her little round chin and so to the silver chain and -locket. And then he was miserable.</p> - -<p>It was strange that a plain heart-shaped locket, having no initials, -could make a man so utterly, extravagantly unhappy. Three months -earlier, Liva, back from a visit in the city, had appeared with her -locket. Up to that time the only personality in which Timothy had ever -indulged was to mention to her that her eyes were the colour of his -sister's eyes, whose eyes were the colour of their mother's eyes and -their father's eyes, and of Timothy's own, and "Our eyes match, mine and -yours," he had blurted out, crimson. And yet, even on these terms, he -had taken the liberty of being wretched because of her. How much more -now when he was infinitely nearer to her? For with the long spring -evenings upon them, when he had sat late at the Vesey farm, matters had -so far advanced with Timothy that, with his own hand, he had picked a -green measuring-worm from Liva's throat. Every time he looked at her -throat he thought of that worm with rapture. But also every time he -looked at her throat he saw the silver chain and locket. And on circus -day, if the oracles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> seemed auspicious, he meant to find out whose -picture was worn in that locket, even though the knowledge made him a -banished man.</p> - -<p>If only she would ever mention the locket! he thought disconsolately -over lunch. If only she would "bring up the subject," then he could find -courage. But she never did mention it. And the talk ran now:—</p> - -<p>"Would you ever, ever think this was the Pump pasture?" from Liva.</p> - -<p>"No, you wouldn't, would you? It don't look the same, does it? You'd -think you was in a city or somewheres, wouldn't you now? Ain't it -differ'nt?"</p> - -<p>"Did you count the elephants?"</p> - -<p>"I bet I did. Didn't you? Ten, wa'n't it? Did you count the cages? -Neither did I. And they was too many of 'em shut up. I don't know -whether it's much of a circus or not—" with gloomy superiority—"they -not bein' any calliope, so."</p> - -<p>"A good many cute fellows in the band," observed Liva. For Liva would -have teased a bit if Timothy would have teased too. But Timothy replied -in mere misery:—</p> - -<p>"You can't tell much about these circus men, Liva. They're apt to be the -kind that carouse around. I guess they ain't much to 'em but their swell -way."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I don't know," said Liva.</p> - -<p>Then a silence fell, resembling nothing so much as the breath of -hesitation following a <i>faux pas</i>, save that this silence was longer, -and was terminated by Liva humming a little snatch of song to symbolize -how wholly delightful everything was.</p> - -<p>"My!" said Timothy, finally. "You wouldn't think this was the Pump -pasture at all, it looks so differ'nt."</p> - -<p>"That's so," Liva said. "You wouldn't."</p> - -<p>It was almost as if the two were inarticulate, as the pasture had been -until the strange influences of the day had come to quicken it.</p> - -<p>While Liva, with housewifely hands, put away the lunch things in their -basket, Timothy nibbled along lengths of grass and hugged his knees and -gloomed at the locket. It was then that Miggy and Peter passed them and -the four greeted one another with the delicate, sheepish enjoyment of -lovers who look on and understand other lovers. Then Timothy's look went -back to Liva. Liva's rose-pink dress was cut distractingly without a -collar, and the chain seemed to caress her little throat. Moreover, the -locket had a way of hiding beneath a fold of ruffle, as if it were <i>her</i> -locket and as if Timothy had no share in it.</p> - -<p>"Oh," cried Liva, "<i>Timmie</i>! That was the lion roared. Did you hear?"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p><p>Timothy nodded darkly, as if there were worse than lions.</p> - -<p>"Wasn't it the lion?" she insisted.</p> - -<p>Timothy nodded again; he thought it might have been the lion.</p> - -<p>"What you so glum about, Timmie?" his sweetheart asked, glancing at him -fleetingly.</p> - -<p>Timothy flushed to the line of his hair.</p> - -<p>"Gosh," he said, "this here pasture looks so differ'nt I can't get over -it."</p> - -<p>"Yes," said Liva, "it does look differ'nt, don't it?"</p> - -<p>Before one o'clock they drifted with the rest toward the animal tent. -They went incuriously past the snake show, the Eats-'em-alive show, and -the Eastern vaudeville. But hard by the red wagon where tickets were -sold Timothy halted spellbound. What he had heard was:—</p> - -<p>"Types. Types. Right this way AND in this direction for Types. No, -Ladies, and no, Gents: Not Tin-types. But Photo-types. Photo<i>graphs</i> put -up in Tintype style AT Tintype price. Three for a quarter. The fourth of -a dozen for the fourth of a dollar. Elegant pictures, elegant finish, -refined, up-to-date. Of yourself, Gents, of yourself. Or of any one you -see around you. And WHILE you wait."</p> - -<p>Timothy said it before he had any idea that he meant to say it:—</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p><p>"Liva," he begged, "come on. You."</p> - -<p>When she understood and when Timothy saw the momentary abashment in her -eyes, it is certain that he had never loved her more. But the very next -moment she was far more adorable.</p> - -<p>"Not unless you will, Timmie," she said, "and trade."</p> - -<p>He followed her into the hot little tent as if the waiting chair were a -throne of empire. And perhaps it was. For presently Timothy had in his -pocket a tiny blurry bit of paper at which he had hardly dared so much -as glance, and he had given another blurry bit into her keeping. But -that was not all. When she thanked him she had met his eyes. And he -thought—oh, no matter what he thought. But it was as if there were -established a throne of empire with Timothy lord of his world.</p> - -<p>Then they stepped along the green way of the Pump pasture and they -entered the animal tent, and Strange Things closed about them. There -underfoot lay the green of the meadow, verdant grass and not infrequent -moss, plantain and sorrel and clover, all as yet hardly trampled and -still sweet with the breath of kine and sheep. And three feet above, -foregathered from the Antipodes, crouched and snarled the striped and -spotted things of the wild, with teeth and claws quick to kill, and with -generations of the jungle in their shifting eyes. The bright<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> wings of -unknown birds, the scream of some harsh throat of an alien wood, the -monkeys chattering, the soft stamp and padding of the elephants chained -in a stately central line along the clover—it was certain, one would -have said, that these must change the humour of the pasture as the -companionship of the grotesque and the vast alters the humour of the -mind. That the pasture, indeed, would never be the same, and that its -influence would be breathed on all who entered there. Already Liva and -Timothy, each with the other's picture in a pocket, moved down that tent -of the field in another world. Or had that world begun at the door of -the stuffy little phototype tent?</p> - -<p>It was the cage of bright-winged birds that held the two. Timothy stood -grasping his elbows and looking at that flitting flame and orange. Dare -he ask her if she would wear his phototype in her locket—dare he—dare -he——</p> - -<p>He turned to look at her. Oh, and the rose-pink cambric was so near his -elbow! Her face, upturned to the birds, was flushed, her lips were -parted, her eyes that matched Timothy's were alight; but there was -always in Timothy's eyes a look, a softness, a kind of speech that -Liva's could not match. He longed inexpressibly to say to her what was -in his heart concerning the locket—the phototype—themselves. And Liva -herself was longing to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> something about the sheer glory of the hour. -So she looked up at his brown Adam's apple, and,</p> - -<p>"Think, Timmie," she said, "they're all in the Pump pasture where -nothin' but cows an' robins an' orioles ever was before!"</p> - -<p>"I know it—I know it!" breathed Timothy fervently. "Don't seem like it -could be the same place, does it?"</p> - -<p>Liva barely lifted her eyes.</p> - -<p>"It makes us seem differ'nt, too," she said, and flushed a little, and -turned to hurry on.</p> - -<p>"I was thinkin' that too!" he cried ecstatically, overtaking her. But -all that Timothy could see was tight coils of blond, crinkled hair, and -a little ear and a curve of white throat, with a silver locket chain.</p> - -<p>Down the majestic line of the elephants, towering in the apotheosis of -mere bulk to preach ineffectually that spirit is apocryphal and mass -alone is potent; past the panthers that sniffed as if they guessed the -nearness of the grazing herd in the next pasture; past the cage in which -the lioness lay snarling and baring her teeth above her cubs, so -pathetically akin to the meadow in her motherhood; past unknown -creatures with surprising horns and shaggy necks and lolling tongues—it -was a wonderful progress. But it was as if Liva had found something more -wonderful than these when, before the tigers' cage, she stepped -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>forward, stooped a little beneath the rope, and stood erect with -shining eyes.</p> - -<p>"Look!" she said. "Look, Timmie."</p> - -<p>She was holding a blue violet.</p> - -<p>"In front of the tigers; it was <i>growing</i>!"</p> - -<p>"Why don't you give it to me?" was Timothy's only answer.</p> - -<p>She laid it in his hand, laughing a little at her daring.</p> - -<p>"It won't ever be the same," she said. "Tigers have walked over it. My, -ain't everything in the pasture differ'nt?"</p> - -<p>"Just as differ'nt as differ'nt can be," Timothy admitted.</p> - -<p>"Here we are back to the birds again," Liva said, sighing.</p> - -<p>Timothy had put the violet in his coat pocket and he stood staring at -the orange and flame in the cage: Her phototype and a violet—her -phototype and a violet.</p> - -<p>But all he said, not daring to look at her at all, was:—</p> - -<p>"I can't make it seem like the Pump pasture to save me."</p> - -<p>There is something, as they have said of a bugle, "winged and warlike" -about a circus—the confusions, the tramplings, the shapes, the keen -flavour of the Impending, and above all the sense of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>Untoward, -which is eternal and which survives glamour as his grave survives a man. -Liva and Timothy sat on the top row of seats and felt it all, and -believed it to be merely honest mirth. Occasionally Liva turned and -peered out through the crack in the canvas where the side met the roof, -for the pure joy of feeling herself alien to the long green fields with -their grazing herds and their orioles, and at one with the colour and -music and life within. And she was glad of it all, glad to be there with -Timothy. But all she said was:—</p> - -<p>"Oh, Timmie, I hope it ain't half over yet. Do you s'pose it is? When I -look outside it makes me feel as if it was over."</p> - -<p>And Timothy, his heart beating, a great hope living in his breast, -answered only:—</p> - -<p>"No, I guess it'll be quite some time yet. It's a nice show. Nice -performance for the money, right through. Ain't it?"</p> - -<p>When at length it really was over and they left the tent, the wagons -from town and country-side and the "depot busses" had made such a place -of dust and confusion that he took her back to the cottonwood on the -slope to wait until he brought the buckboard round. He left her leaning -against the tree, the sun burnishing her hair and shining dazzlingly on -the smooth silver locket. And when he drove back, and reached down a -hand to draw her up to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the seat beside him, and saw her for a moment, -as she mounted, with all the panorama of the field behind her, he -perceived instantly that the locket was gone. Oh, and at that his heart -leaped up! What more natural than to dream that she had taken it off to -slip his phototype inside and that he had come back too soon? What more -natural than to divine the reality of dreams?</p> - -<p>His trembling hope held him silent until they reached the highway. Then -he looked at the field, elliptical tent, fluttering pennons, streaming -crowds, and he observed as well as he could for the thumping of his -heart:—</p> - -<p>"I kind o' hate to go off an' leave it. To-morrow when I go to town with -the pie-plant, it'll look just like nothin' but a pasture again."</p> - -<p>Liva glanced up at him and dropped her eyes.</p> - -<p>"I ain't sure," she said.</p> - -<p>"What do you mean?" he asked her, wondering.</p> - -<p>But Liva shook her head.</p> - -<p>"I ain't sure," she said evasively, "but I don't think somehow the Pump -pasture'll <i>ever</i> be the same again."</p> - -<p>Timothy mulled that for a moment. Oh, could she <i>possibly</i> mean -because....</p> - -<p>Yet what he said was, "Well, the old pasture looks differ'nt enough now, -all right."</p> - -<p>"Yes," assented Liva, "don't it?"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>Timothy had supper at the Vesey farm. It was eight o'clock and the -elder Veseys had been gone to prayer-meeting for an hour when Liva -discovered that she had lost her locket.</p> - -<p>"Lost your locket!" Timothy repeated. It was the first time, for all his -striving, that he had been able to mention the locket in her presence. -He had tried, all the way home that afternoon, to call her attention -innocently to its absence, but the thing that he hoped held fast his -intention. "Why," he cried now, in the crash of that hope, "you had it -on when I left you under the cottonwood."</p> - -<p>"You sure?" Liva demanded.</p> - -<p>"Sure," Timothy said earnestly; "didn't—didn't you have it off while I -was gone?" he asked wistfully.</p> - -<p>"No," Liva replied blankly; she had not taken it off.</p> - -<p>When they had looked in the buckboard and had found nothing, Timothy -spoke tentatively.</p> - -<p>"Tell you what," he said. "We'll light a lantern and hitch up and drive -back to the Pump pasture and look."</p> - -<p>"Could we?" Liva hesitated.</p> - -<p>It was gloriously starlight when the buckboard rattled out on the Plank -Road. Timothy, wretched as he was at her concern over the locket, was -yet recklessly, magnificently happy in being alone by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> her side in the -warm dusk, and on her ministry. She was silent, and, for almost the -first time since he had known her, Timothy was silent too—as if he were -giving his inarticulateness honest expression instead of forcing it -continually to antics of speech.</p> - -<p>From the top of the hill they looked down on the Pump pasture. It lay -there, silent and dark, but no longer expressionless; for instantly -their imagination quickened it with all the music and colour and life of -the afternoon. Just as Timothy's silence was now of the pattern of -dreams.</p> - -<p>He tied the horse, and together they entered the field by the great open -place where the fence had not yet been replaced. The turf was still soft -and yielding, in spite of all the treading feet. The pasture was girdled -by trees—locusts and box-alders outlined dimly upon the sky, -nest-places for orioles; and here and there a great oak or a cottonwood -made a mysterious figure on the stars. One would have said that -underfoot would certainly be violets. A far light pricked out an answer -to their lantern, and a nearer firefly joined the signalling.</p> - -<p>"I keep thinkin' the way it looked here this afternoon," said Liva once.</p> - -<p>"That's funny, so do I," he cried.</p> - -<p>Under the cottonwood on the slope, its leaves stirring like little -banners, Timothy flashed his light,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> first on tufted grass, then on -red-tasselled sorrel, then—lying there as simply as if it belonged -there—on Liva's silver locket. She caught it from him with a little -cry.</p> - -<p>"Oh," she said, "I'm so glad. Oh, thank you ever so much, Timmie."</p> - -<p>He faced her for a moment.</p> - -<p>"Why are you so almighty glad?" he burst out.</p> - -<p>"Why, it's the first locket I ever had!" she said in surprise. "So of -course I'm glad. Oh, Timmie—thank you!"</p> - -<p>"You're welcome, I'm sure," he returned stiffly.</p> - -<p>She gave a little skipping step beside him.</p> - -<p>"Timmie," she said, "let's circle round a little ways and come by where -the big tent was. I want to see how it'll seem."</p> - -<p>His ill-humour was gone in a moment.</p> - -<p>"That's what we <i>will</i> do!" he cried joyously.</p> - -<p>He walked beside her, his lantern swinging a little rug of brightness -about their feet. So they passed the site of the big red ticket wagon, -of the Eastern vaudeville, of the phototype tent; so they traversed the -length where had stretched the great elliptical tent that had prisoned -for them colour and music and life, as in a cup. And so at last they -stepped along that green way of the pasture where underfoot lay the -grass and the not infrequent moss and clover, not yet wholly trampled to -dust; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> this was where there had been assembled bright-winged birds -of orange and flame and creatures of the wild from the Antipodes, and -where Strange Things had closed them round.</p> - -<p>The influence of what the pasture had seen must have been breathed on -all who entered there that night: something of the immemorial freedom of -bright birds in alien woods, of the ancestral kinship of the wild. For -that tranquil meadow, long haunted of Jerseys and Guernseys and orioles, -expressionless as the hills, dependable as a nurse, had that day known -strange breath, strange tramplings, cries and trumpetings, music and -colour and life and the beating of wild hearts—and was it not certain -that these must change the humour of the place as the coming of the -grotesque and the vast alters the humour of the mind? The field bore the -semblance of a place exquisitely of the country and, here in the dark, -it was inarticulate once more. But something was stirring there, -something that swept away what had always been as a wind sweeps, -something that caught up the heart of the boy as ancient voices stir in -the blood.</p> - -<p>Timothy cast down his lantern and gathered Liva Vesey in his arms. Her -cheek lay against his shoulder and he lifted her face and kissed her, -three times or four, with all the love that he bore her.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p><p>"Liva," he said, "all the time—every day—I've meant this. Did you -mean it, too?"</p> - -<p>She struggled a little from him, but when he would have let her go she -stood still in his arms. And then he would have her words and "Did you?" -he begged again. He could not hear what she said without bending close, -close, and it was the sweeter for that.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Timmie," she answered, "I don't know. I don't know if I <i>did</i>. But -I do—now."</p> - -<p>Timothy's courage came upon him like a mantle.</p> - -<p>"An' be my wife?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"An' be ..." Liva assented, and the words faltered away. But they were -not greatly missed.</p> - -<p>Timothy looked over the pasture, and over the world. And lo, it was -suddenly as if, with these, he were become articulate, and they were all -three saying something together.</p> - -<p>When they turned, there was the lantern glimmering alight on the trodden -turf. And in its little circle of brightness they saw something coloured -and soft. It was a gay feather, and Timothy took it curiously in his -hand.</p> - -<p>"See, it's from one of the circus birds," he said.</p> - -<p>"No!" Liva cried. "It's an oriole feather. One of the pasture orioles, -Timmie!"</p> - -<p>"So it is," he assented, and without knowing why, he was glad that it -was so. He folded it away with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> the violet Liva had gathered that -afternoon. After all the strangeness, what he treasured most had -belonged to the pasture all the time.</p> - -<p>"Liva!" he begged. "Will you wear the picture—my picture—in that -locket?"</p> - -<p>"Oh," she said, "Timmie, I'm so sorry. The locket's one I bought cheap -in the city, and it don't open."</p> - -<p>She wondered why that seemed to make him love her more. She wondered a -little, too, when on the edge of the pasture Timothy stood still, -looking back.</p> - -<p>"Liva!" he said, "don't the Pump pasture seem differ'nt? Don't it seem -like another place?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," Liva said, "it don't seem the same."</p> - -<p>"Liva!" Timothy said again, "it ain't the pasture that's so differ'nt. -It's <i>us</i>."</p> - -<p>She laughed a little—softly, and very near his coat sleeve.</p> - -<p>"I 'most knew that this afternoon," she answered.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>VI</span> <span class="smaller">THE FOND FORENOON</span></h2> - -<p>This morning Miggy came by appointment to do a little work for me, and -she appeared in some "best" frock to honour the occasion. It was a blue -silk muslin, cut in an antiquated style and trimmed with tarnished -silver passementerie. In it the child was hardly less distinguished than -she had been in her faded violet apron. It was impossible for her to -seem to be unconscious of her dress, and she spoke of it at once with -her fine directness.</p> - -<p>"I didn't have anything good enough to wear," she said. "I haven't got -any good dress this summer till I get it made myself. I got this out of -the trunk. It was my mother's."</p> - -<p>"It suits you very well, Miggy," I told her.</p> - -<p>"I thought maybe she'd like my wearing it—here," said Miggy, shyly. -"You've got things the way she always wanted 'em."</p> - -<p>We went in my workroom and sat among my books and strewn papers. A -lighted theatre with raised curtain and breathless audience, a room -which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> one wakens to find flooded by a gibbous moon, these have for me -no greater sorcery than morning in a little book-filled room, with the -day before me. Perhaps it is that I ought to be doing so many things -that I take an idler's delight in merely attending to my own occupation.</p> - -<p>While I wondered at what I should set Miggy, I looked for the spirit of -the minute and tried not to see its skeleton. The skeleton was that I -had here an inexperienced little girl who was of almost no use to me. -The spirit was that whatever I chose to do, my work was delightful to -me, and that to bring Miggy in contact with these things was a kind of -adventure. It is, I find, seldom sufficient to think even of the body of -one's work, which to-day proved to be in my case a search in certain old -books and manuscripts for fond allusions. If one can, so to say, think -in and out till one comes to the spirit of a task, then there will be -evident an indeterminate sense of wings. Without these wings there can -be no expression and no creation. And in the true democracy no work will -be wingless. It will still be, please God, laborious, arduous, even -heart-breaking, but never body-fettered, never with its birdlike spirit -quenched. And in myself I would bring to pass, even now, this fair order -of sweet and willing toil by taking to my hand no task without looking -deep within for its essential life.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p><p>So it was with a sense not only of pleasure but of leisure that I -established Miggy by the window with a manuscript of ancient romances -and told her what to do: to look through them for a certain story, -barely more than a reference, to the love of an Indian woman of this -Middle West for her Indian husband, sold into slavery by the French -Canadians. It is a simple story—you will find small mention made of -it—but having once heard it the romance had haunted me, and I was fain -to come on it again: the story of the wife of Kiala, fit to stand niched -with the great loves of the world.</p> - -<p>The morning sun—it was hardly more than eight o'clock—slanted across -the carpet; some roses that Little Child had brought me before her -breakfast were fresh on my table; and the whole time was like a quiet -cup. In that still hour experience seemed drained of all but fellowship, -the fellowship of Miggy and my books and the darling insistence of the -near outdoors. Do you not think how much of life is so made up, free of -rapture or anxiety, dedicated, in task or in pastime, to serene -companionship?</p> - -<p>I have said that for me there are few greater sorceries than morning, -with the day before me, in a small book-filled room. I wonder if this is -not partly because of my anticipations of the parentheses I shall take? -Not recesses, but parentheses, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> can flavour a whole day. I -remember a beloved house in which breakfast and luncheon were daily -observations looked forward to not so much for themselves, as that they -were occasions for the most delightful interruptions. Dinner was a -ceremony which was allowed to proceed; but a breakfast or a luncheon was -seldom got through without one or two of us leaving the table to look up -a stanza, or to settle if two words had the same derivation, or to find -if some obsolete fashion in meanings could not yet be worn with -impunity. It grieved the dear housewife, I remember, and we tried to -tell her how much more important these things were than that our new -potatoes should be buttered while they were hot. But she never could see -it, and potatoes made us think of Ireland, and in no time we were deep -in the Celtic revival and racing off to find "The Love Talker." I -remember but one dinner interruption, and that was when we all left in -the midst of the fish to go in the study and determine if moonlight -shining through stained glass does cast a coloured shadow, as it did on -St. Agnes' eve.... I suppose, in those days, we must have eaten -something, though, save a certain deep-dish cherry pie I cannot remember -what we ate; but those interruptions are with me like so many gifts, and -I maintain that these were the realities. Those days—and especially the -morning when we read through the "Ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> Mariner" between pasting in -two book plates!—taught me the precious lesson that the interruption -and not the task may hold the angel. It was so that I felt that morning -with Miggy; and I know that what we did with that forenoon will persist -somewhere when all my envelopes of clippings are gone to dust.</p> - -<p>After a time I became conscious that the faint rustling of the papers -through which I was looking was absorbed by another sound, rhythmic, -stedfast. I looked out on my neighbour's lawn, and at that moment, -crossing my line of vision through the window before which Miggy was -seated, I saw Peter, cutting my neighbour's grass. I understood at once -that he had chosen this morning for his service in order to be near -Miggy. It all made a charming sight,—Peter, bareheaded, in an -open-throated, neutral shirt, cutting the grass there beyond Miggy in -her quaint dress, reading a romance. I forgot my work for a little, and -watched for those moments of his passing. Miggy read on, absorbed. Then, -for a little, I watched her, pleased at her absorption.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, from my window, I have looked down on the river and the long -yellow sand bar and the mystery of the opposite shore where I have never -been, and I have felt a great pity that these things cannot know that -they are these things. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>Sometimes, in the middle of a summer night, when -the moon is so bright that one can see well within one's own soul, I -have fancied that I have detected an aroma of consciousness, of definite -self-wonder, in the Out-of-doors. Fleetingly I have divined it in the -surprise of Dawn, the laughter of a blue Forenoon, the girlish shyness -of Twilight. And this morning I wanted self-wonder for Miggy and Peter. -What a pity that they could not see it all as I saw it: the Shelley-like -boy cutting the grass and loving this girl, in her mother's gown. But -you must not suppose, either, that I do not know how that vast -unconsciousness of Nature and Love flows with a sovereign essence almost -more precious than awareness.</p> - -<p>"Miggy," I said presently, "Peter is not at work to-day. That is he -cutting grass."</p> - -<p>She looked out briefly.</p> - -<p>"He's got two days off coming to him," she answered. "It's for overtime. -This must be one of 'em. Have <i>you</i> read these stories?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," I said, "I have. Miggy, don't you want to go and ask Peter to -have lunch with us at twelve?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, no, thank you," she dismissed this. "This isn't the day I see him."</p> - -<p>"But wouldn't you like it?" I pressed the matter curiously. "Just we -three at luncheon alone?"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>She was turning the leaves of the manuscript and she looked up to set -me right.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you know," she said, "I don't know Peter <i>that</i> way at all. I just -know him to have him walk home with me, or call, or go walking. Peter -never eats with me."</p> - -<p>Poor Peter, indeed, to be denied the simple intimacy of sometimes -breaking bread with Miggy. I understood that to invite a man to "noon -lunch" in the village was almost unheard of, but,</p> - -<p>"I think he would eat this noon if he never ate before," said I. To -which Miggy made answer:—</p> - -<p>"If you have read all these stories will you—wouldn't you—tell me -some, please? I can't bear to think of having to wait to read 'em before -I know 'em!"</p> - -<p>She shut the book and leaned her chin in her hand and looked at me. And -the idea of having Peter with us for lunch drifted out of the room, -unattended.</p> - -<p>I maintain that one who loves the craft of letters for its own sake, one -who loves both those who have followed it and the records that they have -left, and one who is striving to make letters his way of service, must -all have acted in the same way; and that was the way that I took. In -these days when Helen and Juliet are read aloud to children while they -work buttonholes in domestic science class, think of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> pure -self-indulgence of coming on a living spirit—I say a <i>living</i> -spirit—who had never heard of the beloved women of the world. I wonder -if we could not find such spirits oftener if we looked with care? When I -see certain women shopping, marketing, jolting about in busses, I am -sometimes moved to wonder if they know anything about Nicolete and, if -they were to be told, whether it would not rest them.</p> - -<p>I love it, I love this going back into old time and bringing out its -sweet elements. I have said that there is a certain conservatism in -which, if I let my taste have its way with me, I would luxuriate, as I -might then indulge my love of the semi-precious stones, or of old -tiling, or of lilies-of-the-valley, all day long. And it is so that my -self-indulgence would lead me to spend my days idling over these shadowy -figures in the old romances and the old biographies. The joy of it never -leaves me. Always from these books drifts out to me the smoke of some -hidden incense that makes the world other. Not that I want the world to -be that way, but I like to pretend. I know now that in a world where one -must give of one's utmost, spend and be spent if one is even to pay for -one's keep, these incense hours must be occasional, not to say stolen. -So that to find a Miggy to whom to play preceptor of romance was like -digging a moonstone out of the river bank.</p> - -<p>What did I tell her? Not of Helen or Cleopatra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> or Isolde or Heloise or -Guinevere, because—why, I think that you would not have told her of -these, either. Of Beatrice and Brunhilde and Elaine and Enid I told her, -for, though these are so sad, there beat the mighty motives, seeds of -the living heart. Last I told her, of Nicolete and of Griselda and of -Psyche and of the great sun of these loves that broke from cloud. She -listened, wrapt as I was wrapt in the telling. Was it strange that the -room, which had been like a quiet cup for serene companionship, should -abruptly be throbbing with the potent principles of the human heart? I -think that it was not strange, for assuredly these are nearer to us than -breathing, instant to leap from us, the lightning of the soul, electric -with life or with death. We are never very far from strong emotion. Even -while I recounted these things to Miggy, there, without my window, was -Peter, cutting the grass.</p> - -<p>When I had done, "Is there more like that in books?" asked Miggy.</p> - -<p>Oh, yes; thank heaven and the people who wrote them down, there are in -books many more like these.</p> - -<p>"I s'pose lots didn't get into the books at all," said Miggy, -thoughtfully.</p> - -<p>It is seldom that one finds and mourns a bird that is dead. But think of -the choir of little bright breasts whose raptures nobody hears, nobody -misses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> nobody remembers. How like them we are, we of the loving -hearts.</p> - -<p>"I wouldn't wonder if there's lots of folks being that way right, right -now," concluded Miggy.</p> - -<p>Who am I that I should doubt this?</p> - -<p>"A tournament," said Miggy, dreamily; "I s'pose that was something like -the Java entertainment is going to be."</p> - -<p>She slipped to one side of the big chair and laid both hands on its arm.</p> - -<p>"Listen," she said. "Would this be one? You know Delly Watson that's -crazy? She was in love with Jem Pitlaw, a school teacher that used to be -here, an' that died, an' that wasn't in love with her even if he had -stayed living, and it did that to her. You know ... she talks about -things that nobody ever heard of, and listens, and laughs at what she -thinks she hears. Ain't that like Elaine?"</p> - -<p>Yes, if poor Delly Watson of the village had had a barge and a dwarf and -a river winding from towered city to towered city, she would not have -been unlike Elaine.</p> - -<p>"And Jerry, that sets up folks's stoves and is so in love with the music -teacher that he joined the chorus and paid his dues and set in the bass -corner all winter to watch her and he can't sing a note. And she don't -even see him when she passes him. Ain't that like Beatrice and the Pale -Man?"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>Jerry is so true and patient, and our young music teacher is so fair, -that no one could find it sacrilege to note this sad likeness.</p> - -<p>"And Mis' Uppers that her husband went out West and she didn't get any -word, and he don't come, and he don't come, and she's selling tickets on -the parlour clock, and she cries when anybody even whistles his -tunes—isn't that some like Brunhilde, that you said about, waiting all -alone on top of the mountain? I guess Brunhilde had money, but I don't -think Mis' Uppers' principal trouble is that she ain't. With both of 'em -the worst of it must 'a' been the waiting."</p> - -<p>And I am in no wise sure that that slow-walking woman in the pointed -gray shawl may not have a heart which aches and burns and passions like -a valkyr's.</p> - -<p>"And Mame Wallace, that her beau died and all she's got is to keep house -for the family, and keep house, and <i>keep</i> house. It seems as if she's -sort of like Psyche, that had such an awful lot of things to do—and her -life all mussed up."</p> - -<p>Perhaps it is so that in that gaunt Mame Wallace, whose homing passion -has turned into the colourless, tidy keeping of her house, there is -something shining, like the spirit of Psyche, that would win back her -own by the tasks of her hand.</p> - -<p>"And then there's Threat Hubbelthwait," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> Miggy, "that gets drunk -and sets in his hotel bar fiddling, and Mis' Hubbelthwait shoves him his -meals in on to the cigar show-case and runs before he throws his bow at -her—she's just exactly like those two——"</p> - -<p>"Enid or Griselda?" I recognized them, and Miggy nodded. Poor Mis' -Hubbelthwait! Was she not indeed an Enid, lacking her beauty, and a -Griselda, with no hope of a sweet surprise of a love that but tested -her? Truly, it was as Miggy said: in some form they were all there in -the village, minus the bower and the silken kirtle, but with the same -living hearts.</p> - -<p>And these were not all.</p> - -<p>"Miggy," I said, "what about Liva Vesey and Timothy? Did you count -them?" For Aucassin and Nicolete were happy and so are Liva and Timothy, -and I think that they have all understood meadows.</p> - -<p>Miggy looked startled. One's own generation never seems so typical of -anything as did a generation or two past.</p> - -<p>"Could they be?" she asked. "They got engaged the night of the circus -Liva told me—everybody knows. Could they be counted in?"</p> - -<p>Oh, yes, I assured her. They might be counted. So, I fancy, might all -love-in-the-village, if we knew its authentic essence.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p><p>"Goodness," said Miggy, meditatively, "then there's Christopha and -Allen last winter, that I was their bridesmaid, and that rode off in the -hills that way on their wedding night. I s'pose that was like something, -if we only knew?"</p> - -<p>I could well believe that that first adventure of the young husband and -wife, of whom I shall tell you, was like something sweet and bright and -long ago.</p> - -<p>"And what," I said to Miggy abruptly, "about Peter?"</p> - -<p>"<i>Peter?</i>" repeated Miggy.</p> - -<p>Why not Peter?</p> - -<p>She looked out the window at him.</p> - -<p>"Why," she said, "but he's <i>now</i>. Peter's now. And he wears black -clothes. And he's cutting grass...."</p> - -<p>True for Peter, to all these impeachments. I told her that, in his day, -Aucassin was <i>now</i>, too; and that he wore the clothes of his times, and -that if he did not do the tasks nearest his hand, then Nicolete should -not have loved him.</p> - -<p>"And," said I, "unless I'm very much mistaken, in the same way that all -the ancient lovers loved their ladies, Peter loves you."</p> - -<p>"<i>That</i> way?" said Miggy, laying her hand on the manuscript.</p> - -<p>"That way," said I. And a very good way it was, too.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p><p>Miggy put up both hands with a manner of pointing at herself.</p> - -<p>"Oh, no," she said, "not me." Then her little shoulders went up and she -caught her breath like a child. "<i>Honest?</i>" she said.</p> - -<p>I said no more, but sat silent for a little, watching her across the -fallen manuscript of ancient romances. Presently I picked up the sheets, -and by chance my look fell on the very thing for which we had been -searching: the story of the wife of Kiala, a Wisconsin Indian chief who -was sold into slavery and carried to Martinique. And alone, across those -hundreds of miles of pathless snow and sea, the wife of Kiala somehow -followed him to the door of his West Indian owner. And to him she gave -herself into slavery so that she might be with her husband.</p> - -<p>I read the story to Miggy. And because the story is true, and because it -happened so near and because of this universe in general, I was not able -to read it quite so tranquilly as I should have wished.</p> - -<p>"Oh," Miggy said, "is it like <i>that</i>?"</p> - -<p>Yes, please God; if the heart is big enough to hold it, it is like that.</p> - -<p>Miggy put her hand down quickly on the blue muslin dress she wore.</p> - -<p>"My mother knew!" she said.</p> - -<p>And that is the most wonderful thing of all: one's mother knew.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p><p>Miggy turned once more and looked out the window at Peter. Bless Peter! -I think that he must have been over that grass with the mower quite -twice—perhaps twice and a half. Almost immediately Miggy looked away -from Peter, and I thought—though perhaps after all it was merely the -faint colour that often hovers in her cheek. I felt, however, that if I -had again suggested to Miggy that we ask Peter to lunch, Peter might -possibly have lunched with us. But now I did not suggest it. No, if ever -it gets to be "all Peter with Miggy," it must be so by divine -non-interference.</p> - -<p>My little voice-friend up there on the shelf, the Westminster chimes, -struck twelve, in its manner of sweet apology for being to blame for -things ending. In the village we lunch at twelve, and so my forenoon was -done and even the simple tasks I had set were not all finished. I -wonder, though, if deep within this fond forenoon we have not found -something—wings, or a light, or a singing—that was of the spirit of -the tasks? I wish that I thought so with reasons which I could give to a -scientist.</p> - -<p>At all events I am richly content. And over our luncheon Miggy has just -flattered me unconscionably.</p> - -<p>"My!" she said, "I should think everybody would want to be Secretary."</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>VII</span> <span class="smaller">AFRAID</span></h2> - -<p>I must turn aside to tell of Allen and Christopha, that young husband -and wife whose first adventure, Miggy thought, was like something sweet -and bright and long ago. It happened this last winter, but I cannot -perceive any grave difference between that winter night and this June. -Believe me, the seasons and the silences and we ourselves are not so -different as we are alike.</p> - -<p>On the night of her wedding, Christopha threw her bouquet from the -dining-room doorway, because there were no front stairs from which to -throw it, but instead only a stairway between walls and to be reached -from the dining room: a mere clerk of a stair instead of a -proprietor-like hall staircase. In the confusion which followed—the -carnations had narrowly missed the blazing white gas burner high in the -room—the bride ran away above stairs, her two bridesmaids following. -Her mother was already there, vaguely busy with vague fabrics. As Miggy -had told me, she herself was one of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>Christopha's bridesmaids, and it is -from Miggy that I have heard something of the outcome of the story.</p> - -<p>Almost as soon as the door was closed there was a rap at it, a rap -peremptory, confident.</p> - -<p>"Let me in," said Allen; "I'm the groom!" Chris herself opened the door. -Her muslin-wedding gown and the little bells of lilies unfaded in her -blond hair became her wholly, and all her simple prettiness still wore -the mystery and authority of the hour.</p> - -<p>"Allen," she said, "you oughtn't to of."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir, I ought!" he protested gayly, his voice pleasant with mirth -and with its new, deep note. "I'll never see you a bride again—a real, -weddin'-dress bride. I had to come."</p> - -<p>Christopha's mother looked up from her vague, bright fabrics.</p> - -<p>"I thought you started to take the minister the kodak album," she said -to Allen plaintively. "Has he got anybody to show him any attention? I -should think you might—"</p> - -<p>But the two bridesmaids edged their way into the next room, and on some -pretext of fabrics, took Christopha's mother with them,—as if there -were abroad some secret Word of which they knew the meaning. For Miggy -is sufficiently dramatic to know the Word for another, though she is not -sufficiently simple to know it for herself.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>Allen sat beside his bride on the cretonne-covered skirt box. And after -all, he did not look at her, but only at her warm left hand in his.</p> - -<p>"It is the funniest thing," he said, "when I see you comin' in the -parlour lookin' so differ'nt, I'm blessed if I wasn't afraid of you. -What do you think of that?"</p> - -<p>"You's afraid of my dress," Chris told him, laughing, "not me. You use' -to be afraid of me when we's first engaged, but you ain't now. It's -<i>me</i>. I feel afraid of you—Allen. You're—differ'nt."</p> - -<p>He laughed tenderly, confidently.</p> - -<p>"<i>Boo!</i>" he said. "Now are you?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," she answered seriously; "now."</p> - -<p>"Chris!" he cried boyishly, "we're married! We're goin' to keep house."</p> - -<p>"Oh," she said, "Allen! Think of the fun of puttin' the presents in the -house—the dishes, and the glass, and the ornaments. There won't be -another dinin' room in town like ours. Sideboard an' plate rail, an' the -rug not tacked down."</p> - -<p>Their thoughts flew to the little house, furnished and waiting, down the -snowy street by the Triangle park: their house.</p> - -<p>"Dinners, and suppers, and breakfas's—just us two by ourselves," Allen -said. "<i>And</i> the presents. My!"</p> - -<p>"Well, and company," she reminded him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> "that's what I want. The girls -in to tea in our own house."</p> - -<p>"Yes," he assented. "Right away?" he wanted to know.</p> - -<p>"No," she said, "not right away, Silly! We've got to buy curtains and -things. I never thought I'd have so many presents," she went on happily. -"They's two water pitchers alike. Bess says I can change hers. We'll -take it to the City"—she gave a little bounce on the skirt box—"and -see a show, a really, truly show."</p> - -<p>"Sure we will," said he, magnificently. "And I'll take you to the place -I told you about—where I got picked up."</p> - -<p>The little bride nodded, her eyes softening almost maternally. It was as -if that story were her own, the story of Allen, the little stray child -picked up on the streets of the City by that good woman whom Chris had -never seen. But the name of Sarah Ernestine was like a charm to Chris, -for the woman had been to Allen father and mother both.</p> - -<p>Chris bent down swiftly to his hands, closed over her own, and kissed -them.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Allen," she said, with a curious wistfulness, "will you <i>always</i>, -always be just like you are now?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I should say I would," he answered gently. "They's nobody like -you anywheres, Chris. Mis' Chris, Mis' Allen Martin."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>"Don't it scare you to say it?" she demanded.</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir, it does," he confessed. "It's like sayin' your own name over -the telephone. What about you? Will <i>you</i> always, too?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," she said, "always. Only—"</p> - -<p>"Only what?" he repeated anxiously.</p> - -<p>"Oh," she said, "don't let's let any outside things come between us, -Allen—like they do, like with Bess and Opie,—business and -sewin',—that's what I'm afraid of," she ended vaguely.</p> - -<p>"Well," he said, "I guess we ain't much afraid of each other, honey. I -guess we're just afraid of what could come between us."</p> - -<p>A voice, unconvincing, unimportant, a part of the inessential aspect of -alien things, detached itself from the accompaniment in the next room, -saying something responsible and plaintive about only an hour till train -time.</p> - -<p>"An hour," Allen said over, and put his arms about her, with boyish -awkwardness for the sake of the crisp muslin gown that had so terrified -him. She rose and stood beside him, and he waited for a moment looking -up in her face. "Chris," he said, "I'm scared of this one hour even. -Till train time."</p> - -<p>"I'll hurry up and get the hour done as quick as I can," she promised -him gayly.</p> - -<p>"Honestly, now—" said Chris's mother from the vague and indeterminate -region where she moved.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>"Right off, Mis' Mother!" Allen said, and knew that she was in the -doorway, with the bridesmaids laughing beside her. And then he went down -the stairway, his first radiant moment gone by.</p> - -<p>In the dining room the messenger was waiting. The messenger had arrived, -in the clear cold of the night, from a drive across the Caledonia hills, -and some one had sent him to that deserted room to warm himself. But -Allen found him breathing on his fingers and staring out the frosty -window into the dark. It was Jacob Ernestine, brother to the woman who -had brought up Allen and had been kind to him when nobody else in the -world was kind. For years Sarah Ernestine had been "West"—and with that -awful inarticulacy of her class, mere distance had become an impassable -gulf and the Silence had taken her. Allen had not even known that she -meant to return. And now, Jacob told him, she was here, at his own home -back in the hills—Sarah and a child, a little stray boy, whom she had -found and befriended as she had once befriended Allen. And she was -dying.</p> - -<p>"She didn't get your letter, I guess," the old man said, "'bout gettin' -married. She come to-day, so sick she couldn't hold her head up. I see -she didn't know nothin' 'bout your doin's. I didn't let her know. I jus' -drove in, like split, to tell you, when the doctor went. He says she -can't—she won't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> ... till mornin'. I thought," he apologized wistfully, -"ye'd want to know, anyways, so I jus' drove in."</p> - -<p>"That was all right," Allen said. "You done right, Jacob."</p> - -<p>Then he stood still for a moment, looking down at the bright figures of -the carpet. Jacob lived twelve miles back in the hills.</p> - -<p>"How'd you come?" Allen asked him briefly.</p> - -<p>"I've got the new cutter," the old man answered, with a touch of eager -pride. "I'll drive ye."</p> - -<p>Then some one in the parlour caught sight of the bridegroom, and they -all called to him and came where he was, besieging him with -good-natured, trivial talk. The old man waited, looking out the window -into the dark. He had known them all since they were children, and their -merrymaking did not impress him as wholly real. Neither, for that -matter, did Allen's wedding. Besides, his own sister was dying—somehow -putting an end to the time when he and she had been at home together. -That was all he had thought of during his drive to town, and hardly at -all of Allen and his wedding. He waited patiently now while Allen got -the wedding guests back to the parlour, and then slipped away from them, -and came through the dining room to the stair door.</p> - -<p>"Stay there a minute," Allen bade him shortly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> and went back to the -upper floor and to Chris's door again.</p> - -<p>It was her mother who answered his summons this time, and Allen's manner -and face checked her words. Before he had done telling her what had -happened, Chris herself was on the threshold, already in sober brown, as -one who has put aside rainbows and entered on life. She had a little -brown hat in one hand, and for the other hand he groped out and held it -while he told her, as well as he could.</p> - -<p>"I guess I've got to go, Chrissie," he ended miserably.</p> - -<p>She met his eyes, her own soft with sympathy for the plight of the other -woman.</p> - -<p>"Well, yes," she said quietly, "of course we've got to go."</p> - -<p>He looked at her breathlessly. That possibility had not crossed his -mind.</p> - -<p>"You!" he cried. "You couldn't go, dear. Twelve miles out in Caledonia, -cold as it is to-night. You—"</p> - -<p>In spite of her sympathy, she laughed at him then.</p> - -<p>"Did you honestly think I wouldn't?" she asked, in a kind of wonder.</p> - -<p>"Well, I'm sure—" began her mother. But the two bridesmaids manifestly -heard the Word again, for they talked with her both at once.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p><p>"Not with Jacob, though," Chris was saying decisively. "You help father -and the boys get out our cutter, Allen."</p> - -<p>Allen strode past the mother and lifted his wife's face in his hands.</p> - -<p>"Do you mean it?" he demanded. "Will you go—in the cold—all that long -way—"</p> - -<p>"You Silly!" she answered, and drew away from him and set the little -brown hat on her head.</p> - -<p class="space-above">The road lay white before them, twelve miles of snow and stars to -Jacob's cottage among the Caledonia hills. Jacob had gone on—from the -crest of the rise by the Corner church they saw him and heard the faint -signalling of his bells. It was a place, that rise by the Corner church -on the edge of the village, where two others in such case might have -drawn rein to look at Everything, stretching before, rhythmic crest and -shallow, and all silent and waiting. But not these two, incurious as the -gods, naïve as the first lovers. Only, though of this they were -unconscious, they saw things a little differently that night.</p> - -<p>"Look!" said the girl, with a sign to the lowlands, expressive with -lights. "So many folks's houses—homes, all started. I s'pose it was -just as big a thing for them. But <i>theirs</i> don't seem like anything, -side of ours!"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>"That's so, too," assented Allen. "And theirs <i>ain't</i> anything side of -ours!" he maintained stoutly.</p> - -<p>"No, sir," she agreed, laughing.</p> - -<p>Then she grew suddenly grave, and fell silent for a little, her eyes -here and there on the valley lights, while Allen calculated aloud the -time of the arrival at Jacob's house.</p> - -<p>"Allen!" she said at last.</p> - -<p>"Here!" he answered. "I'm here, you bet."</p> - -<p>"Just look at the lights," she said seriously, "and then <i>think</i>. -There's Bess and Opie—not speakin' to each other. Over there's the -Hubbelthwait farm that they've left for the hotel—an' Threat -Hubbelthwait drunk all the time. An' Howells's, poor and can't pay, and -don't care if they can't, and quarrels so folks can hear 'em from the -road. And the Moneys', that's so ugly to the children, and her findin' -fault, and him can't speak without an oath. That only leaves the -Topladys' over there that's real, regular people. And she kind o' bosses -him."</p> - -<p>"Well, now, that's so, ain't it?" said Allen, looking at the lights with -a difference.</p> - -<p>Chris's right hand was warm in his great-coat pocket, and she suddenly -snuggled close to him, her chin on his shoulder.</p> - -<p>"Oh, Allen," she said, "I'm <i>afraid</i>!"</p> - -<p>"What? On the Plank Road?" he wanted to know, missing her meaning.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p><p>"All them folks started out with presents, and a house, like us," she -said, "and with their minds all made up to bein' happy. But just look at -'em."</p> - -<p>"Well," said Allen, reasonably, "we <i>ain't</i> them."</p> - -<p>"We might get like 'em," she insisted. "How can you tell? Folks just do -get that way or they just don't. How can you <i>tell</i>?"</p> - -<p>"I s'pose that's so, ain't it?" said Allen, thoughtfully.</p> - -<p>"Mother's got a picture of the Hubbelthwaits when they was married," -Chris pursued. "Her in white an' slippers and bracelets, and him slick -as a kitten's foot. Think of her now, Allen, with <i>bracelets</i>. And him -drunk all the time, 'most. How can you tell how things'll turn out? Oh, -Allen, I <i>am</i>! I'm afraid."</p> - -<p>He bent to her face and laid his own against hers, glowing and cold and -with fresh, warm lips.</p> - -<p>"Let's just try to be happy and keep ourselves happy," he said.</p> - -<p>The troubled woman was still in her face, but at his touch the fears -went a little away, and the valley lights being already left behind -among the echoes of the bells, they forgot both the lights and their -shadows and drifted back to talk about the new house and the presents, -and the dinners and suppers and breakfasts together. For these were the -stuff of which the time was made. As it was made, too,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> of that shadowy, -hovering fear for the future, and the tragic pity of their errand, and -of sad conjecture about the little stray child whom Sarah Ernestine had -brought.</p> - -<p>"That ain't it a'ready, is it?" Christopha exclaimed when they saw -Jacob's cottage.</p> - -<p>"It just is—it's 'leven o'clock now," Allen answered, and gave the -horse to the old man; and they two went within.</p> - -<p>The light in the room, like the lights back in the valley, was as if -some great outside influence here and there should part the darkness to -win a little stage for a scene of the tragedy: in the valley, for the -drunkenness at the Hubbelthwaits', the poverty at the Howells', the ill -nature at the Moneys'; and here, in Jacob's cottage, for death. There -was no doubt of the quality of the hour in the cottage. The room was -instinct with the outside touch. Already it was laid upon the woman in -the bed, and with a mystery and authority not unlike that which had come -upon Christopha in her marriage hour and was upon her still.</p> - -<p>The woman knew Allen, smiled at him, made him understand her -thankfulness that he had come. At Christopha she looked kindly and quite -without curiosity. Some way, that absence of curiosity at what was so -vital to him gripped Allen's heart, and without his knowing the process, -showed him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> nature of death. The neighbour who had been with the -sick woman slipped outside, and as she went she patted Chris's shoulder; -and Allen felt that she understood, and he was dumbly grateful to her.</p> - -<p>Allen sat by the bed and held the hand of his foster-mother; and Chris -moved about the room, heating water for a little pot of tea. And so it -was Chris who first saw the child. He was sitting at the end of the wood -box, on the floor before the oven—that little stray boy whom Sarah -Ernestine had picked up as she had once picked up Allen. He looked up at -Christopha with big, soft eyes, naïve as the first bird. Almost before -she knew that she meant to do so, Chris stooped, with a wondering word, -and took him in her arms. He clung to her and she sat in the rocking -chair near the window where stood Jacob's carnation plant. And she tried -both to look at the child and to love him, at the same time.</p> - -<p>"See, Allen," she said, "this little boy!"</p> - -<p>The child looked over his shoulder at Allen, his little arms leaning on -Christopha's breast. And very likely because he had felt strange and -lonely and now was taken some account of, he suddenly and beautifully -smiled, and you would have loved him the more for the way he did that.</p> - -<p>The woman, lying with closed eyes, understood and remembered.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>"Allen," she said, "that's little John. You find him—a home -somewheres. If you can...."</p> - -<p>"Why, yes, mother, we'll do that. We can do that, I guess. Don't you -worry any about <i>him</i>," said Allen.</p> - -<p>"He's all alone. I donno his name, even.... But you be good to him, -Allen, will you?" she said restlessly. "I found him somewheres."</p> - -<p>"Like me," Allen said.</p> - -<p>She shook her head feebly.</p> - -<p>"Worse," she said, "worse. I knew I couldn't—do much. I just—thought I -could keep him from bein' wicked—mebbe."</p> - -<p>"Like you did me, mother, I guess," the boy said.</p> - -<p>Then she opened her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Allen!" she said clearly. "Oh, if I did! When I think how mebbe I done -that—<i>I ain't afraid to die</i>."</p> - -<p>Jacob Ernestine came in the room and stood rubbing one hand on the back -of the other. He saw the kettle's high column of steam and looked -inquiringly at Chris. But she sat mothering the little silent boy, who -looked at her gravely, or smiled, or pulled at her collar, responsive to -her touch as she was thrillingly responsive to his nearness. So Jacob -lifted the kettle to the back of the stove, moved his carnation plant a -little away from the frost of the pane, and settled himself at the -bed's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> foot to watch. And when, after a long time, the child fell -asleep, Chris would not lay him down. Allen would have taken him, and -Jacob came and tried to do so, but she shook her head and they let her -be. She sat so still, hour after hour, that at last she herself dozed; -and it seemed to her, in a manner of dreaming, that the carnation plant -on the window-sill had lifted and multiplied until something white and -like fragrance filled the room; and this, then, she dreamed, was what -death is, death in the room for the woman. Or might it not be the -perfume of her own bridal bouquet, the carnations which she had carried -that night? But then the child stirred, and Christopha roused a little, -and after all, the sense of flowers in the room was the sense of the -little one in her arms. As if many things mean one thing.</p> - -<p>It was toward dawn that the end came, quite simply and with no manner of -finality, as if one were to pass into another chamber. And after that, -as quickly as might be, Christopha and Allen made ready to drive back to -the village for the last bitter business of all.</p> - -<p>Allen, in the barn with Jacob, wondered what he must do. Allen was -sore-hearted at his loss, grateful for the charge that he had been -given; but what was he to do? The child ought not to stay in Jacob's -cottage. If Chris's mother would take him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> for a little,—but Allen -knew, without at all being able to define it, her plaintive, burdened -manner, the burdened manner of the irresponsible. Still puzzling over -this, he brought the cutter to the side door; and the side door opened, -and Chris came out in the pale light, leading the little boy—awake, -warmly wrapped, ready for the ride.</p> - -<p>"Where you goin' to take him to, Chrissie?" Allen asked breathlessly.</p> - -<p>"Some of the neighbours, I guess, ain't we?" she answered. "I donno. I -thought we could see. He mustn't be left here—now."</p> - -<p>"No, that's so, ain't it?" said Allen only. "He mustn't."</p> - -<p>The three drove out together into the land lying about the gate of dawn. -A fragment of moon was in the east. There was about the hour something -primitive, as if, in this loneliest of all the hours, the world reverted -to type, remembered ancient savage differences, and fell in the primal -lines.</p> - -<p>"Allen," Chris said, "you'll miss her. I mean miss knowin' she's alive."</p> - -<p>"Yes," the boy said, "I'll miss knowin' she's alive."</p> - -<p>"Well, we must try to settle what to do with the little boy," she -suggested hastily.</p> - -<p>"Yes," he assented, "that's right. We've got to settle that," and at -this they fell silent.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p><p>"There's Hopkins's," Chris said presently, nodding toward the home of -the neighbour who had waited their coming to Jacob's cottage. "But -she'll hev to be over there lots to-day and to-morrow. And she was kep' -up so late it don't hardly seem as if we'd ought to stop and ask her."</p> - -<p>"No," Allen said, "I donno as it does, really."</p> - -<p>"There's Cripps's," she suggested a little farther on, "but they ain't -up yet. I donno's 'twould do to roust 'em up."</p> - -<p>"No," Allen agreed, "best not do that, I guess." Christopha looked over -the great fields.</p> - -<p>"My!" she said, "you'll miss her—miss thinkin' of her bein' somewheres. -Allen! Where do you s'pose she is?"</p> - -<p>"I thought o' that," said Allen, soberly.</p> - -<p>"Goodness!" said Christopha, and shivered, and suddenly drew the child -close to her. He was sleeping again. And it was so, with his little body -between them, that she could no longer keep her hand warm in Allen's -greatcoat pocket. But above the child's head her eyes and Allen's would -meet, and in that hour the two had never been so near. Nearer they were -than in the talk about the new house, and the presents, and the dinners -and suppers and breakfasts together.</p> - -<p>They passed the farmhouses that looked asleep, and the farmhouses that -looked watchfully awake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> while their owners slept. It would not be well -to knock at these, still and sombre-windowed. And though there were -lights at the Moneys' and at the Howells' and at the Hubbelthwait farm, -and even at Bess and Opie's, their gates, by common consent, were also -passed. Nor did they stop at the Topladys'.</p> - -<p>"They're real, regular people with a grown son," Chris said of them -vaguely, "and it don't seem hardly fair to give 'em little John, too!"</p> - -<p>"Little John," Allen said over wonderingly. When they called him that -the child seemed suddenly a person, like themselves. Their eyes met -above his head.</p> - -<p>"Allen!" Chris said.</p> - -<p>"What? What is it?" he asked eagerly.</p> - -<p>"Could—do you think—could <i>we</i>?" she demanded.</p> - -<p>"My!" he answered, "I been a-wishin'—"</p> - -<p>Involuntarily he drew rein. They were on the rise by the Corner church -at the edge of the village. The village, rhythmic crest of wall and -shallow of lawn, lay below them, and near the little Triangle park would -be their waiting house.</p> - -<p>"Did you mean have him live with us?" Allen made sure.</p> - -<p>"Yes, I did," Chris said, "if we had the money."</p> - -<p>"Well!" said the boy, "well, I guess <i>that'll</i> be all right!"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p><p>"How much <i>she'd</i> of liked it," said Chris.</p> - -<p>"Wouldn't she, though," Allen assented; "wouldn't she? And you heard -what she said—that about keepin' him from bein'—wicked? -Chrissie—<i>could</i> we, you and me? This little fellow?"</p> - -<p>Chris lifted her face and nodded.</p> - -<p>"I ain't afraid," she said simply.</p> - -<p>"I ain't either," her husband said.</p> - -<p>As if, in this new future, there were less need of fear than in the -future which had sought to "try to be happy and keep ourselves happy."</p> - -<p>They looked down where their house would be, near the gate of the coming -dawn. And—as two others in such case might have seen—it was as if they -were the genii of their own mysterious future, a future whose solution -trembled very near. For with the charge of the child had come a courage, -even as the dead woman had known, when she thought of her charge of -Allen, that she was not afraid to die.</p> - -<p>"Allen," said Chris, stumblingly, "it don't seem as if we could get like -the Howells' an' the Hubbelthwaits and them. Somehow it don't seem as if -we <i>could</i>!"</p> - -<p>"No," said Allen, "we couldn't. That's so, ain't it?"</p> - -<p>Above little John's head their eyes met in a kind of new betrothal, new -marriage, new birth. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> when he would have driven on, Allen pulled at -the reins again, and,</p> - -<p>"Chrissie," he said suddenly, "if afterwards—there should be -anybody—else. I mean for us. Would—would you keep on lovin' this -little kiddie, too?"</p> - -<p>She met his eyes bravely, sweetly.</p> - -<p>"Well, you Silly," she said, "of course I would!"</p> - -<p>At which Allen laughed joyously, confidently.</p> - -<p>"Why, Chris," he cried, "we're married! For always an' always. An' -here's this little old man to see to. Who's afraid?"</p> - -<p>Then they kissed each other above the head of the sleeping child, and -drove on toward the village, and toward their waiting house.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>VIII</span> <span class="smaller">THE JAVA ENTERTAINMENT</span></h2> - -<p>When I opened my door this morning, the Outdoors was like a thing coming -to meet me. I mean that it was like a person coming to meet me—no, it -was like many persons, hand in hand and, so to speak, mind in mind; a -great company of whom straightway I became one. I felt that swift, good -gladness that <i>now</i> was <i>now</i>,—that delicate, fleeting Now, that very -coquette of time, given and withdrawn. I remember that I could not soon -go to sleep on the night of the day on which I learned that the Hebrew -tongue has no present tense. They could not catch at that needle-point -of experience, and we can do so. I like to glory in it by myself when no -one else is thinking of it; to think aside, as if <i>to</i> Something, that -now is being now.... And I long for the time when we shall all know it -together, all the time, and understand its potentialities and let it be -breath and pulse to keep the Spirit Future alive and pure.</p> - -<p>It would have been no great wonder if I had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> rejoicing past all -reason in the moment. For at that very instant came Calliope Marsh, home -for the Java entertainment which was set for to-night, and driving to my -gate the Sykes's white horse in the post-office store delivery wagon. -And as I saw her, so precisely did she look like herself, that I could -have believed that Now was not Now, but Then, when first I knew her.</p> - -<p>Calliope brought the buckled lines informally over the horse's head and -let them fall about the tie post, and ran to me. I am afraid that I am -not going to tell what we said. But it was full of being once more in -the presence of those whom you love. Do you not think that such being -together is a means of actual life transcending both breath and -perception?</p> - -<p>When our greeting was done, Calliope sat down on the stair in my hall, -and,</p> - -<p>"Hev you got any spare candle-shades an' sherbet glasses, an' pretty -doilies an' lunch cloths an' rugs an' willow chairs an' a statue of -almost anybody an' a meat-chopper with a peanut-butter attachment an' a -cap an' gown like colleges?" she demanded.</p> - -<p>And when I told her that I thought I might have some of these things,</p> - -<p>"Well," Calliope said, "she wants 'em all. Who do I mean by She? Mis' -Oliver Wheeler Johnson, the personal queen of things."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p><p>She leaned forward, hugging her thin little arms, and she looked up at -me from under the brim of her round straw hat.</p> - -<p>"I'm in need of grace," she said shortly. "I never felt like this toward -any human being. But I tell you, when that little Mis' Johnson comes -dilly-nippin' around where I am, noddin' her blue ostrich tip, seems my -spine just stiffens out in me like it was going to strike at her, same -as a stick. Do you know the feelin'?"</p> - -<p>I answered reluctantly, and not as I should wish to answer; for it is -certain that I, too, have seldom seen Mrs. Johnson without an urgency to -be gone from her little fluttering presence. But Calliope! I could not -imagine Calliope shrinking from any one, or knowing herself alien to -another.</p> - -<p>"For sixty years," she answered my thought of her, "I've never known -what it was to couldn't bear anybody, not without I had a reason. They -ain't much of anybody I what you might say don't like, without they're -malicious or ugly a-purpose. Ugly by nature, ugly an' can't help it, -ugly an' don't know it—I can forgive all them. An' Mis' Johnson ain't -ugly at all—she's just a real sweet little slip of a thing, doin' her -hard-workin' best. But when I first see her in church that day, I says -to myself: 'I'll give that little piece two months to carry the sail -she's carryin' here to-day; four months<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> to hev folks tired of her, an' -six months to get herself the cold shoulder all 'round.' An' I hold to -what I said. An' when her baby-blue nineteen-inch feather swings in an' -'round, an' when she tells how things ought to be, I kind o' bristle all -over me. I'm ashamed of it—an' yet, do you know, I like to give in to -it?" Calliope said solemnly. "I donno what's come over me. Hev you heard -where the Java entertainment's put to be?"</p> - -<p>I had not heard, nor was I sure just why it was of Java, save that -Friendship is continually giving entertainments with foreign names and -practising a wild imperialism to carry out an effect of foreign parts. -And since, at the missionary meeting which had projected the affair, -Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had told about <i>their</i> Java entertainment in -<i>their</i> church at home, that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda Toplady, who -was president of the society, had appointed her chairman of the Java -entertainment committee.</p> - -<p>"And," Calliope informed me, "she's picked out the engine-house for it. -Yes, sir,—the fire-engine house. No other place was <i>quaint</i> enough. No -other place lent itself to decoration probabilities—or somethin' like -that. She turned her back flat on the church an' went round to empty -stores, lookin' for <i>quaint-ity</i>. One while I thought she'd hev us in -the Chinese laundry, she seemed that took with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> the tomato-coloured -signs on the walls. But, finally, she lit on the engine-house; an' when -she see the big, bare engine-room, with the big, shinin' engine in it, -an' harnesses hangin' from them rough board beams in a kind of avenoo, -an' the board walls all streaked down, she spatted her hands an' 'lowed -we'd hev our Java there. 'What a dear, quaint place,' s's she,—'so -<i>flexible</i>!' She held out about the harnesses bein' so quaintly -picturesque an' the fire-engine a piece o' resistance—or somethin' like -that. An' she rents the room, without ay, yes, no, nor boo. My way of -thinkin', a chairman ought to hev boo for a background, even if she <i>is</i> -chairman. That's where she wants the statue an' the nut butter an' the -cap an' gown. Can we borrow 'em of you?"</p> - -<p>"The engine-house!" I repeated incredulously. "You cannot mean the -fire-engine house, Calliope?"</p> - -<p>"I do," Calliope said firmly, "the quaint, flexible fire-engine house. -They ain't been a fire in Friendship in over two years, so Mis' Johnson -says we ain't got that to think of—an' I donno as we hev. An' they -never use the engine any more, now they've got city water, excep' for -fires in the country, and then nobody ever gets in to give the alarm -till the house is burned down an' no need to bother goin'. Even if they -do get in in some sort of season, the department has to go to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> mayor -to get a permit to go outside the city limits. It was so when the -Topladys' barn burned. Timothy told 'em, when they come gallopin' up -after it was most done smokin', that if they had held off a little -longer they could have been a sight of help to him in shinglin' the new -one. Oh, no, they ain't much of any danger of our being disturbed by a -fire in them two hours to-night. Anyhow, they can't be a fire. Mis' -Oliver Wheeler Johnson said so."</p> - -<p>We laughed like children as we loaded my "Java" stuffs on the wagon. -Calliope was a valiant helper to Mrs. Johnson, and so I told her. She -was standing in the wagon box, one arm about my palm, the other free for -driving.</p> - -<p>"I'm the chairman o' the refreshments, too," she confessed. "Oh, well. -Yourself you can boss round, you know," she threw back, smiling; -"anybody can do that. But your feelin's you're some cramped about -runnin'."</p> - -<p>It is certain that Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson was signally unfitted for -a future in Friendship Village. She was a woman of some little world in -which she had moved before she came to us, and in the two worlds she -perceived no difference. Or, where she saw a difference, she sought to -modify it by a touch when a breath would have been too much, and the -only factor of potency would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> been a kind of potency of spirit, -which she did not possess.</p> - -<p>The Oliver Wheeler Johnsons had moved to Friendship only three months -before, and nobody had looked for them at church on their first Sunday. -"Movin' so, you want your Sabbath to take some rest in, an' you ain't -expected to dress yourself up an' get out to Sunday service an' face -strangers," the village said—and when the two walked into church while -the responses were being made nearly everybody lost the place.</p> - -<p>They were very young, and they were extremely well dressed.</p> - -<p>"He's got on one o' the long coats," comment ran after church, "an' he's -got a real soft-speakin' voice. But he seems to know how to act."</p> - -<p>And, "I declare, nice white gloves an' a nineteen-inch baby-blue ostrich -feather durin' movin' seems some like puttin' on."</p> - -<p>And, "The back of her dress fits her just like the front, an' I must say -she knows it. No pullin' down the jacket or hitchin' the strings forward -for <i>her</i>, when she stands up!"</p> - -<p>As Miggy, who first told me about that day, had said, "That Sunday -morning, Mis' Oliver Wheeler Johnson was the belle of the congregation."</p> - -<p>After service that day, instead of going directly home or waiting to be -addressed, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> Johnson had spoken to the woman with -whom she had been seated. It was Mis' Postmaster Sykes.</p> - -<p>"Thank you so much," Mrs. Johnson said, "for letting us share your pew. -May I present my husband? We have come to Friendship to live, and we -shall be coming here to church. And I shall want to join your Ladies' -Aid Society and your Missionary Circle and, perhaps, be in the -Sunday-school right away. I—I think I'll be less homesick—"</p> - -<p>"Actually," Mis' Sykes said afterward, "she took my breath clear away -from me. I never heard of such a thing. Of course, we're real glad to -hev our newcomers Christian people, but we want quiet Christians. An' -did you notice how she was when I give her an introduction around? Why, -she up an' out with somethin' to say to everybody. Just a neat little -'How d' do' wouldn't do for her to remark. I always suspicion them -talkative-at-first kind. It's like they'd been on the stage or brought -up in a hotel."</p> - -<p>When she first came to the Ladies' Aid and the missionary meetings, Mrs. -Johnson "said something." She was "up to her feet" three or four times -at each session with suggestion, information, or description of how they -did in her home church. And some way I think that what chiefly separated -her from the village was the way that inevitable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> nineteen-inch blue -ostrich plume on the little woman's hat bobbed and won attention and was -everywhere at once. Or, perhaps—such creatures of wax we are to our -impressions—it may have been little Mrs. Johnson's mere way of lifting -her small, pointed chin when she talked, and of frowning and -over-emphasizing. Or it may have been that she stood with her hands -clasped behind her in what seemed to Friendship exaggerated ease, or -that she smiled arbitrarily and ingratiatingly as she talked when there -was absolutely nothing at which to smile. I think that these made her -seem as alien to us as, in varied measure, certain moral defects might -have done.</p> - -<p>Moreover, she mentioned with familiarity objects and usages of which -Friendship Village knew nothing: Carriage shoes, a new cake of soap for -each guest, some kind of ice served, it was incredulously repeated, "in -the middle o' the meal!" She innocently let fall that she sent to the -city for her letter-paper. She had travelled in a state-room on a train, -and she said so. She knew a noted woman. She used, we saw from the -street, shaded candles on the table when she and her husband were at -supper alone. She thought nothing of ordering Jimmy Sturgis and the bus -to take her down town to her marketing on a rainy day. She had inclined -to blame the village that Daphne Street was not paved, instead of -joining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> with the village to blame somebody else. Above all, she tried -to buy our old furniture. I do not know that another might not have done -all these quite without giving offence, and, indeed, rather have left us -impressed with her superior familiarity with an envied world. But by the -time of the Java entertainment Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had -innocently alienated half Friendship Village. And this morning Calliope -merely voiced what I knew to be the sentiment of most of Mrs. Johnson's -neighbours and acquaintances. For these people are the kindly of earth; -but they are of earth, where reign both the centrifugal and centripetal -forces,—and the control is not always so swift as science and the human -heart could wish.</p> - -<p>At five o'clock to-day—the day set for the Java evening -entertainment—I made my way to the engine-house. This was partly -because I wished to be as much as possible with Calliope during her few -days in the village, and partly it was because the affair would belong -to the class of festivity which I am loath to miss, and I think that, -for Friendship's sake, I will never willingly pass by a "hall" in which -is to be found a like diversion. Already on the great room, receiving -its final preparation, had descended something of the excited spirit of -the evening: the heat, the insufficient light, the committee members' -shrill, rollicking children sliding on the floor, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> booths which in -all bazaars contain with a precision fairly bewildering the same class -of objects; and the inevitable sense of hurry and silk waists and aching -feet and mustn't-take-your-change-back. But to all these things the Java -engine-house affair would add an element of novelty, almost a flavour of -romance. Certainly the room lent itself to "decoration probabilities," -as Calliope had vaguely quoted; it had been a roller-skating rink, -utilized by the fire-department on the decline of the pastime, and there -was, as Mrs. Johnson's <i>pièce de résistance</i>, the fire-engine.</p> - -<p>I had never before been in the engine-house—you know how there will be -commonplace enough spots in your own town to which you never go: the -engine-house, the church belfry, the wood yard, upstairs over this store -and that, and grocery cellars whose sloping trap-doors, open now and -then to the walk, are as alien as the inside of the trunks of your -trees. When I stepped in the engine-house, it seemed insistently a place -in which I had never been before. And this may have been partly because -the whole idea of a village fire-department is to me singular: the -waiting horses and ladders and hose, whose sole reason for being is -merely ameliorative, and never human and preventive; that pealing of the -sharp, peculiar, terrifying alarm and summons first imprinting something -on the very air, stabbing us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> with <i>Halt</i> while we count the bell -strokes for the ward, and then clanging the wild fury of the -quick-stroke command to help.</p> - -<p>To-day the great glittering fire-engine, flanked by hose-cart and -hook-and-ladder wagon, occupied almost wonderingly the head of the room -which had been invaded, and an inspired committee had garlanded the -engine with paper roses and American flags. The flag of the Netherlands, -copied from a dictionary and wrought in red-white-and-blue cambric with -a silver crown, drooped meditatively from the smoke-stack; a scarlet fez -and a peacock-feather fan hung on the supply hose; and on the -tongue-bracer was fixed a pink sofa cushion from Mis' Amanda Toplady's -parlour, with an olive Indian gentleman in a tinsel zouave jacket -stamped on the cover. On the two big sliding doors, back of which stood -the fire company's horses, were tacked innumerable Javanese trifles more -picturesque than authentic; and on outlying booths and tables there were -others. Directly before the engine was to be the tea-table, where Mis' -Postmaster Sykes was to serve Java tea from a Java canister, loaned by -the Post-office store.</p> - -<p>As soon as I entered I sought out Calliope's booth, a huge affair -constructed of rugs whose red-tongued, couchant dogs and bounding fawns -somewhat marred the Eastern effect. And within, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> found myself in a -circle of the Friendship women whom I know best—all of them tired with -that deadly tiredness born of a day's work at a church fair of any -nation. But at once I saw that it was not merely fatigue which was -disquieting them.</p> - -<p>Calliope was leaning against a bit of Bagelen blue, loaned by the new -minister's wife. And she said to me as if, I thought, in explanation of -what I was to hear,—"I guess we're all pretty tired. Most of us look -like we wanted to pant. I'm all of a shake, myself."</p> - -<p>When Mis' Postmaster Sykes spoke unsmilingly, I understood:—</p> - -<p>"It ain't the bein' tired," she disclaimed; "tired I can stand an' hev -stood since my own birth. But it's the bein' commanded 'round—me, -<i>commanded</i>—by that little I'm-the-one-an'-you-do-as-I-say out there!"</p> - -<p>"Land-a-livin' an' a-dyin'!" said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "I -declare if I know whether I'm on foot or on horseback. It's bad enough -to hev to run a fair, without you've got to be run yourself, too. Ain't -it enough for Mis' Johnson to be made chairman without her wantin' to -boss besides? She might as well say to me, 'Mis' Holcomb, you do -everything the opposite way from the way you've just done it,' an' hev -it over with."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>Mis' Amanda Toplady—even that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda—shook her -head.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Johnson surely acts used to bein' bowed down to," she admitted; -"she seems fair bent on lordin' it. My land, if she wasn't bound to -borrow my Tea rose plant that's just nearin' ready to bud."</p> - -<p>Calliope laughed, a little ruefully, and wholly in sympathy.</p> - -<p>"Honest," she said, "I guess what's the matter with all of us ain't so -much what she does as the particular way she does it. It's so with some -folks. They just seem to sort of <i>set</i> you all over, when you come near -'em—same as the cold does to gravy. We'd all ought to wrostle with the -feelin', I expect."</p> - -<p>"I expect we had," said Mis' Holcomb, "but you could wrostle all your -days with vinegar an' it'd pucker your mouth same way."</p> - -<p>"Funny part," Calliope observed, "everybody feels just alike about her. -When she skips around so sort o' momentous, we all want to dodge. I felt -sorry for her, first, because I thought she was in for nervous -prostration. But after a while I see it wasn't disease—it was just her -feelin' so up an' down significant, you might say."</p> - -<p>"I donno," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "but it's part the way -she says her <i>a</i>'s. That real <i>a</i>-soundin' <i>a</i> kind," she explained -vaguely.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>"She's so right an' left cuffy—I guess that's the whole thing," -Calliope put it in her rich idiom.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Mis' Amanda, sadly, "there must be somethin' we could like -her for, even if it was only her husband."</p> - -<p>"He ain't what I'd call much, either," Calliope dismissed Mr. Oliver -Wheeler Johnson positively; "he's got too soft-speakin' a voice. I like -a man's voice to rumble up soft from his chest an' not slip down thin -from his brain."</p> - -<p>I remember that I listened in a great wonder to these women whom I had -seen at many an office of friendliness to strangers and aliens. Yet as I -looked across the floor at that little Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson—who, -in the hat with the blue plume, was everywhere, directing, altering, -objecting, arranging, commanding and, especially, doing over—I most -unwillingly felt much as they felt. If only Mrs. Johnson had not -continually lifted her little pointed chin. If only she had not -perpetually and ingratiatingly smiled when there was nothing at which to -smile at all.</p> - -<p>Then Abigail Arnold hurried up to us with a tray of cups for the Java -tea.</p> - -<p>"Calliope," she said to the chairman of the refreshments, "Mis' Johnson -jus' put up her little chin an' says, 'What! ain't we no lemons for the -tea?'"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>Calliope compressed her lips and lifted their thin line tight and high.</p> - -<p>"Lemins," she replied, "ain't necessarily found in Java. I've a good big -mind to go home to bed."</p> - -<p>Then we saw little Mrs. Johnson's blue linen dress hurrying toward us -with the waving line of the blue feather above her, like a last little -daring flourish by the artist of her. She was really very pretty and -childish, with a manner of moving in wreaths and lines and never in -solids. Her little feet twinkled along like the signature to the pretty -picture of her. But yet she was not appealing. She was like an -overconfident child whom you long to shut in a closet. Yes, I understand -that I sound like a barbarian in these days of splendid corrective -treatment of children who are studied and not stormed at. And in this -treatment I believe to the uttermost. And yet, overconfidence in a child -is of all things the most—I will amend what I said: Mrs. Oliver Wheeler -Johnson was like an overconfident child whom you long to shut in a -closet because of your ignorance of what else on earth to do. No doubt -there is a better way, but none of us knew it. And she came toward us -intent, every one felt, on some radical change in arrangements, though -the big room was now in the pink of appointment and ready to be left -while the committee went home to sup on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> "just sauce and -bread-and-butter," and to don silk waists.</p> - -<p>We saw little Mrs. Johnson hurrying toward us, upon a background of the -great, patient room, all-tolerant of its petty bedizening. And then Mrs. -Johnson, we in Calliope's booth, the sliding, rollicking children, and -all the others about stood still, at the sharp, peculiar terrifying -alarm and summons which seemed to imprint something on the very air, -stabbing us with <i>Halt</i> that we might count the bell strokes for the -ward, and clanging a wild fury of the quick-stroke command to help. For -the first time in two years the Friendship fire alarm was sounding from -the tower above our heads.</p> - -<p>There was a panting sweep and scurry for the edges of the room, as -instantly a gong on the wall sounded with the alarm, and the two big -sliding doors went back, scattering like feathers the innumerable -Javanese trifles that had been tacked there. Forward, down the rug-hung -vista, plunged the two big horses of the department. We saw the Java -tea-table borne to earth, the Javanese exhibits adorning outlying -counters swept away, and all the "decoration probabilities" vanish in -savage wreck. Then the quaintly picturesque harnesses fell to the -horses' necks, their hoofs trampled terrifyingly on the loose boards of -the floor, and forth from the yawning doors the horses pounded, dragging -the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> <i>pièce de résistance</i>, with garlands on its sides, the pink zouave -cushion crushed beneath it, and the flag of the Netherlands streaming -from the stack. Horses rushed thither in competition, came thundering at -the doors, and galloped to place before the two carts. I think not a -full minute can have been consumed. But the ruin of the Java -entertainment committee's work was unbelievably complete. Though there -had been not a fire in Friendship Village in two years, that night, of -all nights, Jimmy Sturgis's "hay-barn," for the omnibus horses, "took it -on itself," it was said, "to go to work an' burn up." And Jimmy's barn -is outside the city limits, so that the <i>pièce de résistance</i> had to be -used. And Jimmy is in the fire-department, so that the company galloped -informally to the rescue without the benefit of the mayor's authority.</p> - -<p>As the last of the department disappeared, and the women of the -committee stood looking at one another—tired with the deadly tiredness -of a day such as theirs—a little blue linen figure sprang upon a chair -and clasped her hands behind her, and a blue ostrich feather lifted and -dipped as she spoke.</p> - -<p>"Quickly!" Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson cried. "All hands at work now! -Mrs. Sykes, will you set up the tea-table? You can get more dishes from -my house. Mrs. Toplady, this booth, please. You can make it right in no -time. Mrs. Holcomb, you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> will have to do your booth entirely over—you -can get some things from my house. Miss Marsh—ah, Calliope Marsh, you -must go to my house for my lace curtains—"</p> - -<p>She smiled ingratiatingly and surely arbitrarily, for we all knew full -well that there was absolutely nothing to smile at. And with that -Calliope's indignation, as she afterward said, "kind of crystallized and -boiled over." I remember how she stood, hugging her thin little arms and -speaking her defiance.</p> - -<p>"I donno how you feel, Mis' Johnson," she said dryly, "but, <i>my</i> idea, -Bedlam let loose ain't near quaint enough for a Java entertainment. Nor -I don't think it's what you might say real Java, either. Things here -looks to me too flexible. I'm goin' home an' go to bed."</p> - -<p>There was no doubt what the rest meant to do. With one impulse they -turned toward the door as Calliope turned, and silently they took the -way that the <i>pièce de résistance</i> had taken before them. Little Mrs. -Johnson stood on her chair making many gestures; but no one went back.</p> - -<p>Calliope looked straight before her.</p> - -<p>"My feet ache like I done my thinkin' with 'em," she said, "an' my head -feels like I'd stood on it. An' what's it all for?"</p> - -<p>"Regular clock performance," Mis' Postmaster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> Sykes assented. "We've -ticked hard all day long an' ain't got a thing out of it. I often think -it's that way with my housework, but I did think the Ladies' Missionary -could tick, when it <i>did</i> tick, for eternity. I'm tuckered to the bone."</p> - -<p>"Nobody knows," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was Mame-Bliss, "how my poor neck -aches. It's there I suffer first an' most."</p> - -<p>Mis' Amanda Toplady, who was walking behind the rest, took three great -steps and caught us up and spoke, a little breathlessly:—</p> - -<p>"Land, land," she said, "I guess I'll go home an' pop some corn. Seems -to me it'd smell sort of cosy an' homelike an' soothin' down. It's a -grand thing to smell when you're feelin' far off from yourself."</p> - -<p>Calliope laughed a little then.</p> - -<p>"Well," she said, "anyhow I ain't got my silk waist to get into—and I -didn't hev a nice one to put on anyway. I was wishin' I had, and now my -wish has come true by bein' took away from me, bodily—like they will. -But just the same—"</p> - -<p>She turned on the walk and faced us, and hugged her thin little arms.</p> - -<p>"A while ago," she said, "I give that little woman there six months to -get herself the cold shoulder all around. Well, the time ain't up -yet—but both my shoulders feels stone cold!"</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>IX</span> <span class="smaller">THE COLD SHOULDER</span></h2> - -<p>There is something more about Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson.</p> - -<p>Did you ever look through an old school-book of your own and, say, on -the history picture of Vesuvius in eruption impose your own memory of -Pompeii, visited in these twenty years since you studied about it; and -have you not stared hard at the time between and felt yourself some one -other than that one who once dreamed over the Vesuvius picture? Or, -years after you read the Letters, you have made a little mark below -Cicero's cry from exile, "Oh, that I had been less eager for life!" and -you look at the cry and at the mark, and you and one of these become an -anachronism—but you are not sure which it is that so becomes. So now, -in reading over these notes some while after I have set them down, I am -minded here to give you my look ahead to the end of the summer and to -slip in some account of what happened as a closing of the tale. And I -confess that something about me—perhaps it is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>Custodian -herself—likes this way of pretending a freedom from time and of looking -upon its fruit to say which seeds have grown and which have not.</p> - -<p>Friendship Village is not superstitious, but when curious coincidences -occur we do, as we say, "take down note." And it did seem like a -judgment upon us that, a little time after the Java fiasco, and while -indignation was yet at high noon, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson fell ill.</p> - -<p>At first I think we affected not to know it. When she did not appear at -church, none of us mentioned it for a Sunday or two. Then when some one -casually noted her absence we said, "Oh, wasn't she? Got little cold, -likely." That we saw her no more down town or "brushing up" about her -door we facilely laid to chance. When the village heard that her -maid—who always offended by talking almost in a whisper—had once or -twice excused her mistress to callers, every one shut lips and hardened -hearts and said some folk acted <i>very</i> funny about their calling duties. -But when, at the twelve o'clock breakfast of the new minister's -wife—("Like enough breakfast at noon was a real Bible custom," the -puzzled devotees solved that amazing hour), Mrs. Johnson did not appear, -the village was forced to admit that something must be wrong.</p> - -<p>Moreover, against its will the behaviour of young Mr. Johnson was -gravely alarming Friendship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Mr. Johnson was in real estate and -insurance in the city, and this did not impress the village as a serious -business. "Because, what does he <i>sell</i>!" as Abigail Arnold said. "We -know he don't own property. He rents the very house they live in. A -doctor's a doctor an' he gives pills, an' a store's a store with the -kind o' thing you need. But it don't seem like that man could make a -real good livin' for her, dealin' vague in nothin' that way." His -income, it was felt, was problematical, and the village had settled it -that what the Oliver Wheeler Johnsons' had was chiefly wedding presents -"an' high-falutin' tastes." But, in the face of the evidence, every -afternoon at three o'clock the young husband ordered a phaëton from -Jimmy Sturgis and came home from the city to take his wife to drive. -Between shutters the village saw that little Mrs. Johnson's face did -look betrayingly pale, and the blue ostrich plume lay motionless on her -bright hair.</p> - -<p>"I guess Mis' Johnson's real run down," her acquaintances said to one -another uneasily. Still we did not go to see her. The weeks went by -until, one morning, Calliope met the little new Friendship doctor on the -street and asked him about his patient.</p> - -<p>"I up an' ask' him flat out," Calliope confessed afterward; "not that I -really cared to be told, but I hated to know I was heathenish. You don't -like the feelin'. To know they ain't heathens is all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> that keeps some -folks from <i>bein</i>' 'em. Well, so I ask' him. 'Doctor Heron,' s'I, 'is -that Mis' Johnson real sick, or is she just sickish?' He looks at me -an'—'Looks pretty sick, don't she?' s'e. 'Well,' s'I, 'I've seen folks -look real rich that wa'n't it by right-down pocketbook evidence.' 'Been -to see her?' s'e. 'No,' s'I, short. 'Might drop in,' s'e, an' walks off, -lookin' cordial. That little Doctor Heron is that close-mouthed I -declare if I don't respect him same as the minister an' the pipe-organ -an' the skippin' hills."</p> - -<p>So, as midsummer passed and found the little woman still ailing, I -obeyed an idle impulse and went one evening to see her. I recall that as -soon as I had crossed her threshold the old influence came upon me, and -I was minded to run from the place in sheer distaste of the overemphasis -and the lifted, pointed chin and the fluttering importances of her -presence. I was ashamed enough that this should be so, but so it was; -and I held my ground to await her coming to the room only by a measure -of will.</p> - -<p>I sat with Mrs. Johnson for an hour that evening. And it would seem -that, as is the habit of many, having taken my own way I was straightway -possessed to draw others after me. There are those who behave similarly -and who set cunningly to work to gain their own ends, as, for example, I -did.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> For one night soon I devised a little feast, which I have always -held to be a good doorway to any enterprise, and, at the -Friendship-appointed supper hour of six, I made my table as fair as -possible, as has been done in like case ever since butter was first -served "in a lordly dish." And my guests were Calliope, without whom no -festival is wholly in keeping, and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and -Mis' Postmaster Sykes, and that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda Toplady.</p> - -<p>Because they had arrived so unsuspectingly I own myself to have felt -guilty enough when, in that comfortable half-hour after a new and -delectable dessert had been pronounced upon, I suggested with what -casualness I might summon that we five pay a visit that night to Mrs. -Oliver Wheeler Johnson.</p> - -<p>"Land!" said Mis' Holcomb, "I've thought I would an' then I've thought I -wouldn't till I feel all two-faced about myself. I donno. Sometimes I -think one way an' sometimes I think the other. Are you ever like that?"</p> - -<p>"I s'pose," said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, majestically, "that them in our -position ought to overlook. I donno's 'twould hurt us any to go," she -added graciously.</p> - -<p>Calliope's eyes twinkled.</p> - -<p>"That's it," she said; "let them that's got the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> social position to -overlook things be Christian an' overlook 'em."</p> - -<p>That great Mis' Amanda Toplady folded her hands, dimpled like a baby -giant's.</p> - -<p>"I'd be glad to go," she said simply; "I've got some grape jell that -looks to me like it wasn't goin' to keep long, an' I'd be thankful to be -on terms with her so's I could carry it in to her. They ain't a single -other invalid in Friendship."</p> - -<p>Calliope sprang to her feet and crossed her little arms, a hand hugging -either shoulder.</p> - -<p>"Well said!" she cried; "do let's go! I'm sick to death of slidin' off -the subject whenever it comes up in my mind."</p> - -<p>So, in the fair October dusk, we five went down the Plank Road—where -Summer lingers late. The air was gentle with the soft, impending dark. I -wonder why the colonnade of sweet influences, down which we stepped, did -not win us to themselves. But I remember how, instead, our imminent -visit drew us back to the days of Mrs. Johnson's coming, so that -presently we were going over the incident of the Java entertainment, -and, as Calliope would have put it, "crystallizing and boiling over" -again in the old distaste.</p> - -<p>But when we reached the little cottage of the Johnsons, our varied -motives for the visit were abruptly merged in a common anxiety. For -Doctor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Heron's buggy stood at the gate and the little one-story cottage -was dark save for a light in what we knew to be a corner bedroom. The -hallway was open to the night, but though we could distinctly hear the -bell jingle in the kitchen no one answered the summons. Then, there -being somewhere about a murmur of voices, Calliope stepped within and -called softly:—</p> - -<p>"Doctor, Doctor Heron—you there? Is they anything we can do?"</p> - -<p>The doctor came momentarily to the lighted doorway down the hall.</p> - -<p>"That you, Calliope?" he said. "You might come here, will you? Tell the -rest to sit down somewheres. And you tell Mr. Johnson he can come."</p> - -<p>On which, from out the dark living room, some one emerged very swiftly -and without a word pushed by us all where we were crowded in the passage -and strode down to the little lighted chamber. Calliope hurried after -him, and we four shrank back in sudden dread and slipped silently into -the room which the young husband had left, and stood together in the -dimness. Was she so sick? In that room he must have heard the door-bell -as we had heard it, and yet he had not answered. Was it possible that we -had come too late?</p> - -<p>While we waited we said nothing at all, save that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> great Mis' Amanda -Toplady, who said three times or four, "Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'm always -waitin' till somethin's too late—either me or the other thing." It -seemed very long before we heard some stir, but it can have been only a -few minutes until the doctor came down the little hall and groped into -the room. In answer to all that we asked he merely occupied himself in -lighting a match and setting it deliberately to the candles on the table -and adjusting their shades. They were, we noted afterward, the same -candles whose presence we had detected and derided at those long ago -tête-à-tête suppers in that house. The light glowed on the young -doctor's pale face as he looked at us, each in turn, before he spoke. -And when he had done with his slow scrutiny—I think that we cannot -wholly have fancied its accusation—he said only:—</p> - -<p>"Yes, she's pretty sick. I can't tell yet."</p> - -<p>Then he turned and closed the outer door and stood leaning against it, -looking up the hall.</p> - -<p>"Miss Marsh!" he called.</p> - -<p>But why did the man not tell us something, we wondered; and there -flashed in my mind Calliope's reference to the pipe-organ and the -skipping hills. At all events, Calliope would tell us.</p> - -<p>And so she did. We heard her step in the hall, coming quickly and yet -with a manner of exceeding care. I think that with the swift sense which -wings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> before intelligence, the others understood before they saw her, -even as I understood. Calliope stopped in the doorway as if she could -trust herself to go no farther. And she was holding something in her -arms.</p> - -<p>"Calliope," we said; "Calliope...."</p> - -<p>She looked down at that which she held, and then she looked at us. And -the tears were in her eyes, but her face was brighter than I have ever -known it.</p> - -<p>"It's a baby," she said, "a little bit of a baby. <i>Her</i> baby. An' it -makes me feel—it makes me feel—oh," she broke off, "don't it make you -feel that way, too?"</p> - -<p>We looked at one another, and avoided one another's look, and then -looked long at the baby. I do not remember that we said anything at all, -or if we did so, that it bore a meaning. But an instant after Calliope -gave the baby to the nurse who appeared in the doorway, we all tiptoed -down to the kitchen by common consent. And it was plain that Mrs. -Johnson's baby made us feel that way, too.</p> - -<p>In our desire to be of tardy service we did the most absurd things. We -took possession of the kitchen, rejoicing that we found the supper -dishes uncared for, and we heated a great kettle of water, and washed -and wiped and put away, as softly as we could; and then we "brushed up -around." I think that only the need of silence kept us from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> cleaning -windows. When the nurse appeared—who had arrived that day unknown of -Friendship—we sprang as one to do her bidding. We sent the little maid -to bed, we tidied the living room, walking tiptoe, and then we went back -through the kitchen and sat down on the little side "stoop." And all -this time we had addressed one another only about the tasks which we had -in hand.</p> - -<p>After a little silence,</p> - -<p>"The milkman was quite late this morning," observed Mis' Holcomb.</p> - -<p>"Well, he's begun to deliver in cans instead o' bottles," Mis' Sykes -explained; "it takes him some longer to get around. He says bottles -makes his wife just that much more to do."</p> - -<p>Then we fell silent again.</p> - -<p>It was Calliope, sitting on the porch step outside, where it was dark, -who at last had the courage to be articulate.</p> - -<p>"I hope—I <i>hope</i>," she said, "she's goin' to be all right."</p> - -<p>Mis' Sykes shaded her eyes from the bracket lamp within.</p> - -<p>"I'll go bail," she said, "that little you-do-as-I-say chin'll carry her -through. I'm glad she's got it."</p> - -<p>Just then we heard the thin crying of the child and we could divine -Calliope, that on the step where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> she sat she was hugging her arms and -rocking somewhat, to and fro.</p> - -<p>"Like enough," she said, "oh, like enough—folks ain't so cramped about -runnin' their own feelin's as they think they are!"</p> - -<p>To this we murmured something indefinite in sound but positive enough in -sense. And we all knew what we all knew.</p> - -<p>"Let's go out around the house to the front gate," said that great Mis' -Amanda Toplady, abruptly. "Have any of you ladies got two -handkerchiefs?"</p> - -<p>"I've got two," said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, "an' I ain't used either -one. Do you want the one with essence or the one without?"</p> - -<p>"I ain't partial," said Mis' Amanda.</p> - -<p>We rose and stumbled along the grassy path that led round the house. At -the gate we met Doctor Heron.</p> - -<p>"Well," he said slowly, "well." And after a moment, "Will—will any of -you be here in the morning?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Yes," we all said simply.</p> - -<p>"That's good," he commented shortly, "I didn't know."</p> - -<p>We five had to separate at the first corner to go our home ways, and we -stood for a moment under the gas-light. I remember how, just then, -Peter's father came singing past us, like one of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>Friendship family -who did not understand his kinship. Even as we five had not understood -ours.</p> - -<p>"You haven't got a shawl, hev you?" Mis' Sykes said to me solicitously.</p> - -<p>"The nights have been some chilly on a person's shoulders for a day or -two now," said Mis' Holcomb.</p> - -<p>Calliope put her hand up quickly to her throat.</p> - -<p>"Quit," she said. "All of you. Thank God. An' shake hands. I tell you, -after this I bet I'll run my own feelin's about folks or I'll bring down -the sky an' make new feelin's! Oh," said Calliope, "don't her—an' -<i>now</i>—an' the baby—an'—oh, an' that bright star winkin' over that -hitchin' post, make things seem—easy? Good night. I can't stand out -here any longer."</p> - -<p>But when we had gone away a few steps, Calliope called us back. And as -we turned again,</p> - -<p>"To bring down the sky," she repeated, "I bet that's the way God meant -us to do. They ain't any of us got enough <i>to</i> us to piece out without it!"</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>X</span> <span class="smaller">EVENING DRESS</span></h2> - -<p>I have said that Daphne Street has been paved within the past year, but -I had not heard of the manner in which the miracle had been wrought -until the day when Calliope's brief stay in the village ended and she -came to tell me good-by—and, more than incidentally, to show me some -samples of a dress which she might have, and a dress which she wouldn't -have, and a dress which she had made up her mind to have.</p> - -<p>"We don't dress much here in Friendship Village," she observed. "Not but -what we'd like to, but we ain't the time nor the means nor the places to -wear to. But they was one night—"</p> - -<p>She looked at me, as always when she means to tell a story, somewhat -with the manner of asking a permission.</p> - -<p>"None of the low-neck' fashion-plates used to seem real to us," she -said. "We used to look at 'em pinned up in Lyddy Ember's dressmakin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> -windows, ah-ahing in their low pink an' long blue, an' we'd look 'em -over an' think tolerant enough, like about sea-serpents. But neither the -one nor the other bit hold rill vital, because the plates was so young -an' smilin' an' party-seemin', an' we was old an' busy, like you get, -an' considered past the dressin' age. Still, it made kind of a nice -thing to do on the way home from the grocery hot forenoons—draw up -there on the shady side, where the street kitters some into a curve, an' -look at Lyddy's plates, an' choose, like you was goin' to get one.</p> - -<p>"Land knows we needed some oasises on that street from the grocery up -home. Daphne Street, our main street, didn't always use' to be what it -is now—neat little wooden blocks an' a stone curb. You know how it use' -to be—no curb an' the road a sight, over your shoe-tops with mud in the -wet, an' over your shoe-tops with sand when it come dry. We ladies used -to talk a good deal about it, but the men knew it meant money to hev it -fixed, an' so they told us hevin' it fixed meant cuttin' the trees down, -an' that kept us quiet—all but the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery -Improvement Sodality.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Postmaster Sykes was president o' the Sodality last year, you -know,—she's most always president of everything,—an' we'd been -workin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> quite hard all that winter, an' had got things in the cemetery -rill ship-shape—at least I mean things <i>on</i> the cemetery was. An' at -one o' the July meetin's last summer Mis' Sykes up an' proposed that we -give over workin' for the dead an' turn to the livin', an' pave the main -street of Friendship Village.</p> - -<p>"'True,' she says, 'our constitution states that the purpose of our -Sodality shall be to keep up the graves of our townspeople an' make 'em -attractive to others. But,' says she, 'when they ain't enough of us dead -to occupy all the time, the only Christian way to remedy that is to work -for folks before they die, while we're waitin' for their graves.'</p> - -<p>"This seemed reasonable, an' we voted unanimous to pave Daphne Street. -An' on the way home Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Timothy Toplady an' I see -Timothy Toplady settin' in the post-office store, an' we went in to tell -him an' Silas Sykes about it. But before we could start in, Silas says, -eyebrows all eager, 'Ain't you heard?'</p> - -<p>"'Heard what?' says his wife, kind o' cross, bein' he was her wedded -husband an' she <i>hadn't</i> heard.</p> - -<p>"''Bout Threat Hubbelthwait,' says Silas, lookin' at Mis' Toplady an' -me, bein's Mis' Sykes was his wife. 'Drunk again,' says Silas, 'an' -fiddlin' for dear life, an' won't let anybody into the hotel. Mis' -Hubbelthwait has gone over to her mother's,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> an' the hired girl with -her; an' Threat's settin' in the bar an' playin' all the hymn tunes he -knows.'</p> - -<p>"It wasn't the first time it had happened, you know. Threat an' his wife -an' the hired girl keep the only hotel in Friendship Village—when -Threat is sober. When he isn't, he sometimes closes up the house an' -turns out whoever happens to be there, an' won't let a soul in—though, -of course, not much of anybody ever comes to Friendship anyway, excep' -now an' then an automobile on its way somewheres. An' there Threat will -set in the bar, sometimes most of one week, sometimes most of two, an' -scrape away on the only tunes he knows—all hymns, 'Just As I Am,' an' -'Can A Little Child Like Me?' Threat don't mean to be sacrilegious; he -shows that by never singin' them two hymns in church, when they're give -out.</p> - -<p>"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, when Silas got through, 'what men are!'</p> - -<p>"'We ain't so much as woman, lemme tell you,' says Silas, right crisp. -Which wasn't what he meant, an' we all laughed at him, so he was a -little mad to start with.</p> - -<p>"'The Sodality's decided to pave Daphne Street,' Mis' Sykes mentions -then, simple.</p> - -<p>"'Pave <i>what</i>?' shouts Silas—Silas always seems to think the more you -do in sound the more you'll do in sense.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p><p>"'Do <i>what</i> to Daphne Street?' says Timothy, whirlin' from the peanut -roaster.</p> - -<p>"'Pave Daphne Street,' says Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' me, -wonderin'.</p> - -<p>"Silas wrapped his arms around his own shoulders.</p> - -<p>"'When,' says he, lettin' his head lurch with his own emphasizin', 'did -the Common Council hear about this?'</p> - -<p>"'They ain't heard, about it,' says Mis' Sykes, 'no more'n we ever hear -anything about them.'</p> - -<p>"Silas an' Timothy is both aldermen, an' rill sensitive over it. I guess -the Common Council always <i>is</i> a delicate subject, ain't it?</p> - -<p>"Mebbe it wasn't a rill diplomatic way to begin, but it hadn't entered -the Sodality's head that the town wouldn't be glad to hev the pavin' -done if the Sodality was willin' to do it. Ain't it a hard thing to -learn that it ain't all willingness, nor yet all bein' capable, that -gets things done in the world? It's part just edgin' round an' edgin' -round.</p> - -<p>"What did the Common Council do that night but call a special meetin' -an' vote not to order any city pavin' done that present year. Every -member was there but Threat Hubbelthwait, who was fiddlin', an' every -vote was switched by Silas an' Timothy to be unanimous, excep' Eppleby -Holcomb's vote. Eppleby, we heard afterwards, said that when a pack o' -women made up their minds to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> pave, they'd pave if it was to pave—some -place that Eppleby hadn't ought to 'a' mentioned; an' he was goin' to be -on the pavin' side. But then, Eppleby is the gentlest husband in -Friendship Village, an' known to be.</p> - -<p>"Sodality met special next day, not so much to do anything as to let it -be known that we'd took action. This we done by votin' to lay low till -such time as we could order the wooden blocks. We preferred to pave -peaceable, it bein' hot weather.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss an' -Mis' Mayor Uppers an' I walked home together from that meetin'. It was a -blisterin' July afternoon—one of them afternoons that melts itself out -flat, same as a dropped pepp'mint on a brick walk, an' you're left -stickin' in it helpless as a fly, an' generally buzzin'. I rec'lect we -was buzzin'—comin' down Daphne Street in that chokin' dust an' no -pavement.</p> - -<p>"'It's a dog's life, livin' in a little town—in some respects,' I -remember Mis' Sykes says.</p> - -<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Toplady, tolerant, 'I know. I know it is. But I'd -rather live in a little town an' dog it out than go up to the city an' -turn wolf, same as some.'</p> - -<p>"An' yet we all felt the same, every one of us. They ain't a woman -livin' in a little place that don't feel the same, now and again. It's -quiet an' it's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> easy housework, an' you get to know folks well. But oh, -none of it what you might say <i>glitters</i>. An' they ain't no woman -whatever—no matter how good a wife an' mother an' Christian an' even -housekeeper she is—that don't, 'way down deep in her heart, feel that -hankerin' after some sort o' <i>glitter</i>.</p> - -<p>"So it was natural enough that we should draw up at Lyddy's dressmakin' -window an' rest ourself. An' that afternoon we'd have done so, anyway, -for she hed been pinnin' up her new summer plates—Lyddy don't believe -in rushin' the season. An' no sooner had we got a good look at 'em—big -coloured sheets they was, with full-length pictures—than Mis' Toplady -leaned 'way forward, her hands on her knees, an' stood lookin' at 'em -the way you look at the parade.</p> - -<p>"'Well, look-a-there,' she says. 'Look at that one.'</p> - -<p>"The one she meant was a woman with her hair all plaited an' fringed an' -cut bias, an' with a little white hat o' lilacs 'bout as big as a cork; -an' her dress—my land! Her dress was long an' rill light blue, an' -seemed like it must have been paper, it was so fancy. It didn't seem -like cloth goods at all, same as we hed on. It was more like we was -wearin' meat an' vegetable dresses, an' this dress was dessert—all -whipped cream an' pink sugar an' a flower on the plate.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>"'Dear land!' says Mis' Toplady, lookin' 'round at us strange, 'do they -do it when they get gray hair? I didn't know they done it when their -hair was gray.'</p> - -<p>"We all looked, an' sure enough, the woman's hair was white. 'Afternoon -Toilette for Elderly Woman,' it said underneath, plain as plain. Always -before the plates hed all been young an' smilin' an' party-seemin', an' -we'd thought of all that as past an' done for, with us, along with all -the other things that didn't come true. But here was a woman grayer than -any of us, an' yet lookin' as live as if she'd been wearin' a housework -dress.</p> - -<p>"'Why,' says Mis' Sykes, starin', 'that must be a new thing this season. -I never heard of a woman well along in years wearin' anything but brown -or navy blue or gray,—besides black.' Mis' Sykes is terribly dressy, -but even she never yet got anywheres inside the rainbow, except in a bow -at the chin.</p> - -<p>"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, wistful, 'wouldn't it seem -like heaven to be able to wear colours without bein' talked about?'</p> - -<p>"An' Mis' Mayor Uppers—her that her husband grew well off bein' mayor, -an' never'd been back to Friendship Village since he was put out of -office, she says low:—</p> - -<p>"'You ladies that has husbands to keep thinkin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> well of you, I should -think you'd think about this thing. Men,' she says, 'loves the light -shades.'</p> - -<p>"At that Mis' Toplady turned around on us, an' we see her eyes -expressin' i-dees.</p> - -<p>"'Ladies,' says she, impressive, 'Mis' Uppers is right. We hadn't ought -to talk back or show mad. We ladies of the Sodality had ought to be able -to get our own way peaceable, just by takin' it, the way the Lord give -women the weapons to do.'</p> - -<p>"We see that somethin' was seethin' in her mind, but we couldn't work -our way to what it was.</p> - -<p>"'Ladies,' says she, an' stepped up on the wooden step to Lyddy's -dressmakin' shop, 'has the husbands of any one of us seen us, for twenty -years, dressed in the light shades?'</p> - -<p>"I didn't hev any husband to answer for, but I could truthfully say of -the rest that you'd think black an' brown an' gray an' navy had -exhausted the Lord's ingenuity, for all the attention they'd paid to any -other colour He'd wove with.</p> - -<p>"'Let's the Sodality get up an evenin' party, an' hev it in post-office -hall, an' invite our husbands an' buy new dresses—light shades an' some -lace,' says Mis' Toplady, lettin' the i-dee drag her along, main -strength.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Sykes was studyin' the fashion-plate hungry, but she stopped an' -stepped up side o' Mis' Toplady.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>"'Well, sir,' she said, 'I donno but 'twould help us to work the pavin' -of Daphne Street. Why, Silas Sykes, for one, is right down soft-hearted -about clothes. He always notices which one of their waists the choir's -got on. I heard him say once he wasn't goin' to church again till they -bought somethin' new.'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Holcomb nodded. 'Five years ago,' she said, 'I went up to the city -with Eppleby. An' I saw him <i>turn around</i> to look after a woman. I'll -never forget the sensation it give me—like I was married to a man that -wasn't my husband. The woman had on a light pink dress. I know I come -home an' bought a pink collar; I didn't think I could go any farther, -because she was quite young. Do you s'pose....'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady pointed at Lyddy's fashion-plate. 'I should go,' she says, -'just as far as my money would let me go.'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Uppers stood lookin' down to the walk. 'The mayor,' she says—she -calls him 'the mayor' yet—'was terrible fond o' coloured neckties. He -was rill partial to green ones. Mebbe I didn't think enough about what -that meant....'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady came down off the step. 'Every man is alike,' says she, -decided. 'Most of us Friendship ladies thinks if we give 'em a clean -roller towel we've done enough towards makin' things pretty;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> an' I -think it's time, as wives, we took advantage of the styles.'</p> - -<p>"'An',' says Mis' Sykes, the president, rill dreamy for her, but firm, -'I think so, too.'</p> - -<p>"I tell you, we all walked home feelin' like we'd hed a present—me too, -though I knew very well I couldn't hev a light dress, an' I didn't hev -any husband. You start out thinkin' them are the two principal things, -but you get a-hold o' some others, if you pay attention. Still, I judged -the ladies was on the right track, for men is men, say what who will. -All but Threat Hubbelthwait. We passed the hotel an' heard him settin' -in there by the bar scrapin' away on 'Can A Little Child Like Me?' We -took shame to him, an' yet I know we all looked at each other sort of -motherly, like he <i>was</i> some little shaver, same as he sung, an' -performin' most fool.</p> - -<p>"It don't take us ladies long to do things, when our minds is made. -Especially it don't when Mis' Timothy Toplady is chairman of the -Entertainment Committee, or the Doin' Committee of whatever happens, -like she was that time. First, we found out they was plenty enough nun's -veilin' in the post-office store, cheap an' wide an' in stock an' all -the light shades; an' I bought all the dresses, noons, of the clerk, so -Silas wouldn't suspect—me not hevin' any husband to inquire around,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> -like they do. Then we hired the post-office hall, vague, without sayin' -for what—an' that pleased Silas that gets the rent. An' then we give -the invitations, spectacular, through the <i>Friendship Daily</i> to the -Sodality's husbands, for the next Tuesday night. We could do it that -quick, not bein' dependent on dressmakers same as some. The ladies was -all goin' to make their dresses themselves, an' the dresses wa'n't much -to do to make. Nobody bothered a very great deal about how we should -make 'em, the principal thing bein' the colour; Mis' Toplady's was blue, -like the fashion-plate; Mis' Holcomb's pink, like the woman in the city; -Mis' Uppers' green, like the mayor's necktie, an' so on. I made me up a -dress out o' the spare-room curtains—white, with a little blue flower -in it, an' a new blue ribbon belt. But Mis' Sykes, she went to work an' -<i>rented</i> a dress from the city, for that one night. That much she give -out about it, an' would give out no more. That woman loves a surprise. -She's got a rill pleasant mind, Mis' Sykes has, but one that does enjoy -jerkin' other people's minds up, an most anything'll do for the string.</p> - -<p>"For all we thought we hed so much time, an' it was so easy to do, the -afternoon o' the party we went 'most crazy. We'd got up quite a nice -little cold supper—Mis' Hubbelthwait had helped us, she bein' still at -large, an' Threat fiddlin'. We planned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> meat loaf an' salad an' pickles -an' jelly, an' scalloped potatoes for the hot dish, an' ice cream an' -cake, enough in all for thirty folks: fifteen husbands an' fifteen -Sodality, or approximatish. An' we planned to go to the hall in the -afternoon an' take our dresses there, an' sly em' up and leave 'em, an' -put 'em on after we'd got there that night, so's nobody's husbands -should suspect. But when we all came in the afternoon, an' the -decoratin' with greens an' festoons of cut paper an' all was to do, -there Mis' Toplady, that was to make scalloped potatoes, hadn't got her -sleeves in yet, an' she was down to the hall tryin' to do both; an' Mis' -Holcomb, that was to make the salad dressing, had got so nervous over -her collar that she couldn't tell which edge she'd cut for the top. But -the rest of us was ready, an' Mis' Sykes's dress had come from the city, -an' we all, Mis' Toplady an' Mame too, hed our dresses in boxes in the -post-office hall kitchen cupboards. An' we done the decoratin', an' it -looked rill lovely, with the long tables laid ready at each side, an' -room for bein' a party left in between 'em.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb left the hall about five -o'clock to go home an' lay out Silas's an' Timothy's an' Eppleby's best -clothes for 'em—the rest hed done it at noon. Mis' Hubbelthwait was -goin' over to the hotel to get some dishes out, an' I went with her to -help. The bar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> was to the back, where Threat set an' slep' an' fiddled, -an' Mis' Hubbelthwait was goin' to slip in still an' sly the dishes out -to me. A good many of the hotel dishes was her individual weddin' -presents, so she didn't think wrong of her conscience.</p> - -<p>"We was all five hurryin' along together, rehearsin' all we'd got to do -before six-thirty, when we heard a funny sound. We listened, an' we -thought they must be testin' the hose. But when we got to Lyddy's shop, -where the street kitters off some in a curve, we looked ahead an' we see -it wasn't that.</p> - -<p>"It's an automobile," says Mis' Toplady. 'My land,' she says, 'it ain't -only one. It's two.'</p> - -<p>"An' we see it was. There come the two of 'em, ploughin' along through -the awful sand of Daphne Street, that was fit for no human locomotive, -unless ostriches. When the Proudfits are here, that's the only one in -the village with an automobile, they understand the sand, and they'd put -on the whole steam and tear right along through it. But strangers would -go careful, for fear they'd get stuck, an' so they got it, like you do. -An' them two big red cars was comin' slow, the dust like cloaks an' -curtains billowin' up behind. They looked quite wild, includin' the -seven folks in each one that was laughin' an' callin' out. An' by the -time they'd come up to us, us four ladies of the Sodality an' Mis' -Hubbelthwait was lined up on the walk watchin' 'em. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> stopped an' -one of 'em hailed us, leanin' past his driver.</p> - -<p>"'I beg your pardon,' he says, 'is this the street to the best hotel?'</p> - -<p>"It was Mis' Toplady that answered him, rill collected. 'They's only one -street in town,' says she, 'an' they's only one hotel, an' that they -ain't now.'</p> - -<p>"'Can you tell me how soon there will be one?' says the man. 'By -dinner-time, I hope.'</p> - -<p>"We all felt kind of delicate about answerin' this, an' so Mis' -Hubbelthwait herself spoke up. 'Threat's drunk an' fiddlin', she says. -'They's no tellin' when Friendship Village will ever hev a hotel again.'</p> - -<p>"Both automobiles was listenin' by then, an' though some of 'em laughed -out sort o' rueful, not many of 'em see the funny.</p> - -<p>"'Gad,' one of the men says, 'how about the bird an' the bottle we were -to send back to Bonner, sittin' by his tire in the desert, a ways back? -Don't tell us there's no place,' he says, 'where we can find dinner, -twenty-one of us and the three chauf—' that word.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady shook her head. 'They ain't a place big enough to seat -twenty-one, even if they was the food to feed 'em—' she begun, an' then -she stopped an' looked 'round at us, as though she was thinkin' -somethin'.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, come now,' says the man,—he was good-lookin' an' young, an' -merry-seemin',—'Oh, come now,' he said, 'I am sure that the ladies of -Friendship could cook things such as never man yet ate. We are -sta-arving,' he says, humorous. 'Can't you do something for us? We'll -give you,' he winds up, genial, 'two dollars a plate for a good, -home-cooking dinner for the twenty-four of us. What do you say?'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled toward us sort o' wild. 'Is two dollars times -twenty-four, forty-eight dollars?' says she, low.</p> - -<p>"An' we see it was, though Mis' Holcomb was still figurin' it out in the -palm of her other hand, while we stood gettin' glances out of each -other's eyes, an' sendin' 'em, give for take. We see, quick as a flash, -what Mis' Toplady was thinkin' about. An' it was about that hall, all -festooned with greens an' cut paper, an' the two long tables laid ready, -an' the veal loaf an' scalloped potatoes an' ice-cream for thirty. An' -when Mis' Sykes, that usually speaks, stood still, an' didn't say one -word, but just nodded a little bit, sort o' sad, Mis' Toplady, that was -chairman o' the Entertainment Committee, done like she does -sometimes—she took the whole thing into her own hands an' just settled -it.</p> - -<p>"'Why, yes,' she says to 'em, rill pleasant, 'if you want to come up to -post-office hall at half-past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> six,' she says, 'the Friendship Married -Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality will serve you your supper, nice -as the nicest, for two dollars a head.'</p> - -<p>"'Good!' the men all sings out, an' the women spats their hands soft, -an' one of 'em says somethin' to the merry-seemin' man.</p> - -<p>"'Oh, yes,' he says then, 'couldn't we all break into this hotel an' -floss up a bit before dinner?'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Hubbelthwait stepped out towards 'em.</p> - -<p>"'I was thinkin' of that,' says she. 'My husband,' she says, dignified, -'is settin' in the bar—practisin' his violin. He—he does that -sometimes, an' we—don't bother him. But the bar is at the back. I can -let you in, still, the front way to the rooms, if you want. An' I'll be -there myself to wait on you.'</p> - -<p>"An' that was what they done, somebody takin' one o' the cars back for -the other car, an' the rest of us fair breakin' into a run toward -post-office hall.</p> - -<p>"'My land,' says Mis' Toplady, almost like a groan, 'what <i>hev</i> we -done?'</p> - -<p>"It <i>was</i> a funny thing to do, we see it afterward. But I tell you, you -can't appreciate the influence o' that forty-eight dollars unless you've -tried to earn money in a town the size o' Friendship Village. Sodality -hardly ever made more than five dollars to its ten-cent -entertainments—an' that for a big turn-out on a dry night. An' here was -the price<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> of about nine such entertainments give us outright, an' no -extra work, an' rill feet-achin' weather. I say it was more than flesh -an' blood <i>or</i> wives could stand. We done it automatic, like you -contradict when it's necessary.</p> - -<p>"But there <i>was</i> the men to reckon with.</p> - -<p>"'What'll Timothy—an' Silas—an' Eppleby....' Mis' Toplady says, an' -stops, some bothered an' some rill pained.</p> - -<p>"I judged, not havin' any husband to be doin' the inquirin', it wasn't -polite for me to laugh. But I couldn't hardly help it, thinkin' o' them -fifteen hungry men an' the supper et away from 'em, just William Nilly.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Sykes, we remembered afterwards, never said a word, but only kep' -up with us back to the hall.</p> - -<p>"Back to the hall, where the rest o' the Sodality was, we told 'em what -we'd done—beginnin' with the forty-eight dollars, like some kind o' -weapon. But I tell you, we hadn't reckoned without knowin' our -hostesses, head an' heart. An' they went in pell mell, pleased an' glad -as we was, an' plannin' like mad.</p> - -<p>"The first need was more food to make up that supper to somewheres near -two dollars' worth—feedin' your husband is one thing an' gettin' up a -two-dollar meal is another. But we collected that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> all in pretty sudden: -leg o' lamb, left from the Holcombs' dinner an' only cut off of one -side; the Sykes's roast o' veal, the same; three chickens for soup the -Libertys hed just dressed for next day company dinner; big platter of -devilled eggs chipped in from Mis' Toplady; a jar o' doughnuts, a -steamer o' cookies, a fruit-cake a year old—we just made out our list -an' scattered to empty out all our pantries.</p> - -<p>"By six o'clock we was back in the hall, an' all the food with us. But -nobody hed met nobody's husband yet, an' nobody wanted to. We didn't -quite know how we was goin' to do, I guess—but done is done, an' to do -takes care of itself.</p> - -<p>"'Hadn't we ought to 'a' sent word to the men?' says Mis' Holcomb, for -the third or fourth time. 'I sneaked around so's not to pass Eppleby's -office, but I declare I feel mean. He'll hev to eat sauce an' plain -bread-an'-butter for his supper. An' most o' the men-folks the same. -'Seems though somebody'd ought to send 'em word an' not let 'em come up -here, all washed an' dressed.'</p> - -<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Toplady, cuttin' cake with her lips shut tight an' -talkin' anyway, 'I kind o' thought—leave 'em come up. I bet they'd -rather be in it than out of it, every one of 'em, an' who knows they -might be some supper left? An' we can all—'</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>"An' at that Mis' Toplady faces round from cuttin' the cake: 'My land, -my land,' she says, sort o' hushed, 'why, doin' this, we can't none of -us wear our new dresses!'</p> - -<p>"An' at that we looked at each other, each one sort of accusin', an' I -guess all our hearts givin' one o' them sickish thumps. An' Mis' Sykes, -her that hed been so still, snaps back:—</p> - -<p>"'I wondered what you thought I'd rented my dress from the city for at -<i>Three Dollars a night</i>.'</p> - -<p>"I tell you, that made a hush in the middle of the plannin'. We'd forgot -all about our own dresses, an' that was bad enough, with the hall all -hired an' everything all ready, an' every chance in the world of -everybody's husband's findin' out about the dresses before we could get -up another Sodality party, same way. But here was Mis' Sykes, three -dollars out, an mebbe wouldn't be able to rent her dress again at all.</p> - -<p>"'I did want Silas,' Mis' Sykes says then, wistful, 'to see me in that -dress. Silas an' I have been married so long,' she says, 'that I often -wonder if I seem like a person to him at all. But in that dress from the -city, I think I would.'</p> - -<p>"We was each an' all ready to cry, an' I dunno but we would hev done -it—though we was all ready to serve, too: coffee made, potatoes pipin' -hot, veal an' lamb het up an' smellin' rich, chicken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> soup steamin', an' -all. But just that very minute we heard some of 'em comin' in the -hall—an' the one 'ready' conquered the other 'ready,' like it will, an' -we all made a rush, part curious an' part nerves, to peek through the -little servin' window from the kitchen.</p> - -<p>"<i>What</i> do you think we saw? It was the automobile folks, hungry an' got -there first. In they'd come, women laughin', men jokin', all makin' a -lark out o' the whole thing. An' if the women wasn't, every last one of -'em, wearin'—not the clothes they hed come in, but light pink an' light -blue an' white an' flowered things, an' all like that.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Hubbelthwait burst in on us while we was lookin'. 'They hed things -in their trunk at the back o' the automobile,' says she. 'They says they -wanted to floss up for dinner, an' floss up they hev. They look like -Lyddy's fashion sheets, one an' all.'</p> - -<p>"At that Mis' Sykes, a-ceasin' to peek, she drops her tray on the bare -floor an' begun untyin' her apron. 'Quick!' she raps out, 'Mis' -Hubbelthwait, you go an' set 'em down. An' every one o' you—into them -togs of ours! Here's the chance to wear 'em—here an' <i>now</i>,' she says, -'an' leave them folks see we know how to do things here in Friendship -Village as good as the best.'</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p><p>"Well, bein' as she had rented the dress, an' three dollars hed to be -paid out anyhow, an' bein' as she was president, an' bein' as we was all -hankerin' in our hearts, we didn't need much urgin'. We slammed the -servin' window shut an' set chairs against both doors, an' we whisked -out of our regular dresses like wild.</p> - -<p>"'Oh, land—my land, the sleeves—the sleeves ain't in mine!' says Mis' -Toplady, sort o' glazed, an' speakin' in a wail. But we encouraged her -up to pin 'em in, which she done, an' it couldn't be told from stitches. -Poor Mame Holcomb's collar that wasn't on yet we turned in for her -V-shape, so's her dress was low, like the best. An' Mis' Uppers, that -was seasonin' the chicken soup like none of us could, her we took turns -in dressin' in her green. An' I'd got into my spare-room curtains, -somehow, just as Mis' Hubbelthwait come shoving at that door.</p> - -<p>"'The men—the men!' says she, painful. 'They're all out here—Silas an' -Timothy an' Eppleby an' all. They've all heard about it—the automobiles -went to the post-office for their mail, an' Silas told 'em enjoyable -about Threat, an' the automobiles told him where they was goin' to eat. -An' they've come, thinkin' they's enough for all, an' they're out here -now.'</p> - -<p>"Mis' Toplady groaned a little, agonized an'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> stifled, but rill firm. -'Tell 'em, then,' says she, 'to come back up here, like men, an' -<i>help</i>.'</p> - -<p>"Then we heard a little rustle, soft an' silky an' kind o' -pink-soundin', an' we looked around, an' there, from where she had been -dressin' herself over behind the kitchen boiler all alone, Mis' -Postmaster Sykes stepped out. My land, if she wasn't in a white dress, a -little low in the neck, an' elbow sleeves, an' all covered solid as -crust with glitterin' silver spangles.</p> - -<p>"'Let's tell 'em ourselves,' she says, 'come on—all of you. Let's take -out the first course, an' tell the men what we want 'em to do.'</p> - -<p>"We made Mis' Sykes go first, carryin' high the tureen of chicken soup. -An' on one side of her walked Mis' Timothy Toplady, in blue, with the -wafers, an' on the other Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, in pink, with -the radishes. An' neither one of 'em could hardly help lookin' at Mis' -Sykes's dress all the way out. An' back of 'em went the rest o' the -ladies, all in pink an' blue an' white an' pale green nun's veilin' that -they'd made, an' carryin' the water-pitchers an' ice an' celery an' like -that. An' me, I hung back in the kitchen watchin' an' lovin' 'em every -one—an' almost lovin' Timothy Toplady an' Silas Sykes an' Eppleby when -they looked on an' saw.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Sykes set the soup down in front o' the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> merry-seemin' man for him -to serve it. An' then she crossed over an' spoke to Silas, an' swep' up -ahead of him in that spangly dress, the other ladies followin' an' -noddin' bright when they passed the men, an' motionin' 'em toward the -back o' the hall. An' back the men all come into the kitchen, followin' -as they was asked to do, an' orderly through bein' dazed. Silas an' -Timothy an' Eppleby was first, an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' Mame -went up to 'em together.</p> - -<p>"I'll never forget that minute. I thought the men was goin' to burst out -characteristic an' the whole time be tart, an' I shut both doors an' the -servin' window careful. An' instead o' that, them three men stood there -just smilin' a little an lookin' surprised an' agreeable; an' the other -husbands, either takin' the cue or feelin' the same, done likewise, too. -An' when Mame Bliss says, sort o' tremblin'—Eppleby bein' the gentlest -husband in Friendship Village, an' known to be: 'How do you like us, -Eppleby?' Eppleby just nods an' wrinkles up his eyes an' smiles at her, -like he meant lots more. An' he says, 'Why didn't you never wear that -dress before, Mame?'</p> - -<p>"An' 'Well, Timothy?' says Mis' Toplady, sort o' masterful, an' fully -expectin' to hev to master. But Timothy Toplady, he just rubs his hands -an' looks at her sort o' wonderin', an' he says, 'Blisterin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> Benson, -you look as good as the city folks, Amandy—all light, an' loose made, -an' stylish—'</p> - -<p>"But Silas Sykes, he just stood lookin' at his wife an' lookin'. Of -course she <i>did</i> hev the advantage, bein' her spangles shone so. An' -Silas looked at her an' looked, just as if her bein' his wife didn't -make him admire her any the less. An' Mis' Sykes, she was rill pink an' -pleased an' breathless, an' I guess she could see she seemed like a -person to Silas, the way she'd wanted to.</p> - -<p class="space-above">"It all went off splendid. The men stayed an' dished in the kitchen an' -helped carry away from the tables—the forty-eight dollars completin' -their respect—an' we ladies done the servin'. An' I tell you, we served -'em with an air, 'count o' bein' well dressed, like they was, an' -knowin' it. An' we knew the automobile folks appreciated it—we could -tell by the way they kep' lookin' at us. But of course we all understood -Mis' Sykes looked the best, an' we let her do all the most prominent -things—bringin' in the first dish of everything an' like that, so's -they could hev a good look.</p> - -<p>"When it was over, the merry-seemin' man stood up an' made a little -speech o' thanks, rill courteous an' sweet, an' like he knew how to act. -An' when he was through we, one an' all, nudged Mis' Sykes to reply, an' -she done so, the two tables<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> listenin', an' the Sodality standin' in -between, an' the Sodality's husbands crowdin' in both kitchen doors to -listen.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Sykes says, rill dignified, an' the light catchin' in her -spangles: 'We're all very much obliged, I'm sure, for our forty-eight -dollars clear. An' we think perhaps you'd like to know what the money is -goin' toward. It's goin',' she says, 'towards the pavin' of the main -street of our little city.'</p> - -<p>"Silas Sykes was lookin' out the servin' window like it was a box. -'What's that?' says he, more of him comin' out of the window, 'what's -<i>that</i> you say?'</p> - -<p>"An' they was a little wave o' moves an' murmurs all around him like -when somethin' is goin' to happen an' nobody knows what; an' I know the -Sodality caught its breath, for, as Mis' Toplady always says, the dear -land knows what men <i>will</i> do.</p> - -<p>"With that up springs the merry-seemin' man, his face all beamin', an' -he says loud an' clear an' drowndin' out everything else: 'Hear, hear! -Likewise, here an' now. I move that we as one man, an' that man's -automobile having lately come up the main street of Friendship -Village—do ourself contribute to this most worthy end. Get to work,' -says he. 'Think civic thoughts!'</p> - -<p>"He slid the last roll off its plate, an' he laid somethin' in paper -money on it, an' he started it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> down the table. An' every man of 'em -done as he done. An' I tell you, when we see Mis' Hubbelthwait's bread -plate pilin' with bills, an' knew what it was for, we couldn't help—the -whole Sodality couldn't help—steppin' forwards, close to the table, an' -standin' there an' holdin' our breaths. An' the men, back there in the -kitchen, they hushed up when they see the money, an' they kep' hushed. -Land, land, it was a great minute! I like to think about it.</p> - -<p>"An' when the plate come back to the merry-seemin' man, he took it an' -he come over towards us with it in his hand, an' we nudged Mis' Sykes to -take the money. An' she just lifted up the glitter part of her skirt an' -spread it out an' he dropped the whole rustlin' heap on to the spangles. -An' the rest of us all clapped our hands, hard as we could, an' right -while we was doin' it we heard somethin' else—deeper an' more manly -than us. An' there was the men streamin' out o' the kitchen doors, an' -Silas Sykes high in the servin' window—an' every one of 'em was -clappin', too.</p> - -<p>"I tell you, we was glad an' grateful. An' we was grateful, too, when -afterwards they was plenty enough supper left for the men-folks. An' -when we all set down together around that table, Mis' Sykes at the head -an' the plate o' bills for a centrepiece, Mis' Toplady leaned back, hot -an' tired, an' seein'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> if both her sleeves was still pinned in place, -an' she says what we was all thinkin':—</p> - -<p>"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'we can pave streets an' dress in the light -shades even if we ain't young, like the run o' the fashion-plates. Ain't -it like comin' to life again?' she says."</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XI</span> <span class="smaller">UNDERN</span></h2> - -<p>I have a guest who is the best of the three kinds of welcome guests. Of -these some are like a new rug which, however fine and unobtrusive it be, -at first changes the character of your room so that when you enter you -are less conscious of the room than of the rug. Some guests are like -flowers on the table, leaving the room as it was save for their sweet, -novel presence. And some guests are like a prized new book, unread, from -which you simply cannot keep away. Of these last is my guest whom my -neighbour calls the New Lady.</p> - -<p>My neighbour and Elfa and Miggy and Little Child and I have all been -busy preparing for her. Elfa has an almost pathetic fondness for -"company,"—I think it is that she leads such a lonely life in the -little kitchen-prison that she welcomes even the companionship of -more-voices-in-the-next-room. I have tried to do what I can for Elfa, -but you never help people very much when you only try to do what you -can. It must lie nearer the heart than that. And I perfectly understand -that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> magazines and trifles of finery which I give to her, and the -flowers I set on the kitchen clock shelf, and the talks which, since my -neighbour's unconscious rebuke, I have contrived with her, are about as -effectual as any merely ameliorative means of dealing with a social -malady. For Elfa is suffering from a distinct form of the social malady, -and not being able to fathom it, she knows merely that she is lonely. So -she has borrowed fellowship from her anticipation of my guest and of -those who next week will come down from the town; and I know, though she -does not know, that her jars of fresh-fried cakes and cookies, her fine -brown bread and her bowl of salad-dressing, are her utmost expression of -longing to adjust the social balance and give to herself companionship, -even a kind of household.</p> - -<p>Little Child to-day came, bringing me a few first sweet peas and -Bless-your-Heart, Bless-your-Heart being her kitten, and as nearly pink -as a cat can be and be still a cat.</p> - -<p>"To lay in the New Lady's room," she remarked, bestowing these things -impartially upon me.</p> - -<p>Later, my neighbour came across the lawns with a plate of currant tarts -and a quarter of a jelly cake.</p> - -<p>"Here," she said, "I don't know whether you like tarts or not. They're -more for children, I always think. I always bake 'em, and the little -round child fried cakes, too, and I put frosting faces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> on the cookies, -and such things. It makes my husband and I seem more like a family," she -explained, "and that's why I always set the dining-room table. As long -as we ain't any little folks running around, I always tell him that him -and I would be eating meat and potatoes on the kitchen drop-leaf like -savages if I didn't pretend there was more of us, and bake up for 'em."</p> - -<p>Miggy alone does not take wholly kindly to the New Lady idea, though I -assure her that our mornings are to remain undisturbed.</p> - -<p>"Of course," she observed, while in the New Lady's honour she gathered -up strewn papers, "I know I'll like her because she's your friend. But I -don't know what folks want to visit for. Don't you s'pose that's why the -angels don't come back—because they know everything, and they know what -a lot of extra work they'd make us?"</p> - -<p>In Miggy the tribal sense seems to have run itself out. Of the sanctity -of the individual she discerns much; but of the wider sanctities she has -no clear knowledge. Most relationships she seems to regard, like the -love of Peter, as "drawbacks," save only her indefinite consciousness of -that one who is "not quite her sister"—the little vague Margaret. And -this, I think, will be the leaven. Perhaps it is the universal leaven, -this consciousness.</p> - -<p>I was glad that the New Lady was to arrive in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> the afternoon. Sometimes -I think that the village afternoon is the best time of all. It is no -wonder that they used to call that time "undern." If they had not done -so, the word must have grown of its own will—perhaps it did come to -life with no past, an immaculate thing, so like its meaning that it -could not help being here among us. I know very well that Sir John -Mandeville and others used "undern" to mean the third hour, or about -nine in the morning, but that may have been because at first not every -one recognized the word. Many a fairy thing wanders for a long time on -earth, patiently putting up with other connotations than its own. -Opportunism, the subconscious mind, personality, evolution itself,—all -these are still seeking their full incarnations in idea. No wonder -"undern" was forced for a long while to mean morning. But nine o'clock -in the morning! How, after all, was that possible? You have only to say -it over—undern, undern, undern,—to be heavenly drowsy with summer -afternoon. The north of England recognized this at last and put the word -where it belongs; and I have, too, the authority of the lady of Golden -Wing:—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"Undern cometh after noon,</div> -<div>Golden Wings will be here soon...."</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>One can hardly stop saying that, once one is started. I should like to -go on with it all down the page.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p><p>I was thinking of these things as I drove to the station alone to meet -the New Lady. The time had taken on for me that pleasant, unlike-itself -aspect which time bears in any mild excitement, so that if in the moment -of reading a particularly charming letter one can remember to glance up -and look the room in the face, one may catch its <i>other</i> expression, the -expression which it has when one is not looking. So now I caught this -look in the village and an air of -Something-different-is-going-to-happen, such as we experience on -holidays. Next week, when the New Lady's friends come down to us for two -days, I dare say, if I can remember to look for it, that the village -will have another expression still. Yet there will be the same quiet -undern—though for me it is never a commonplace time. Indeed, usually I -am in the most delighted embarrassment how to spend it. In the mornings -now—Miggy being willing—I work, morning in the true democracy being -the work time; afternoon the time for recreation and the more -specialized forms of service <i>and</i> a little rest; the evening for -delight, including the delight of others. Not every one in the village -accepts my afternoon and evening classifications. I am constantly coming -on people making preserves after mid-day, and if I see a light in a -kitchen window after nine at night I know that somebody is ironing in -the cool of the day. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> usually my division of time is the general -division, save that—as in the true democracy—service is not always -recognized as service. Our afternoons may be spent in cutting carpet -rags, or in hemming linen, or sewing articles for an imminent bazaar, -and this is likely to be denominated "gettin' through little odd jobs," -and accounted in a measure a self-indulgence. And if evening delight -takes the form of gardening and later a flame of nasturtiums or dahlias -is carried to a friend, nobody dreams that this is not a pleasant -self-indulgence too, and it is so regarded. With these things true is it -not as if a certain hope abroad in the world gave news of itself?</p> - -<p>Near the Pump pasture I came on Nicholas Moor—who rings the Catholic -bell and is interested in celluloid—and who my neighbour had told me -would doubtless come to me, bringing his little sheaf of "writin's." I -had not yet met him, though I had seen in the daily paper a vagrant poem -or two over his name—I remember a helpless lyric which made me think of -a gorgeous green and gold beetle lying on its back, unable to recover -its legs, but for all that flashing certain isolated iridescent colours. -My heart ached for Nicholas, and when I saw him now going across the -pasture his loneliness was like a gap in things, one of the places where -two world-edges do not quite meet. There are so many pleasant ways to do -and the boy seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> to know how to do none of them. How can he be lonely -in the village? For myself, if I decide of an afternoon to take my work -and pay a visit, I am in a pleasant quandary as to which way to turn. If -I go to the west end of Daphne Street, there are at least five families -among whom to choose, the other four of whom will wonder why I did not -come to them. Think of knowing five families in two blocks who would -welcome one's coming and even feel a little flattering bitterness if one -chose the other four! If I take a cross street, I am in the same -difficulty. And if I wish to go to the house of one of my neighbours, my -motives clash so seriously that I often sit on my porch and call to -whoever chances to be in sight to come to me. Do you wonder that, in -town, the moment I open my address book I feel smothered? I recover and -enjoy town as much as anybody, but sometimes in a stuffy coupé, hurrying -to get a half-dozen of the pleasantest calls "done," I surprise a -companion by saying: would now that it were undern on Daphne Street!</p> - -<p>I told this to the New Lady as we drove from the station. The New Lady -is an exquisite little Someone, so little that it is as if she had been -drawn quickly, in a single delicate curving line, and then left, lest -another stroke should change her. She understands the things that I say -in the way that I mean them; she is the way that you always think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> the -people whom you meet are going to be, though they so seldom are; like -May, she is expectation come alive. What she says fits in all the -crannies of what you did not say and have always known, or else have -never thought of before and now never can forget. She laughs when she -should laugh, and never, never when somebody else should laugh alone. -When you tell her that you have walked eight miles and back, she says -"<i>And back!</i>" with just the proper intonation of homage. She never tells -a story upon the heels of your own little jest so swiftly that it cannot -triumphantly escape. When you try to tell her something that you have -not quite worked out, she nods a little and you see that she meant it -before you did. She enters every moment by its gate and not over its -wall, though she frequently wings her way in instead of walking. Also, -she is good to look at and her gowns are as meet as the clouds to the -sky—and no less distracting than the clouds are at their very best. -There is no possible excuse for my saying so much about her, but I like -to talk of her. And I like to talk to her as I did when we left the -station and I was rambling on about undern.</p> - -<p>The New Lady looked about with a breath of content.</p> - -<p>"No wonder," she said, "you like to pretend Birthday, in New York."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p><p>It is true that when I am there where, next to the village, I like best -to live, I am fond of this pretence. It is like the children's game of -"Choosing" before shop windows, only it is extensive and not, as cream -puffs and dolls and crumpets in the windows dictate to the children, -purely intensive. Seeing this man and that woman in the subway or the -tea-room or the café or the car, I find myself wondering if it is by any -chance their birthdays; and if it is, I am always wishing to deal out -poor little gifts at which I fancy they would hardly look. To the lithe -idle blond woman, elbows on table; to the heavy-lidded, -engagement-burdened gentlewoman; to the busy, high-eyebrowed man in a -cab; to the tired, slow-winking gentleman in his motor; to the -thick-handed labourer hanging to his strap, I find myself longing to -distribute these gifts: a breakfast on our screened-in porch in the -village, with morning-glories on the table; a full-throated call of my -oriole—a June call, not the isolated reminiscent call of August; an -hour of watering the lawn while robins try to bathe in the spray; a -morning of pouring melted paraffin on the crimson tops of moulds of -currant jelly; a yellow afternoon of going with me to "take my work and -stay for supper." I dare say that none of my chosen beneficiaries would -accept; but if I could pop from a magic purse a crop of caps and fit -folk, willy nilly, I wonder if afterward, even if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> they remembered -nothing of what had occurred, they might not find life a little -different.</p> - -<p>"If it was my birthday," said the New Lady, "I would choose to be driven -straight away through that meadow, as if I had on wings."</p> - -<p>That is the way she is, the New Lady. Lacking wings of her own she gives -them to many a situation. Straightway I drove down into the Pump pasture -and across it, springy soil and circus-trodden turf and mullein stalks -and ten-inch high oak trees.</p> - -<p>"Let's let down the bars," said the New Lady, "and drive into that next -meadow. If it <i>is</i> a sea, as it looks, it will be glad of your company."</p> - -<p>It was not a sea, for as we drove through the lush grass the yellow and -purple people of the meadow came marching to meet us, as dignified as -garden flowers, save that you knew, all the time, that wild hearts were -beating beneath the rainbow tassels. It was a meadow with things to say, -but with finger on lip—as a meadow should be and as a spirit must be. -The meadow seemed to wish to say: "It is all very pleasant for you there -in the village to admire one another's wings, but the real romance is in -the flight." I wondered if it were not so that it had happened—that one -day a part of the village had got tired waiting, and had broken off and -become something free, of which the meadow was the body and its secret -was the spirit. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> then the presence of the New Lady always sets me -wondering things like this.</p> - -<p>"Why," I said to her suddenly, "spring has gone! I wonder how that -happened. I have been waiting really to get hold of spring, and here it -is June."</p> - -<p>"June-and-a-half," assented the New Lady, and touched the lines so that -we came to a standstill in the shade of a cottonwood.</p> - -<p>"This way," she said—and added softly, as one who would not revive a -sadness, her own idea of the matter.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"Where did Spring die? I did not hear her go</div> -<div>Down the soft lane she painted. All flower still</div> -<div>She moved among her emblems on the hill</div> -<div>Touching away their burden of old snow.</div> -<div>Was it on some great down where long winds flow</div> -<div>That the wild spirit of Spring went out to fill</div> -<div>The eyes of Summer? Did a daffodil</div> -<div>Lift the pale urn remote where she lies low?</div> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<div>"Oh, not as other moments did she die,</div> -<div>That woman-season, outlined like a rose.</div> -<div>Before the banner of Autumn's scarlet bough</div> -<div>The Summer fell; and Winter, with a cry,</div> -<div>Wed with March wind. Spring did not die like those;</div> -<div>But vaguely, as if Love had prompted, 'Now.'"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The New Lady's theory does not agree with that of Little Child. I am in -doubt which to accept. But I like to think about both.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p><p>And when the New Lady had said the faint requiem, we drove on again and -the next moment had almost run down Nicholas Moor, lying face downward -in the lush grass.</p> - -<p>I recognized him at once, but of course the New Lady did not do so, and -she leaned from the cart, thoroughly alarmed at the boy's posture and, -as he looked up, at his pallor.</p> - -<p>"Oh, what is the matter?" she cried, and her voice was so heavenly -pitying that one would have been willing to have most things the matter -only to hear her.</p> - -<p>Nicholas Moor scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and stood abashed, -looking as strangely detached from the moment as if he had fallen from a -frame and left the rest of the picture behind.</p> - -<p>"Nothing. I just like to be here," he was surprised into saying.</p> - -<p>The New Lady sat down and smiled. And her smile was even more -captivating than had been her late alarm.</p> - -<p>"So do I," she told him heartily. "So do I. What do you like about it, -<i>best</i>?"</p> - -<p>I do not think that any one had ever before spoken to Nicholas so -simply, and he answered, chord for chord.</p> - -<p>"I guess—I guess I like it just on account of its being the way it is," -he said.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p><p>"That is a very, very nice reason," the New Lady commented. "Again, so -do I."</p> - -<p>We left him, I remember, looking about as if he were seeing it all for -the first time.</p> - -<p>As we drove away I told my New Lady about Nicholas, and she looked along -her own thought and shook her head.</p> - -<p>"There must be hundreds of them," she said, "and some are poets. But -most of them are only lonesome. I wonder which Nicholas is?"</p> - -<p>We lingered out-of-doors as long as we might, because the touch of the -outdoors was so companioning that to go indoors was a distinct good-by. -Is it so with you that some Days, be they never so sunny, yet walk with -you in a definite reserve and seem to be looking somewhere else; while -other Days come to you like another way of being yourself and will not -let you go? I know that some will put it down to mood and not to the Day -at all; but, do what I will, I cannot credit this.</p> - -<p>It was after five o'clock when we drove into the village, and all Daphne -Street was watering its lawns. Of those who were watering some pretended -not to see us, but I understood that this they accounted the etiquette -due to a new arrival. Some bowed with an excess of cordiality, and this -I understood to be the pleasant thought that they would show my guest -how friendly we all are. And some laid down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> the hose and came to the -sidewalk's edge to meet the New Lady then and there.</p> - -<p>Of these were Mis' Postmaster Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss -and my neighbour.</p> - -<p>"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," Mis' Postmaster Sykes said graciously -to the New Lady. "I must say it seems good to see a strange face now an' -then. I s'pose you feel all travel dust an' mussed up?"</p> - -<p>And at Mis' Holcomb's hitching post:—</p> - -<p>"Pleased to meet you," said Mis' Holcomb. "I was saying to Eppleby that -I wondered if you'd come. Eppleby says, 'I donno, but like enough -they've went for a ride somewheres.' Lovely day, ain't it? Been to the -cemetery?"</p> - -<p>I said that we had not been there yet, and,</p> - -<p>"Since it's kept up it makes a real nice thing to show folks," Mis' -Holcomb said. "I s'pose you wouldn't come inside for a bite of supper, -would you?"</p> - -<p>My neighbour—bless her!—had on a black wool dress to do honour to my -guest.</p> - -<p>"It's nice for the neighbours to see company comin' and goin'," she said -cordially, "though of course we don't have any of the extra work. But I -guess everybody likes extra work of <i>this</i> kind."</p> - -<p>And as we drove away:—</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>"Good-by," she cried, "I hope you'll have a good night's rest and a -good breakfast."</p> - -<p>When I looked at the New Lady I saw her eyes ever so slightly misted.</p> - -<p>"Spring didn't die," she said—as Little Child had said. "Spring knew -how to keep alive. It got down in these people's hearts."</p> - -<p>Yes, the New Lady is a wholly satisfactory guest. She even pretended not -to notice Peter's father who, as we alighted, came singing by, and bowed -to us, his barren old face lighted with a smile, as a vacant room is -lighted, revealing the waste. If I had some one staying with me who had -smiled at Peter's father or—at any one, or who did not see the village -as it is, I think I should be tempted to do as my neighbour did to me -that morning: pick three carnation pinks for her and watch her go away.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XII</span> <span class="smaller">THE WAY THE WORLD IS</span></h2> - -<p>Was it not inevitable that poor, lonely Nicholas Moor should have sought -out my New Lady? A night or two after her arrival he saw her again, at a -supper in the church "lecture-room." He was bringing in a great freezer -of ice-cream and when she greeted him he had all but dropped the -freezer. Then a certain, big obvious deacon whose garden adjoined my own -had come importantly and snatched the burden away, and the boy had -stood, shamefast, trying to say something; but his face was lighted as -at a summons. So the New Lady had divined his tragedy, the loneliness -which his shyness masked as some constant plight of confusion.</p> - -<p>"Come and see me sometime," she had impulsively bidden him. "Do you know -where I am staying?"</p> - -<p>Did he know that! Since he had seen her in the meadow had he known -anything else? And after some days of hard trying he came one night, -arriving within the dusk as behind a wall. Even in the twilight, when he -was once under the poplars, he did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> not know what way to look. To seem -to look straight along the road was unnatural. To seem to look out -across the opposite fields was hypocrisy. To look at the house which -held the New Lady was unthinkable. So, as he went in at the gate and up -the fern-bordered walk, he examined the back of his hand—near, and then -a little farther away. As he reached the steps he was absorbedly -studying his thumb.</p> - -<p>From a place of soft light, shed through a pink box shade on the table, -and of scattered willow chairs and the big leaves of plants, the New -Lady came toward him.</p> - -<p>"You did come!" she said. "I thought you wouldn't, really."</p> - -<p>With the utmost effort Nicholas detached one hand from his hat brim and -gave it her. From head to foot he was conscious, not of the touch of her -hand, little and soft, but of the bigness and coarseness of his own -hand.</p> - -<p>"I hated to come like everything," he said.</p> - -<p>At this of course she laughed, and she went back to her willow chair and -motioned him to his. He got upon it, crimson and wretched.</p> - -<p>"As much as that!" she observed.</p> - -<p>"You know I wanted to come awfully, too," he modified it, "but I dreaded -it—like sixty. I—I can't explain...." he stumbled.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p><p>"Don't," said the New Lady, lightly, and took pity on him and rang a -little bell.</p> - -<p>She thought again how fine and distinguished he was, as he had seemed to -her on the day when she had first spoken to him. He sat staring at her, -trying to realize that he was on the veranda with her, hearing the sound -of the little bell she had rung. He had wanted something like this, -wistfully, passionately. Miserable as he was, he rested in the moment as -within arms. And the time seemed distilled in that little silver -bell-sound and the intimacy of waiting with her for some one to come.</p> - -<p>He knew that some one with a light footfall did come to the veranda. He -heard the New Lady call her Elfa. But he saw only her hands, plump and -capable and shaped like his own, moving among the glasses. After which -his whole being became absorbed in creditably receiving the tall, cool -tumbler on the tray which the capable hands held out to him. A period of -suspended intelligence ensued, until he set the empty glass on the -table. Then the little maid had gone, and the New Lady, sipping her own -glass, was talking to him.</p> - -<p>"You were lying on the grass that day," she said, "as if you understood -grass. Not many do understand about grass, and almost nobody understands -the country. People say, 'Come, let us go into the country,' and when -they get there is it the country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> they want at all? No, it is the -country sports, the country home,—everything but the real country. They -play match games. They make expeditions, climb things in a stated time, -put in a day at a stated place. I often think that they must go home -leaving the country aghast that they could have come and gone and paid -so little heed to it. Presently we are going to have some charming -people out here who will do the same thing."</p> - -<p>So she talked, asking him nothing, even her eyes leaving him free. It -seemed to him, tense and alert and ill at ease as he listened, that he, -too, was talking to her. From the pressing practicalities, the -self-important deacon, the people who did not trouble to talk to him, -his world abruptly escaped, and in that world he walked, an escaped -thing too, forgetful even of the little roll of verses which he had -dared to bring.</p> - -<p>Yet when she paused, he looked out at her shrinkingly from under his -need to reply. He did not look at her face, but he looked at her hands, -so little that each time he saw them they were a new surprise and alien -to him. He looked away from them to the friendliness of her smile. And -when he heard himself saying detached, irrelevant things, he again fell -to studying one of his own hands, big and coarse and brown. Oh, he -thought, the difference between her and him was so hopelessly the -difference in their hands.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p><p>In an absurdly short time the need to be gone was upon him; but of this -he could not speak, and he sat half unconscious of what she was saying, -because of his groping for the means to get away. Clearly, he must not -interrupt her to say that he must go. Neither could he reply to what she -said by announcing his intention. And yet when he answered what she -said, straightway her exquisite voice went on with its speech to him. -How, he wondered, does anybody ever get away from anywhere? If only -something would happen, so that he could slip within it as within doors, -and take his leave.</p> - -<p>Something did happen. By way of the garden, and so to a side door, there -arrived those whose garden adjoined,—the big, obvious, self-important -deacon, and behind him Three Light Gowns. The little maid Elfa came -showing them through the house, in the pleasant custom of the village. -And when the New Lady, with pretty, expected murmurings, rose to meet -them, Nicholas got to his feet confronting the crisis of saying good-by, -and the moment closed upon him like a vise. He heard his voice falter -among the other voices, he saw himself under the necessity to take her -hand and the deacon's hand, and the hands, so to speak, of the Three -Light Gowns; and this he did as in a kind of unpractised bewildering -minuet.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p><p>And then he found his eyes on a level with eyes that he had not seen -before—blue eyes, gentle, watching, wide—and a fresh, friendly little -face under soft hair. It was Elfa, taking away the empty glasses. And -the boy, in his dire need to ease the instant, abruptly and inexplicably -held out his hand to her too. She blushed, sent a frightened look to the -New Lady, and took the hand in hers that was plump and capable, with its -strong, round wrist. And the little maid, being now in an embarrassment -like his own, the two hands clung for a moment, as if they had each the -need.</p> - -<p>"Good night," she said, trembling.</p> - -<p>"Good night," said the New Lady, very gently.</p> - -<p>"Oh, <i>good night</i>!" burst from the boy as he fled away.</p> - -<p class="space-above">It was Elfa who admitted him at his next coming. The screened porch was -once more in soft light from the square rose shade, and the place had -the usual pleasant, haunted air of the settings of potentialities. As if -potentiality were a gift of enchantment to human folk.</p> - -<p>The New Lady was not at home, Elfa told him, in her motherly little -heart pitying him. And at the news he sat down, quite simply, in the -chair in which he had sat before. He must see her. It was unthinkable -that she should be away. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>To-night he had meant to have the courage to -leave with her his verses.</p> - -<p>On the willow table lay her needlework. It was soft and white beyond the -texture of most clouds, and she had wrought on it a pattern like the -lines on a river. As his eyes rested on it, Nicholas could fancy it -lying against her white gown and upon it her incomparable hands. Some -way, she seemed nearer to him when he was not with her than when, with -her incomparable hands and her fluent speech, she was in his presence. -When she was not with him, he could think what to say to her. When he -stood before her—the thought of his leave-taking on that veranda seized -upon him, so that he caught his breath in the sharp thrust of mortified -recollection, and looked away and up.</p> - -<p>His eyes met those of Elfa, who was quietly sitting opposite.</p> - -<p>"How they must all have laughed at me. You too!" he said.</p> - -<p>"Why?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"That last time I was here. Shaking hands that way," he explained.</p> - -<p>"I didn't laugh," she unexpectedly protested; "I cried."</p> - -<p>He looked at her. And this was as if he were seeing her for the first -time.</p> - -<p>"<i>Cried?</i>" he repeated.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p><p>"Nobody ever shakes hands with me," Elfa told him.</p> - -<p>He stared at her as she sat on the edge of her chair, her plump hands -idle on her apron.</p> - -<p>"No," he admitted, "no, I don't suppose they do. I didn't think—"</p> - -<p>But he had not thought of her at all.</p> - -<p>"By the door all day I let in hand-shakes," she said, "an' then I let -'em out again. But I don't get any of 'em for me."</p> - -<p>That, Nicholas saw, was true enough. Even he had been mortified because -he had taken her hand.</p> - -<p>"Once," Elfa said, "I fed a woman at the back door. An' when she went -she took hold o' my hand, thankful. An' then you done it too—like it -was a mistake. That's all, since I worked out. I don't know folks -outside much, only some that don't shake hands, 'count of seemin' -ashamed to."</p> - -<p>"I know," said Nicholas.</p> - -<p>"Sometimes," she went on, "folks come here an' walk in to see <i>her</i> an' -they don't shake. Ain't it funny—when folks can an' don't? When they -come from the city to-morrow, the whole house'll shake hands, but me. -Once I went to prayer-meetin' an' I hung around waitin' to see if -somebody wouldn't. But they didn't—any of 'em. It was rainin' outside -an' I guess they thought I come with somebody's rubbers."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p><p>Nicholas looked at her a little fearfully. It had seemed to him that in -a great world of light he had always moved in a little hollow of -darkness and detachment. Were there, then, other hollows like that? -Places to which outstretched hands never penetrate? A great -understanding possessed him, and he burst out in an effort to express -it.</p> - -<p>"You're a funny girl," he said.</p> - -<p>She flushed, and suddenly lifted one hand and looked at it. Nicholas -watched her now intently. She studied the back of her hand, turned it, -and sat absorbedly examining her little thumb. And Nicholas felt a -sudden sense of understanding, of gladness that he understood. As he -felt when he was afraid and wretched, so Elfa was feeling now.</p> - -<p>He leaned toward her.</p> - -<p>"Don't feel afraid," he said gently.</p> - -<p>She shook her head.</p> - -<p>"I don't," she said; "I don't, truly. I guess that's why I stayed here -now. She won't be back till ten—I ought to have said so before. -You—you won't want to wait so long."</p> - -<p>He rose at once. And now, being at his ease, his head was erect, his -arms naturally fallen, his face as confident and as occupied by his -spirit as when he lay alone in the meadows.</p> - -<p>"Well, sir," he said, "let's shake hands again!"</p> - -<p>She gave him her hand and, in their peculiarly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> winning upward look, her -eyes—blue, wide, watchful, with that brooding mother watchfulness of -some women, even in youth. And her hand met his in the clasp which is -born of the simple, human longing of kind for kind.</p> - -<p>"Good-by," she answered his good-by, and they both laughed a little in a -shyness which was a way of delight.</p> - -<p>In the days to follow there flowed in the boy's veins a tide of novel -sweetness. And now his thoughts eluded one another and made no chain, so -that when he tried to remember what, on that first evening, the New Lady -and he had talked about, there came only a kind of pleasure, but it had -no name. Everything that he had to do pressed upon him, and when he -could get time he was away to the meadow, looking down on the chimneys -of that house, and swept by a current that was like a singing. And -always, always it was as if some one were with him.</p> - -<p>There came a night when he could no longer bear it, when his wish took -him to itself and carried him with it. Those summer dusks, warm yellow -with their moon and still odorous of spring, were hard to endure alone. -Since the evening with her, Nicholas had not seen the New Lady save -when, not seeing him, she had driven past in a phaëton. At the sight of -her, and once at the sight of Elfa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> from that house, a faintness had -seized him, so that he had wondered at himself for some one else, and -then with a poignancy that was new pain, new joy, the new life, had -rejoiced that he was himself. So, when he could no longer bear it, he -took his evening way toward the row of poplars, regretting the moonlight -lest by it they should see him coming. And to-night he had with him no -verses, but only his longing heart.</p> - -<p>He had no intimation of the guests, for the windows at that house were -always brightly lighted, and until he was within the screened veranda -the sound of voices did not reach him. Then from the rooms there came a -babel of soft speech and laughter, and a touch of chords; and when he -would have incontinently retreated, the New Lady crossed the hall and -saw him.</p> - -<p>She came to the doorway and greeted him, and Nicholas looked up in the -choking discomfort of sudden fear. She was in a gown that was like her -needlework, mysteriously fashioned and intricate with shining things -which made her infinitely remote. The incomparable little hands were -quite covered with jewels. It was as if he had come to see a spirit and -had met a woman.</p> - -<p>"How good of you to come again," she said. "Come, I want my friends to -meet you."</p> - -<p>Her friends! That quick crossing of words within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> there, then, meant the -presence of her friends from the city.</p> - -<p>"I couldn't! I came for a book—I'll get it some other time. I've got to -go now!" Nicholas said.</p> - -<p>Then, "Bettina—Bettina!" some one called from within, and a man -appeared in the hallway, smiled at sight of the New Lady, dropped his -glass at sight of Nicholas, bowed, turned away—oh, how should he know -that her name was Bettina when Nicholas had not known!</p> - -<p>This time he did not say good night at all. This time he did not look at -his great hand, which was trembling, but he got away, mumbling -something, his retreat graciously covered by the New Lady's light words. -And, the sooner to be gone and out of the moonlight that would let them -see him go, he struck blindly into the path that led to the side gate of -the garden. The mortification that chains spirit to flesh and tortures -both held him and tortured him. For a breath he imagined himself up -there among them all, his hands holding his hat, imagined having to -shake hands with them: and somehow this way of fellowship, this meeting -of hands outstretched for hands, seemed, with them, the supreme ordeal, -the true symbol of his alien state from them and from the New Lady. No -doubt she understood him, but for the first time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> Nicholas saw that this -is not enough. For the first time he saw that she was as far away from -him as were the others. How easy, Nicholas thought piteously, those -people in her house all found it to act the way they wanted to! Their -hands must be like her hands....</p> - -<p>He got through the garden and to the side gate. And now the old -loneliness was twofold upon him because he had known what it is to reach -from the dark toward the light; yet when he saw that at the gate some -one was standing, he halted in his old impulse to be on guard, hunted by -the fear that this would be somebody alien to him. Then he saw that it -was no one from another star, but Elfa.</p> - -<p>"Oh...." he said, and that, too, was what she said, but he did not hear. -Not from another star she came, but from the deep of the world where -Nicholas felt himself alone.</p> - -<p>"I—was just going away," he explained.</p> - -<p>For assent she stepped a little back, saying nothing. But when Nicholas -would have passed her it was as if the immemorial loneliness and the -seeking of forgotten men innumerable stirred within him in the ache of -his heart, in the mere desperate wish to go to somebody, to be with -somebody, to have somebody by the hand.</p> - -<p>He turned upon Elfa almost savagely.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p><p>"Shake hands!" he said.</p> - -<p>Obediently she put out her hand, which of itself stayed ever so briefly, -within his. He held it, feeling himself crushing it, clinging to it, -being possessed by it. Her hand was, like his, rough from its work, and -it was something alive, something human, something that answered. And -instantly it was not Elfa alone who was there companioning him, but the -dark was quick with presences, besieging him, letting him know that no -one alive is alone, that he was somehow one of a comrade company, -within, without, encompassing. And the boy was caught up by the sweet -will outside his own will and he never knew how it was that he had Elfa -in his arms.</p> - -<p>"Come here. Come here...." he said.</p> - -<p>To Elfa, in her loneliness threaded by its own dream, the moment, -exquisite and welcome as it was, was yet as natural as her own single -being. But to the boy it was not yet the old miracle of one world built -from another. It was only the answer to the groping of hands for hands, -the mere human call to be companioned. And the need to reassure her came -upon him like the mantle of an elder time.</p> - -<p>"Don't feel afraid," he said.</p> - -<p>Her eyes gave him their winning upward look, and it was as if their -mother watchfulness answered him gravely:—</p> - -<p>"I don't. I don't, truly."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>And at this she laughed a little, so that he joined her; and their -laughter together was a new delight.</p> - -<p>Across the adjoining lawn Nicholas could see in the moonlight the moving -figure of the big deacon, a Light Gown or two attending. A sudden -surprising sense of safety from them overswept the boy. What if they did -come that way! What, he even thought, if those people in the house were -to come by? Somehow, the little hollow of dark in which he had always -walked in the midst of light was as light as the rest of the world, and -he was not afraid. And all this because Elfa did not stir in his arms, -but was still, as if they were her harbour. And then Nicholas knew what -they both meant.</p> - -<p>"Elfa!" he cried, "do you...?"</p> - -<p>"I guess I must...." she said, and knew no way to finish that.</p> - -<p>"Love me?" said Nicholas, bold as a lion.</p> - -<p>"I meant that too," Elfa said.</p> - -<p>Between the New Lady's house and the big, obvious deacon's lawn the boy -stood, silent, his arms about the girl. So this was the way the world -is, people bound together, needing one another, wanting one another, -stretching out their hands....</p> - -<p>"Why, it was <i>you</i> I wanted!" Nicholas said wonderingly.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XIII</span> <span class="smaller">HOUSEHOLDRY</span></h2> - -<p>"After supper" in the village is like another room of the day. On these -summer nights we all come out to our porches to read the daily paper, or -we go to sit on the porch of a neighbour, or we walk about our lawns in -excesses of leisure, giving little twitches to this green and to that. -"In our yards" we usually say. Of these some are so tiny that the -hammocks or the red swinging-chairs find room on the planting spaces -outside the walks, and there men smoke and children frolic and call -across the street to one another. And this evening, as I went down -Daphne Street to post my letters, I saw in process the occasional -evening tasks which I have noted, performed out-of-doors: at the -Sykeses' cucumbers in preparation for to-morrow's pickles; a bushel of -over-ripe cherries arrived unexpectedly at the Herons' and being pitted -by hand; a belated needle-task of Mis' Holcomb's finishing itself in the -tenuous after-light. This fashion of taking various employments into the -open delights me. If we have peas to shell or beans to string or corn to -husk,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> straightway we take them to the porch or into the yard. This -seems to me to hold something of the grace of the days in the Joyous -Garde, or on the grounds of old châteaux where they embroidered or wound -worsted in woodland glades, or of colonial America, where we had out our -spinning wheels under the oaks. When I see a great shining boiler of -gasoline carried to the side yard for the washing of delicate fabrics, I -like to think of it as done out-of-doors for the charm of it as much as -for the safety. So Nausicaa would have cleansed with gasoline!</p> - -<p>It was sight of the old Aunt Effie sewing a seam in Mis' Holcomb's -dooryard which decided me to go to see Miggy. For I would not willingly -be where Aunt Effie is, who has always some tragedy of gravy-scorching -or dish-breaking to tell me. I have been for some time promising to go -to see Miggy in her home, and this was the night to do so, for the New -Lady went home to-day and I have been missing her sorely. There is a -kind of minus-New Lady feeling about the universe.</p> - -<p>At the same moment that I decided for Miggy, Peter rose out of the -ground. I wonder if he can have risen a very little first? But that is -one of those puzzles much dwelt upon by the theologians, and I will not -decide. Perhaps the thought of Miggy is a mighty motive on which Peter's -very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> being is conditioned. Anyway, there he was, suddenly beside me, -and telling me some everyday affair of how little use in the cannery -were Shorty Burns and Tony Thomas and Dutchie Wade, whose houses we were -passing. And to his talk of shop I responded by inviting him to go with -me to see Miggy. Would he go? He smiled his slow smile, with that little -twist of mouth and lifting of brow.</p> - -<p>"This is like finding an evening where there wasn't one before," he -said.</p> - -<p>The little house where Miggy lives has a copper beech in the -dooryard—these red-leaved trees seem to be always in a kind of hush at -their own difference. The house is no-colour, with trimmings of another -no-colour for contrast, and the little front porch looks like something -that has started to run out the front door and is being sternly snatched -backward. The door stood ajar—no doubt for the completion of this -transaction—and no one was about. We rapped, for above the bell push -was a legend of Aunt Effie's inscribing, saying: "Bell don't ring." For -a moment our summons was unanswered. Then Miggy called from upstairs.</p> - -<p>"I'll be down in a minute," she said. "Go right in, both of you, and -wait for me—will you?"</p> - -<p>To take the cards of one's visitors from a butler<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> of detached -expression or from a maid with inquisitive eyelashes is to know nothing -of the charm of this custom of ours of peeping from behind an upper -curtain where we happen to be dressing, and alone in the house, at the -ringing of the doorbell, and of calling down to a back which we -recognize an informal "Oh, go right in and wait for me a minute, will -you?" In this habit there is survival of old tribal loyalties and -hospitalities; for let the back divined below be the back of a stranger, -that is to say, of a barbarian, and we stay behind our curtains, silent, -till it goes away.</p> - -<p>In the sitting room at Miggy's house a little hand lamp was burning, the -fine yellow light making near disclosures of colour and form, and -farther away formulating presences of shadow. Aunt Effie had been at her -sewing, and there were yards of blue muslin billowing over a sunken -arm-chair and a foam of white lining on the Brussels-covered couch. The -long blue cotton spread made the big table look like a fat Delft sugar -bowl, and the red curtains were robbed of crude colour and given an -obscure rosy glow. A partly finished waist disguised the gingerbread of -the what-not, one forgot the carpet, the pictures became to the neutral -wall what words which nobody understands are to ministering music. And -on the floor before the lounge lay Little Child and Bless-your-Heart, -asleep.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p><p>At first I did not see the child. It was Peter who saw her. He stooped -and lifted her, the kitten still in her arms, and instead of saying any -of the things a woman might have said, Peter said <i>"Well....</i>" with a -tenderness in his voice such as women can give and more. For a man's -voice-to-a-child gets down deeper than happiness. I suppose it is that -the woman has always stayed with the child in the cave or the tent or -the house, while the man has gone out to kill or to conquer or to trade; -and the ancient crooning safety is still in the woman's voice, and the -ancient fear that he may not come back to them both is in the voice of -the man. When Peter lifted Little Child in his arms, I wished that Miggy -had been there to hear.</p> - -<p>"What's it dreaming about?" Peter said.</p> - -<p>"'Bout Miggy," said Little Child sleepily, and she snuggled in Peter's -coat collar.</p> - -<p>"Dream about Peter too!" Peter commanded.</p> - -<p>"Well, <i>I</i> will," promised Little Child o' Dreams, and drifted off.</p> - -<p>Peter sank awkwardly down to the floor and held her so, and he sat there -stroking Bless-your-Heart and looking as if he had forgotten me, save -that, "Shorty Burns and Tony Thomas and Dutchie Wade that I was telling -you about," he remarked once irrelevantly, "<i>they've</i> each got a kiddie -or so."</p> - -<p>Miggy came downstairs and, "I'm a surprise,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> she said in the doorway, -and stood there in a sheer white frock—a frock which said nothing to -make you look, but would not let you look away; and it had a little -rhyme of lace on this end and on that. It was the frock that she had -made herself—she told me so afterward, but she did not mention it -before Peter, and I liked her the better for that. When I hear women -boast of these things I always wonder why, then and there, I should not -begin to recite a sonnet I have turned, so as to have a hand in things. -To write an indifferent sonnet is much less than to make a frock which -can be worn, but yet I should dislike infinitely to volunteer even so -little as a sonnet or a quatrain. In any case, it would be amazing taste -for me to do so; while "I made it myself" I hear everywhere in the -village, especially in the presence of the Eligible. But I dare say that -this criticism of mine is conditioned by the fact that my needle-craft -cell got caught in the primal protozoan ooze and did not follow me.</p> - -<p>"Miggy! Oh, Miggery!" said Peter, softly. He had made this name for a -sort of superlative of her.</p> - -<p>"Like me?" inquired Miggy. I wonder if even the female atom does not -coquette when the sun strikes her to shining in the presence of her atom -lord?</p> - -<p>You know that low, emphatic, unspellable thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> which may be said by the -throat when a thing is liked very much? When one makes it, it feels like -a vocal dash in vocal italics. Peter did that, very softly.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Miggy, "I feel that dressed-up that I might be cut out of -paper. What <i>are</i> you doing down there, Peter?"</p> - -<p>He glanced down mutely, and Miggy went round the table and saw what he -held.</p> - -<p>"Why," she said, "that great heavy girl, Peter. Give her to me."</p> - -<p>Miggy bent over Peter, with her arms outstretched for the child. And -Peter looked up at her and enjoyed the moment.</p> - -<p>"She's too heavy for you to lift," he said, with his occasional quiet -authority. "I'll put her where you want her."</p> - -<p>"Well, it's so hot upstairs," Miggy hesitated. "It's past her bedtime, -but I hate to take her up there."</p> - -<p>"Undress her down here," said I. "The Delft sugar bowl shuts you off a -fine dressing-room. And let her sleep for a while on the couch."</p> - -<p>So Miggy went for the little nightgown, and Peter, with infinite pains, -got to his feet, and detached Bless-your-Heart and deposited her on the -table, where she yawned and humped her back and lay down on an -unfinished sleeve and went to sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> again. And when Miggy came down, -she threw a light quilt and a pillow near the couch and sat behind the -table and held out her arms.</p> - -<p>"Now!" she said to Peter, and to me she said, "I thought maybe you'd -spread her up a bed there on the couch."</p> - -<p>"Let Peter," said I. "I've another letter I ought to have written. If I -may, I'll write that here while you undress her."</p> - -<p>"Well," said Miggy, "there's some sheets of letter-paper under the cover -of the big Bible. And the ink—I guess there's some in the bottle—is on -top of the organ. And the pen is there behind the clock. And you'd ought -to find a clean envelope in that pile of newspapers. I think I saw one -there the other day. You spread up her bed then, Peter."</p> - -<p>I wrote my letter, and Peter went at the making up of the lounge, and -Miggy sat behind the table to undress Little Child. And Little Child -began waking up. It touched me infinitely that she who in matters of -fairies and visionings is so wise and old should now, in her sleepyhood, -be just a baby again.</p> - -<p>"I—<i>won't</i>—go—bed," she said.</p> - -<p>"Oh," said Miggy, "yes. Don't you feel all the little wingies on your -face? They're little dream wings, and the dreams are getting in a hurry -to be dreamed."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>"I do' know those dreams," said Little Child, "I do' <i>want</i> those -dreams. Where's Bless-your-Heart?"</p> - -<p>"Dreaming," said Miggy, "all alone. Goodness, I believe you've got a -little fever."</p> - -<p>Peter stopped flopping the quilt aimlessly over the lounge and turned, -and Miggy laid the back of her hand on Little Child's cheek and beneath -her chin. The man watched her anxiously as, since the world began, -millions of men have looked down at this mysterious pronouncement of the -woman.</p> - -<p>"She has?" he said. "She'd ought not to have any milk, then, had she?" -he added vaguely. It seemed to me that Miggy must have paused for a -moment to like Peter for this wholly youthful, masculine eagerness to -show that he knew about such things.</p> - -<p>"I'll fix her something to take," said Miggy, capably. "No, dear. The -other arm. Straighten elbow."</p> - -<p>"I want my shoes an' stockin's on in bed," Little Child observed. She -was sitting up, her head drooping, her curls fastened high with a -hairpin of Miggy's. "An' I want my shirtie on. An' <i>all</i> my clothes. I -won't go bed if you don't."</p> - -<p>Miggy laughed. "Bless-your-Heart hasn't got her clothes on," she -parried.</p> - -<p>"Ain't she got her furs on any more?" demanded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> Little Child, opening -her eyes. "She has, too. She has not, too, took a bath. An' I won't have -no bath," she went on. "I'm too old for 'em."</p> - -<p>At that she would have Bless-your-Heart in her arms, and there was some -argument arising from her intention to take the kitten in one hand all -the way through her nightgown sleeve. And by this time sleepyhood tears -were near.</p> - -<p>"<i>Don't</i> curl your toes under so," said Miggy, struggling with a shoe. -"Peter, do go on. You'll never have it done."</p> - -<p>Whereat Peter flapped the quilt again; and—</p> - -<p>"I will curl my toes up. That's what I want to do. I <i>want</i> to curl 'em -up!" said Little Child. And now the sleepyhood tears were very near.</p> - -<p>"Goodness," said Miggy, suddenly, "to-morrow is Sunday. I'll have to do -her hair up for curls. Peter!" she cried, "stop waving that quilt, and -tear me off a strip of that white lining there."</p> - -<p>"Yes, <i>I'll</i> have curls," said Little Child, unexpectedly, "because that -is so becunning to me."</p> - -<p>But she was very sleepy, and when Peter had been sent for the brush from -the kitchen shelf, her head was on Miggy's shoulder, and Miggy looked at -Peter helplessly.</p> - -<p>"Give her to me," said Peter, and took the child and laid the kitten at -large upon the floor; and then, holding Little Child's head in the -hollow of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> his arm, he sat down before Miggy, leaning toward her, and -all the child's soft brown hair lay on his sleeve.</p> - -<p>I should have liked to watch them then. And I should have liked Calliope -and Mis' Toplady and my neighbour to see them—those three who of all -the village best understood mystery. I know that Peter did not take his -eyes from Miggy's face as she brushed and wound the curls. How could -he?—and Miggy, "sweet as boughs of May" in that white frock, her look -all motherly intent upon her task. She was very deft, and she had that -fine mother-manner of caring for the child with her whole hand instead -of tipsifingers. I would see a woman infinitely delicate in the touching -of flowers or tea-cups or needlework, but when she is near a child, I -want her to have more than delicacy. I was amazed at Miggy's gentleness -and her pretty air of accustomedness. And when Little Child stirred, -Miggy went off into some improvised song about a little black dog that -got struck with a wagon and went Ki—yi—ki—yi—<i>ad infinitum</i>, and -Miggy seemed to me to have quite the technical mother-air of tender -abstraction.</p> - -<p>"How dark her hair is growing," she said.</p> - -<p>"It's just the colour of yours," said Peter, "and the little curls on -the edges. They're like yours, too."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p><p>"My hair!" Miggy said deprecatingly. "You've got rather nice hair, -Peter, if <i>only</i> it wouldn't stick up that way at the back."</p> - -<p>"I know it sticks up," Peter said contritely. "I do every way to make it -stay down. But it won't."</p> - -<p>"It makes you look funny," observed Miggy, frankly.</p> - -<p>"Well," he told her, "if you wouldn't ever make me go 'way from you, you -wouldn't ever need to see the back of my head."</p> - -<p>"That would be just what would turn your head," she put it positively. -"Peter, doesn't your arm ache, holding her so?"</p> - -<p>He looked down at his arm to see, and, "I wouldn't care if it did," he -replied, in some surprise. "No. It feels good. Oh, Miggy—do you do this -every night?"</p> - -<p>"I don't always curl her hair," said Miggy, "but I always put her to -bed. If ever Aunt Effie undresses her, she tells her she <i>may</i> die -before morning, so she'd better say her prayer, pretty. Goodness, she -hasn't said her prayer yet, either."</p> - -<p>"Isn't she too sleepy?" asked Peter.</p> - -<p>"Yes," Miggy answered; "but she feels bad in the morning if she doesn't -say it. You know she thinks she says her prayer to mother, and that -mother waits to hear her...."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p><p>Miggy looked up fleetingly at her mother's picture on the wall—one of -those pale enlargements of a photograph which tell you definitely that -the subject is dead.</p> - -<p>"I do' want any other curls on me," announced Little Child, suddenly.</p> - -<p>"Just one more, dear," Miggy told her, "and then we're through. Turn her -head a little, Peter."</p> - -<p>"No," said Little Child. "Now I'm all curly."</p> - -<p>And, "Yes, Precious. Be still on Peter's arm just a minute more," said -Miggy at the same time.</p> - -<p>And, "If you say anything more, I'll kiss you," said Peter, to whom it -might concern.</p> - -<p>"Kiss <i>me</i>?" said Little Child. "I won't be."</p> - -<p>"Somebody's got to be," said Peter, with decision.</p> - -<p>"Now, our prayer," ruled Miggy suddenly, and rose. "Come, dear."</p> - -<p>Peter looked up in Miggy's face.</p> - -<p>"Let her be here," he said. "Let her be here."</p> - -<p>He lifted Little Child so that she knelt, and her head drooped on his -shoulder. He had one arm about her and the other hand on the pink, -upturned soles of her feet. The child put out one hand blindly for -Miggy's hand. So Miggy came and stood beside Peter, and together they -waited for the little sleepy voice.</p> - -<p>It came with disconcerting promptness.</p> - -<p>"Now—I—lay—me—down—to—sleep—for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>—Jesus'—sake—Amen," prayed -Little Child in one breath.</p> - -<p>"No, sweetheart," Miggy remonstrated, with her alluring emphasis on -"sweet." "Say it right, dear."</p> - -<p>"Now I lay me—is Bless-your-Heart sayin' hers?" demanded Little Child.</p> - -<p>"Couldn't you get along without her, when you're so sleepy?" Miggy -coaxed.</p> - -<p>"Mustn't skip nights," Little Child told her. "Bless-your-Heart might -die before morning."</p> - -<p>So Miggy found Bless-your-Heart under the couch, and haled her forth, -and laid her in Little Child's arms. And Peter put his face close, close -to Little Child's, and shut his eyes.</p> - -<p>"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I -should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take who'll I bless -to-night?" said Little Child.</p> - -<p>"Aunt Effie," Miggy prompted.</p> - -<p>"Bless Aunt Effie," said Little Child, "and Miggy and Bless-your-Heart -and New Auntie" (she meant me. Think of her meaning me!) "and the man -that gave me the peanuts, and bless Stella's party and make 'em have -ice-cream, and bless my new shoes and my sore finger. For Jesus' sake, -Amen."</p> - -<p>Little Child drew a long breath and stirred to get down, but Peter did -not move.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>"And bless Peter," Miggy said.</p> - -<p>"No," said Little Child, "He needn't. Peter's nice 'nuff."</p> - -<p>Peter got to his feet with Little Child in his arms, and his face was -glowing, and he looked at Miggy as if she were what he meant whenever he -said "universe." But Miggy had gone to the couch, and was smoothing the -quilt that Peter had wrinkled in all directions, and patting the pillow -that Peter had kneaded into a hard ball.</p> - -<p>"You lay her down," she said.</p> - -<p>Peter did so, setting the kitten on the floor, and then bending low over -the couch, looking in the upturned face as the little dark head touched -the pillow and sought its ease, and her hand fell from where it had -rested on his shoulder. And he stooped and kissed her cheek more gently -than he had ever done anything.</p> - -<p>"I want my drink o' water," said Little Child, and opened her eyes; and -now from the couch she could see me. "Tell me a story," she commanded -me, drowsily.</p> - -<p>I did not go to her, for who am I that I should have broken that trio? -But when Miggy and Peter took the lamp and went away to the kitchen for -the drink of water and for some simple remedy for the fever which Miggy -had noted or fancied, I sat beside Little Child and said over something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> -that had been persistently in my mind as I had watched Miggy with her:—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"I like to stand in this great air</div> -<div>And see the sun go down;</div> -<div>It shows me a bright veil to wear</div> -<div>And such a pretty gown.</div> -<div>Oh, I can see a playmate there</div> -<div>Far up in Splendour Town!"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Little Child began it with me, but her voice trailed away. I thought -that in the darkness were many gentle presences—Little Child's tender -breathing, the brushing wings of hurrying dreams, and perhaps that -other—"not quite my sister," but a shadowy little Margaret.</p> - -<p>Afterward, Miggy and Peter and I sat together for a little while, but -Peter had fallen in a silence. And presently Aunt Effie came home, and -on the porch—which seemed not yet to have escaped—she told us about -having broken her needle and left her shears at her neighbour's. While -Peter ran over to Mis' Holcomb's for the shears, I had a word with -Miggy.</p> - -<p>"Miggy!" I said, "don't you see?"</p> - -<p>"See what?" she wanted to know, perversely.</p> - -<p>"How Peter would love to have Little Child, too?" I said.</p> - -<p>She laughed a little, and was silent; and laughed again.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>"He was funny and nice," she admitted; "and wasn't Little Child funny -not to bless him?"</p> - -<p>"Because he is nice enough," I reminded her.</p> - -<p>Miggy laughed once more—I had never seen her in so tender and feminine -a mood. And this may have been partly due to the new frock, though I -cannot think that it was entirely this. But abruptly she shook her head.</p> - -<p>"Peter's father went by just before you came in," she said. -"He—couldn't hardly walk. What if I was there to get supper for him -when he got home? I never could—I never could...."</p> - -<p>By the time Peter and I were out alone on Daphne Street again, the -sitting rooms in all the houses were dark, with a look of locked front -doors—as if each house had set its lips together with, "We are a home -and you are not."</p> - -<p>Peter looked out on all this palpable householdry.</p> - -<p>"See the lights upstairs," he said; "everybody's up there, hearing their -prayers and giving 'em fever medicine. Yes, sir, Great Scott! Shorty -Burns and Tony Thomas and Dutchie Wade—they ain't good for a thing in -the cannery. And yet they know...."</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XIV</span> <span class="smaller">POSTMARKS</span></h2> - -<p>Between church service and Sunday School we of the First church have so -many things to attend to that no one can spare a moment.</p> - -<p>"Reverent things, not secular," Calliope explains, "plannin' for church -chicken-pie suppers an' Christmas bazaars and like that; but not a word -about a picnic, not even if they was to be one o' Monday sunrise."</p> - -<p>To be sure, this habit of ours occasionally causes a contretemps. As -when one morning Mis' Toplady arrived late and, in a flurry, essayed to -send up to the pulpit by the sexton a Missionary meeting notice to be -read. Into this notice the minister plunged without the precaution of -first examining it, and so delivered aloud:—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"See Mis' Sykes about bringing wiping cloths and dish-rags.</div> -<div>"See Abigail about enough forks for her table.</div> -<div>"Look around for my rubbers.</div> -<div>"Dun Mame Holcomb for her twenty cents."</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>Not until he reached the fourth item was the minister stopped by the -agonized rustle in a congregation that had easily recognized Mis' -Toplady's "between services" list of reminder, the notice of the -forthcoming meeting being safe in her hymn book.</p> - -<p>Still we persist in our Sabbath conferences when "everybody is there -where you want 'em an' everybody can see everybody an' no time lost an' -no party line listening"; and it is then that those who have been for -some time away from the village receive their warmest welcome. I am not -certain that the "I must get down to church and see everybody" of a -returned neighbour does not hold in fair measure the principles of -familyhood and of Christ's persuadings to this deep comradeship.</p> - -<p>It was in this time after church that we welcomed Calliope one August -Sunday when she had unexpectedly come down from town on the Saturday -night. And later, when the Sunday-school bell had rung, I waited with -her in the church while she looked up her Bible, left somewhere in the -pews. When she had found it, she opened it in a manner of eager haste, -and I inadvertently saw pasted to the inside cover a sealed letter, -superscription down, for whose safety she had been concerned. I had -asked her to dine with me, and as we walked home together she told me -about the letter and what its sealed presence in her Bible meant.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p><p>"I ain't ever read it," Calliope explained to me wistfully. "Every one -o' the Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle has got one, an' none of us has -ever read 'em. It ain't my letter, so to say. It's one o' the Jem Pitlaw -collection. The postmark," she imparted, looking up at me proudly, "is -Bombay, India."</p> - -<p>At my question about the Jem Pitlaw collection she laughed -deprecatingly, and then she sighed. ("Ain't it nice," she had once said -to me, "your laughs hev a sigh for a linin', an' sighs can hev laughin' -for trimmin'. Only trouble is, most folks want to line with trimmin's, -an' they ain't rill durable, used that way.")</p> - -<p>"Jem Pitlaw," Calliope told me now, "used to be schoolmaster here—the -kind that comes from Away an' is terrible looked up to on that account, -but Jem deserved it. He knew all there was <i>to</i> know, an' yet he thought -we knew some little things, too. We was all rill fond of him, though he -kept to himself, an' never seemed to want to fall in love, an' not many -of us knew him well enough to talk to at all familiar. But when he went -off West on a vacation, an' didn't come back, an' never come back, an' -then died, Friendship Village mourned for him,—sincere, though no -crape,—an' missed him enormous.</p> - -<p>"He'd had a room at Postmaster Sykes's—that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> was when he was postmaster -first an' they was still humble an' not above the honest penny. An' Jem -Pitlaw left two trunks an' a sealed box to their house. An' when he -didn't come back in two years, Silas Sykes moved the things out of the -spare room over to the post-office store loft. An' there they set, three -years on end, till we got word Jem was dead—the very week o' the -Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle's Ten Cent Tropical Fête. Though, -rilly, the Tropical Fête wasn't what you might say 'tropical.' It was -held on the seventeenth of January, an' that night the thermometer was -twenty-four degrees below on the bank corner. Nor it wasn't rilly what -you might say a Fête, either. But none o' the Circle regretted them -lacks. A lack is as good as a gift, sometimes.</p> - -<p>"We'd started the Foreign Missionary Circle through Mis' Postmaster -Sykes gettin' her palm. I donno what there is about palms, but you know -the very name makes some folks think thoughts 'way outside their heads, -an' not just stuffy-up inside their own brains. When I hear 'palm,' I -sort o' feel like my i-dees got kind o' wordy wings an' just went it -without me. An' that was the way with more than me, I found out. Nobody -in Friendship Village hed a palm, but we'd all seen pictures an' -hankered—like you do. An' all of a sudden Mis' Sykes got one, like she -gets her new hat, sometimes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> without a soul knowin' she's thinkin' -'hat' till she flams out in it. Givin' surprise is breath an' bread to -that woman. She unpacked the palm in the kitchen, an' telephoned around, -an' we all went over just as we was an' set down there an' looked at it -an' thought 'Palm'! You can't realize how we felt, all of us, if you -ain't lived all your life with nothin' but begonias an' fuchsias from -November to April, an' sometimes into May. But we was all mixed up about -'em, now we see one. Some hed heard dates grew on palms. Others would -have it it was cocoanuts. Still more said they was natives of the -equator, an' give nothin' but shade. So it went. But after a while Mis' -Timothy Toplady spoke up with that way o' comin' downstairs on her words -an' rilly gettin' to a landin':—</p> - -<p>"'They's quite a number o' things,' she says, 'that I want to do so much -it seems like I can't die without doin' 'em. But I guess prob'ly I will -die without. Folks seems to drop off leavin' lots of doin's undone. An' -one o' my worst is, I want to see palm trees growin' in hot lands—big -spiky leaves pointin' into the blue sky <i>like fury</i>. 'Seems if I could -do that,' s'she, 'I'd take in one long breath that'd make me all lungs -an' float me up an' off.'</p> - -<p>"We all laughed, but we knew what she meant well enough, because we all -felt the same way. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> think most North folks do—like they was cocoanuts -an' dates in our actions, 'way back. An' so we was all ready for Mis' -Toplady's idee when it come—which is the most any idee can expect:—</p> - -<p>"'I tell you what,' s'she, 'le's hev a Ladies' Foreign Missionary -Circle, an' get read up on them tropical countries. The only thing I -really know about the tropics is what comes to me unbeknownst when I -smell my tea rose. I've always been meanin' to take an interest in -missions,' says she.</p> - -<p>"So we started it, then an' there, an' she an' I was the committee to -draw out a constitution an' decide what officers should be elected an' -do the general creatin'. We made it up that Mis' Sykes should be the -president—that woman is a born leader, and, as a leader, you can depend -on the very back of her head. An' at last we went off to the minister -that then was to ask him what to take up.</p> - -<p>"'Most laudable,' s'he, when he'd heard. 'Well, now, what country is it -you're most interested in?' he says. 'Some island of the sea, I s'pose?' -he asks, bright.</p> - -<p>"'We're interested in palms,' Mis' Timothy Toplady explained it to him -frank, 'an' we want to study about the missionaries in some country -where they's dates an' cocoanuts an' oaseses.'</p> - -<p>"He smiled at that, sweet an' deep—I know it seemed to me as if he knew -more about what we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> wanted than we knew ourselves. Because they's some -ministers that understands that Christianity ain't all in the bottle -labelled with it. Some of it is labelled 'ointment,' an' some 'perfume,' -an' some just plain kitchen flavourin'. An' a good deal of it ain't -labelled at all.</p> - -<p>"I forget what country it was we did study. But they was nine to ten of -us, an' we met every week, an' I tell you the time wa'n't wasted. We -took things in lavish. I know Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss said that -after belongin' to the Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle she could never -feel the same absent-minded sensation again when she dusted her parlour -shells. An' Mis' Toplady said when she opened her kitchen cabinet an' -smelt the cinnamon an' allspice out o' the perforated tops, 'most -always, no matter how mad she was, she broke out in a hymn, like 'When -All Thy Mercies,' sheer through knowin' how allspice was born of God an' -not made of man. An' Mis' Sykes said when she read her Bible, an' it -talked about India's coral strand, it seemed like, through knowin' what -a reef was, she was right there on one, with her Lord. I felt the same -way, too—though I'd always felt the same way, for that matter—I always -did tip vanilla on my handkerchief an' pretend it was flowers an' that -I'd gone down South for the cold months. An' it got so that when the -minister give out a text that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> had geography in it, like the Red Sea, or -Beer-elim, or 'a place called The Fair Haven,' the Ladies Foreign -Missionary Circle would look round in our seats an' nod to each other, -without it showin', because we knew that we knew, extra special, just -what God was talkin' about. I tell you, knowledge makes you alive at -places where you didn't know there was such a place.</p> - -<p>"In five months' time we felt we owed so much to the Ladies' Foreign -Missionary Circle that it was Mis' Sykes suggested we give the Ten Cent -Tropical Fête, an' earn five dollars or so for missions.</p> - -<p>"'We know a great deal about the tropics now,' she says, 'an' I propose -we earn a missionary thank-offering. Coral an' cocoanuts an' dates an' -spices isn't all the Lord is interested in, by any means,' s'she. 'An' -the winter is the time to give a tropic fête, when folks are thinkin' -about warm things natural.'</p> - -<p>"We voted to hev the fête to Mis' Sykes's because it was too cold to -carry the palm out. We went into it quite extensive—figs an' dates an' -bananas an' ginger for refreshments, an' little nigger dolls for -souvenirs, an' like that. It was quite a novel thing for Friendship, an' -everybody was takin' an interest an' offerin' to lend Japanese umbrellas -an' Indian baskets an' books on the South Sea, an' a bamboo chair with -an elephant crocheted in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> tidy. An' then, bein' as happenin's always -crowd along in flocks, what come that very week o' the fête but a letter -from an old aunt of Jem Pitlaw's, out West. An' if Jem hadn't been dead -almost ever since he left Friendship! an' the aunt wrote that we should -sell his things to pay for keepin' 'em, as she was too poor to send for -'em an' hadn't any room if she wasn't.</p> - -<p>"I donno whether you know what rill excitement is, but if you don't, -you'd ought to drop two locked trunks an' a sealed box into a town the -size o' Friendship Village, an' leave 'em there goin' on five years, an' -then die an' let 'em be sold. That'll show you what a pitch true -interest can get het up to. All of a sudden the Tropical Fête was no -more account than the telephone ringin' when a circus procession is -going by. Some o' the Ladies' Missionary was rill indignant, an' said -we'd ought to sue for repairin' rights, same as when you're interfered -with in business. Mis' Sykes, she done her able best, too, but nothin' -would do Silas but he must offer them things for sale on the instant. -'The time,' s'he, firm, 'to do a thing is now, while the interest is up. -An' in this country,' s'he, '"now" don't stay "now" more'n two minutes -at a time.'</p> - -<p>"So he offered for sale the contents of them three things—the two -trunks an' the sealed box—unsight, unseen, on the day before the Fête -was to be. Only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> one thing interfered with the 'unsight, unseen' -business: the sealed box had got damp an' broke open, an' what was -inside was all showin'.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Sykes an' I saw it on the day o' the sale. Most o' the Circle was -to her house finishin' up the decorations for the Fête so's to leave the -last day clear for seein' to the refreshments, an' her an' I run over to -the post-office store for some odds an' ends. Silas had brought the two -trunks an' the box down from the loft so to give 'em some advertisin'. -An' lookin' in the corner o' the broke box we could see, just as plain -as plain, was <i>letters</i>. Letters in bunches, all tied up, an' letters -laid in loose—they must 'a' been full a hundred of 'em, all lookin' -mysterious an' ready to tell you somethin', like letters will. I know -the looks o' the letters sort o' went to my head, like the news of Far -Off. An' I hated seein' Jem's trunks there, with his initials on, -appearin' all trustin' an' as if they thought he was still alive.</p> - -<p>"But that wasn't the worst. They was three strangers there in the -store—travellin' men that had just come in on the Through, an' they was -hangin' round the things lookin' at 'em, as if they had the right to. -This town ain't very much on the buy, an' we don't hev many strangers -here, an' we ain't rill used to 'em. An' it did seem too bad, I know we -thought, that them three should hev happened in on the day of a private -Friendship Village sale that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> didn't concern nobody else but one, an' -him dead. An' we felt this special when one o' the men took a-hold of a -bunch o' the letters, an' we could see the address of the top one, to -Jem Pitlaw, wrote thin an' tiny-fine, like a woman. An' at that Mis' -Sykes says sharp to her husband:—</p> - -<p>"'Silas Sykes, you ain't goin' to sell them letters?'</p> - -<p>"'Yes, ma'am, I am,' Silas snaps, like he hed a right to all the letters -on earth, bein' he was postmaster of Friendship Village. 'Letters,' -Silas give out, 'is just precisely the same as books, only they ain't -been through the expense of printin'. No differ'nce. No -differ'nce!'—Silas always seems to think repeatin' a thing over'll get -him somewheres, like a clock retickin' itself. 'An',' he says, 'I'm -goin' to sell 'em for what they'll bring, same as the rest o' the -things, an' you needn't to say one word.' An' bein' as Silas was -snappin', not only as a postmaster but as a husband, Mis' Sykes, she -kep' her silence. Matrimony an' politics both in one man is too much for -any woman to face.</p> - -<p>"Well, we two went back to Mis' Sykes's all het up an' sad, an' told the -Circle about Jem Pitlaw's letters. An' we all stopped decoratin' an' set -down just where we was an talked about what an awful thing it seemed. I -donno as you'll sense it as strong as we did. It was more a feelin' than -a wordin'. <i>Letters</i>—bein' sold an' read out loud an' gettin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> known -about. It seemed like lookin' in somebody's purse before they're dead.</p> - -<p>"'I should of thought,' Mis' Sykes says, 'that Silas regardin' bein' -postmaster as a sacred office would have made him do differ'nt. An' I -know he talked that right along before he got his appointment. "Free -Private Secretary to the People," an' "Trusted Curator of Public -Communication," he put it when he was goin' around with his petition,' -says she, grievin'.</p> - -<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Amanda Toplady—I rec'lect she hed been puttin' up a -big Japanese umbrella, an' she looked out from under it sort o' sweet -an' sincere an' dreamy—'you've got to be a woman an' you've got to live -in a little town before you know what a letter really is. I don't think -these folks that hev lots o' mail left in the front hall in the -mornin'—an' sometimes get one that same afternoon—<i>knows</i> about -letters at all. An' I don't believe any man ever knows, sole except when -he's in love. To sense what a letter is you've got to be a woman without -what-you-may-say much to enjoy; you've got to hear the train whistle -that might bring you one; you've got to calculate how long it'll take -'em to distribute the mail, an' mebbe hurry to get your bread mixed, or -your fried-cakes out o' the lard, or your cannin' where you can leave -it—an' then go change your shoes an' slip on another skirt,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> an' poke -your hair up under your hat so's it won't show, an' go down to the -post-office in the hot sun, an' see the letter through the glass, there -in your own box, waitin' for you. That minute, when your heart comes up -in your throat, I tell you, is gettin' a letter.'</p> - -<p>"We all knew this is so—every one of us.</p> - -<p>"'It's just like that when you write 'em, only felt differ'nt,' says -Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I do mine to my sister a little at a -time—I keep it back o' the clock in the kitchen an' hide the pencil -inside the clock door, so's it won't walk off, the way pencils do at our -house. An' then, right in the midst of things, be it flour or be it -suds, I can scratch down what comes in my head, till I declare sometimes -I can hardly mail it for readin' it over an' thinkin' how she'll like to -get it.'</p> - -<p>"'My, my!' says Mis' Sykes, reminiscent, ''specially since Silas has -been postmaster an' we've had so much to do with other people's letters, -I've been so hungry for letters of my own that I've wrote for samples. I -can do that with a level conscience because, after all, you do get a new -dress now an' then. But I couldn't answer advertisements, same as some, -when I didn't mean true—just to get the letters back. That don't seem -to me rill honest.'</p> - -<p>"An' then I owned up.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p><p>"'Last week, when I paid my taxes,' I says, 'I whipped out o' the -clerk's office quick, sole so's he'd hev to mail me my tax receipt. But -he didn't do it. He sent it over by their hired girl that noon. I love -letters like I do my telephone bell an' my friends,' I know I says.</p> - -<p>"An' there was all that hundred letters or so—letters that somebody had -put love in for Jem Pitlaw, an' that he'd read love out of an' saved -'em—there they was goin' to be sold for all Friendship Village to read, -includin' some that hadn't even known him, mebbe more than to speak to.</p> - -<p>"We wasn't quite through decoratin' when supper time come, so we stayed -on to Mis' Sykes's for a pick-up lunch, et in the kitchen, an' finished -up afterwards. Most of 'em could do that better than they could leave -their work an' come down again next mornin'—men-folks can always get -along for supper, bein' it's not a hot meal.</p> - -<p>"'Ain't it wonderful,' says Mis' Toplady, thoughtful, 'here we are, -settin' 'round the kitchen table at Mis' Postmaster Sykes's in -Friendship Village. An' away off in Arabia or Asia or somewhere that I -ain't sure they is any such place, is somebody settin' that never heard -of us nor we of him, an' he's goin' to hev our five dollars from the -Tropical Fête to-morrow night, an' put it to work doin' good.'</p> - -<p>"'It makes sort of a connection, don't it?' says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> Mis' -Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'There they are an' here we are. Ain't it -strange? 'Seems like our doin' this makes us feel nearer to them places. -I donno but that,' says she, noddin', 'is the start of what it means -about the lion and the lamb layin' down together.'</p> - -<p>"'Oh!'says Mis' Toplady, 'I tell you the Foreign Missionary Circle has -been next best to <i>goin'</i>. 'Seems sometimes as if I've 'most been -somewheres an' seen palms a-growin' an' a-wavin' an' a red sky back. -Don't it to you? I've dreamed o' them places all my life, an' I ain't -never had anything but Friendship Village, an' I don't know now that -Arabia an' Asia an' India is rilly fitted in, the way they look on the -map. An' so with some more. But if so be they are, then,' she says, 'we -owe it to the Foreign Missionary Circle that we've got that far towards -seein' 'em.'</p> - -<p>"An' we all agreed, warm, excep' Mis' Sykes, who was the hostess an' too -busy to talk much; but we knew how she felt. An' we said some more about -how wonderful things are, there in Mis' Sykes's kitchen while we et.</p> - -<p>"Well, when we got done decoratin' after supper, we all walked over to -the post-office store to the sale—the whole Circle of us. Because, of -course, if the letters was to be sold there wasn't any harm in seein' -who got 'em, an' in knowin' just how mean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> who was. Then, too, we was -interested in what was in the two trunks. We was quite early—early -enough to set along on the front rows of breakfast-food boxes that was -fixed ready. An' in the very frontmost one was Mis' Sykes an' Mis' -Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, an' me.</p> - -<p>"But we see, first thing when we got into the store, that they was -strangers present. The three travellin' men that Mis' Sykes an' I had -noticed that afternoon was still in town, of course, an' there they was -to the sale, loungin' along on the counter each side o' the cheese. We -couldn't bear their bein' there. It was our sale, an' they wasn't rill -sure to understand. To us Mr. Pitlaw hed been Mr. Pitlaw. To them he was -just somebody that hed been somebody. I didn't like it, nor they didn't -none o' the Ladies' Missionary like it. We all looked at each other an' -nodded without it showin', like we do, an' we could see we all felt the -same.</p> - -<p>"Silas was goin' to officiate himself—that man has got the idee it's -the whistle that runs the boat. They had persuaded him to open the -trunks an' sell the things off piecemeal, an' he see that was rilly the -only way to do it. So when the time come he broke open the two trunks -an' he wouldn't let anybody touch hasp or strap or hammer but himself. -It made me sort of sick to see even the trunk things of Mr. Pitlaw's -come out—a pepper an' salt suit, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> pair of new suspenders, a collar -an' cuff case—the kind that you'd recognize was a Christmas present; a -nice brush an' comb he'd kept for best an' never used, a cake of -pretty-paper soap he'd never opened, a bunch o' keys, an' like that. You -know how it makes you feel to unpack even your own things that have been -put away a good while; it's like thinkin' over forgot thoughts. Well, -an' this was worse. Jem Pitlaw, that none of us had known well enough to -mention familiar things to, was dead—he was <i>dead</i>; an' here we were, -lookin' on an' seein' the things that was never out of his room before, -an' that he'd put in there, neat an' nice, five years back, to be took -out, he thought, in a few weeks. Quite a lot of us felt delicate, but -some got behind the delicate idee an' made it an excuse for not buyin' -much. They's all kinds to a sale—did you ever notice? Timothy Toplady, -for instance—I donno but he's all kinds in his single self. 'Seems he -couldn't bring himself to bid on a thing but Jem Pitlaw's keys.</p> - -<p>"'Of course nobody knows what they'll fit,' says he, disparagin', 'so to -buy 'em don't seem like bein' too familiar with Mr. Pitlaw,' s'he, rill -pleased with himself.</p> - -<p>"But Mis' Sykes whispers to me:—</p> - -<p>"'Them keys'll go dirt cheap, an' Timothy knows it, an' a strange key -may come in handy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> any minute. Timothy's reasons never whip to a froth,' -s'she, cold.</p> - -<p>"But I guess she was over-critical because of gettin' more fidgety, like -we all did, the nearer Silas got to the letters. He hed left the letters -till the last. An' what with folks peekin' in the box since he'd brought -it down, an' what with handlin' what was ready to spill out, most of 'em -by then was in plain sight. An' there I see more o' them same -ones—little thin writin', like a woman's. We 'most all noticed it. An' -I couldn't keep my eyes off of 'em. 'Seemed like she might be somebody -with soft ways that ought to be there, savin' the letters, wardin' off -the heartache for Mr. Pitlaw an' mebbe one for herself.</p> - -<p>"An' right while I was lookin' Silas turned to the box and cleared his -throat, important as if he was the whistle for New York City, an' he -lifted up the bunch of the letters that had the little fine writin' on -top, just the way Mr. Pitlaw had tied 'em up with common string.</p> - -<p>"'Oh!' says Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes, each side of me, the one 'oh!' -strong an' the other low, but both 'oh's' meanin' the same thing.</p> - -<p>"'Now, what,' says Silas, brisk, 'am I bid for this package of nice -letters here? Good clear writin', all in strong condition, an' no holes -in, just as firm an' fresh,' s'he, 'as the day they was dropped into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> -the mail. What am I bid for 'em?' he asks, his eyebrows rill expectant.</p> - -<p>"Not one of the travellin' men had bid a thing. They had sat still, just -merely loungin' each side the cheese, laughin' some, like men will, -among each other, but not carin' to take any part, an' we ladies felt -rill glad o' that. But all of a sudden, when Silas put up the bunch o' -letters, them three men woke up, an' we see like lightnin' that this was -what they hed been waitin' for.</p> - -<p>"'Twenty-five cents!' bids one of 'em, decisive.</p> - -<p>"There was a movement of horror spread around the Missionary Circle at -the words. Sometimes it's bad enough to hev one thing happen, but often -it's worse to hev another occur. Even Silas looked a little doubtful, -but to Silas the main chance is always the main thing, an' instantly he -see that these men, if they got in the spirit of it, would run them -letters up rill high just for the fun of it. An' Silas was like some -are: he felt that money is money.</p> - -<p>"So what did he do but begin cryin' the goods up higher—holdin' the -letters in his hands, that little, thin writin' lookin' like it was -askin' somethin'.</p> - -<p>"'Here we hev letters,' says Silas, 'letters from Away. Not just -business letters, to judge by the envelopes—an' I allow, gentlemen,' -says Silas, facetious, 'that, bein' postmaster of Friendship Village, -I'm as good a judge of letters as there is a-goin'.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> Here we hev some -intimate personal letters offered for sale legitimate by their heiress. -What am I bid?' asks he.</p> - -<p>"'Thirty-five cents!'</p> - -<p>"'Fifty cents!' says the other two travellin' gentlemen, quick an' in -turn.</p> - -<p>"'Seventy-five cents!' cries out the first, gettin' in earnest—though -they was all laughin' at hevin' somethin' inspirin' to do.</p> - -<p>"But Silas merely caught a-hold of the mood they was in, crafty, as if -he'd been gettin' the signers to his petition while they was feelin' -good.</p> - -<p>"'One moment, gentlemen!' s'he. 'Do you know what you're biddin' on? I -ain't told you the half yet,' s'he. 'I ain't told you,' s'he, 'where -these letters come from.'</p> - -<p>"With that he hitches his glasses an' looked at the postmarks. An' he -read 'em off. Oh, an' what do you guess them postmarks was? I'll never -forget the feelin' that come over me when I heard what he was sayin', -turnin' back in under the string to see. For the stamps on the letters -was foreign stamps. The postmarks was foreign postmarks. An' what Silas -read off was: Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Singapore—oh, I can't begin to -remember all the names nor to pronounce 'em, but I think they was all in -India, or leastwise in Asia. Think of it! in Asia, that none of the -Ladies' Foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> Missionary Circle hed been sure there was such a place.</p> - -<p>"I know how we all looked around at each other sudden, with the same -little jump in the chest as when we remember we've got bread in the oven -past the three-quarters, or when we've left the preserves on the blaze -while we've done somethin' else an' think it's burnin', or when we've -cut out both sleeves for one arm an' ain't got any more cloth. I mean it -was that intimate, personal jump, like when awful, first-person things -have happened. An' I tell you what, when the Ladies' Missionary feels a -thing, they feel it strong an' they act it sudden. It's our way, as a -Circle. An' in that look that went round among us there was hid the nod -that knows what each other means.</p> - -<p>"'One dollar!' shouts one o' the travellin' men.</p> - -<p>"An' with that we all turned, like one solid human being, straight -towards Mis' Postmaster Sykes, that was our president an' a born leader -besides, an' the way we looked at her resembled a vote.</p> - -<p>"Mis' Sykes stood up, grave an' scairt, though not to show. An' we was -sure she'd do the right thing, though we didn't know what the right -thing was; but we felt confidence, I know, in the very pattern on the -back of her shawl. An' she says, clear:—</p> - -<p>"'I'd like to be understood to bid for the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> box o' Mr. Pitlaw's -letters, includin' the bunch that's up. An' I bid five dollars.'</p> - -<p>"Of course we all knew in a minute what that meant: Mis' Sykes was -biddin' with the proceeds of the Ten Cent Tropical Fête that was to be. -But we see, too, that this was a missionary cause if there ever was one, -an' they wa'n't one of us that thought it irregular, or grudged it, or -looked behind.</p> - -<p>"I don't know whether you know how much five dollars rilly is—like you -sense it when you've spoke it to a sale, or put it on a subscription -paper in Friendship. There wasn't a sound in that store, everybody was -so dumfounded. But none was so much as Silas Sykes. Silas was so -surprised that he forgot that he was in public.</p> - -<p>"'My King!' says he, unexpected to himself. 'What you sayin', Huldy? You -ain't biddin' that out o' your allowance, be you?' says he. Silas likes -big words in the home.</p> - -<p>"'No, sir,' says she, crisp, back, 'I ain't. I can't do miracles out of -nothin'. But I bid, an' you'll get your money, Silas. An' I may as well -take the letters now.'</p> - -<p>"With that she rose up an' spread out her shawl almost broodin', an' -gathered that box o' Jem Pitlaw's into her two arms. An' with one motion -all the rest o' the Ladies' Missionary got up behind her an' stalked out -of the store, like a big bid is sole all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> there is to an auction. An' -they let us go. Why, there wasn't another thing for Silas Sykes to do -but let be as was. Them three men over by the cheese just laughed, an' -said out somethin' about no gentleman outbiddin' a lady, an' shut up, -beat, but pretendin' to give in, like some will.</p> - -<p>"Just before we all got to the door we heard somebody's feet come down -off'n a cracker-barrel or somethin', an' Timothy Toplady's voice after -us, shrill-high an' nervous:—</p> - -<p>"'Amanda,' s'he, 'you ain't calculatin' to help back up this -tomfoolishness, I hope?'</p> - -<p>"An' Mis' Amanda says at him, over her shoulder:</p> - -<p>"'If I was, that'd be between my hens an' me, Timothy Toplady,' says -she.</p> - -<p>"An' the store door shut behind us—not mad, I remember, but gentle, -like 'Amen.'</p> - -<p>"We took the letters straight to Mis' Sykes's an' through the house to -the kitchen, where there was a good hot fire in the range. It was bitter -cold outdoors, an' we set down around the stove just as we was, with the -letters on the floor in front o' the hearth. An' when Mis' Sykes hed got -the bracket lamp lit, she turned round, her bonnet all crooked but her -face triumphant, an' took off a griddle of the stove an' stirred up the -coals. An' we see what was in her mind.</p> - -<p>"'We can take turns puttin' 'em in,' she says.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p><p>"But I guess it was in all our minds what Mis' -Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss says, wistful:—</p> - -<p>"'Don't you think,' she says, 'or <i>do</i> you think, it'd be wrongin' Mr. -Pitlaw if we read over the postmarks out loud first?'</p> - -<p>"We divided up the bunches an' we set down around an' untied the -strings, an', turn in an' turn out, we read the postmarks off. 'Most -every one of 'em was foreign—oh, I can't begin to tell you where. It -was all mixed up an' shinin' of names we'd never heard of before, an' -names we had heard in sermons an' in the Bible—Egypt an' Greece an' -Rome an' isles o' the sea. Mis' Toplady stopped right in the middle o' -hers.</p> - -<p>"'Oh, I can't be sure I'm pronouncin' 'em right,' she says, huntin' for -her handkerchief, 'but I guess you ladies get the <i>feel</i> o' the places, -don't you?'</p> - -<p>"An' that was just it: we did. We got the feel of them far places that -night like we never could hev hed it any other way. An' when we got all -through, Mis' Toplady spoke up again—but this time it was like she flew -up a little way an' lit on somethin'.</p> - -<p>"'It ain't likely,' she says, 'that we'll ever, any of us, hev a letter -of our own from places like these. We don't get many letters, an' what -we do get come from the same old towns, over an' over again, an' quite -near by. Do you know,' she says, 'I believe this Writin' here'—she held -out the tiny fine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>writing that was like a woman with soft ways—'would -understand if we each took one of her letters an' glued it together here -an' now an' carried it home an' pasted it in our Bibles. <i>She</i> went -travellin' off to them places, an' she must have wanted to; an' she -would know what it is to want to go an' yet never get there.'</p> - -<p>"I think Mis' Amanda was right—we all thought so. An' we done what she -mentioned, an' made our choice o' postmarks. I know Mis' Amanda took -Cairo.</p> - -<p>"''Count of the name sort o' picturin' out a palm tree a-growin' an' -a-wavin' against a red sky,' she says, when she was pinnin' her shawl -clear up over her hat to go out in the cold. 'Think of it,' she says; -'she might 'a' passed a palm the day she wrote it. Ain't it like seein' -'em grow yourself?'</p> - -<p>... "Mebbe it all wasn't quite regular," Calliope added, "though we made -over five dollars at the Ten Cent Fête. But the minister, when we told -him, he seemed to think it was all right, an' he kep' smilin', sweet an' -deep, like we'd done more'n we <i>had</i> done. An' I think he knew what we -meant when we said we was all feelin' nearer, lion an' lamb, to them -strange missionary countries. Because—oh, well, sometimes, you know," -Calliope said, "they's things that makes you feel nearer to faraway -places that couldn't hev any postmark at all."</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XV</span> <span class="smaller">PETER</span></h2> - -<p>Last night in my room there was no sleeping, because the moon was there. -It is a south room, and when the moon shines on the maple floor with its -white cotton rugs and is reflected from the smooth white walls, to step -within is like entering an open flower. Who could sleep in an open -flower? I might sleep in a vast white petunia, because petunias do not -have as much to say to me as do some other flowers. But in the bell of a -lily, as in the bell of the sky or in my moonlit room, I should wish my -thought to stay awake and be somebody. Be Somebody. On these nights, it -is as if one had a friend in one's head conferring with one. And I think -of this comrade as Her, the Custodian of me, who lives deep within and -nearly comes outside to this white porch of the moon.</p> - -<p>I like to light my candle and watch its warm rays mix with the -blue-white beams from without. There would have been a proper employment -for a wizard:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> to diffuse varying insubstantialities, such as these, and -to look within them, as within a pool—a pool free of its basin and -enjoying the air. Yes, they were an unimaginative race, wizards. When -will the era of white art come, with æsthetic witches and wizards who -know our modern magics of colour and form and perception as a mere basis -for their sorceries? Instead of pottering with thick, slab gruel and -mediæval newts' eyes, think what witches they will be! Sometimes I think -that they are already arriving. The New Lady told me the most delightful -thing about a Thought of hers that she saw ... but it was such an -elusive thing to tell and so much of it I had to guess, because words -have not yet caught up with fancies, that it is hard to write down. -Besides, perhaps you know. And if you did not know, you would skip this -part anyway. So I merely mention that <i>she</i> mentioned the coming alive -of a thought of hers which helped her spirit to grow, quite without her -will. Very likely you understand other wizardries. An excellent place to -think them out must be the line where candle rays meet moonbeams, but -there is no such discoverable line, just as there is no discoverable -line between the seeing and the knowing, where the Custodian dwells.... -By all of which I am merely showing you what the moon can do to one's -head and that it is no great wonder that one cannot sleep.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p><p>"Ain't the moon kind of like a big, shinin' brain," Calliope said once, -"an' moonlight nights it gets in your head and thinks for you."</p> - -<p>So last night when I went in my room I did not try to sleep; nor did I -even light my candle. I went straight to a window and opened it—the one -without a screen. I would not live in a house that did not have certain -windows which one could open to let in the moon, or the night, or the -living out-of-doors, with no screens to thwart their impulse. Suppose -that sometime Diana—well, suppose what you will that is sensible, no -moon can shine through a screen. Really, it cannot do its best through -even an open window. And this was why I gave up trying to make it do so -and went downstairs again—which is the earthly and rational of floating -out into that utter beauty as I wanted to float.</p> - -<p>Of going out into such a night I would like to write for a long time, as -I would like to keep on breathing lilies-of-the-valley and never have -done. I think, though, that "into" such a night is not the word; to go -out <i>upon</i> the night is the essential experience. For, like a June day, -a moonlit night of itself will not let us inside. We must know some -other way of entrance. And I suspect that some of us never quite find -the way—I wonder if we are missed?</p> - -<p>I stepped round the house to the open ocean of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> light that broke on soft -shores of leaf and line, solemnizing, magnifying. It was like a glimpse -into something which, afterward and afterward, is going to be. The -definiteness of its premonitory message was startling. As when on seeing -once that something had happened on my birthday, 1500, I felt as if I -had heard from a kind of twin-time, so now I understood that this night -was the birthday of far-off, immortal moments of my own, yet to be lived -... so friendly near we are to the immeasurable kindred.</p> - -<p>And there, from the shadow of the flowering currant bush, which just now -is out of flower and fallen in meditative quiet—a man arose. My sharp -fear, as savage a thing as if the world were ten thousand years younger, -or as if I were a ptarmigan and he a cougar—was only momentary. For the -cougar began to apologize and I recognized him.</p> - -<p>"Why," I said, "Peter."</p> - -<p>"Yes'm," said he, "I couldn't help being here—for a little while."</p> - -<p>"Neither could I, Peter," I told him.</p> - -<p>These were remarkable admissions of ours, for a large part of evening in -the village is an uninhabitable part of day and, no matter in what -splendour of sky it comes, is a thing to be shut outside experience. If -we relate being wakened by something that goes bang, we begin it, "In -the middle of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> night, about twelve o'clock;" and, "They have a light -in their house 'most every night till midnight," is a bit of sharp -criticism not lightly to be lived down. But now it was as if Peter were -a part of the time itself, and outlaw too, if the evening was outlaw. -"I'm glad I saw you," Peter said—as if we were here met by chance in -the usual manner. "I wanted to see you and tell you: I'm going away—to -be gone right along."</p> - -<p>"Why," I said again, "Peter!"</p> - -<p>"You'd go too," he said simply.</p> - -<p>"I should want to go," I told him, "but I doubt if I would go. Where are -you going?"</p> - -<p>"They want to put in a cannery at Marl. It'd be a branch. I'd run it -myself."</p> - -<p>I did not miss the implication of the conditional mood. And <i>Marl</i>. What -wonderful names they give to some of the towns of this world. That word -makes a picture all of white cornices and white wings of buildings and -bright façades. I dare say from the railroad track the real town of Marl -shows an unpainted livery barn and a blue barber shop, but the name -sounds like the name of a chapter of travel, beginning: To-day we drove -to Marl to see the queen. Or the cataract. Or the porch of the morning.</p> - -<p>"Why are you going, Peter?" I drove in the peg for him.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p><p>"I guess you know," he said. "It's all Miggy with me."</p> - -<p>I knew that he wanted before all else to tell somebody, to talk to -somebody, to have somebody know.</p> - -<p>"Tell me, Peter," I said.</p> - -<p>And now Peter told me how things were with him. If I should repeat what -he said you would be scornful, for it was so little. It was broken and -commonplace and set with repetition. It was halting and unfinished, like -the unformed writing of a boy. But in his words I felt the movings of -life and destiny and death more than I feel them when I think about the -rushing of the stars. He loved her, and for him the world became a -transparent plane wherein his soul moved as simply as his body. Here was -not only a boy longing for a girl. Here was not only a man, instinct -with the eager hope of establishing a home. Here was something not -unlike this very moon-washed area won from the illimitable void, this -area where we stood and spoke together, this little spot which alone was -to us articulate with form and line and night sounds. So Peter, -stumbling over his confession of love for Miggy, was like the word -uttered by destiny to explicate its principle. It mattered not at all -what the night said or what Peter said. Both were celestial.</p> - -<p>These moments when the soul presses close to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> its windows are to be -understood as many another hint at the cosmic—Dawn, May, the firmament, -radio-activity, theistic evolution, a thousand manifestations of the -supernal. In this cry of enduring spirit it was as if Peter had some -intimacy with all that has no boundaries. I hardly heard his stumbling -words. I listened to him down some long avenue of hearths whose -twinkling lights were like a corridor of stars.</p> - -<p>And all this bright business was to be set at naught because Miggy would -have none of it.</p> - -<p>"She seems to like me," Peter said miserably, "but I guess she'd like me -just as well if I wasn't me. And if I was right down somebody else, I -guess she'd like me a good deal better. She—don't like my hands—nor -the way my hair sticks up at the back. She thinks of all such things. I -wouldn't care if she said all her words crooked. I'd know what she -meant."</p> - -<p>I knew the difference. To him she was Miggy. To her he was an -individual. He had never in her eyes graduated from being a person to -being himself.</p> - -<p>"Calliope says," I told him, "that she likes almond extract better than -any other kind, but that she hardly ever gets a bottle of almond with -which she does not find fault. She says it's the same way with people -one loves."</p> - -<p>Peter smiled—he is devoted to Calliope, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> alone in the village has -been friendly with his father. <i>Friendly.</i> The rest of the village has -only been kind.</p> - -<p>"Well," he tried to put it, "but Miggy never seems to be thinking of me -as <i>me</i>, only when she's finding fault with me. If she'd only think -about me, even a little, the way I think about her. If she'd only miss -me or want me or wonder how the house would seem if we were married. But -she don't care—she don't care."</p> - -<p>"She says, you know," I ventured, "that she can't ask you to support -Little Child too."</p> - -<p>"Can't she see," he cried, "that the little thing only makes me love her -more? Don't she know how I felt the other night—when she let me help -her that way? She must know. It's just an excuse—"</p> - -<p>He broke off and his hands dropped.</p> - -<p>"Then there's her other reason," he said, "I guess you know that. I -can't blame her for it. But even with that, it kind of seems as if,—if -she loved me—"</p> - -<p>"Yes," I said, "Peter, it does seem so."</p> - -<p>And yet in my heart I am certain that the reason is not at all that -Miggy cannot love him—I remember the woman-softening of her face that -forenoon when she found the spirit of the old romances in the village. I -am not even certain that the reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> is that she does not love Peter -now—I remember how tender and feminine she was the other night with -Peter and Little Child. I think it is only that the cheap cynicism of -the village—which nobody means even when it is said!—has taught her -badly; and that Life has not yet touched her hand, has not commanded -"Look at me," has not bidden her follow with us all.</p> - -<p>I looked into the bright bowl of the night which is alternately with one -and against one in one's mood of emprise; the bright bowl of the night -inverted as if some mighty genii were shaking the stars about like -tea-leaves to fortune the future. What a pastime <i>that</i> for a wizard!</p> - -<p>"Oh, Peter," I said, "<i>if</i> one were a wizard!"</p> - -<p>"I didn't understand," said Peter.</p> - -<p>"How pleasant it would be to make folk love folk," I put it.</p> - -<p>He understood that. "Wouldn't it, though?" he assented wistfully. So -does everybody understand. Wouldn't it, though! Oh, <i>don't you wish you -could</i>?</p> - -<p>In the silence which fell I kept on looking at those starry tea-leaves -until I protest that a thought awoke in my mind as if it wanted to be -somebody. Be Somebody. It was as if it came alive, quite without my -will, so that almost I could see it. It was a friend conferring in my -head. Perhaps it was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> Custodian herself, come outside to that white -porch of the moon.</p> - -<p>"Peter," I said, "I think I'm going to tell you a story."</p> - -<p>For I longed to make him patient with Miggy, as men, who understand -these things first, are not always patient with women, who often and -often understand too late.</p> - -<p>He listened to the story as I am setting it down here—the story of the -New Village. But in it I could say nothing of how, besides by these -things celestial, cosmic, I was touched by the simple, human entreaty of -the big, baffled man and that about his hands and the way his hair -sticks up at the back.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XVI</span> <span class="smaller">THE NEW VILLAGE</span></h2> - -<p>Once upon a time there was a village which might have been called -The-Way-Certain-Folk-Want-It-Now. That, however, was not its name—it -had a proper, map-sounding name. And there every one went to and fro -with a fervour and nimbleness which proved him to be skilfully intent -upon his own welfare.</p> - -<p>The village had simple buildings and white walls, lanes and flowering -things and the flow of pure air. But the strange thing about the town -was that there each inhabitant lived alone. Every house had but one -inmate and he well content. He liked everything that he owned and his -taste was all-sufficient and he took his pleasure in his own walls and -loved best his own ways. The day was spent in lonely selling or lonely -buying, each man pitted against all others, and advantage and -disadvantage were never equal, but yet the transactions were dreary, -lacking the picturesqueness of unlicensed spoliation. The only greeting -which folk exchanged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> in passing was, "Sir, what do you do for -yourself?" There were no assemblings of the people. The town kept itself -alive by accretion from without. When one died another appeared and took -his place gladly, and also others arrived, like precept added to precept -and not like a true flowering. There were no children. And the village -common was overgrown and breast-high with weeds. When the day was done -every one retired to his own garden and saw his flowers blossoming for -him and answering to the stars which came and stood over his head. There -was in the town an epidemic of the intensive, only the people thought of -it as the normal, for frequently epidemics are so regarded.</p> - -<p>In one soul the contagion did not prevail. The soul was the lad Matthew, -whose body lived on the town's only hill. When others sat at night in -their gardens Matthew was wont to go up an airy path which he had made -to the upper spaces and there wander conjecturing about being alive. For -this was a detail which he never could take wholly for granted, in the -manner in which he had become wonted to door-mats, napkin-rings, -oatmeal, and mirrors. Therefore he took his thought some way nearer to -the stars, and there he found so much beauty that he longed to fashion -it to something, to create of it anew. And as he opened his heart he -began to understand that there is some one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> whom he was the -offspring. As he was companioned by this idea, more and more he longed -for things to come nearer. Once, in his walking a hurrying bird brushed -his face, grew confused, fluttered at his breast, and as he would have -closed it in his hands he found that the bird was gone and his hands -were empty, but beneath them his own heart fluttered and throbbed like a -thing apart.</p> - -<p>One night, so great was the abstraction of the boy, that instead of -taking the upper path he fared down into the town. It was a curious way -to do—to go walking in the town as if the thing were common property, -but then the walls were very high and the gates were fast closed and -bound round with creeping things, which grow very quickly. Matthew -longed to enter these gardens, and he wondered who lived in the houses -and what might be in their hearts.</p> - -<p>Amazingly, at the turn of a white wall, a gate was opened and she who -had opened it leaned into the night as if she were looking for -something. There was a fluttering in the breast of Matthew so that he -looked down to see if the bird had come back. But no bird was there. And -it smote him that the lady's beauty, and surely her goodness, were great -enough so that of them something might be created, as he would fain have -created marvels from the sky.</p> - -<p>"I would like to make your beauty into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>something other," he said to -her. "I cannot think whether this would be a song or a picture or a -vision."</p> - -<p>She looked at him with as much pleasure as if he had been an idea of her -own.</p> - -<p>"Tell me about my beauty," she bade him. "What thing is that?"</p> - -<p>"Nay, that will take some while," Matthew said. "If I do that, I must -come in your garden."</p> - -<p>Now, such a thing had never happened in the town. And as this seemed why -it never happened, it seemed likely to go on never happening -indefinitely. But loneliness and the longing to create and the -conjecture about life have always been as potent as battles; and beauty -and boredom and curiosity have had something to do with history as well.</p> - -<p>"Just this once, then," said the lady, and the gate closed upon the two.</p> - -<p>Here was a garden like Matthew's own, but indefinitely atmosphered -other. It spoke strangely of a wonted presence, other than his own. In -his own garden he fitted as if the space for him were niched in the air, -and he went as a man accustomed will go without thinking. But here he -moved free, making new niches. And whereas on his own walks and plots he -looked with lack-lustre eye as a man looks on his own gas-jet or rain -pipe, now Matthew looked on all that he saw as on strange flame and -sweet waters. And it was not the shrubs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> and flowers which most -delighted him, but it was rather on a garden bench the lady's hat and -gloves and scissors.</p> - -<p>"How pleasing!" said he, and stopped before them.</p> - -<p>"Do you find them so?" asked the lady.</p> - -<p>And when he told her about her beauty, which was more difficult to do -than he had imagined and took a longer time, she said:—</p> - -<p>"There can be no other man in the world who would speak as you speak."</p> - -<p>On which he swore that there was no man who would not speak so, and -likewise that no man could mean one-half what he himself meant. And he -looked long at her house.</p> - -<p>"In those rooms," he said, "you go about. I wish that I could go about -there."</p> - -<p>But that frightened her a little.</p> - -<p>"In there," he said, "are the lamps you light, the plates you use, the -brush that smooths your hair. How strange that is."</p> - -<p>"Does it seem strange?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Sometime I will go there," said he, and with that he thought that the -bird once more was fluttering at his breast. And again there was no -bird.</p> - -<p>When the time was come that he must leave her, this seemed the most -valiant thing to do that ever he had done. It was inconceivable to -accept that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> though now she was with him, breathing, sentient, yet in -another moment he would be out alone in the empty night. Alone. For the -first time the word became a sinister thing. It meant to be where she -was not.</p> - -<p>"How is this to go on," he said, "I living where you do not live?"</p> - -<p>But she said, "Such things have never been any other way," and closed -the gate upon him.</p> - -<p>It is a mighty thing when one who has always lived alone abruptly finds -himself to have a double sense. Here is his little box of ideas, neatly -classified, ready for reference, which have always methodically bobbed -out of their own will the moment they were mentioned. Here are his own -varieties of impression ready to be laid like a pattern upon whatever -presents itself to be cut out. Here are his tastes, his sentiments, his -beliefs, his longings, all selected and labelled and established. And -abruptly ideas and impressions and tastes are thrown into rapt disorder -while he wonders what this other being would think, and his sentiment -glows like a lamp, his belief embraces the world, his longing becomes -only that the other being's longing be cast in counterpart. When he -walks abroad, the other's step accompanies him, a little back, and -invisible, but as authentic as his own. When he thinks, his thought, -without his will, would share itself. All this is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> new way of -consciousness. All this makes two universes where one universe had -previously been competent to support life.</p> - -<p>Back on his hill Matthew went through his house as if he were seeing it -for the first time. There was the garden that he had planted, and she -was not walking there. There was his window, and she was not looking -from it; his table, and she was not sitting beside it; his book which he -could not read for wondering if she had read. All the tools of his home, -what could they not become if she touched them? The homely tasks of the -cupboard, what joy if she shared them? But what to do? He thought that -it might be something if they exchanged houses, so that he could be -where she had been, could use what she had used, could think of her in -her setting. But yet this did not wholly delight him, either.</p> - -<p>And now his house stifled him, so that he rushed out upon that airy path -of his that he had made to reach the upper spaces, and he fled along, -learning about being alive. Into the night he went, farther than ever he -had gone before, till the stars looked nearer to him than houses -commonly look, and things to think about seemed there waiting for him.</p> - -<p>So it adventured that he came abruptly upon the New Village. It lay upon -the air as lightly as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> strong, fair hands were uniting to bear it up, -and it was not far from the stars and the clear places. Before he -understood its nearness, the night was, so to say, endued with this -village, and he entered upon its lanes as upon light.</p> - -<p>This was a town no larger than his own and no more fortuned of Nature. -Here were buildings not too unlike, and white walls and flowering things -and the flow of pure air. But here was also the touch of bells. And he -saw that every one went to and fro in a manner of quiet purpose that was -like a garment.</p> - -<p>"Sir, what do you do for yourself?" he asked courteously of one who was -passing.</p> - -<p>The citizen gave him greeting.</p> - -<p>"I make bread for my family," said he, "and, it may be, a dream or two."</p> - -<p>Matthew tried hard to perceive, and could make nothing of this.</p> - -<p>"Your family," he said, "what thing is that?"</p> - -<p>The citizen looked at him narrowly.</p> - -<p>"I see that you rebuke me," said he, gently; "but I, too, labor for the -community, so that the day shall become a better day."</p> - -<p>"Community," said Matthew. "Now I know not at all what that may be, -either."</p> - -<p>Then the man understood that here was one who would learn about these -things, and in the New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> Village such a task is sacred and to be assumed -on the moment by any to whom the opportunity presents. So the man took -Matthew with him.</p> - -<p>"Come," he said, "this is the day when we meet together."</p> - -<p>"Together," said Matthew, and without knowing why he liked what he felt -when he said that.</p> - -<p>They went first to the market-place, trodden of many feet, and about it -a fair green common planted in gracious lines. Here Matthew found men in -shops that were built simply and like one another in fashion, but with -pleasant devices of difference, and he found many selling together and -many buying, and no one was being robbed.</p> - -<p>"How can these things be?" he asked. "Here every man stands with the -others."</p> - -<p>"Inside of all things," the citizen answered, "you will find that it is -so written."</p> - -<p>On the common many were assembled to name certain projects and purposes: -the following of paths to still clearer spaces, the nurturing of certain -people, ways of cleanliness, purity of water, of milk, wide places for -play, the fashioning of labour so that the shrines within be not -foregone, the freeing of fountains, the planting of green things.</p> - -<p>"Why will all this be?" asked Matthew. "For these things a man does in -his own garden or for his own house, and no other interferes."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p><p>"Nay, but look deep within all things, Friend," the citizen said, "and -you will never find it written so."</p> - -<p>"Friend," repeated Matthew, "<i>friend</i>...."</p> - -<p>Then the citizen went to his own house, and Matthew with him. The wall -was no wall, but a hedge, and the garden was very beautiful. And lo, -when they went in, there came tumbling along the path little beings made -in the image of the citizen himself. And with them a woman of exceeding -beauty and power, which the little ones also bore. As if the citizen had -chosen her beauty and power to make them into something other.</p> - -<p>It was as it had been when the bird was fluttering and beating at the -boy's breast, but he did not even heed.</p> - -<p>"Tell me!" he cried. "These—do they live here with you? Are they -yours?"</p> - -<p>"We are one another's," said the citizen.</p> - -<p>Matthew sat among them, and to pleasure him they did many sweet tasks. -They brought him to eat and drink in the garden. The woman gave quiet -answers that had in them something living, and alive, too, some while -after she had spoken. ("So <i>she</i> could answer," Matthew thought, "and -better, too, than that.") And the children brought him a shell, a pretty -stone, a broken watch, and a little woolly lamb on three wheels, and the -fourth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> wheel missing. The lamb had a sound to make by squeezing, and -this sound Matthew made a great many times, and every time the children -laughed. And when they did that Matthew could think of nothing to say -that seemed a thing to be said, but he was inscrutably elated, and did -the trick again.</p> - -<p>And when he rose to take his leave:—</p> - -<p>"Is it for them that you make bread and a dream or two?" he asked.</p> - -<p>He knew that he should always like to remember the citizen's smile as he -answered.</p> - -<p>They stood at the opening of the hedge and folk were going by.</p> - -<p>"Are they not jealous of you?" Matthew asked.</p> - -<p>"They have families and bread and dreams of their own," said the -citizen. "Every house is filled with them."</p> - -<p>Matthew looked breathlessly along the street of the New Village, and he -saw men, as they went, giving one another greeting: "Friend, is much -accomplished?" or, "Peace to you, Friend." And they talked together, and -entered gardens where were those who came to meet them or who waited -within. They were a fine company, moving as to some secret way of being, -and as if they had all looked deep within to see how it is written. And -as he watched, something in Matthew would have cried out that he, too, -was offspring of their Father, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> for all this had he too been -created, and that for this would he live, joying and passioning and -toiling in the common destiny. But when he spoke, all that he could say -was:—</p> - -<p>"Every man, then, may sit down now with a lamb with three wheels and the -fourth wheel missing...."</p> - -<p>On which he ceased for very shame. But the citizen understood and smiled -once more, and said to him: "Come you here again, Brother."</p> - -<p>With that word Matthew was off, down from the clear upper spaces, to -where, lonely on its hill, his own house stood among its lonely -neighbours. And Matthew strode shouting down the deserted streets and -calling at every gate; and, it being now day, every one came forth to -his lonely toil.</p> - -<p>Matthew went and stood on the common where the weeds were high, and so -amazed were the folk that they came about him, each suspecting the other -of secret connivance in this strange business. For nothing had ever been -done so.</p> - -<p>"Men and brothers," cried Matthew, "it is not so that it was meant. I -pray you look deep within, and see how the meaning was written. Is it -that you should live, each pitted against another, wounding the other, -advantaging himself? Join now each his hand with that of a neighbour. -<i>His neighbour.</i> Make the thing of which, it seems, the world is made;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> -a family. Let the thing come alive which is greater than the family: the -community. Oh, my comrades, let us work together for the coming of the -kingdom of God."</p> - -<p>In the murmur that rose were the words which have been spoken since time -began:—</p> - -<p>"It is not so that it was done in the old time...."</p> - -<p>"It is not seemly that we change...."</p> - -<p>"If every one did this ... but we cannot do it alone."</p> - -<p>"Have you thought what will become of our business?"</p> - -<p>And again and yet again: "It is not so that it was done in the old -time."</p> - -<p>And when the most would have none of it, Matthew made his way sadly -through the throng—of whom were many who smiled (kindly!)—to the edge -of the common, where stood a woman, trembling.</p> - -<p>"Come," he said.</p> - -<p>She went with him, and she with many little frightened breaths, but he -had no pity, for he read deep within and saw that it was written that -she wanted none. When they reached her own house, she would have -entered.</p> - -<p>"Go we in here," she besought him, "I will show you the rooms where I go -about and the lamps that I light."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p><p>"We are past all that now," said Matthew, gently, "I will not go on -living where you do not live."</p> - -<p>He took her to his own house, through the garden that he had planted. He -made her look from his window, sit by his table, open his books; and he -bade her to a little task at the cupboard and laughed for joy that she -performed it.</p> - -<p>"Oh, come away," he cried. "And now we will go quickly to the New -Village, that one which I have found or another, where men know all this -happiness and more."</p> - -<p>But she stood there by Matthew's cupboard and shook her head.</p> - -<p>"No," she said gravely, "here we will stay, you and I, in your house. -Here we will live—and it may be there is a handful of others who -understand. And here we will do what we can."</p> - -<p>"But I must show you," Matthew cried, "the way the others live—the -things they strive for: the following of paths to clearer spaces, the -freeing of shrines."</p> - -<p>"All that," she said, "we will do here."</p> - -<p>"But," he urged, "you must see how else they do—the shell, the pretty -stone, the watch, the woolly lamb on three wheels and one wheel -missing...."</p> - -<p>"All that," she said, "is in my heart."</p> - -<p>Matthew looked in her face and marvelled, for he saw that beside her -beauty there was her power, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> to that he bowed himself as to a far -voice. And again it was as when the bird was at his breast, but now he -knew what this would be.</p> - -<p>So they live there in Matthew's house. And a handful besides understand -and toil for the fairer order. And this will come; and then that New -Village, in the clear upper spaces, will hang just above every -village—nay, will come down to clothe it like a garment.</p> - -<p class="space-above">When I had done,</p> - -<p>"Peter," I said—I nearly called him Matthew!—"these are the things -that Miggy does not understand. And that she will understand."</p> - -<p>He knew. He said nothing; but he knew how it is written.</p> - -<p>"Peter," I said, "I suppose Miggy will never have been to your house?"</p> - -<p>I knew that she could not have been there.</p> - -<p>"Some day soon," I said—"before you go away—ask us to come there. I -should like her to sit by your table and look from your window."</p> - -<p>For how can one be sure that divine non-interference is always divine?</p> - -<p>Peter drew his breath long.</p> - -<p>"Would you?" he said; "would you? So many times I've thought maybe that -would make her think of me as if I <i>was</i> me."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p><p>Yes, that might help. If only Miggy knew how to shake hands as Elfa -shook hands with Nicholas Moor, that might help, too. How did it begin, -this pride of individualism in a race which does not know its own -destiny save as the great relationships, human and divine, can reveal -that destiny? But Peter knows! And the hope of the world is that so many -do know.</p> - -<p>Since he said his grateful good night and rushed away, I have been -trying to readjust my impression of Peter. For I can no longer think of -him in connection with Miggy and the cannery and my neighbour's lawn and -the village. Now he is a figure ranging the ample intervals of a field -fraternal to the night and to the day. Fraternal, too, to any little -moon-washed area, won from the void, where it is easy to be in -conference with the spirit without and within. Truly, it is as if the -meaning of the universe were passioning for the comradeship of hearts -that can understand.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XVII</span> <span class="smaller">ADOPTION</span></h2> - -<p>The big window of my sitting room is an isle of sirens on whose shore -many of my bird neighbours are continually coming to grief. For, from -without, the window makes a place of soft skies and seductive leaves -where any bird might think to wing a way. And in that mirrored deep -there is that curious atmosphere which makes In-a-looking-glass a better -thing than the room which it reflects—an elusive sense which Little -Child might call Isn't-any-such-placeness. I think that I might call it -so too. And so, evidently, the birds would call it, for they are always -trying to find there some path of flight.</p> - -<p>A morning or two ago, when I heard against the pane the soft thud of an -eager little body, I hurried out to see lying under the window an -oriole. It was too terrible that it should have been an oriole. For days -I had seen him hanging here and there, back downward, on this limb and -that, and heard his full-throated note ringing from the innermost air, -so that the deeps of air could never again be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> wholly alien to me. And -now he lay, his wings outstretched, his eyes dim, his breast hardly -moving. I watched him, hoping for the breath to begin to flutter and -labour. But though the great Nature was with him, herself passioning in -all the little fibres to keep life pulsing on, yet her passion was not -enough; and while I looked the little life went out.</p> - -<p>... I held the tiny body in my hand, and it was almost as if the -difference between living and not living slipped through my fingers and -was gone. If only that one within me, who watches between the seeing and -the knowing, had been a little quicker, I might almost have -understood....</p> - -<p>"Them little things go out like a match," said my neighbour.</p> - -<p>She was standing on the other side of the box hedge, and I caught a look -on her face that I had seen there once or twice before, so that my heart -had warmed to her; and now, because of that look, she fitted within the -moment like the right word.</p> - -<p>"It don't seem like anybody could <i>mean</i> 'em to die before their time," -she said. "Ain't it almost as if it happened when Everything somehow -couldn't help it?"</p> - -<p>It was this, the tragedy of the Unfulfilled Intention, that was in my -mind while I hollowed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> little grave under the hedge. And when we had -finished, my neighbour, who had stepped informally over the box to help -me, looked up with a return of that fleeting expression which I had -noted.</p> - -<p>"I guess we've found one now for sure," she said.</p> - -<p>"Found one?" I puzzled.</p> - -<p>"I thought you knew," she told me. "I thought everybody knew—we've been -looking for one so long. For a baby."</p> - -<p>She never had told me and no one had told me, but I loved her for -thinking that all the world knew. There are abroad a multitude of these -sweet suspicions as well as the sad misgivings of the hunted. She had -simply let me know, that early morning in the garden, her sorrow that -there was "no little thing runnin' round." And now she told me for how -long they had been trying to find one to adopt, consciously serving no -social need, but simply hungering for a child whom they could "take to." -It was a story of fruitless visits to the homes in the city, the news -sent of this little waif or that, all proving too old or of too sad an -inheritance. To me it would seem that the more tragic the inheritance -the more poignantly sounds the cry for foster-folk. And this may be -extreme, I know, but virtue, I find, does not lie exclusively in the -mean, either. It lies partly in one's taste in extremes. However,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> this -special extreme I find not generally believed in as I believe in it; and -my neighbour, not sharing it, had waited on with empty arms.</p> - -<p>And now, after all the long hoping, she had found a baby—a baby who -filled all the requirements and more. First of all, he was a boy; -second, he was of healthful Scotch parentage; third, he was six weeks -old; and, fondest I could see in my neighbour's heart, he was good to -look at. When she told me this she produced, from beneath her apron, a -broken picture post-card. The baby was lying on a white blanket spread -on the grass, and he was looking up with the intentness of some little -soul not yet embodied; or as if, having been born, some shadow-thing, -left over from his source of shadows, yet detained his attention. -"William," it said beneath the picture.</p> - -<p>"But I shall call him Kenneth," my neighbour said; "I've always meant -to. I don't want he should be called after his father, being he isn't -ours, you might say. But he is ours," she added in a kind of challenge. -"<i>He's</i> going after him to-morrow to the city"—and now "he" meant her -husband, in that fine habit of use by these husbands and wives of the -two third persons singular to mean only each other, in a splendid, -ultimate, inevitable sense, authentic as the "we" of a sovereign, no -more to be mistaken. "I'd go too," she added, "but we're adopting the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> -baby with the egg money—we've saved it for years for when the time -come. And one fare to the city and back is a lot of eggs. I thought I'd -rather wait for him here and have the ticket money to spend on the -clothes."</p> - -<p>She was on her way, I thought I guessed, to carry her good news to our -friends in the village, for she bore that same air which I have noted, -of being impermanent and subject to flight. And as she left me she -turned to give me one of those rare compliments which are priceless.</p> - -<p>"You come over this afternoon," she said, "and I'll show you what little -things I've made."</p> - -<p>I remember another compliment. It was when, in town, a charming little -woman, a woman all of physical curves and mental tangents, had been -telling a group of us about a gay day in a four-in-hand. She had not -looked at me because for that sort of woman, as well as for others, I -lack all that which would make them take account of my presence; but -when in the four-in-hand she came to some mention of the road where the -accident had nearly occurred ("Oh, it was a beautiful road," she said, -"the river on one side, and the highlands, and a whole <i>mob</i> of trees,") -she turned straight upon me through her description as consistently as -she had neglected me when she described the elbow-bits of the leaders -and the boots of the woman on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>box-seat. It may have been a chance, -but I have always hugged it to me.</p> - -<p>My neighbour's house is small, and her little upstairs rooms are the -half-story with sloping ceilings and windows which extend from the floor -to the top of one's head. It gives me a curious sense of -over-familiarity with a window to be as tall as it is. I feel that I -have it at advantage and that I am using it with undue intimacy. When I -was a little girl I used to creep under the dining-room table and sit -there, looking up, transfixed at the difference. A new angle of material -vision, the sight of the other side of the shield, always gives me this -pause. But whereas this other aspect of things used to be a delight, -now, in life, I shrink a little from availing myself of certain -revelations. I have a great wish to know things, but I would know them -otherwise than by looking at their linings. I think that even a window -should be sanctioned in its reticences.</p> - -<p>Before a black walnut commode my neighbour knelt that afternoon, and I -found that it was filled with the things which she had made for the -baby, when they should find him. These she showed to me—they were -simple and none too fine, and she had made them on her sewing-machine in -the intervals of her busy life. For three years she had wrought at them, -buying them from the egg money.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> I wondered if this secret pastime of -garment-making might not account for my impression of her that she must -always be off to engage in something other. Perhaps it was this -occupation, always calling her, which would not let her appear fixed at -garden-watering or festival. I think that it may be so of any who are -"pressed in the spirit" to serve, to witness to any truth: that is their -vocation and every other is an avocation, a calling away from the real -business of life. For this reason it is my habit to think of the social -workers in any division of the service, family or town or state or -church, as Vocationists. It is they who are following the one great -occupation. The rest of us are avocationists. In my neighbour I -perceived one of the great comrade company of the Vocationists, -unconscious of her banner, but because of some sweet, secret piping, -following, following....</p> - -<p>"I've always thought I'd get to do a little embroidering on a yoke or -two," she said, "but so far I couldn't. Anyway I thought I could do the -plain part and running the machine before he came. The other I could sit -by the crib and do. Embroidery seems sort o' baby-watchin' work, don't -it?"</p> - -<p>When I left her I walked across the lawns to my home in a sense of -security and peace. With increasing thousands consciously striving and -passioning to help, and thousands helping because of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> the unconscious -spirit within them, are there not many windows in the walls?</p> - -<p>"He" was to go by the Accommodation early next morning to bring home the -baby. Therefore when, just before seven o'clock, I observed my -neighbour's husband leave his home and join Peter at his gate as usual, -I went at once to see if something was amiss.</p> - -<p>My neighbour was having breakfast as her custom was "after the men-folks -were out of the way." At all events she was pretending to eat. I saw in -her eyes that something was troubling her, but she greeted me -cheerfully. I sat by the sewing-machine while she went on with her -pretence at breakfast.</p> - -<p>"The little thing's sick," she said. "Last night we got the despatch. -'Baby in hospital for day or two. Will advise often,' it had in it. I'm -glad they put that in. I'll feel better to know they'll get good -advice."</p> - -<p>I sat with her for a long time, regardless of my work or that Miggy was -waiting for me. I was struck by the charm of matter-of-fact hopefulness -in my neighbour, not the deliberate forcing of hope, but the simple -expectation that nothing tragic would occur. But for all that she ate no -breakfast, and I knew well the faint, quite physical sickness that she -must have endured since the message came.</p> - -<p>"I'm going to get his basket ready to-day," she said. "I never did that, -two reasons. One was, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> seemed sort of taking too much for granted, -like heating your spider before the meat wagon drives up. The other -reason was I needed the basket for the clothes."</p> - -<p>I stayed with her while she made ready the clothes-basket, lining it -with an old muslin curtain, filling it with pillows, covering it with -the afghan from the parlour couch. Then, in a shoe box edged with the -curtain's broad ruffle, she put an array of little things: the brush -from the spare-room bureau, the pincushion from her own work-basket, a -sachet bag that had come with a last year's Christmas gift, a cake of -"nice soap" which she had kept for years and never unwrapped because it -was so expensive. And then she added a little glass-stoppered bottle of -white pills.</p> - -<p>"I don't know what they're for," she said. "I found them when I -housecleaned, and there was so many of 'em I hated to throw 'em away. Of -course I'll never use 'em, but they look sort of nice in there—so white -and a glass cork—don't you think so?"</p> - -<p>She walked with me across the lawn and stood brooding, one hand across -her mouth, looking down at the disturbance—so slight!—in the grass -where we had laid the bird. And on her face was the look which, each -time that I saw it there, drew me nearer to her.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p><p>"'Seems as if I'd ought to be there to the hospital," she said, "doing -what I can. Do you s'pose they'll take good care of him? I guess they -know more about it than I do. But if I could get hold of him in my arms -it seems as if I could help 'em."</p> - -<p>I said what I could, and she went away to her house. And for the first -time since I had known her she did not seem put upon to be back at some -employment. These times of unwonted idleness are terrible to witness. I -remember a farmer whom I once saw in the afternoon, dressed in his best, -waiting in the kitchen for the hour of his daughter's wedding, and I -wondered that the great hands did not work of their own will. The lost -aspect of certain men on holidays, the awful inactivity of the day of a -funeral, the sad idleness of old age, all these are very near to the -tragedy of negation. Work, the positive, the normal, the joyous, is like -an added way of being. I thought that I would never again marvel at my -neighbour for being always on the edge of flight to some pressing -occupation. Why should she not be so?—with all that there is to be -done. Whether we rush about, or conceal the need and rush secretly, is a -detail of our breeding; the need is to get things done, to become by -doing. And while for myself I would prefer the accomplishment of not -seeming to hurry, as another is accomplished at the harp, yet I own that -I would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> cheerfully forego the pretty grace rather than find myself -without some slight degree of the robust proficiency of getting things -done.</p> - -<p>"If you're born a picture in a book," Calliope once said, "it's all very -well to set still on the page an' hold your hands. But if you're born -anyways human at all, stick up your head an' start out for somewhere."</p> - -<p>My neighbour rarely comes to my house. And therefore, though she is to -me so familiar a figure in her garden, when next morning I found her -awaiting me in my sitting room, she seemed strange to me. Perhaps, too, -she was really strange to me that day.</p> - -<p>"My baby died," she said.</p> - -<p>She stood there looking at me, and I knew that what she said was true, -but it seemed to me for a moment that I could not have it so.</p> - -<p>"He died yesterday in the evening," she told me. "I just heard this -morning, when the telegraph office opened. I dressed myself to go after -him, but <i>he's</i> gone."</p> - -<p>"To go after him?" I repeated.</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>"He was in the charity part. I was afraid they'd bury him in the -potter's field and they wouldn't mark—it, and that I couldn't never -tell which one it was. So I want to get him and have him buried here.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> -<i>He</i> didn't want I should go—he thought it'd be too much for me. But I -was bound to, so he says he'd go. They'd ought to get here on the Five -o'Clock this afternoon. Oh, if I'd went yesterday, do you think it would -'a' been any different?"</p> - -<p>There I could comfort her. I did not think it would have been different. -But when I tried to tell her how much better it was this way than that -the baby should first have come to her and then have sickened, she would -have none of it.</p> - -<p>"I've never held him once," she said. "Do you s'pose anything could be -worse than that? I'd rather have got hold of him once, no matter what."</p> - -<p>It touched me unutterably, the grief of this mother who was no mother. I -had no knowledge what to say to her. But I think that what she wanted -most was companionship. She went to one and another and another of our -neighbours to whom she had shown so happily the broken post-card -picture, and to them in the same way she took the news:—</p> - -<p>"My baby died."</p> - -<p>And I was amazed to find how in this little time, the tentacles of her -heart having fastened and clung, she had made for herself, without ever -having seen the child, little things to tell about him: His eyes were so -bright; the sun was shining and the picture was made out-of-doors, yet -the eyes were opened wide. They were blue eyes—had she told us?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> Had we -noticed the hands in the picture? And the head was a beautiful shape.... -All this seemed to me marvellous. For I saw that no woman ever mourns -for any child dumbly, as a bird mourns a fledgling, but even if she -never sees it, she will yet contrive some little tender ways to give it -personality and to cherish it.</p> - -<p>They did their best to comfort her, the women of the village. But many -of them had lost little children of their own, and these women could not -regard her loss as at all akin to theirs. I think that this my neighbour -felt; and perhaps she dimly felt that to me her grief, hardly less than -theirs, brimmed with the tragic disaster of the unfulfilled and bore, -besides, its own peculiar bitterness. In any case I was of those who, -that afternoon, went out to the cemetery to await the coming of my -neighbour and "him" and their little burden. Calliope was there, and -Mis' Amanda Toplady and Miggy; and when it was time to go Little Child -was with me, so she went too. For I am not of those who keep from -children familiarity with death. Familiarity with the ways of death I -would spare them, but not the basic things, primal as day.</p> - -<p>"I don't want to give a real funeral," my neighbour had said. "I just -want the few that I tell to happen out there to the cemetery, along -about five. And then we'll come with him. It seems as if it'll hurt -less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> that way. I couldn't bear to see a whole line driving along, and -me look back and know who it was for."</p> - -<p>The cemetery had the dignity and serenity of a meadow, a meadow still -somewhat amazed that it had been for a while distracted from its ancient -uses, but, after all, perceiving no permanent difference in its -function. I am never weary of walking down these grassy streets and of -recounting their strangenesses. As that of the headstone of David -Bibber's wives, one stone extending across the heads of the two graves -and at either end of the stone two Gothic peaks from whose inner slopes -reach two marble hands, clasped midway, and,</p> - -<p class="center">SACRED TO THE WIVES OF DAVID BIBBER</p> - -<p>inscribed below, the wifely names not appearing in the epitaph. And that -of Mark Sturgis who, the village said, had had the good luck to marry -two women named Dora; so he had erected a low monument to "Dora, Beloved -Wife of Mark Sturgis, Jr." ("But how mixin' it must be to the ghosts!" -Calliope said.) And of the young girl of a former Friendship family of -wealth, a girl who sleeps beneath a monument on which stands a great -figure of a young woman in a white marble dress made with three -flounces. ("Honest," Calliope had put it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> "you can't hardly tell -whether it's a tomb or a valentine.")</p> - -<p>But these have for me an interest less of the bizarre than of the human, -and nothing that is human was alien to that hour.</p> - -<p>We waited for them by the new little grave, the disturbance—so -slight!—in the earth where we would lay the stranger baby. Our hands -were filled with garden flowers—Calliope had drawn a little hand cart -laden with ferns and sweet-brier, and my dear Mis' Amanda Toplady had -cut all the half-blown buds from her loved tea rose.</p> - -<p>"It seems like a little baby wasn't real dead that I hadn't helped lay -out," said that great Mis' Amanda, trying to find her handkerchief. "Oh, -I wish't it was alive. It seems like such a little bit of comin' alive -to ask the Lord!"</p> - -<p>And as the afternoon shadows drew about us with fostering arms,</p> - -<p>"Out-Here knows we feel bad more than Down Town, don't it?" said Little -Child.</p> - -<p>I have always thought very beautiful that village custom of which I have -before spoken, which provides that the father and mother of a little -baby who dies may take it with them in a closed carriage to the grave. -It was so that my neighbour and her husband brought their baby to the -cemetery from the station, with the little coffin on their knees.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p><p>On the box beside the driver Peter was riding. We learned afterward -that he had appeared at the station and had himself taken that little -coffin from the car. "So then it didn't have to be on the truck at all," -my neighbour noted thankfully when she told me. I think that it must be -this living with only a street or two between folk and the open country -which gives these unconscious sharpenings of sensibility often, -otherwhere, bred only by old niceties of habit.</p> - -<p>So little Kenneth was buried, who never had the name save in unreality; -whom my neighbour had never tended; who lived for her only in dream and -on that broken post-card and here in the hidden dust. It made her grief -so sad a thing that her arms did not miss him; nor had he slipped from -any usage of the day; nor was any link broken with the past; only the -plans that had hung in air had gone out, like flames which had kindled -nothing. Because of this she sorrowed from within some closed place at -which her husband could only guess, who stood patiently without in his -embarrassed concern, his clumsy anxiety to do what there was to be done, -his wondering distress at his wife's drooping grief. But her sorrow was -rooted in the love of women for the "little young thing, runnin' round," -for which she had long passioned.</p> - -<p>"Oh, God, who lived in the spirit of the little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> Lord Jesus, live Thou -in this child's spirit, and it in Thee, world without end," Doctor June -prayed. And Little Child whispered to me and then went to let fall a -pink in the grave. "So if the flower gets to be an angel flower, then -they can go round together," she explained.</p> - -<p>When I looked up there were in the west the first faint heraldings of -rose. And against it stood Miggy and Peter, side by side, looking down -this new way of each other's lives which took account of sorrow. He said -something to her, and she nodded, and gave him her white hollyhocks to -lay with the rest. And as they turned away together Little Child -whispered to me, pulling herself, by my arm, to high tiptoe:—</p> - -<p>"That little child we put in the sunset," she said, nodding to the west, -"it's there now. It's there now!"</p> - -<p>Perhaps it was that my heart was filled with the tragedy of the -unfulfilled intention, perhaps it was that I thought that Little Child's -whispering was true. In any case I hastened my steps, and as we passed -out on the road I overtook Miggy and Peter.</p> - -<p>"Peter," said I, "may Miggy and I come to pay you that visit now, on the -way back?"</p> - -<p>Miggy looked startled.</p> - -<p>"It's supper time," she objected.</p> - -<p>Who are we that we should interrupt a sunset, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> a situation, or the -stars in their courses, merely to sup? Neither Miggy nor I belong to -those who do so. Besides, we had to pass Peter's very door. I said so, -and all the time Peter's face was glowing.</p> - -<p>"Hurry on ahead," I bade him, "and Miggy and Little Child and I will -come in your house to call."</p> - -<p>He looked at me gratefully, and waited for good night to my neighbour, -and went swiftly away down the road toward the sunset.</p> - -<p>"Oh, goody grand, goody grand," Little Child went on softly, in an -invocation of her own to some secret divinity of her pleasure. "Oh, that -little child we put there, it's talkin' to the sky, an' I guess that -makes sunset be!"</p> - -<p>My neighbour was looking back across the tranquil meadow which might -have been deep with summer hay instead of mounded to its sad harvest.</p> - -<p>"I wish," she said, "I could have had his little grave in my garden, -same as you would a bird. Still I s'pose a cemet'ry is a cemet'ry and -had ought to be buried in. But oh, I can't tell you how glad I am to -have him here in Friendship Village. It's better to think about, ain't -it?"</p> - -<p>But the thing that gripped my heart was to see her, beside her husband, -go down the road and not hurry. All that bustling impermanence was -fallen from her. I think that now I am becoming thankful for every one -who goes busily quickening the day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> with a multitude, yes, even with a -confusion, of homely, cheerful tasks.</p> - -<p>Miggy slipped her hand within my arm.</p> - -<p>"Did you think of it?" she said. "I've been, all the time. It's most the -same with her as it would be to me if I'd lost <i>her</i>. You know ... that -little Margaret. I mean, if she should never be."</p> - -<p>As when one hears the note of an oriole ringing from the innermost air, -so now it seems to me that after these things the deeps of air can never -again be wholly alien to me.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XVIII</span> <span class="smaller">AT PETER'S HOUSE</span></h2> - -<p>I wondered somewhat that Peter did not come out of his house to fetch -us. He was not even about the little yard when we went up the walk, -though he knew that we must arrive but a few moments after he did. -Little Child ran away to pick Bouncing Bet and Sweet Clover in the long, -rank grass of the unkept garden. And Miggy and I went and stood on the -porch before Peter's door, and I knew what I intended.</p> - -<p>"Rap!" I said to Miggy.</p> - -<p>She looked at me in surprise—I have not often commanded her like that. -But I wanted to see her stand at Peter's door asking for admission. And -I think that Peter had wanted it too and that this was why he had not -come to the gate to fetch us. I guessed it by the light on his face -when, in the middle of Miggy's knock, he caught open the door. I like to -remember his face as it looked at that moment, with the little twist of -mouth and lifting of brow which gave him a peculiar sweetness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> -naïveté, curiously contradicted by the way his eyes were when they met -Miggy's.</p> - -<p>"How long it took you," he said. "Come in. <i>Come in.</i>"</p> - -<p>We went in, and I looked at Miggy. For I did not want her to step in -that house as she would have stepped in a house that was just a house. -Is it not wonderful how some front doors are Front Doors Plus? I do not -know plus what—that is one of those good little in-between things which -we know without always naming. But there are some front doors which are -to me boards and glass and a tinkling cymbal bell; while other doors of -no better architecture let me within dear depths of homes which are to -houses what friends are to inhabitants. It was so that I would have had -Miggy go within Peter's house,—not as within doors, but as within arms.</p> - -<p>We entered directly from the porch into the small parlour—the kind of -man's parlour that makes a woman long to take it on her lap and tend it. -There were no curtains. Between the windows was a big table filled with -neat piles of newspapers and weeklies till there should be time to look -them over. The shelf had a lamp, not filled, a clock, not going, and a -pile of seed catalogues. On two walls were three calendars with big -hollyhocks and puppies and ladies in sunbonnets. The entire inner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> wall -was occupied by a map of the state—why does a man so cherish a map of -something, hung up somewhere? On the organ was a row of blue books—what -is it that men are always looking for in blue books? In a corner, on the -floor, stood a shotgun. The wood stove had been "left up" all summer to -save putting it up in the fall—this business of getting a stove on -rollers and jacking it up and remembering where it stood so that the -pipe will fit means, in the village, a day of annual masculine sacrifice -to the feminine foolishness of wanting stoves down in summer. There was -nothing disorderly about the room; but it was dressed with no sash or -hair ribbon or coral beads, as a man dresses his little girl.</p> - -<p>"We don't use this room much," Peter said. "We sit in here sometimes in -summer, but I think when a man sits in his parlour he always feels like -he was being buried from it, same as they're used for."</p> - -<p>"Why—" said Miggy, and stopped. What she was going to say it was not -important to know, but I was glad that she had been going to say it. -Something, perhaps, about this being a very pretty room if there were -somebody to give it a touch or two.</p> - -<p>Peter was obviously eager to be in the next room, and that, he -explained, would have been the dining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> room, only he had taken it for -his own, and they ate in the kitchen. I think that I had never heard him -mention his father at all, and this "we" of his now was a lonelier thing -than any lonely "I."</p> - -<p>"This is my room," he said as we entered it. "It's where I live when I'm -not at the works. Come and let me show you."</p> - -<p>So Peter showed Miggy his room, and he showed it to me, too, though I do -not think that he was conscious of that. It was a big room, bare of -floor and, save for the inescapable flowery calendar, bare of walls. -There was a shelf of books—not many, but according to Peter's nature -sufficiently well-selected to plead for him: "Look at us. Who could love -us and not be worth while?"—bad enough logic, in all conscience, to -please any lover. Miggy hardly looked at the books. She so -exasperatingly took it for granted that a man must be everything in -general that it left hardly anything for him to be in particular. But -Peter made her look, and he let me look too, and I supplied the comments -and Miggy occasionally did her three little nods. The writing table -Peter had made from a box, and by this Miggy was equally untouched. All -men, it appeared, should be able to make writing tables from boxes. With -the linen table cover it was a little different—this Peter's mother had -once worked in cross-stitch for his room, and Miggy lifted an end and -looked at it.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p><p>"She took all those stitches for you!" she said. "There's one broken," -she showed him.</p> - -<p>"I can mend that," Peter said proudly, "I'll show you my needle kit."</p> - -<p>At this she laughed out suddenly with, "<i>Needle kit!</i> What a real -regular old bachelor you are, aren't you?"</p> - -<p>"I can't help that," said Peter, with "and the same cannot be said for -you" sticking from the sentence.</p> - -<p>On the table lay the cannery account books, and one was open at a full -page of weary little figures.</p> - -<p>"Is this where you sit nights and do your work and read?" Miggy -demanded.</p> - -<p>"Right here," Peter told her, "every night of the year, 'most. Except -when I come to see you."</p> - -<p>Miggy stood looking at the table and the wooden chair.</p> - -<p>"That's funny," she remarked finally, with an air of meditative -surprise; "they know you so much better than I do, don't they?"</p> - -<p>"Well," Peter said gravely, "they haven't been thought about as much as -you have, Miggy—that's one thing."</p> - -<p>"Thinking's nothing," said Miggy, merrily; "sometimes you get a tune in -your head and you can't get it out."</p> - -<p>"Sit down at the table," said Peter, abruptly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> "Sit down!" he repeated, -when her look questioned him. "I want to see you there."</p> - -<p>She obeyed him, laughing a little, and quite in the woman's way of -pretending that obedience is a choice. Peter looked at her. It is true -that he had been doing nothing else all the while, but now that she sat -at the table—his table—he looked more than before.</p> - -<p>"Well," he said, "well, well." As a man says when he has a present and -has no idea what to say about it.</p> - -<p>Peter's photographs were on the wall above the table, and Peter suddenly -leaned past Miggy and took down the picture of his mother and put it in -her hand, without saying anything. For the first time Miggy met his -eyes.</p> - -<p>"Your mother," she said, "why, Peter. She looked—oh, Peter, she looked -like you!"</p> - -<p>Peter nodded. "Yes, I do look like she did," he said; "I'm always so -glad."</p> - -<p>"She knew you when you were a little bit of a baby, Peter," Miggy -advanced suddenly.</p> - -<p>Peter admitted it gravely. She had.</p> - -<p>"Well," said Miggy, as Peter had said it. "Well."</p> - -<p>There was a picture of Peter's father as a young man,—black, -curly-haired, black-moustached, the cheeks slightly tinted in the -picture, his hands laid trimly along his knees. The face was weak, -empty,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> but it held that mere confidence of youth which always gives a -special sting to the grief of unfulfilment. Over this they passed, -saying nothing. It struck me that in the delicacy of that silence it was -almost as if Miggy shared something with Peter. Also, it struck me -pleasantly that Miggy's indifference to the personalities of divers -aunts in straight bangs and long basques was slightly exaggerated, -especially when, "I never thought about your having any aunts," she -observed.</p> - -<p>And then Peter took down a tiny picture of the sort we call in the -village "card size," and gave it to her.</p> - -<p>"Guess who," he said.</p> - -<p>It was a little boy of not more than five, in a straight black coat -dress, buttoned in the front and trimmed with broad black velvet strips, -and having a white scalloped collar and white cuffs. One hand was -resting on the back of a camp-chair and the other held a black helmet -cap. The shoes had double rows of buttons, and for some secret reason -the photographer had had the child laboriously cross one foot -negligently over the other. The fine head, light-curled, was resting in -the horns of that ex-device that steadied one out of all semblance to -self. But in spite of the man who had made the picture, the little boy -was so wholly adorable that you wanted to say so.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p><p>"Peter!" Miggy said, "It's <i>you</i>."</p> - -<p>I do not know how she knew. I think that I would not have known. But -Miggy knew, and her knowing made me understand something which evidently -she herself did not understand. For she looked at the picture and looked -at it, a strange, surprised smile on her face. And,</p> - -<p>"Well, well, <i>well</i>," she said again. "I never thought about that -before. I mean about you. <i>Then.</i>"</p> - -<p>"Would—would you want that picture, Miggy?" Peter asked; "you can have -it if you do."</p> - -<p>"Can I really?" said Miggy. "Well, I do want it. Goodness...."</p> - -<p>"I always kind of thought," Peter said slowly, "that when I have a son -he'll look something like that. He might, you know."</p> - -<p>Peter was leaning beside her, elbows on the table, and Miggy looked up -at him over the picture of the child, and made her three little nods.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she said, "you would want your little boy to look like you."</p> - -<p>"And I'd want him named Peter. It's a homely old name, but I'd want him -to have it."</p> - -<p>"Peter isn't a homely name," said Miggy, in a manner of surprise. "Yes, -of course you'd want him—"</p> - -<p>The sentence fell between them unfinished. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> I thought that Miggy's -face, still somewhat saddened by the little Kenneth and now tender with -its look for the picture, was lightly touched with a glowing of colour. -But then I saw that this would be the light of the sunset on her cheeks, -for now the West was become a glory of rose and yellow, so that it held -captive her eyes. It is too frail a thing for me to have grasped by -sense, but the Moment seemed to say—and could give no reason—that our -sunset compact Miggy kept then without remembering the compact.</p> - -<p>It almost startled me when out in the unkept garden Little Child began -to sing. We had nearly forgotten her and we could not see her, so that -she might have been any other little child wandering in the sweet -clover, or merely a little voice coming in with the western light:—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"I like to stand in this great air</div> -<div>And see the sun go down.</div> -<div>It shows me a bright veil to wear</div> -<div>And such a pretty gown.</div> -<div>Oh, I can see a playmate there</div> -<div>Far up in Splendour Town!"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>"Look here," said Peter to Miggy; and I went over to the sunset window -and let them go on alone.</p> - -<p>He led her about the room, and she still had the little picture in her -hand. From the bureau, with its small array of cheap brushes and boxes, -she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> turned abruptly away. I think that she may have felt as I felt -about the splash of rose on the rose-breasted grosbeak's throat—that I -ought not to have been looking. Beyond was a little old dry-goods box -for odds and ends, a box which must have known, with a kind of feminine -intelligence, that it ought to be covered with cretonne. On this box -Miggy knelt to read Peter's high school diploma, and she stopped before -a picture of the house where he was born. "Was it there?" she asked. -"Doesn't that seem funny?" Which manifestly it did not seem. "Is <i>that</i> -where your violin lives?" she asked, when they came to its -corner—surely a way of betrayal that she had thought of it as living -somewhere else. And all the while she carried the picture in her hand, -and the sunset glorified the room, and Little Child was singing in the -garden.</p> - -<p>"Peter," said Miggy, "I don't believe a man who can play the violin can -sew. Give me the needle kit. I'm going to mend the table cover—may I?"</p> - -<p>Might she! Peter, his face shining, brought out his red flannel -needle-book—he kept it on the shelf with his shaving things!—and, his -face shining more, sat on a creaking camp-chair and watched her.</p> - -<p>"Miggy," he said, as she caught the threads skilfully together, "I don't -believe I've ever seen you sew. I know I never have."</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p><p>"This isn't sewing," Miggy said.</p> - -<p>"It's near enough like it to suit me," said Peter.</p> - -<p>He drew a breath long, and looked about him. I knew how he was seeing -the bare room, lamp-lighted, and himself trying to work in spite of the -longing that teased and possessed him and bade him give it up and lean -back and think of her; or of tossing on the hard couch in the tyranny of -living his last hour with her and of living, too, the hours that might -never be. And here she was in this room—his room. Peter dropped his -head on his hand and his eyes did not leave her face save to venture an -occasional swift, ecstatic excursion to her fingers.</p> - -<p>Simply and all quietly, as Nature sends her gifts, miracles moved toward -completion while Miggy sewed. The impulse to do for him this trifling -service was like a signal, and when she took up the needle for him I -think that women whose hands had long lain quiet stirred within her -blood. As for Peter—but these little housewifely things which enlighten -a woman merely tease a man, who already knows their import and longs for -all sweet fragments of time to be merged in the long possession.</p> - -<p>Miggy gave the needle back to Peter and he took it—needle, red book, -and hand.</p> - -<p>"Miggy!" he said, and the name on his lips was like another name. And it -was as if she were in some place remote and he were calling her.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>She looked at him as if she knew the call. Since the world began, only -for one reason does a man call a woman like that.</p> - -<p>"What is it you want?" she said—and her voice was very sweet and very -tired.</p> - -<p>"I want more of <i>you</i>!" said Peter Cary.</p> - -<p>She may have tried to say something, but her voice trembled away.</p> - -<p>"I thought it would be everything—your coming here to-day," Peter said. -"I've wanted it and wanted it. And what does it amount to? Nothing, -except to make me wild with wanting you never to go away. I dread to -think of your leaving me here—shutting the door and being gone. If it -was just plain wanting you I could meet that, and beat it, like I do the -things down to the works. But it isn't that. It's like it was something -big—bigger than me, and outside of me, and it gets hold of me, and it's -like it asked for you without my knowing. I can't do anything that you -aren't some of it. It isn't fair, Miggy. I want more of you—all of -you—all the time, Miggy, all the time...."</p> - -<p>I should have liked to see Miggy's face when she looked at Peter, whose -eyes were giving her everything and were asking everything of her; but I -was studying the sunset, glory upon glory, to match the glory here. And -the singing of Little Child began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> again, like that of a little voice -vagrant in the red west....</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"Oh, I can see a playmate there,</div> -<div>Far up in Splendour Town!"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Miggy heard her, and remembered.</p> - -<p>"Peter, Peter!" she cried, "I couldn't—I never could bring us two on -you to support."</p> - -<p>Peter gave her hands a little shake, as if he would have shaken her. I -think that he would have shaken her if it had been two or three thousand -years earlier in the world's history.</p> - -<p>"You two!" he cried; "why, Miggy, when we marry do I want—or do you -want—that it should stay just you and me? We want children. I want you -for their mother as much as I want you for my wife."</p> - -<p>It was the voice of the paramount, compelling spirit, the sovereign -voice of the Family, calling through the wilderness. Peter knew,—this -fine, vital boy seeking his own happiness; he gropingly understood this -mighty thing, and he was trying his best to serve it. And, without -knowing that she knew, Miggy knew too ... and the seal that she knew was -in what was in the sunset. And as far removed from these things as the -sunset itself was all Miggy's cheap cynicism about love and all the -triviality of her criticism of Peter.</p> - -<p>Miggy stood motionless, looking at Peter. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> then, like an evil spell -which began to work, another presence was in the room....</p> - -<p>Somewhile before I had begun to hear the sound, as a faint undercurrent -to consciousness; an unimportant, unpleasant, insisting sound that -somehow interfered. Gradually it had come nearer and had interfered more -and had mingled harshly with the tender treble of Little Child. Now, -from Peter's gate the sound besieged my ears and entered the room and -explained itself to us all—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"My Mary Anna Mary, what you mean I <i>never</i> know,</div> -<div>You don't make me merry, very, but you make me sorry, oh—"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>the "oh" prolonged, undulatory, exploring the air....</p> - -<p>I knew what it was, and they knew. At the sound of his father's voice, -drunken, piteous, Peter dropped Miggy's hands and his head went down and -he stood silent, like a smitten thing. My own heart sank, for I knew -what Miggy had felt, and I thought I knew what she would feel now. So -here was another unfulfilled intention, another plan gone astray in an -unperfected order.</p> - -<p>Peter had turned somewhat away before he spoke.</p> - -<p>"I'll have to go now," he said quietly, "I guess you'll excuse me."</p> - -<p>He went toward the kitchen door ashamed, miserable, all the brightness -and vitality gone from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> him. I am sorry that he did not see Miggy's face -when she lifted it. I saw it, and I could have sung as I looked. Not for -Peter or for Miggy, but for the sake of something greater than they, -something that touched her hand, commanded "Look at me," bade her follow -with us all.</p> - -<p>Before Peter reached the door she overtook him, stood before him, put -her hands together for a moment, and then laid one swiftly on his cheek.</p> - -<p>"Peter," she said, "that don't make any difference. That don't make any -difference."</p> - -<p>No doubt he understood her words, but I think what he understood best -was her hand on his cheek. He caught her shoulders and looked and -looked....</p> - -<p>"Honest—honest, don't it?" he searched her.</p> - -<p>You would not have said that her answer to that was wholly direct. She -only let fall her hand from his cheek to his shoulder, and,</p> - -<p>"Peter," she said, "<i>is it like this</i>?"</p> - -<p>"Yes," he said simply, "it's like this."</p> - -<p>And then what she said was ever so slightly muffled, as if at last she -had dropped her head in that sweet confusion which she had never seemed -to know; as if at last she was looking at Peter as if he <i>was</i> Peter.</p> - -<p>"Then I don't ever want to be any place where you aren't," she told him.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p><p>"Miggy!" Peter cried, "take care what you say. Remember—he'd live with -us."</p> - -<p>She made her three little nods.</p> - -<p>"So he will," she answered, "so he will. He—and my little sister—and -all of us."</p> - -<p>Peter's answer was a shout.</p> - -<p>"Say it out!" he cried, "say you will. Miggy! I've <i>got</i> to hear you say -it out!"</p> - -<p>"Peter, Peter," she said, "I want to marry you."</p> - -<p>He took her in his arms and in the room was the glory upon glory of the -west, a thing of wings and doors ajar. And strong as the light, there -prevailed about them the soul of the Family, that distributes burdens, -shares responsibilities, accepts what is and what is to come. Its voice -was in the voice of Little Child singing in the garden, and of old Cary -babbling at the gate. Its heart was the need of Peter and Miggy, each -for the other. I saw in their faces the fine freedoms of the sunset, -that sunset where Miggy and Little Child and I had agreed that a certain -spirit lives. And it did but tally with the momentous utterance of these -things and of the evening when Miggy spoke again.</p> - -<p>"Go now—you go to him," she said, "we'll wait. And—Peter—when you -come back, I want to see everything in the room again."</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>XIX</span> <span class="smaller">THE CUSTODIAN</span></h2> - -<p>When the river is low, a broad, flat stone lying a little way from shore -at the foot of our lawn becomes an instrument of music. In the day it -plays now a rhapsody of sun, now a nocturne of cloud, now the last -concerto, Opus Eternal. In the night it becomes a little friendly -murmur, a cradle song, slumber spell, neighbour to the Dark, the alien -Dark who very likely grows lonely, being the silent sister, whereas the -Light goes on blithely companioned of us all. But if I were the Dark and -owned the stars, and the potion which quickens conscience, and the sense -of the great Spirit brooding, brooding, I do not know that I would -exchange and be the Light. Still, the Light has rainbows and toil and -the sun and laughter.... After all, it is best to be a human being and -to have both Light and Darkness for one's own. And it is concerning this -conclusion that the river plays on its instrument of music, this shallow river</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div class="i3">"—to whose falls</div> -<div>Melodious birds sing madrigals."</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p><p>I have heard our bank cat-birds in the willows sing madrigals to the -stone-music until I wanted to be one of them—cat-bird, madrigal, -shallows, or anything similar. But the human is perhaps what all these -are striving to express, and so I have been granted wish within wish, -and life is very good.</p> - -<p>Life was very good this summer afternoon when half the village gathered -on our lawn above the singing stone, at Miggy's and Peter's -"Announcement Supper." To be sure, all Friendship Village had for -several days had the news and could even tell you when the betrothal -took place and where; but the two were not yet engaged, as Miggy would -have said, "out loud."</p> - -<p>"What <i>is</i> engaged?" asked Little Child, who was the first of my guests -to arrive, and came bringing an offering of infinitesimal flowers which -she finds in the grass where I think that they bloom for no one else.</p> - -<p>"It means that people love each other very much—" I began, and got no -further.</p> - -<p>"Oh, goody grand," cried Little Child. "Then I'm engaged, aren't I? To -everybody."</p> - -<p>Whenever she leads me in deep water, I am accustomed to invite her to a -dolphin's back by bidding her say over some song or spell which I have -taught her. This afternoon while we waited on the lawn and her little -voice went among the charmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> words, something happened which surely -must have been due to a prank of the dolphin. For when she had taken an -accurate way to the last stanza of "Lucy," Little Child soberly -concluded:—</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>"'She lived unknown, and few could know</div> -<div class="i1">When Lucy ceased to be;</div> -<div>But she is in her grave, and what's</div> -<div class="i1">The difference to me!'"</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>But, even so, it was charming to have had the quiet metre present.</p> - -<p>I hope that there is no one who has not sometime been in a company on -which he has looked and looked with something living in his eyes; on a -company all of whom he holds in some degree of tenderness. It was so -that I looked this afternoon on those who came across the lawn in the -pleasant five o'clock sun, and I looked with a difference from my manner -of looking on that evening of my visit to the village, when I first saw -these, my neighbours. Then I saw them with delight; now I see them with -delight-and-that-difference; and though that difference is, so to say, -partly in my throat, yet it is chiefly deep in my understanding. There -came my Mis' Amanda Toplady, with her great green umbrella, which she -carries summer and winter; Mis' Postmaster Sykes, with the full-blooming -stalk of her tuberose pinned on her left shoulder; Mis' -Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss in the pink nun's veiling of the Post-office -hall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> supper; and my neighbour, who had consented to come, with: "I -donno as that little thing would want I should stay home. Oh, but do you -know, that's the worst—knowin' that the little thing never saw me and -can't think about me at all!" And there came also those of whom it -chances that this summer I have seen less than I should have wished: the -Liberty sisters, in checked print. "It don't seem so much of a jump out -of mournin' into wash goods as it does into real dress-up cloth," gentle -Miss Lucy says. And Abigail Arnold, of the Home Bakery, who sent a great -sugared cake for to-day's occasion. "Birthday cakes is correct," she -observed, "an' weddin' cake is correct. Why ain't engagement cakes -correct—especially when folks get along without the ring? I donno. I -always think doin' for folks is correct, whether it's the style or -whether it ain't." And Mis' Photographer Sturgis, with a new and -upbraiding baby; Mis' Fire Chief Merriman in "new black, but not true -mournin' now, an' anyway lit up by pearl buttons an' a lace handkerchief -an' plenty o' scent." And Mis' "Mayor" Uppers who, the "mayor" not -returning to his home and the tickets for the parlour clock having all -been sold, to-day began offering for sale tickets on the "parlour -'suit,' brocade' silk, each o' the four pieces a differ'nt colour and -all as bright as new-in-the-store." And though we all understood what -she was doing and she knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> that we all knew, she yet drew us aside, one -after another, to offer the tickets for sale privately, and we slipped -the money to her beneath our handkerchiefs or our fans or our sewing.</p> - -<p>We all had our sewing—even I have become pleasantly contaminated and -have once or twice essayed eyelets. Though there was but an hour to -elapse before supper-time and the arrival of the "men-folks," we settled -ourselves about the green, making scallops on towels, or tatting for -sheet hems, or crocheted strips for the hems of pillow-slips. Mis' Sykes -had, as she almost always does have, new work which no one had ever seen -before, and new work is accounted of almost as much interest as a new -waist and is kept for a surprise, as a new waist should be kept. Little -Child, too, had her sewing; she was buttonhole-stitching a wash-cloth -and talking like a little old woman. I think that the little elf -children like best to pretend in this way, as regular, arrant witches -feign old womanhood.</p> - -<p>"Aunt Effie is sick," Little Child was telling Mis' Toplady; "she is -sick from her hair to her slippers."</p> - -<p>I had a plan for Little Child and for us all; that after supper she -should have leaves in her hair and on her shoulders and should dance on -the singing stone in the river. And Miggy, whose shy independence is now -become all shyness, was in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> house, weaving the leaves, and had not -yet appeared at her party at all.</p> - -<p>Then one of those charming things happened which surely have a kind of -life of their own and wake the hour to singing, as if an event were a -river stone, and more, round which all manner of faint music may be set -stirring.</p> - -<p>"Havin' a party when I ain't lookin'!" cried somebody. "My, my. I don't -b'lieve a word of what's name—this evolution business. I bet you -anything heaven is just <i>gettin' back</i>."</p> - -<p>And there was Calliope, in her round straw hat and tan ulster, who in -response to my card had hastened her imminent return.</p> - -<p>"Yes," she said, when we had greeted her and put her in a chair under -the mulberry tree, "my relation got well. At least, she ain't sick -enough to be cross, so 'most anybody could take care of her now."</p> - -<p>Calliope laughed and leaned back and shut her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Land, land," she said, "I got so much to tell you about I don't know -where to begin. It's all about one thing, too—somethin' I've found -out."</p> - -<p>Mis' Amanda Toplady drew a great breath and let fall her work and looked -round at us all.</p> - -<p>"Goodness," she said, "ain't it comfortable—us all settin' here -together, nobody's leg broke, nobody's house on fire, nor none of us -dead?"</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p><p>"'Us all settin' here together,'" Calliope repeated, suddenly grave -amid our laughter, "that's part of what I'm comin' to. I wonder," she -said to us, "how you folks have always thought of the City? Up till I -went there to stay this while I always thought of it as—well, as the -City an' not so much as folks at all. The City always meant to me big -crowds on the streets—hurryin', hurryin', eatin', eatin', and not -payin' much attention to anything. One whole batch of 'em I knew was -poor an' lookin' in bakery windows. One whole batch of 'em I knew was -rich an' sayin' there has to be these distinctions. And some more I knew -was good—I always see 'em, like a pretty lady, stoopin' over, givin'. -And some more I knew was wicked an' I always thought of them climbin' in -windows. And then there was the little bit o' batch that knows the -things I want to know an' talks like I'd like to talk an' that I'd -wanted an' wanted to go up to the City an' get with.</p> - -<p>"Well, then I went. An' the first thing, I see my relative wa'n't rich -nor poor nor bad nor good nor—the way I mean. Nor her friends that come -to see her, they wan't either. The ones I took for rich talked economy, -an' the ones I thought was poor spent money, an' the good ones gossiped, -an' they all jabbered about music and pictures that I thought you -couldn't talk about unless you knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> the 'way-inside-o'-things, like -they didn't know. The kinds seemed all mixed up, and all of 'em far away -an' formal, like—oh, like the books in a library when you can't think -up one to draw out. I couldn't seem to get near to anything.</p> - -<p>"Then one night I done what I'd always wanted to do. I took two dollars -an' went to the theatre alone an' got me a seat. I put on the best I -had, an' still I didn't feel like I was one of 'em, nor one of much of -anybody. The folks on the car wasn't the way I meant, an' I felt mad at -'em for bein' differ'nt. There was a smilin' young fellow, all dressed -black an' expensive, an' I thought: 'Put you side of Peter Cary an' -there wouldn't be anybody there but Peter.' And when I got inside the -theatre, it was just the same: one awful collection of dressed-up hair -an' dressed-down backs an' everybody smilin' at somebody that wasn't me -and all seemin' so sure of themselves. Specially the woman in front of -me, but I guess it always is specially the woman in front of you. She -was flammed out abundant. She had trimmin's in unexpected places, an' a -good many colours took to do it, an' a cute little chatter to match. It -come to me that she was more than different from me: she was the -<i>otherest</i> a person can be. An' I felt glad when the curtain went up.</p> - -<p>"Well, sir," Calliope said, "it was a silly little play—all about -nothin' that you could lay much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> speech to. But oh, they was somethin' -in it that made you get down on your hands and knees in your own heart -and look around in it, and <i>look</i>. They was an old lady and a young -mother and a child and a man and a girl—well, that don't sound like -much special, does it? And that's just it: it wasn't much special, but -yet it was all of everything. It made 'em laugh, it made 'em cry, it -made <i>me</i> laugh and cry till I was ashamed and glad and grateful. And -when the lights come up at the end, I felt like I was kind of the mother -to everything, an' I wanted to pick it up an' carry it off an' keep care -of it. And it come over me all of a sudden how the old lady and the -young mother an' man an' girl, man an' girl, <i>man an' girl</i> was right -there in the theatre, near me, over an' over again; an' there I'd been -feelin' mad at 'em for seemin' far off. But they wasn't far off. They'd -been laughin' and cryin', too, an' they knew, just like I knew, what was -what in the world. My, my. If it'd been Friendship I'd have gone from -house to house all the way home, shakin' hands. An' as it was, I just -<i>had</i> to speak to somebody. An' just then I see the flammed-out woman in -front of me, that her collar had come open a little wee bit up top—not -to notice even, but it give me an excuse. And I leaned right over to her -and I says with all the sympathy in me:—</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p><p>"'Ma'am, your neck is peepin'."</p> - -<p>"She looked around su'prised and then she smiled—smiled 'most into -laughin'. And she thanked me sweet as a friend an' nodded with it, an' I -thought: 'Why, my land, you may have a baby home.' I never had thought -of that. An' then I begun lookin' at folks an' lookin'. An' movin' up -the aisles, there wasn't just a theatre-lettin'-out. They was <i>folks</i>. -And all over each one was the good little things they'd begun -rememberin' now that the play was over, or the hurt things that had come -back onto 'em again.... An' out on the street it was the same. The folks -had all got alive and was waitin' for me to feel friendly to 'em. -<i>Friendly.</i> The young fellows in the cars was lovers, just like Peter. -An' everybody was just like me, or anyhow more alike than differ'nt; and -just like Friendship, only mebbe pronouncin' their words some differ'nt -an' knowin' more kinds of things to eat. It seems to me now I could go -anywhere an' find folks to be nice to. I don't love Friendship Village -any the less, but I love more things the same way. Everything, 'most. -An' I tell you I'm glad I didn't die before I found it out—that we're -all one batch. <i>Do</i> you see what I mean—deep down inside what I say?" -Calliope cried. "Does it sound like anything to you?"</p> - -<p>To whom should it sound like "anything" if not to us of Friendship -Village? We know.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p><p>"Honestly," said that great Mis' Amanda Toplady, trying to wipe her -eyes on her crochet work, "Whoever God is, I don't believe He wants to -keep it a secret. He's always 'most lettin' us know. I 'most knew Who He -is right then, while Calliope was talkin'."</p> - -<p>"I 'most knew Who He is right then, while Calliope was talkin'." ... I -said the words over while the men crossed the lawn, all arriving -together in order to lighten the trial of guesthood: Dear Doctor June, -little Timothy Toplady, Eppleby Holcomb, Postmaster Sykes, Photographer -Jimmie Sturgis, Peter, and Timothy, Jr., and the others. Liva Vesey was -already in the kitchen with Miggy and Elfa, and I knew that, somewhere -invisible, Nicholas Moor was hovering, waiting to help dish the -ice-cream. When the little tables, each with its bright, strewn -nasturtiums, were set about the lawn, Miggy reluctantly appeared from -the kitchen. She was in the white frock which she herself had made, and -she was, as I have said, a new Miggy, not less merry or less elfin, but -infinitely more human. It was charming, I thought, to see how she and -Peter, far from tensely avoiding each other, went straight to each -other's side. With them at table were Liva and Timothy, Jr., now meeting -each other's eyes as simply as if eyes were for this purpose.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p><p>"I 'most knew Who He is right then, while Calliope was talkin'" ... I -thought again as we stood in our places and Doctor June lifted his hands -to the summer sky as if He were there, too.</p> - -<p>"Father," he said, "bless these young people who are going to belong to -each other—Thou knowest their names and so do we. Bless our being -together now in their honour, and be Thou in our midst. And bless our -being together always. Amen."</p> - -<p>And that was the announcement of Miggy's and Peter's betrothal, at their -Engagement Party.</p> - -<p>Little Child, who was sitting beside Calliope, leaned toward her.</p> - -<p>"How long will it take for God to know," she asked, "after Doctor June -sent it up?"</p> - -<p>Calliope put her arm about her and told her.</p> - -<p>"Then did He get here since Doctor June invited Him?" Little Child -asked.</p> - -<p>"You think, 'way deep inside your head, an' see if He isn't here," I -heard Calliope say.</p> - -<p>Little Child shut her eyes tightly, and though she did open them briefly -to see what was on the plate which they set before her, I think that she -found the truth.</p> - -<p>"I 'most know," she said presently. "Pretty near I know He is. I guess -I'm too little to be sure nor certain. When I'm big will I know sure?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> - -<p>"Yes," Calliope answered, "then you'll know sure."</p> - -<p>"I 'most knew Who He is while Calliope was talkin'" ... I said over once -more. And suddenly in the words and in the homely talk and in the happy -comradeship I think that I slipped between the seeing and the knowing, -and for a moment stood very near to the Custodian—Himself. The -Custodian Who is in us all, Who speaks, now as you, now as I, most -clearly in our human fellowship, in our widest kinship, in the universal -<i>togetherness</i>. Truly, it is not as my neighbour once said, for I think -that God has many and many to "neighbour with," if only we would be -neighbours.</p> - -<p>Presently, as if it knew that it belonged there, the sunset came, a -thing of wings and doors ajar. Then Miggy fastened the leaves in Little -Child's hair and led her down to dance on the broad, flat stone which is -an instrument of music. Above the friendly murmur of the shallows the -little elf child seemed beckoning to us others of the human voices on -the shore. And in that fair light it was as if the river were some clear -highway, leading from Friendship Village to Splendour Town, where -together we might all find our way.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Friendship Village Love Stories, by Zona Gale - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES *** - -***** This file should be named 54676-h.htm or 54676-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/6/7/54676/ - -Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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