Univ. of Cilifornlt FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE BY ZONA GALE AUTHOR OF " THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETTARRE gorfc THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 All rights reserved Corvmcirr, 1908, v THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. &t up and electrotyped. * ublished October, 1908. Co EDITH, HARRIET, AND MUSA AND THE TWO FOR WHOM IT COMES TOO LATE GEORGIA AND HELEN THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED ?s n AUTHOR'S NOTE FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE is not known to me, nor are any of its people, save in the comradeship which I offer here. But I commend for occupancy a sweeter place. For us here the long Caledonia hills, the four rhythmic spans of the bridge, the nearer river, the island where the first birds build these teach our windows the quiet and the oppor- tunity of the " home town," among the " home people." To those who have such a bond to cherish I commend the little real home towns, their kindly, brooding companionship, their doors to an efficiency as intimate as that of fairy fingers. If there were shrines to these things, we would seek them. The urgency is to recognize shrines. PORTAGE, WISCONSIN, September, 1908. CERTAIN of the following chapters have appeared in The Outlook, The Broadway Magazine, The Delin- eator, Everybody's, and Harper s Monthly Magazine. Thanks are due to the editors for their courteous permission to reprint these chapters. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGB I. THE SIDE DOOR ...... I II. THE DEBUT la III. NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR . . .28 IV. COVERS FOR SEVEN . .... 43 V. THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME . 50 VI. STOCK . . . . . .68 VII. THE BIG WIND ...... 79 VIII. THE GRANDMA LADIES . . . . . 107 IX. NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH . . . .122 X. LONESOME I 137 XI. LONESOME II . . . . . .152 XII. OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY . . .165 XIII. TOP FLOOR BACK 183 XIV. AN EPILOGUE 208 XV. THE TEA PARTY . . . . . . 214 XVI. WHAT is THAT IN THINE HAND ? . . . 234 XVII. PUT ON THY BEAUTIFUL GARMENTS . . .256 XVIII. IN THE WILDERNESS A CEDAR . . .278 XIX. HERSELF ....... 295 XX. THE HIDINGS OF POWER . . . 307 Friendship Village THE SIDE DOOR IT is as if Friendship Village were to say : "There is no help for it. A telephone line, an- tique oak chairs, kitchen cabinets, a new doctor, and the like are upon us. But we shall be mediaeval directly we and our improvements. Really, we are so now, if you know how to look." And are we not so ? We are one long street, rambling from sun to sun, inheriting traits of the parent country roads which we unite. And we are cross streets, members of the same family, properly imitative, proving our ancestorship in a piimeval genius for trees, or bursting out in inexplicable weaknesses of Court-House, Engine-House, Town Hall, and Telephone Office. Ultimately our stock dwindles out in a slaughter-yard and a few detached houses of milkmen. The cemetery is delicately put behind us, under a hill. There is nothing mediaeval in all this, one would say. But then see how we wear our rue : 2 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE When one of us telephones, she will scrupulously ask for the number, not the name, for it says so at the top of every page. "Give me one-one," she will put it, with an impersonality as fine as if she were calling for four figures. And Central will answer : "Well, I just saw Mis' Holcomb go 'crost the street. I'll call you, if you want, when she comes back." Or, " I don't think you better ring the Helmans* just now. They were awake 'most all night with one o' Mis' Helman's attacks." Or, "Doctor June's invited to Mis' Sykes's for tea. Shall I give him to you there?" The telephone is modern enough. But in our use of it is there not a flavour as of an Elder Time, to be caught by Them of Many Years from Now ? And already we may catch this flavour, as our Britain great-great-lady grandmothers, and more, may have been conscious of the old fashion of sitting in bowers. If only they were conscious like that ! To be sure of it would be to touch their hands in the margins of the ballad books. Or we telephone to the Livery Barn and Boarding Stable for the little blacks, celebrated for their self-control in encounters with the Proudfits' motor- car. The stable-boy answers that the little blacks are at "the funeral." And after he has gone off to ask his employer what is in then, the employer, THE SIDE DOOR 3 who in his unofficial moments is our neighbour, our church choir bass, our landlord even, comes and tells us that, after all, we may have the little blacks, and he himself brings them round at once, the same little blacks that we meant all along. And when, quite naturally, we wonder at the boy's version, we learn : " Oh, why, the blacks was standin* just acrost the street, waitin' at the church door, hitched to the hearse. I took 'em out an' put in the bays. I says to myself: ' The corp won't care.' ' Someway the Proudfits' car and the stable telephone must themselves have slipped from modernity to old fashion before that incident shall quite come into its own. So it is with certain of our domestic ways. For example, Mis' Postmaster Sykes in Friendship Village every woman assumes for given name the employment of her husband has some fine modern china and much solid silver in extremely good taste, so much, indeed, that she is wont to confess to hav- ing cleaned forty, or sixty, or seventy-five pieces "seventy-five pieces of solid silver have I cleaned this morning. You can say what you want to, nice things are a rill care." Yet surely this is the proper conjunction Mis' Sykes is currently reported to rise in the night preceding the days of her house cleaning, and to take her carpets out in the back yard, and there softly to sweep and sweep 4 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE them so that, at their official cleaning next day, the neighbours may witness how little dirt is whipped out on the line. Ought she not to have old-fashioned silver and egg-shell china and drop- leaf mahogany to fit the practice ? Instead of daisy and wild-rose patterns in "solid," and art curtains, and mission chairs, and a white-enamelled refrigerator, and a gas range. We have the latest funeral equipment, black broadcloth-covered supports, a coffin carriage for up-and-down the aisles, natural palms to order, and the pulleys to "let them down slow"; and yet our individual funeral capacity has been such that we can tell what every woman who has died in Friendship for years has " done without " : Mis' Grocer Stew, her of all folks, had done without new-style flat-irons; Mis' Worth had used the bread pan to wash dishes in; Mis' Jeweller Sprague the first Mis' Sprague had had only six bread and butter knives, her that could get wholesale too. . . . And we have little maid-servants who answer our bells in caps and trays, so to say; but this savour of jestership is authentic, for any one of them is likely to do as of late did Mis' Holcomb- that-was-Mame Bliss's maid, answer, at dinner- with-guests, that there were no more mashed pota- toes, "or else, there won't be any left to warm up for your breakfasts." . . . And though we have THE SIDE DOOR 5 our daily newspaper, receiving Associated Press service, yet, as Mis' Amanda Toplady observed, it is "only very lately that they have mentioned in the Daily the birth of a child, or anything that had anything of a tang to it." We put new wine in old bottles, but also we use new bottles to hold our old wine. For, consider the name of our main street: is this Main or Clark or Cook or Grand Street, according to the register of the main streets of towns ? Instead, for its half- mile of village life, the Plank Road, macadamized and arc-lighted, is called Daphne Street. Daphne Street! I love to wonder why. Did our dear Doctor June's father name it when he set the five hundred elms and oaks which glorify us ? Or did Daphne herself take this way on the day of her flight, so that when they came to draught the town, they recognized that it was Daphne Street, and so were spared the trouble of naming it ? Or did the Future anonymously toss us back the suggestion, thrifty of some day of her own when she might remember us and say, "Daphne Street!" Already some of us smile wL a secret nod at something when we direct a stranger, "You will find the Telegraph and Cable Office two blocks down, on Daphne Street." "The Commercial Travellers' House, the Abigail Arnold Home Bakery, the Post- office and Armoury are in the same block on Daphne 6 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Street." Or, "The Electric Light Office is at the corner of Dunn and Daphne." It is not wonderful that Daphne herself, foreseeing these things, did not stay, but lifted her laurels somewhat nearer Tempe, although there are those of us who like to fancy that she is here all the time in our Daphne- street magic: the fire bell, the tulip beds, and the twilight bonfires. For how else, in all reason, has the name persisted ? Of late a new doctor has appeared one may say, has abounded : a surgeon who, such is his zeal, will almost perform an operation over the telephone and, we have come somewhat cynically to believe, would prefer doing so to not operating at all. As Calliope Marsh puts it: "He is great on operations, that little doctor. Let him go into any house, an' some o* the family, seems though, has to be operated on, usually inside o* twelve hours. It'll get so that as soon as he strikes the front porch, they'll commence sterilizin* water. I donno but some'll go an* put on the tea- kettle if they even see him drive past." Why within twelve hour #e wonder when we hear the edict ? Why never fourteen hours, or six ? How does it happen that no matter at what stage of the malady the new doctor is called, the patient always has to be operated on within twelve hours ? Is it that everybody has a bunch and goes about THE SIDE DOOR 7 not knowing it until he appears ? Or is he a kind of basanite for bunches, and do they come out on us at the sight of him ? There are those of us who al- most hesitate to take his hand, fearing that he will fix us with his eye, point somewhere about, and tell us, "Within twelve hours, // you want your life your own." But in spite of his skill and his modernity, in our midst there persist those who, in a scientific night, would die rather than risk our advantages. Thus the New shoulders the Old, and our transi- tion is still swift enough to be a spectacle, as was its earlier phase which gave over our Middle West to cabins and plough horses, with a tendency away from wigwams and bob-whites. And in this local warfare between Old and New a chief figure is Calliope Marsh who just said that about the new doctor. She is a little rosy wrinkled creature officially though no other than officially per- taining to sixty years; mender of lace, seller of extracts, and music teacher, but of the three she thinks of the last as her true vocation. ("I come honestly by that," she says. "You know my father before me was rill musical. I was babtized Calliope because a circus with one come through the town <-he day't I was born.") And with her, too, the grafting of to-morrow upon yesterday is uncon- scious; or only momentarily conscious, as when she phrased it: 8 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Land, land, I like New as well as anybody. But I want it should be put in the Old kind o' gentle, like an /-dee in your mind, an' not sudden, like a bullet in your brain." In her acceptance of innovations Calliope symbol- izes the fine Friendship tendency to scientific pro- cedure, to the penetration of the unknown through the known, the explication of mystery by natural law. And when to the bright-figured paper and pictures of her little sitting room she had added a print of the Mona Lisa, she observed : "She sort o' lifts me up, like somethin' I've thought of, myself. But I don't see any sense in raisin' a question about what her smile means. I told the agent so. 'Whenever I set for my photograph,' I says to him, ' I always have that same silly smile on my face." With us all the Friendship idea prevails: we accept what Progress sends, but we regard it in our own fashion. Our improvements, like our enter- tainments, our funerals, our holidays, and our very loves, are but Friendship Village exponents of the modern spirit. Perhaps, in a tenderer significance than she meant, Calliope characterized us when she said : "This town is more like a back door than a front or, givin' it full credit, anyhow, it's no more'n a side door, with no vines." THE SIDE DOOR q For indeed, we are a kind of middle door to experience, minus the fuss of official arriving and, too, without the old odours of the kitchen savoury beds; but having, instead, a serene side-door existence, partaking of both electric bells and of neighbours with shawls pinned over their heads. Only at one point Calliope was wrong. There are vines, with tendrils and flowers and many birds. 11 THE DEBUT MRS. RICKER, "washens, scrubben, work by the day or Our," as the sign of her own lettering announced, had come into a little fortune by the death of her first husband, Al Kitton, early divorced and late repentant. Just before my arrival in Friendship she had bought a respectable frame house in the heart of the village, - for a village will have a heart instead of having a boulevard, and with her daughter Emerel she had set up a modest establishment with Ingrain carpets and parlour pieces, and a bit of grass in front. Thus Emerel Kitton we, in our simple, penultimate way, called it Kitten became a kind of heiress. She had been christened Emma Ella, but her mother, of her love of order, had tidied the name to Emerel, and Friendship had adopted the form, perhaps as having about it something pleasing and jewel-like. Though Emerel was in the thirties at the time of her inheritance, she was still pretty, shy, conformable; 10 THE DEBUT II and yet there was no disguising that she was nearly a spinster when, as soon as the white house was settled, Mrs. Ricker issued invitations to her daughter's coming-out party. You aRe Invite to A Comen Out Recep Next wenesday Night at eigt At Her Home EMMA ELLA KITTON MRS. RICKER AND KITTON Pa the invitations said, and the "Pa" was divined to imply "Please answer/' "It's Kitton's money an' it's his daughter. I hed to hev him in it somehow," Mrs. Ricker explained her double signature. "You see," she added, " up till now I ain't never been situate' so's Emerel could come out. I've always wanted to give her things, too, but 't seems like when I've tried, everything's shook its fist at me. It ain't too late. Emerel looks just like she did fifteen years ago, don't she?" It was at once observed that if Emerel shared her mother's enthusiasm for the project, she did not betray it. But then no one knew much about Emerel save that she was engaged, and had been 12 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE so for some years, to big Abe Daniel, the Methodist tenor, a circumstance wholly unconsidered in the scheme of her debut. Quite simply and with happy pride, Mrs. Ricker and Kitton issued her invitations to every one in the village who had ever employed her. And the village was divided against itself. " How can we ?" Mis' Postmaster Sykes demanded, "I ask you. There's things to omit an* there's things to observe. We should be The Laughing Stock." "The Laughing Stock," variously echoed her followers. On the other hand : "Land, o' course we'll all go," Mis' Amanda Toplady comfortably settled it, "an' take Emerel a deboo present, civilized. The dear child." And to that many of us gladly assented, Timothy, big Amanda's little husband, going so far as to add : "I do vum, the Sykeses feels the post-office like it was that much oats." A day later Timothy's opinion seemed, he thought, to be verified. Mis' Postmaster Sykes issued "written invites to an evening party, hot supper and like that," as Friendship communicated it, to be given on the very night of Emerel's debut. Friendship was shaken. Never in the history of the village had two social affairs been set for the THE DEBUT 13 same hour. Indeed, more than one hostess had postponed an impending tea-party or thimble party or "afternoon coffee" or "five o'clock supper" on hearing that another was planned for the same day. And now, when there were those of us anx- ious to "do something nice" for hard-working little Mrs. Ricker, the Sykeses had deliberately sought the forbidden ground. And Society dare not deny Mis' Sykes, for besides "being who she was" ("She's the leader in Friendship if they is a leader," we said, emphatically implying that there was none), she kept two maids, little young thing and a rill hired girl, entertained " above the most," put out her sewing and wore, we kept in the back of our minds, a bar pin, solid, with "four solitaires" in it. And, "Oh, you know," Calliope Marsh admitted to me later/" Mis' Sykes is rilly a great society woman. They isn't any- body's funeral that she don't get to ride to the cemet'ry."^ Mrs. Ricker and Kitton accepted the situation with fine philosophy. "Of course," she said, "the whole town can dance to the Sykeses' fiddlin' if they want. But it's a pretty pass if they do let anybody step in before me that's washed for 'em an'cleaned their houses years on end." My own course was pleasantly simple. Mrs. Ricker and Kitton had included me on her list, 14 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE accredited, no doubt, because a few weeks earlier she had helped me to settle my belongings in Old- moxon house, and since then had twice swept for me, and was to come in a day or two to do so again. As I had instantly accepted her invitation, I had no choice when Mis' Sykes's "written invite " came, even though when it arrived Mis' Sykes herself was calling on me. "Well said," she observed, when she saw a neigh- bour's little girl, her temporary servitor, coming up my walk with the invitations in a paper bag to be kept clean, "I meant to get my call made on you before your invite got here. I hope you'll overlook taking us both together. I've meant to call on you before, but I declare it looked like a mountain to me to get started out. Don't you find your calls a rill chore?" But Mis' Sykes's visit was, she confessed, "Errand as well as Call." "The Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Im- provement Sodality," she told me, as she rose to go, " is to our wits' end to get up a new entertainment. We want to give something, and we want it should be rill new and spicey, but of course it has to be pretty quiet, owing to the Cause the Dead, so. It bars us from home-talent evenings or festivals or like that. And the minute I saw the inside o* your house it come to me: of course you know THE DEBUT 15 your house is differ'nt from Friendship. If I'd been shot out of a gun into it, I wouldn't V sensed I was in Friendship at all. You've got nice things, all carved an' hard to dust. The Oldmoxons use' to do a lot o' entertainin', an' everybody remem- bers it, an' the house has been shut quite some time. Well, now, you've been ask' to join the Sodality. An' if you was to announce an Evening Benefit for it, here in your home, the whole town'd come out to it hot- foot. We're owin' Zittelhof on Eph Cadoza's coffin yet, an' I shouldn't wonder an' that one evening would pay him all off and, same time, get you rill well acquainted. Don't you think it's a nice /-dea ? " As I had come to Friendship chiefly to get away from everywhere, I thought that I had never heard such a bad plan. But inasmuch as I was obliged to refuse outright one invitation of my visitor's, about the other I weakly temporized and promised to let her know. And she went away, deploring my hasty acceptance of Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, although, "How could you tell?" she strove to excuse me. " A person coming to a strange town so, of course they accept all their invitations good faith. And then her signing her name that way might mislead you. It gives a rill sensation of a hyphen. But still, the spelling after all you'd ought " 16 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE She looked at me with tardy suspicion. "Some geniuses can't spell very well, you know," I defended my discrimination. "That's so," she admitted brightly; "I see you're literary." The next morning the other principal, Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, arrived to keep her engagement with me. She was a little woman, suggesting wire, which gave and sprang when she moved, and paper, which crackled when she laughed. Her speech was all independence, confidence, self-possession; but in her silences I have seldom seen so wistful a face as hers. In response to my question : "Oh," Mrs. Ricker and Kitton said brightly, "everything's goin' fine. I s'pose the town's still decidin' between us, but up to now I ain't had but one regrets that can't come that's Mis' Stew. She wrote it was on account o' domestic affliction, an' I hadn't heard what, so I went right down. 'Seems nobody had died she ain't much of any family, anyway. But she'd wrote her letter out of a letter book, an' the only one she could find regrettin' an invite give domestic affliction for the reason. She said she didn't know a letter like that hed to be true, an' I don't know as it does, either." She stood silent for a moment, searching my face. "Look-a-here," she said; "they's somethin' I THE DEBUT 17 thought of. Mebbe you've heard of it bein' done in the City somewheres. Do you s'pose folks'd be willin' to send Emerel's an' my funeral flowers to the comin' out party Instead? 9 ' "Funeral . . . ?" I doubted. "Grave flowers," she explained. "You know, they're a perfect waste so far's the General Dead is concerned. An' land knows, the fam'ly don't sense 'em much more. Anyway, Emerel an' I ain't got any fam'ly. An' if folks'd be willin' to send us what flowers they would send us if we died now, then they'd do us some good. We'll never want 'em more'n we do now, dead or alive. 'Least, I won't. Emerel, she don't seem to care. But do you think it'd be all right if I was to mention it out around ?" My desire to have this happen I did my best not to confuse with a disinterested opinion. But indeed Mrs. Ricker and Kitton was seldom in need of an opinion, as was proved that night by the appearance of this notice in the Friendship Daily: All that would give flowers when dead please send same anyhow and not expected to send same if we do die afterwards. MRS. RICKER AND KITTON. All of Friendship society which intended to accept Mis' Sykes's invitation hastened with re- i8 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE lieved eagerness to follow with flowers its regiets to the " comen out recep." For every one was genu- inely attached to the little laundress and interested in her welfare up to the point of sacrificing social interests in the eyes of the Sykeses. Friend- ship gardens were rich with Autumn, cosmos and salvia and opulent asters, and on the morning of the two parties this store of sweetness was rifled for the debutante. By noon Mrs. Ricker and Kitton was saying in awe, "Nobody in Friend- ship ever had this many flowers, dead, or alive, or rich." And although some of us grieved that Mis' Postmaster Sykes had shown what she named her good-will by ordering from the town a pillow of white carnations (but with no "wording"), Mrs. Ricker and Kitton received even this sug- gestive token with simple-hearted delight. "It'll look lovely on the lamp shelf," she ob- served. "I've often planned how nice my parlour'd trim up for a funeral." In the preparation for the two events, the one unconcerned and unconsulted appeared to be the debutante herself. We never said " Emerel's party" ; we all said "Mis' Ricker's party." We knew that Mrs. Ricker and Kitton was putting painstaking care on Emerel's coming-out dress, which was to be a surprise, but otherwise Emerel was seldom even mentioned in connection with her debut. And THE DEBUT 19 whenever we saw her, it was as Friendship had seen her for two years, walking quietly with Abe Daniel, her betrothed. "It's doin' things kind o* backwards," Calliope Marsh said, "engaged first an' comin' out in society afterwards. But I donno as it's any more back- wards than ridin' to the cemet'ry feet first. What's what all depends on what you agree on for What. If it ain't your soul you mean about," she added cryptically. The Topladys and others of us who united to uphold Emerel, and especially to uphold Emerel's mother, could not but realize that the majority of Friendship society had regretted to decline the debut party, and had been pleased to accept the hospitality of the Postmaster Sykeses. I dare say that this may have been partly why, in the usual self-indulgence of challenge, I put on my prettiest frock for the party and prepared to set out some- what early, hoping for the amusement of sharing in the finishing touches. But as I was leaving my house Calliope Marsh arrived, buttoned tightly in her best gray henrietta, her cheeks hot with some intense excitement. "Well," she said without preface, "they've done it. Emerel Kitton's married. She's just married Abe at the parsonage to get out o' bein* debooed. They've gone to take the train now." 20 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE No one could fail to see what this would mean to Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, and, rather than the newly married Emerel, it was she who absorbed our speculation. "Mis' Ricker just slimpsed," Calliope told me. " I says to her : ' Look here, Mis' Ricker, don't you go givin' in. Your kitchen's a sight with the good things o' your hand think o' that,' I told her; 'think how you mortgaged your very funeral for to-night, an' brace yourself up/ An' she says, awful pitiful: 'I cant, Calliope,' she says. T seems like this slips the pins right out. They ain't nothin' to deboo with now, anyway,' she told me. 'How can I?'" "Oh, poor Mrs. Ricker!" I exclaimed. Calliope looked at me intently. "Well," she said, "that's what I run in about. You're a stranger just fresh come here. You ain't met folks much yet. An' Mis' Sykes, she's just crazy to get a-hold o' you an' your house for the Sodality. An' the only thing I could think of for Mis' Ricker well, would you stand up with Mis' Ricker to-night an' shake all their hands ? An' sort o' leave her deboo for you, you might say ?" I think that I loved Calliope for this even before she understood my assent. But she added some- thing which puzzled me. "If I was you," she observed, "I'd do somethin' THE DEBUT 21 else to-night, too. You could do it or I could do it for you. You don't expect to let Mis' Sykes hev the Sodality here, do you?" "I might have had it here," I said impulsively, " if she had not done this to poor little Mrs. Ricker." "Would would you give me the lief to say that?" Calliope asked demurely. I had no objection in the world to any one know- ing my opinion of Mis' Postmaster Sykes's proceed- ing, "one of her preposterousnesses," Calliope called it, and I said so, and set off for Mrs. Ricker's, while Calliope herself flew somewhere else on some last mission. And, "Mis' Sykes'd ought to be showed," she called to me over-shoulder. "That woman's got a sinful pride. She'd wear fur in August to prove she could afford to hev moths !" The Ricker parlour was a garden which sloped gently, as a garden should, for the house was old and the parlour floor sagged toward the entrance so that the front of the organ was propped on wooden blocks. The room was bedizened with flowers, in dishes, tins, and gallon jars, so that it seemed some way an alien thing, like a prune horse. On the lamp shelf was the huge white carnation pillow, across which the hostess had inscribed "welcom," in stems. Within ten minutes of the appointed hour all those who had been pleased to accept were in the 22 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE rooms, and Mrs. Ricker and Kitton and I, standing among the funeral flowers, received the guests while Calliope, hovering at the door, gave the key with : " Ain't you heard ? Emerel's a bride instead of a debbytant. Ain't it a rill joke ? Married to-night an* we're here to celebrate. Throw off your things." Then she hopelessly involved them in a presentation to me, and between us we con- trived to elide Mrs. Ricker and Kitton from all save her perfunctory office, until her voice and lips ceased their trembling. Poor little hostess, in her starched lawn which had seemed to her adequate for her unpretentious role of mother ! All her hu- mour and independence and self-possession had left her, and in their stea-d, on what was to have been her great night, had settled only the immemorial wistfulness. Although I did not then foresee it, the guests that evening were destined to point me to many meanings, like sketches in the note-book of a patient Pen. I aie fond of remembering them as I saw them first: fche Topladys, that great Mis' Amanda, ponderous, majestic, and suggesting black grosgrain, her bearding way of whole-hearted ap- proval not quite masking the critical, house-wife glances which she continually cast; and little Timothy, her husband, who, in company, went quite out of his head and could think of nothing THE DEBUT 23 to say save " Blisterin' Benson, what I think is this : ain't everything movin' off nice?" Dear Doctor June, pastor emeritus of Friendship, since he was so identified with all the village interests that not many could tell from what church he had retired. (At each of the three Friendship churches he rented a pew, and contributed impartially to their benefi- cences; and, "seems to me the Lord would of," he sometimes apologized for this.) Photographer Jimmy Sturgis, who stood about with one eye shut, and who drove the 'bus, took charge of the mail- bags, conducted a photograph gallery, and painted portraits. ("The Dead From Photos a specialty," was tacked on the risers of the stairs leading to his studio.) And Mis' Photographer Sturgis, who was an invalid and "very, very seldom got out." (Not, I was to learn, an invalid because of ill health, but by nature. She was an invalid as other people are blond or brunette, and no more to be said about it.) Miss Liddy Ember, the village seam- stress, and her beautiful sister Ellen, who was "not quite right," and whom - Miss Liddy took about and treated like a child until the times when Ellen "come herself again," and tMen she quite over- shadowed in personality little busy Miss Liddy. Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Eppleby Holcomb, and the "Other" Holcombs; Mis' Doctor Helman, the Gekerjecks, who " kept the drug store," 24 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE and scented the world with musk and essences. ("Musk on one handkerchief and some kind o' flower scent on your other one," Mis' Gekerjeck was wont to say, "then you can suit everybody, say who who will.") --These and the others Mrs. Ricker and Kitton and I received, standing before the white carnation pillow. And I, who had come to Friendship to get away from everywhere, found myself the one to whom they did honour, as they were to have honoured Emerel. When the hour for supper came, Mrs. Ricker and Kitton excused herself because she must "see to gettin' it on to the plates," and Mis' Toplady, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Calliope, and I "handed." We had all lent silver and dishes indeed, save at Mis' Sykes's (and of course at the Proudfits' of Proudfit estate), there is rarely a Friend- ship party at which the pantries of the guests are not represented, an arrangement seeming almost to hold in anticipation certain social and political ideals. (If the telephone yields us an invitation from those whom we know best, we always answer: "Thank you. I will. What do you want me to send over?" Is there such a matter-of-course federation on any boulevard ?) And after the guests had been served and the talk had been re- sumed, we four who had "handed" sat down, with Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, at meat, at a corner of the kitchen table. THE DEBUT 25 "Everything tastes like so much chips to me when I hev company, anyhow," the hostess said sadly, "but to-night it's got the regular salt-pork taste. When I'm nervous or got delegates or comin* down with anything, I always taste salt pork/' "Well, everything's all of a whirl to me," Calliope confessed, "an' I should think your brains, Mis' Ricker, 'd be fair rarin' 'round in your head." "Who didn't eat what?" Mrs. Ricker and Kitton asked listlessly. "I meant to keep track when the plates come out, but I didn't. Did they all take a-hold rill good?" "They wa'n't any mincin' 't/ see," Mis'Holcomb- that-was-Mame-Bliss assured her. " Everything you had was lovely, an' everybody made 'way with all they got." W T e might have kept indefinitely on at these fasci- nating comparisons, but some unaccountable stir and bustle and rise of talk in the other rooms persuaded our attention. ("Can they be goin' home?" cried that great Mis' Amanda Toplady. "If they are, I'll go bail Timothy Toplady started it." And, " I bet they've broke the finger bowl," Mrs. Ricker and Kitton prophesied darkly.) And then we all went in to see what had happened, but it was what none of us could possibly have forecast : Crowding in the parlour, overflowing into the sitting room, 26 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE still entering from the porch, were Postmaster and Mis' Postmaster Sykes and all their guests. It was quite as if Wishes had gathered head and spirited them there. I remember the white little face of Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, luminously gratified to the point of triumph; and Mis' Sykes's brisk and cordial "No reason why we shouldn't go to two receptions in an evening, like they do in the City, Mis' Ricker, is they?" And the aplomb of the hostess's self-respecting, corrective "An Kitton. 'Count of Al bein' so thoughtful in death." And then to my amazement Mis' Postmaster Sykes turned to me and held out both hands. "I am so glad" she said, almost in the rhythm of certain exhausts, "that you've decided to hev Sodality at your house. You must just let me take a-hold of it for you and run it. And I'm going to propose your name the very next meeting we hev, can't I?" I walked home with Calliope when we had left Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, tired but triumphant. ("Land," the hostess said, "now it's turned out so nice, I donno but I'm rill pleased Emerel's married. I'd hate to think o' borrowin' all them things over again for a weddin'.") And in the dark street Calliope said to me : "You see what I done, I guess. I told you Mis' THE DEBUT 27 Sykes was regular up-in-arms about usin' your house though I think the rill reason is she wants to get upstairs in it. You know how some are. So I marched myself up there before the party, an* I told her you wasn't goin' to hev Sodality sole because you thought she'd been so mean to Mis' Ricker. An' I give her to understand sharp off 't she'd better do what she did do if she wanted you in the Sodality at all. 'An',' s'l, < I donno what she'll think o' you anyway, not knowin' enough to go to two companies in one evenin', like the City, even if one is your own.' She see reason. You know, Mis' Sykes an' I are kind o' connections, but you can make even your relations see sense if you go at 'em right. I donno," Calliope ended doubtfully, "but I done wrong. An' yet I feel good friends with my backbone too, like I'd done right!" And it was so that having come to Friendship Village to get away from everywhere, I yet found myself abruptly launched in its society, committed to its Sodality, and, best of all, friends with Calliope Marsh. Ill NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR Two days before Thanksgiving the air was already filled with white turkey feathers, and I stood at a window and watched until the loneliness of my still house seemed like something pointing a mocking finger at me. When I could bear it no longer I went out in the snow, and through the soft drifts I fought my way up the Plank Road toward the village. I had almost passed the little bundled figure before I recognized Calliope. She was walking in the middle of the road, as in Friendship we all walk in winter; and neither of us had umbrellas. I think that I distrust people who put up umbrellas on a country road in a fall of friendly flakes. Instead of inquiring perfunctorily how I did, she greeted me with a fragment of what she had been thinking which is always as if one were to open a door of his mind to you instead of signing you greeting from a closed window. NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 29 "I just been tellin' myself," she looked up to say without preface, "that if I could see one more good old-fashion* Thanksgivin', life'd sort o' smooth out. An* land knows, it needs some smoothin* out for me." With this I remember that it was as if my own loneliness spoke for me. At my reply Calliope looked at me quickly as if I, too, had opened a door. "Sometimes Thanksgivin' is some like seein' the sun shine when you're feelin' rill rainy yourself," she said thoughtfully. She held out her blue-mittened hand and let the flakes fall on it in stars and coronets. "I wonder," she asked evenly, "if you'd help me get up a Thanksgivin' dinner for a few poor sick folks here in Friendship?" In order to keep my self-respect, I recall that I was as ungracious as possible. I think I said that the day meant so little to me that I was willing to do anything to avoid spending it alone. A state- ment which seems to me now not to bristle with logic. "That's nice of you," Calliope replied genially. Then she hesitated, looking down Daphne Street, which the Plank Road had become, toward certain white houses. There were the homes of Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame- 30 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Bliss, and the Liberty sisters, all substantia, dignified houses, typical of the simple prosperity of the countryside. "The only trouble," she added simply, "is that in Friendship I don't know of a soul rill sick, nor a soul what you might call poor." At this I laughed, unwillingly enough. Dear Cal- liope ! Here indeed was a drawback to her project. "Honestly," she said reflectively, "Friendship can't seem to do anything like any other town. When the new minister come here, he give out he was goin' to do settlement work. An' his second week in the place he come to me with a reg'lar hang-dog look. ' What kind of a town is this ?' he says to me, disgusted. 'They ain't nobody sick in it an' they ain't nobody poor!' I guess he could 'a' got along without the poor most of us can. But we mostly like to hev a few sick to carry the flowers off our house plants to, an' now an' then a tumbler o' jell. An' yet I've known weeks at a time when they wasn't a soul rill flat down sick in Friendship. It's so now. An' that's hard, when you're young an' enthusiastic, like the minister." "But where are you going to find your guests then, Calliope?" I asked curiously. "Well," she said brightly, "I was just plannin* as you come up with me. An' I says to myself: ' God give me to live in a little bit of a place where NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 31 we've all got enough to get along on, an* Thanks- givin' finds us all in health. It looks like He'd afflicted us by lettin' us hev nobody to do for/ An* then it come to me that if we was to get up the dinner, with all the misery an' hunger they is in the world, God in His goodness would let some of it come our way to be fed. 'In the wilderness a cedar,' you know as Liddy Ember an' I was always tellin' each other when we kep' shop to- gether. An' so to-day I said to myself I'd go to work an' get up the dinner an' trust there'd be eaters for it." "Why, Calliope," I said, "Calliope!" "I ain't got much to do with, myself," she added apologetically; "the most I've got in my sullar, I guess, is a gallon jar o' watermelon pickles. I could give that. You don't think it sounds irreverent connectin' God with a big dinner, so?" she asked anxiously. And, at my reply : "Well, then," she said briskly, "let's step in an' see a few folks that might be able to tell us of some- body to do for. Let's ask Mis' Mayor Uppers an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, an' the Liberty girls." Because I was lonely and idle, and because I dreaded inexpressibly going back to my still house, I went with her. Her ways were a kind of enter- 32 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE tainment, and I remember that I believed my leisure to be infinite. We turned first toward the big shuttered house of Mis' Mayor Uppers, to whom, although her husband had been a year ago removed from office, discredited, and had not since been seen in Friend- ship, we yet gave her old proud title, as if she had been Former Lady Mayoress. For the present mayor, Authority Hubblethwaite, was, as Calliope said, "unconnect'." I watched Mis' Uppers in some curiosity while Calliope explained that she was planning a dinner for the poor and sick, "the lame and the sick that's comfortable enough off to eat," and could she suggest some poor and sick to ask ? Mis' Uppers was like a vinegar cruet of mine, slim and tall, with a little grotesquely puckered face for a stopper, as if the whole known world were sour. "I'm sure," she said humbly, "it's a nice i-dea. But I declare, I'm put to it to suggest. We ain't got nobody sick nor nobody poor in Friendship, you know." " Don't you know of anybody kind o' hard up ? Or somebody that, if they ain't down sick, feels sort o' spindlin'?" Calliope asked anxiously. Mis' Uppers thought, rocking a little and running a pin in and out of a fold of her skirt. "No," she said at length, "I don't know a soul. NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 33 I think the church'd give a good deal if a real poor family'd come here to do for. Since the Cadozas went, we ain't known which way to look for poor. Mis' Ricker gettin' her fortune so puts her beyond the wolf. An' Peleg Bemus, you can't get him to take anything. No, I don't know of anybody real decently poor." "An' nobody sick?" Calliope pressed her wist- fully. "Well, there's Mis' Crawford," admitted Mis' Uppers; "she had a spell o' lumbago two weeks ago, but I see her pass the house to-day. Mis' Brady was laid up with toothache, too, but the Daily last night said she'd had it out. An' Mis' Doctor Helman did have one o' her stomach attacks this week, an' Elzabella got out her dyin' dishes an' her dyin' linen from the still-room you know how Mis' Doctor always brings out her nice things when she's sick, so't if she should die an' the neighbours come in, it'd all be shipshape. But she got better this time an' helped put 'em back. I declare it's hard to get up anything in the charity line here." Calliope sat smiling a little, and I knew that it was because of her secret certainty that "some o' the hunger" would come her way, to be fed. "I can't help thinkin'," she said quietly, "that we'll find somebody. An' I tell you what: if we do, can I count on you to help some?" 34 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Mis' Mayor Uppers flushed with quick pleasure. "Me, Calliope?" she said. And I remembered that they had told me how the Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality had been unable to tempt Mis' Uppers to a single meeting since the mayor ran away. "Oh, but I couldn't though," she said wistfully. "No need to go to the table if you don't want," Calliope told her. " Just bake up somethin' for us an' bring it over. Make a couple o' your cherry pies - did you get hold of any cherries to put up this year ? Well, a couple o' your cherry pies an' a batch o* your nice drop sponge cakes," she directed. "Could you?" Mis' Mayor Uppers looked up with a kind of light in her eyes. " Why, yes," she said, " I could, I guess. I'll bake 'em Thanksgivin' mornin'. I I was wonderin' how I'd put in the day." When we stepped out in the snow again, Calliope's face was shining. Sometimes now, when my faith is weak in any good thing, I remember her look that November morning. But all that I thought then was how I was being entertained that lonely day. The dear Liberty sisters were next, Lucy and Viny and Libbie Liberty. We went to the side door, there were houses in Friendship whose front doors we tacitly understood that we were never ex- NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 35 pected to use, and we found the sisters down cellar, with shawls over their heads, feeding their hens through the cellar window, opening on the glassed-in coop under the porch. In Friendship it is a point of etiquette for a morn- ing caller never to interrupt the employment of a hostess. So we obeyed the summons of the Liberty sisters to "come right down"; and we sat on a firkin and an inverted tub while Calliope told her plan and the hens fought for delectable morsels. "My grief!" said Libbie Liberty, tartly, "where you goin' to get your sick an' poor?" Mis' Viny, balancing on the window ledge to reach for eggs, looked back at us. "Friendship's so comfortable that way," she said, "I don't see how you can get up much of anything." And little Miss Lucy, kneeling on the floor of the cellar to measure more feed, said without looking up: "You know, since mother died we ain't never done anything for holidays. No we can't seem to want to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas or like that." They all turned their grave lined faces toward us. "We want to let the holidays just slip by without noticin'," Miss Viny told us. "Seems like it hurts less that way." Libbie Liberty smiled wanly. 36 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE " Don't you know," she said, "when you hold your hand still in hot water, you don't feel how hot the water really is ? But when you move around in it some, it begins to burn you. Well, when we let Thanksgiving an' Christmas alone, it ain't so bad. But when we start to move around in 'em " Her voice faltered and stopped. "We miss mother terrible," Miss Lucy said simply. Calliope put her blue mitten to her mouth, but her eyes she might not hide, and they were soft with sympathy. " I know I know," she said. " I remember the first Christmas after my mother died I ached like the toothache all over me, an' I couldn't bear to open my presents. Nor the next year I couldn't either I couldn't open my presents with any heart. But- Calliope hesitated, "that second year," she said, "I found somethin' I could do. I saw I could fix up little things for other folks an' take some comfort in it. Like mother would of." She was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the three lonely figures in the dark cellar of their house. "Your mother," she said abruptly, "stuffed the turkey for a year ago the last harvest home." "Yes," they said. "Look here," said Calliope; "if I can get some poor folks together, or even one poor folk, or NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 37 hungry, will you three come over to my house an' stuff the turkey ? The way I can't help thinkin* the way your mother would of, if she'd been here. An' then," Calliope went on briskly, "could you bring some fresh eggs an' make a pan o' custard ov"" to my house ? An' mebbe one o' you'd stir up a sunshine cake. You must know how to make your mother's sunshine cake?" There was another silence in the cellar when Calliope had done, and for a minute I wondered if, after all, she had not failed, and if the bleeding of the three hearts might be so stanched. It was not self-reliant Libbie Liberty who spoke first; it was gentle Miss Lucy. "I guess," she said, "I could, if we all do it. I know mother would of." "Yes," Miss Viny nodded, "mother would of." Libbie Liberty stood for a moment with com- pressed lips. "It seems like not payin' respect to mother," she began; and then shook her head. "It ain't that," she said; "it's only missin' her when we begin to step around the kitchen, bakin' up for a holiday." " I know I know," Calliope said again. "That's why I said for you to come over in my kitchen. You come over there an' stir up the sunshine cake, too, an' bake it in my oven, so's we can hev it et hot. Will you do that?" 38 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE And after a little time they consented. If Calliope found any sick or poor, they would do that. "We ain't gettin' many i-dees for guests," Calliope said, as we reached the street, "but we're gettin' helpers, anyway. An' some dinner, too." Then we went to the house of Mis' Holcomb-that- was-Mame-Bliss called so, of course, to distinguish her from the "Other" Holcombs. "Don't you be shocked at her," Calliope warned me, as we closed Mis' Holcomb's gate behind us; "she's dreadful diff'r'nt an' bitter since Abigail was married last month. She's got hold o' some kind of a Persian book, in a decorated cover, from the City; an' now she says your soul is like when you look in a lookin'-glass that there ain't really nothin' there. An' that the world's some wind an' the rest water, an' they ain't no God only your own breath oh, poor Mis' Holcomb!" said Calliope. "I guess she ain't rill balanced. But we ought to go to see her. We always consult Mis' Holcomb about everything." Poor Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss ! I can see her now in her comfortable dining room, where she sat cleaning her old silver, her thin, veined hands as fragile as her grandmother's spoons. "Of course, you don't know," she said, when Calliope had unfolded her plans, "how useless it all seems to me. What's the use I keep sayin' to NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 39 myself now'-days ; what's the use ? You put so much pains on something an' then it goes off an* leaves you. Mebbe it dies, an' everything's all wasted. There ain't anything to tie to. It's like lookin' in a glass all the while. It's seemin,' it ain't bein'. We ain't certain o' nothin' but our breath, an' when that goes, what hev you got ? What's the use o' plannin' Thanksgivin' for any- body?" "Well, if you're hungry, it's kind o' nice to get fed up," said Calliope, crisply. "Don't you know a soul that's hungry, Mame Bliss?" She shook her head. "No," she said, "I don't. Nor nobody sick in body." "Nobody sick in body," Calliope repeated ab- sently. "Soul-sick an' soul-hungry you can't feed up," Mis' Holcomb added. "I donno," said Calliope, thoughtfully, " I donno but you can." "No," Mis' Holcomb went on; "your soul's like yourself in the glass: they ain't anything there." "I donno," Calliope said again; "some mornin's when I wake up with the sun shinin' in, I can feel my soul in me just as plain as plain." Mis' Holcomb sighed. "Life looks dreadful footless to me," she said. 40 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Well," said Calliope, "sometimes life is some like hearin' firecrackers go off when you don't feel up to shootin' 'em yourself. When I'm like that, I always think if I'd go out an' buy a bunch or two, an' get somebody to give me a match, I could see more sense to things. Look here, Mame Bliss; if I get hold o' any folks to give the dinner for, will you help me some?" "Yes," Mis' Holcomb assented half-heartedly, "I'll help you. I ain't nobody much in family, now Abigail's done what she has. They's only Eppleby, an' he won't be home Thanksg'vin this year. So I ain't nothin' else to do." "That's the /-dee," said Calliope, heartily; "if everything's foolish, it's just as foolish doin' nothin' as doin' somethin'. Will you bring over a kettleful o' boiled potatoes to my house Thanksgivin' noon ? An' mash 'em an' whip 'em in my kitchen ? I'll hev the milk to put in. You you don't cook as much as some, do you, Mame?" Did Calliope ask her that purposely ? I am almost sure that she did. Mis' Holcomb's neck stiffened a little. "I guess I can cook a thing or two beside mash' potatoes," she said, and thought for a minute. "How'd you like a pan o' 'scalloped oysters an' some baked marcaroni with plenty o' cheese?" she de- manded. NOBODY SICK, NOBODY POOR 41 "Sounds like it'd go down awful easy," admitted Calliope, smiling. "It's just what we need to carry the dinner off full sail," she added earnestly. "Well, I ain't nothin' else to do an' I'll make 'em," Mis' Holcomb promised. "Only it beats me who you can find to do for. If you don't get anybody, let me know before I order the oysters." Calliope stood up, her little wrinkled face aglow; and I wondered at her confidence. "You just go ahead an' order your oysters," she said. "That dinner's goin' to come off Thanks- givin' noon at twelve o'clock. An' you be there to help feed the hungry, Mame." When we were on the street again, Calliope looked at me with her way of shy eagerness. "Could you hev the dinner up to your house," she asked me, "if I do every bit o' the work?" "Why, Calliope," I said, amazed at her persistence, "have it there, of course. But you haven't any guests yet." She nodded at me through the falling flakes. "You say you ain't got much to be thankful for," she said, "so I thought mebbe you'd put in the time that way. Don't you worry about folks to eat the dinner. I'll tell Mis' Holcomb an' the others to come to your house an' I'll get the food an' the folks. Don't you worry ! An' I'll bring my water- melon pickles an' a bowl o' cream for Mis' Holcomb's 42 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE potatoes, an* I'll furnish the turkey a big one. The rest of us'll get the dinner in your kitchen Thanksgivin' mornin'. My!" she said, "seems though life's smoothin' out fer me a'ready. Good- by it's 'most noon." She hurried up Daphne Street in the snow, and I turned toward my lonely house. But I remember that I was planning how I would make my table pretty, and how I would add a delicacy or two from the City for this strange holiday feast. And I found myself hurrying to look over certain long-disused linen and silver, and to see whether my Cloth-o'- Gold rose might be counted on to bloom by Thurs- day noon. IV COVERS FOR SEVEN "WE'LL set the table for seven folks," said Cal- liope, at my house on Thanksgiving morning. "Seven!" I echoed. "But where in the world did you ever find seven, Calliope?" " I found 'em," she answered. " I knew I could find hungry folks to do for if I tried, an' I found 'em. You'll see. I sha'n't say another word. They'll be here by twelve, sharp. Did the turkey come?" Yes, the turkey had come, and almost as she spoke the dear Liberty sisters arrived to dress and stuff it, and to make ready the pan of custard, and to "stir up" the sunshine cake. I could guess how the pleasant bustle in my kitchen would hurt them by its holiday air, and I carried them off to see my Cloth-o'-Gold rose which had opened in the night, to the very crimson heart of it. And I told them of the seven guests whom, after all, Calliope had actually contrived to marshal to her dinner. And in the midst of our almost gay speculation on this, they went at their share of the task. 43 44 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE The three moved about their offices gravely at first, Libbie Liberty keeping her back to us as she worked, Miss Viny scrupulously intent on the deli- cate clatter of the egg-beater, Miss Lucy with eyes downcast on the sage she rolled. I noted how Cal- liope made little excuses to pass near each of them, with now a touch of the hand and now a pat on a shoulder, and all the while she talked briskly of ways and means and recipes, and should there be onions in the dressing or should there not be ? We took a vote on this and were about to chop the onions in when Mis' Holcomb's little maid arrived at my kitchen door with a bowl of oysters which Mis' Holcomb had had left from the 'scallop, an' wouldn't we like 'em in the stuffin' ? Roast turkey stuffed with oysters ! I saw Libbie Liberty's eyes brighten so delightedly that I brought out a jar of seedless raisins and another of preserved cherries to add to the custard, and then a bag of sweet almonds to be blanched and split for the cake o' sunshine. Surely, one of us said, the seven guests could be preparing for their Thanksgiving dinner with no more zest than we were putting into that dinner for their sakes. "Seven guests !" we said over and again. "Calliope, how did you do it ? When everybody says there's nobody in Friendship that's either sick or poor?" "Nobody sick, nobody poor!" Calliope exclaimed, piling a dish with watermelon pickles. "Land, you COVERS FOR SEVEN 45 might think that was the town motto. Well, the town don't know everything. Don't you ask me so many questions." Before eleven o'clock Mis' Mayor Uppers tapped at my back door, with two deep-dish cherry pies in a basket, and a row of her delicate, feathery sponge cakes and a jar of pineapple and pie-plant preserves "to chink in." She drew a deep breath and stood looking about the kitchen. "Throw off your things an' help, Mis' Uppers," Calliope admonished her, one hand on the cellar door. "I'm just goin' down for some sweet po- tatoes Mis' Holcomb sent over this morning, an* you might get 'em ready, if you will. We ain't goin' to let you off now, spite of what you've done for us." So Mis' Mayor Uppers hung up her shawl and washed the sweet potatoes. And my kitchen was fragrant with spices and flavourings and an odorous oven, and there was no end of savoury business to be at. I found myself glad of the interest of these others in the day and glad of the stirring in my lonely house. Even if their bustle could not lessen my own loneliness, it was pleasant, I said to myself, to see them quicken with interest; and the whole affair entertained my infinite leisure. After all, I was not required to be thankful. I merely loaned my house, cosey in its glittering drifts of turkey feathers, and the day was no more and no less to 46 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE me than before, though I own that I did feel more than an amused interest in Calliope's guests. Whom, in Friendship, had she found "to do for," I detected myself speculating with real interest as in the dining room, with one and another to help me, I made ready my table. My prettiest dishes and silver, the Cloth-o'-Gold rose, and my yellow- shaded candles made little auxiliary welcomes. Whoever Calliope's guests were, we would do them honour and give them the best we had. And in the midst of all came from the City the box with my gift of hothouse fruit and a rosebud for every plate. "Calliope !" I cried, as I went back to the kitchen, "Calliope, it's nearly twelve now. Tell us who the guests are, or we won't finish dinner!" Calliope laughed and shook her head and opened the door for Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, who entered, followed by her little maid, both laden with good things. "I prepared for seven," Mis' Holcomb said. "That was the word you sent me but where you got your seven sick an' poor in Friendship beats me. I'll stay an' help for a while but to me it all seems like so much monkey work." We worked with a will that last half-hour, and the spirit of the kitchen came upon them all. I watched them, amused and pleased at Mis' Mayor Uppers's flushed anxiety over the sweet potatoes, at COVERS FOR SEVEN 47 Libbie Liberty furiously basting the turkey, and at Miss Lucy exclaiming with delight as she un- wrapped the rosebuds from their moss. But I think that Mis' Holcomb pleased me most, for with the utensils of housewifery in her hands she seemed utterly to have forgotten that there is no use in anything at all. This was not wonderful in the presence of such a feathery cream of mashed potatoes and such aromatic coffee as she made. There was something to tie to. Those were real, at any rate, and beyond all seeming. Just before twelve Calliope caught off her apron and pulled down her sleeves. "Now," she said, "I'm going to welcome the guests. I can can't I ?" she begged me. "Every- thing's all ready but putting on. I won't need to come out here again; when I ring the bell on the sideboard, dish it up an' bring it in, all together turkey ahead an' vegetables followin'. Mis' Hol- comb, you help 'em, won't you ? An' then you can leave if you want. Talk about an old-fashion' Thanksgivin'. My!" "Who has she got?" Libbie Liberty burst out, basting the turkey. "I declare, I'm nervous as a witch, I'm so curious ! " And then the clock struck twelve, and a minute after we heard Calliope tinkle a silvery summons on the call-bell. 48 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE I remember that it was Mis' Holcomb herself to whom nothing mattered who rather lost her head as we served our feast, and who was about putting in dishes both her oysters and her macaroni instead of carrying in the fair, brown, smoking bake pans. But at last we were ready Mis' Holcomb at our head with the turkey, the others following with both hands filled, and I with the coffee-pot. As they gave the signal to start, something it may have been the mystery before us, or the good things about us, or the mere look of the Thanks- giving snow on the window-sills seemed to catch at the hearts of them all, and they laughed a little, almost joyously, those five for whom joy had seemed done, and I found myself laughing too. So we six filed into the dining room to serve whomever Calliope had found "to do for." I wonder that I had not guessed before. There stood Calliope at the foot of the table, with its lighted candles and its Cloth-o'-Gold rose, and the other six chairs were quite vacant. "Sit down!" Calliope cried to us, with tears and laughter in her voice. "Sit down, all six of you. Don't you see ? Didn't you know ? Ain't we soul- sick an' soul-hungry, all of us ? An' I tell you, this is goin' to do our souls good an' our stom- achs too!" Nobody dropped anything, even in the flood of COVERS FOR SEVEN 49 our amazement. We managed to get our savoury burden on the table, and some way we found our- selves in the chairs I at the head of my table where Calliope led me. And we all talked at once, exclaiming and questioning, with sudden thanks- giving in our hearts that in the world such things may be. "I was hungry an* sick," Calliope was telling, " for an old-fashion* Thanksgivin' or anything that'd smooth life out some. But I says to myself, 'It looks like God had afflicted us by not givin' us anybody to do for/ An* then I started out to find some poor an' some sick an' each one o' you knows what I found. An' I ask' myself before I got home that day, 'Why not them an' me ?' There's lots o' kinds o' things to do on Thanksgivin' Day. Are you ever goin' to forgive me?" I think that we all answered at once. But what we all meant was what Mis' Holcomb-that-was- Mame-Bliss said, as she sat flushed and smiling behind the coffee-cups: "I declare, I feel something like I ain't felt since I don't know when!" And Calliope nodded at her. "I guess that's your soul, Mame Bliss," she said. " You can always feel it if you go to work an' act as if you got one. I'll take my coffee clear." THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME THE Friendship accommodation reaches the vil- lage from the City at six o'clock at night, and we call the train the Dick Dasher, because Dick Dasher is its engineer. We "come out on the Dick Dasher" and we "go in on the Through"; but the Through is a kind of institution, like marriage, while the Dick Dasher is a thing more intimate, like one's wedding. It was one winter night on the latter that I hardly heeded what I overheard. "The Lord will provide, Delia," Doctor June was saying. "I ain't sure," came a piping answer, "as they is any Lord. An' don't you tell anybody 'bout seein' me on this train. I'm goin' on through west." "Thy footfall is a silver thing, West west 1" I said over to the beat of the wheels, but the words 5 THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 51 that I said over were more insistent than the words that I heard. I was watching the eyes of a motor- car carrying threads of streaming light, moving near the track, swifter than the train. It belonged, as I divined, to the Proudfits of Friendship, and it was carrying Madame Proudfit and her daughter Clementina, after a day of shopping and visiting in the town. And when I saw them returning home in this airy fashion, as if they were the soul and I in the stuffy Dick Dasher were the body, I renewed a certain distaste for them, since in their lives these Proudfits seemed goblin-like, with no interest in any save their own picturesque Sittings. But while I shrugged at myself for judging them and held firmly to my own opinion, as one will do, I was conscious all the time of the gray minister in the aisle of the rocking coach, holding clasped in both hands his big carpet-bag without handles. Over it I saw him looking down in grieved conster- nation at the little woman huddled in the rush seat. "No Lord!" he said, "no Lord! Why, Delia More ! You might as well say there ain't no life in your own bones." "So they isn't," she answered him grimly. "They keep on a-goin' just to spite me." " Delia More De-lia. More," the wheels beat out, and it was as if I had heard the name often. Already I had noticed the woman. She had a kind 52 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE of youth, like that of Calliope, who had journeyed in town on the Through that morning and who had somewhat mysteriously asked me not to say that she had gone away. But Calliope's persistent youthfulness gives her a claim upon one, while on this woman whom Doctor June perplexedly re- garded, her stifled youth imposed a forlorn aloofness, made the more pathetic by her prettiness. No one but the doctor himself was preparing to leave the train at Friendship. He balanced in the aisle alone, while the few occupants of the car sat without speaking men dozing, children pad- ding on the panes, a woman twisting her thin hair tight and high. Doctor June looked at those nearest to be sure of their tired self-absorption, but as for me, who sat very near, I think he had long ago decided that I kept my own thoughts and no others, since sometimes I had forgotten to give him back a greeting. So it was in a fancied security which I was loath to be violating, that he opened his great carpet-bag and took out a book to lay on the girl's knee. "Open it," he commanded her. I saw the contour of her face tightened by her swiftly set lips as she complied. "Point your finger," he went on peremptorily. She must have obeyed, for in a kind of unwilling eagerness she bent over the page, and the doctor THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 53 stooped, and together in the blurring light of the kerosene lamp in the roof of the coach they made out something. "... the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things . . ." I unwillingly caught, and yet not wholly unwill- ingly either. And though I watched, as if much de- pended upon it, the great motor-car of the Proudfits vanishing before us into the dark, I could not for- bear to glance at the doctor, who was nodding, his kind face quickening. But the girl lifted her eyes and laughed with deliberate scepticism. " I don't take any stock," she said, and within me it was as if something answered to her bitterness. "No no. Mebbe not," Doctor June com- mented with perfect cheerfulness. "Some folks take fresh air, and some folks like to stay shut up tight. But 'the shadow of good things to come.' I'd take that much stock if I was you, Delia." As he laid the book back in his bag, the train was jolting across the switches beside the gas house, and the lights of Friendship were all about the track. "Why don't you get off?" he reiterated, in his tone a descending scale of simple hospitality. " Come to our house and stop a spell. Come for tea," he added; "I happen to know we're goin' to hev hot griddle-cakes an* sausage gravy." She shook her head sharply and in silence. 54 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Doctor June stood for a moment meditatively look* ing down at her. "There's a friend of yours at our house to-day, for all day," he observed. "I ain't any friends," replied the girl, obstinately, "without you mean use 9 to be. An' I don't know if I had then, either." "Yes. Yes, you have, Delia," said Doctor June, kindly. "He was asking about you last time he was here kind of indirect." " ffho?" she demanded, but it was as if some- thing within her wrung the question from her against her will. "Abel Halsey," Doctor June told her, "Abel Halsey. Remember him ?" Instead of answering she looked out the window at the Friendship Depot platform, and : "Ain't he a big minister in the City?" I barely heard her ask. "No," said Doctor June; "dear me, no. Abel's still gypsyin' it off in the hills. I expect he's out there by the depot with the busses now, come to meet me in his buggy. Better let him take us all home to griddle-cakes, Delia?" he pressed her wistfully. "I couldn't," she said briefly. And, as he put out his hand silently, " Don't you let anybody know't you saw me!" she charged him again. THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 55 When he was gone, and the train was slackening in the station, she moved close to the window. If I had been lonely ... I must have caught a certain cheer in the look of the station and in the magnificent, cosmic leisure of the idlers: in Pho- tographer Jimmy Sturgis, in his leather coat, with one eye shut, stamping a foot and waiting for the mail-bag; in old Tillie, known up and down the world for her waffles, and perpetually peering out between shelves of plants and wax fruit set across the window of the "eating-house"; in Peleg Bemus, wood-cutter, stumping about the platform on his wooden leg, wearing modestly the prestige he had won by his flute-playing and by his advantage of New York experience "a janitor in the far east, he was," Timothy Toplady had once told me; in Timothy Toplady himself, who always meets the trains, but for no reason unless to say an amazed and reproachful " Blisterin' Benson ! not a soul wants off here"; and in Abel Halsey, that itin- erant preacher, of whom Doctor June had spoken. Abel was a man of grace, Bible-taught, passioning for service, but within him his gentle soul burned to travel, and his white horse, Major Mary, and his road wagon and his route to the door of many a country church were the sole satisfactions of his wanderlust; and next to these was his delight to be at a railway station when any train arrived, 56 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE savouring the moment of some silent familiarity with distance. I delighted in them all, and that night, as I looked, I wondered how it would seem to me if I were returning to it after many years; and I could imagine how my heart would ache. As the train moved on, the girl whom Doctor June had called Delia More turned her head, mani- festly to follow for a little way each vanishing light and figure; and as the conductor came through the car and she spoke to him, I saw that she was in a tingle of excitement. "You sure," she asked, "that you stop to the canal draw ?" "Uh?" said the conductor, and when he com- prehended, "Every time," he said, "every time. You be ready when she whistles." He hesitated, manifestly in some curiosity. "They ain't a house in a mile Pom there, though," he told her. "I know that," she gave back crisply. When I heard her speaking of the canal draw, I found myself wondering; for a woman is not above wonder. There, where the trains stopped just per- ceptibly I myself was wont to leave them for the sake of the mile walk on the quiet highroad to my house. That, too, though it chanced to be night, for I am not afraid. But I wondered the more because other women do fear, and also because mine was the only house between the canal draw and THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COM* 57 Friendship Village; and manifestly the shortest way to reach the village would have been to alight at the station. But I held my peace, for the affairs of others should be to those others an efficient disguise; and moreover, the greater part of one's wonder is wont to come to naught. Yet, as I seemed to follow this woman out upon the snow and the train kept impersonally on across the meadows, I could not but see that her bags were many and looked heavy, and twice she set them down to r?rrange. I think a ghost of the road could have done no less than ask to help her. And I did this with an abruptness of which I am unwill- ing master, though indeed I had no need to assume impatience, for I saw that my quiet walk was spoiled. When I spoke to her, she started and shrank away; but there was an austerity in the lonely white road and in the country silence which must have chilled a woman like her; and her bags were many and seemed heavy. "Much obliged to you," she said indistinctly. "I'd just as li've you should take the basket, if you want." So I lifted the basket and trudged beside her, hoping very much that she would not talk. For though for my own comfort I would walk far to avoid treading on a nest, or a worm, or a magenta flower (and I loathe magenta), yet I am often blame* 58 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE ful enough to wound through the sheerest bungling those who talk to me when I would rather be silent. The night was one clinging to the way of Autumn, and as yet with no Winter hinting. The air was mild and dry, and the sky was starry. I am not ashamed that on a quiet highroad on a starry night I love to be silent, and even to forget concerns of my own which seem pressing in the publicity of the sun; but I am ashamed, I own, to have been called to myself that night by a little choking breath of haste. " I can't go so fast," my companion said humbly; "you might jest set the basket down anywheres. I can - But I think that she can hardly have heard my apology, for she stood where she had halted, staring away from me. We were opposite the cemetery lying in its fence of field stone and whitewashed rails. "O my soul, my soul!" I heard her say. "I'd forgot the graveyard, or I couldn't never 'a' come this way." At that she went on, her feet quickening, as I thought, without her will; and she kept her face turned to me, so that it should be away from that whitewashed fence. And now because of the wound she had shown me, I walked a little apart in the middle of the road for my attempt at sympathy. So we came to the summit of the hill, and there the THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 59 dark suddenly yielded up the distance. The lamps of the village began to signal, lights dotted the fields and gathered in a cosey blur in the valley, and half a mile to westward the headlight that marked the big Toplady barn and the little Toplady house shone out as if some one over there were saying something. "You live here in Friendship ?" the girl demanded abruptly. I could show her my house a little way before us. "Ever go inside the graveyard?" she asked. Sometimes I do go there, and at that answer she walked nearer to me and spoke eagerly. "Air all the tombstones standin' up straight, do you know?" she said. "Hev any o' their head- stones fell down on 'em ?" This I could answer too, definitely enough; for Friendship Cemetery, by the vigilance of the Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality, is kept in no less scrupulous order than the Friendship parlours. "Well, that's a relief," she said; "I couldn't get it out o' my head." Then, because she seemed of those on whom silence lays a certain imaginary demand, "My mother an' father an' sister's buried there," she explained. "They're in there. They all died when I was gone. An' I got the notion that their headstones had tipped over on to 'em. Or Aunt Cornie More's, maybe." 60 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Aunt Cornie More. I knew that name, for they had told me about her in Friendship, so that her name, and that of the Oldmoxons, in whose former house I lived, and many others were like folk whom one passes often and remembers. I had been told how Aunt Cornie More had made her own shroud from her crocheted parlour curtains, lest these fall to a later wife of her octogenarian husband; and how as she lay in her coffin the curtain's shell-stitch parrot "come right acrost her chest." This woman beside me had called her "Aunt" Cornie More. And then I remembered the name which Doctor June had spoken on the train and the wheels had measured. "Delia More!" I said, involuntarily, and re- gretted it as soon as I had spoken. But, indeed, it was as if some legend woman of the place walked suddenly beside me, like the quick. Who in Friendship had not heard the name, and who, save one who keeps her own thoughts and forgets to give back greeting, would not on the in- stant have remembered it ? Delia More's step- sister, Jennie Crapwell, had been betrothed to a carpenter of Friendship, and he was at work on their house when, a month before the wedding-day, Delia and that young carpenter had "run away." Who in Friendship could not tell that story ? But before I had made an end of murmuring something THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 6r "I might 'a' known they hadn't done talkin' yet," Delia More said bitterly. "They say it was like that when Calliope Marsh's beau run off with some- body else, for ten years the town et it for cake. Well, they ain't any of 'em goin' to get a look at me. I don't give anybody the chance to show me the cold shoulder. You can tell 'em I was here if you want. They can scare the children with it." "I won't tell," I said. She looked at me. "Well, I can't help it if you do," she returned. "Pm glad enough to speak to somebody, gettin' back so. It's fourteen year. An' I was fair body- sick to see the place again." At this she asked about Friendship folk, and I an- swered as best I might, though of what she inquired I knew little, and what I did know was footless enough for human comfort. As to the Topladys, for example, I had no knowledge of that one who had earned his money in bricks and had later married a " foreigner " ; but I knew Mis' Amanda, that she had hands dimpled like a baby giant's, and that she carried a blue parasol all winter to keep the sun from her eyes. I could not tell whether Liddy Ember had been able to afford skilled treatment for her poor, queer, pretty little sister, but I knew that Ellen Ember, with her crown of bright hair, went about Friendship streets singing aloud, and 62 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE leaping up to catch at the low branches of the curb elms, and that she was as picturesque as a beautiful grotesque on a page of sober text. I had not learned where the Oldmoxons had moved, but I knew of them that they had left me a huge fireplace in every room of my house. I could have repeated little about Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Marne-Bliss, save that her black week-day cloak was lined with wine broadcloth, and that she wore it wrong side out- ward for "best." And of whether Abigail Arnold's children had turned out well or ill, I was profoundly ignorant; but I remembered that she had caused a loaf of bread to be carved on the monument of her husband, the home baker. And so on. But these were not matters of w T hich I could talk to the hungry woman beside me. Then, to my amazement, when I mentioned the Proudfits, those great and rich Proudfits whose motor had raced by our train, Delia More would have none of them. "I do* want to hear about 'em," she said. "I know about 'em. I use' to play with Miss Clem- entina an' Miss Linda when we were little things. I use' to live with the Proudfits then, an' go to school. They were good to me time an' time again they've told me their home was mine, too. But now it wouldn't be the same. I know 'em. They always were cruel proud an' cruel pious. Mis' Proudfit, THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 63 she use' to set up goodness an' worship it like a little god." This judgment startled me, and yet to its import I secretly assented. For though I barely had their acquaintance, Madame Proudfit and her daughter Clementina were thorns to me too, so that I had had no pleasure in giving them back their greetings. Perhaps it was that they alone in Friend- ship sounded for me a note of other days but whatever it was, they were thorns to me; and I remember how, once more, something within me seemed to answer to this woman's bitterness. None the less, since of the Proudfits I could give her some fragment of account, I did so, to forge for Delia More what link I might between her present and her past. And it was knowledge which all Friendship shared. "You knew," I said, "that Miss Linda does not come here now, because she married against the wish of her family." Delia More looked up at me. But though I saw that now she softened somewhat, I had no relish for giving to her anything of the sad romance of beautiful Linda Proudfit (as they said) and the poor young clerk of nobody knew where, who, a dozen years before, had fled away together "into the storm." Then there is Calliope Marsh," I ventured, to 64 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE turn my thought not less than hers. But Delia More did not answer, and at this I was puzzled, for I think that Calliope has lived in Friendship since the beginning, when she and Liddy Ember were partners in their little "modiste" shop. "You will recall Calliope?" I pressed the matter. And at that, "Yes. Oh, yes," she said, and would say no more. And because Calliope had forbidden me, I did not mention that I had seen her on the train that morning, and that she was absent from Friendship, but it grieved me that this stranger should be indifferent to anything about her. I would have passed my own gate, because the basket was heavy and because I knew that the girl was crying. But she remembered how I had shown her my house, and there she detained me and caught at her basket, in haste to be gone. So I, who feel upon me a weak necessity to do a bidding, watched her go down the still road; yet I could not let her go away quite like that, and before I had meant to do so I called to her. "Delia More!" I said as familiarly as if she had been some other expression of myself. I saw her stop, but I did not go forward. I lifted my voice a little, for by the distance between us I was less ill at ease than I am in the usual personalities of comfort. THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 65 "I heard that on the train," I said then awk- wardly, and I was the more awkward that I was not persuaded of any reason in my words, "that about 'the shadow of good things to come/ Maybe it meant something." Delia More's thin, high-pitched voice came back to me, expressing all my unvoiced doubt. "Tisn't like," she said. "I never take any stock." Then I looked at my dark house in a kind of consternation lest it had heard me trying to give comfort, for within those walls I had sometimes spoken almost as this woman spoke. But it oc- curred to me that even the drowned should throw immaterial ropes to any who struggle in dark waters. It will not be necessary, I hope, to say that I fol- lowed Delia More that night from no faintest wish to know what might happen to her. For I have a weak desire for peace of mind, and I would rather have forgotten her story. I followed because the quiet highroad was so profoundly lonely, and the country silence is ambiguous, and I cannot bear to think of a woman abroad alone in the dark. I cannot bear to think of myself abroad alone in the dark, though I go quite without fear; but certain other women have fear, and this one was crying. I kept well behind her, and as soon as she reached 66 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE the village, I meant to lose sight of her and return, for a village is guardian enough. But when we had passed the bleak meadow of the slaughter-house and the wide, wet-smelling wood yard and had reached the first cottage on Daphne Street, I was startled to see her unlatch that cottage gate and enter the yard. And I was suddenly sadly ap- prehensive, for the cottage was the home of Calliope, who that morning had left the village and had asked me to say nothing about it. What if this poor creature had fled to Calliope for sanctuary, only to find locked doors ? So I waited in the shadow of a warehouse like a bandit; and I raged at the thought of having possibly to harbour this stranger among the books of my quiet home. Then suddenly I saw a light shining brightly in Calliope Marsh's cottage, and some one wearing a hat came swiftly and drew down a shade. On the instant the matter was clear to me, who have a genius for certain ways of a busybody. Calliope must have known that this poor girl was coming; Calliope's warning to me to keep silence must have been a way of protection to her. And here to Cal- liope's cottage Delia More had come creeping, whom all Friendship would hold in righteous dis- taste. But I alone of all Friendship knew that she was here, "fair body-sick to see the place again." I turned back to the highroad, pretending great THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME 67 wrath that I should be so keen over the doings of any, and that my walk should have been spoiled because of her. But there are times when wrath is difficult. And do what I would, there came some singing in my blood, and like a busybody, I found myself standing still in the road fashioning a plan. VI STOCK IT was as if Time and the Hour were my allies, for at once I was aware of a cutter driven smartly from the village, and I recognized the Topladys' sorrel. At my signal the cutter drew up beside me, and it held Timothy Toplady on his way home from the station. I asked him what o'clock it was, and when he had found a match to light his huge silver watch "Blisterin' Benson!" he said ruefully, "it's ha'- past six, an* me late with the chores again. I'm hauled an' sawed if it hain't always ha' past six. They don't seem to be no times in between." "Mr. Toplady," I said boldly, "let us get up a surprise party on Calliope Marsh you and Mrs. Toplady and me." I had learned that he was loath to oppose a sugges- tion and that he always preferred to agree, but I had not hoped for enthusiasm. "That's the /-dea," said Timothy, heartily. "I 68 STOCK 69 do admire a su'prise. But what I think is this," he added, "when'll we hev it?" "To-night," I proposed boldly. " Whew ! " Timothy whistled. " Sudden for Gen- eral eh ? Suits me suits me. Better drive out home with me an' break it to Amanda," he cried. I smiled as I sat beside him, noting that his en- thusiasm was very like relief. For if any one was present, he well knew that his masterful Amanda would say nothing of his tardiness. And so it was, for as we entered the kitchen she entirely overlooked her husband in her amazement at seeing me. "Forevermore !" that great Amanda said, turning from her stove of savoury skillets; "ain't you the stranger ? Timothy says only to-day, speakin' o' you, 'She ain't ben here for a week/ s'e. 'Week!' s'l; 'it's goin' on two. 9 I'm a great hand to keep track. Throw off your things." At that I began to feel her influence. Mis* Top- lady is so huge and capable that her mere presence will modify my judgments; and instantly I fell won- dering if I was not, after all, come on a fool's errand. She is like Athena. For I can think about Athena well enough, but if I were really to stand before her, I am certain that the project in which I implored her help would be sunk in my sudden sense of Olympus. Not the less, I made my somewhat remarkable pro- posal with some show of assurance., and I should 70 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE have counted on Mis' Toplady's sympathy, which ripens at less than a sigh. In Friendship you but mention a possible charity, visit, or new church car- pet, and the enthusiasm will react on the possibility, and the thing be done. It is the spirit of the West, the pioneer blood in the veins of her children, express- ing itself (since there are of late no forests to con- quer) in terms of love of any initiative. We love a project as an older world would approve the civilizing reasons for that project. Mis' Amanda plunged into the processes of the party much as she would have felled a tree. It warmed my heart to hear her. " We'd ought to hev a hot supper what victuals'll we take ?" she said. "Land, yes, oysters, o' course, an' we'll all chip in an' take plenty-enough crackers. We might as well carry dishes from here, so's to be sure an' hev what we want to use. At Mis' Doctor Helman's su'prise we run 'way short o' spoons, an' Elder Woodruff finally went out in the hall an' drank his broth, an' hid his bowl in the entry. Mis' Hel- man found it, an' knew it by the nick. That reminds me who'll we ask ?" "Mrs. Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss," said I, promptly, "and Abigail Arnold, and Doctor June, and Abel Halsey." "An' the Proudfits," Mis' Amanda went on. "Suppose," said I, with high courage, "that we do not ask the Proudfits at all ?" STOCK 71 Mis' Amanda threw up her giant hands. "Not ask the Proudfits?" she said. "Why, my land a' livin', the minister hardly has church in the church without the Proudfits get an invite." "Calliope mends their fine lace for them," I re- minded her, feeling guilty. "They wouldn't care to come, Mrs. Amanda, would they?" But of course I was remembering Delia More's " But now I know 'em. They worship goodness like a little god." And that night I was not minded to have them about, for it might befall that it would be necessary to understand other things as well. "Miss Linda would 'a' cared to," said Mis' Amanda, thoughtfully, "but I donno, myself, about Mis' Proudfit an' Miss Clementina for sure." So bold an innovation as the Proudfits' omission, however, moved Timothy Toplady to doubt. "They might not come," he said, frowning and looking sidewise, "but-what I think is this, will they like bein' left out?" His masterful Amanda instantly took the other side. "Land, Timothy!" she said, "you be one!" I have heard her say that to him again and again, and always in a tone so skilfully admiring that he looked almost gratified. And we mentioned the Proudfits no more. So Calliope Marsh's surprise party came about. 72 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE When supper was over, the table was "left setting," while pickles and cookies and "conserve" were packed in baskets; and presently the Topladys and I were stealing about the village inviting to festivity. I love to remember how swiftly Daphne Street took on an air of the untoward. Kitchens were left dark, unaccustomed lights flashed in upper chambers, some went scurrying for oysters before the post-office store should be closed, and some spread the news, eager to share in the holiday importance. I love to remember our certainty, so reasonably established, that they would all join us as infallibly as children will join in jollity. No one refused, no one hesitated ; and when, at eight o'clock, the Topladys and I reached the rendezvous in the Engine-House entry, every one was there before us save only, of course, the Proudfits. "Where's the Proudfits? Ain't we goin' to wait for the Proudfits ?" asked more than one; and some one had seen the Proudfit motor come flashing through the town from the Plank Road, empty. At all of which I kept a guilty silence; and I had by then not a little guilt to bear, since I was becoming every moment more doubtful of my undertaking. For at heart these people are the kindly of earth, and yet they are prone, as Delia More had said of the Pioud- fits, "to worship goodness like a little god," nor do they commonly broaden their allegiance without dis- STOCK 73 languished precedent. And how were we to secure this ? Every one was there the little gray Doctor June, flitting about as quietly as a moth, and all those of whom Delia More had asked me: Mis' Holcomb- that-was-Mame-Bliss, wearing her cloak wine broad- cloth side out to honour the occasion; Abigail Arnold, with a huge basket of gingerbread and jum- bles from her home bakery; Photographer Jimmy Sturgis, and even Mis' Sturgis, in a faint aroma of caraway which she nibbled incessantly; Liddy Ember, and poor Ellen, wearing her magnificent hair like a coronet, and standing wistfully about, with her hand, palm outward, persistently covering her mouth; and Abel Halsey, who was to leave at mid- night for a lonely cross-country ride into the hills. And as they stood, gossiping and eager, the women bird-observant of one another's toilettes, I own my- self to have felt like an alien among them, remember- ing how I alone knew that Calliope Marsh was not even in the village. Very softly we lifted the latch of Calliope's gate and trooped in her little dark yard. "Blisterin' Benson!" Timothy Toplady whis- pered, "ef the house hain't pocket-dark, front and back. What ef she's went in the country ?" "Sh h!" whispered his great Amanda, master- fully. "It's the shades down, I'm nervous as a 74 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE witch. My land ! if the front door ain't open a foot!" Though there are no locked doors in Friendship, I had feared that Calliope's cottage door would now be barred, and that Delia More would answer no formal summons. At sight of the unguarded en- trance I had a sick fear that she had in some way heard of our coming and fled away, leaving the door ajar in her haste. But when we had footed softly across the porch and peered in the dark pas- sage, we saw at its farther end a crack of light. " Might as well step ri' down to the dinin' room that's where she sets," Mis' Amanda said in her whisper, which is gigantic too. The passage smelled of the oilcloth on the floor and of a rubber waterproof which I brushed. And I shrank back beside the waterproof and let the others go on. For, after all, to that woman within I was a stranger, and these were her friends of old time. So it was Mis' Amanda who opened the dining-room door. I could see that the room was cheery with a red- shaded hanging-lamp, and shelves of plants, and a glowing fire in the great range. A table was covered with red cotton and laid with dishes. Also, there was the fragrance of toast, so that one wished to enter. And in a rocking-chair sat Delia More. She stared up in a kind of terror at the open door, and STOCK 75 then turned shrinkingly to some one who sat beside her. But at that one beside her I looked and looked again, for her rich fur cloak had fallen where she had let it fall; and there, sitting with Delia More's hand in hers, was that great Madame Proudfit of the Proudfit estate. "For the land!" Mis' Amanda said. "For the land . . ." But she was not looking at Madame Proudfit. And hardly seeing her, as I could guess, that great Mis' Amanda went forward, holding out her arms. "Delia More!" she cried, "Delia More!" I saw Abel Halsey's pale, luminous face as he pushed past Timothy and strode within and crossed to her; and I remember Abigail Arnold and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and how they fol- lowed Abel with little sharp cries which must have been a kind of music. And with them went Ellen Ember, as if, secretly, she were wiser than we knew. And while the others blocked the passage or crowded into the room, according to the nature which was theirs, some one came from the cellarway and paused, smiling, on the threshold. And it was, Miss Clementina Proudfit, with eggs in her hands. "Wait !" I heard Delia's sharp, piping voice then; " wait ! " She rose, one thin little hand pressed tensely along her cheek. But the other hand Madame Proudfit 76 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE held in both her own as she, too, rose beside her. And with them Abel stood, facing the rest. "O, Abel Halsey Abel Halsey . . ." Delia said, " an' Mame Bliss nor you, Abigail, 'don't you, any of you, come in yet. I got somethin' to tell you." " But shake hands first, Delia," cried Abel Halsey, and Delia looked up at him, in her face a sudden, incredulous thankfulness which flushed it, brow and cheek, and won it to a way of beauty. But she did not give him her hand. And before she could speak again Miss Clementina put down the eggs, and, with some little stir of silk, she took a step or two steps toward us. "Ah," she said, "let us not wait for anything it has been so long since we have met ! Delia has just told mother and me all about these years and you don't know how splendid we think she has been and how brave in great trouble. Come in, everybody, and let's make her welcome home!" Madame Proudfit said nothing, but she nodded and smiled at Delia More, and it seemed to me that in the Proudfits' way with Delia, their beautiful Linda had won a kind of presence with them after all. And * in the moment's hush the toast, propped on a fork before the coals in the range, suddenly blazed up in blue flame at the crust. "Somebody save the toast!" cried Clementina and smiled very brightly. STOCK 77 They needed no more. Timothy Toplady sprang at the toast, and already Abel Halsey and Doctor June were shaking Delia's hand; and Mis' Amanda, throwing her shawl back over her shoulders from its pin at her throat, enveloped Delia in her giant arms. And the others came pushing forward, on their faces the smiles which, however they had faltered in the passage seeking a precedent, I make bold to guess bodied forth the gentle, hesitant spirit which informed them. As for me, I waited without, even after the others had entered. And as I lingered, the outer door was pushed open to admit some late comer who whisked down the passage and stood in the dining-room door- way. It was Calliope. "Delia More !" she cried; "didn't I tell you how it'd be if you'd only let 'em know ? An' Mis' Proud- fit, you here ? I been worried to death on account o' forgettin' to take home your cream lace waist I mended." Madame Proudfit's voice lowered the high key of the others talking in chorus. "We drove over to get it, Calliope," she said. "And here we found our Delia More." At eleven o'clock that night, as I sat writing a let- ter in which the spirit of what had come to pass must have breathed as a spirit will breathe - 78 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Calliope Marsh tapped at my door; and she had a little basket. "Here," she said, "I brought you this. It's some o' everything we hed. An' I'm obliged for my s'prise," she added, squeezing my hand in the dark- ness. "I surmised first thing, most, when Delia described you. No; land, no! Delia don't sus- picion you got it up. She don't think of it bein' anybody but just God an' I donno's 'twas. An* that's what Abel thinks wa'n't Abel splendid ? You know 'bout Abel an' Delia ? You know he use' to he wanted to that is, he was in oh, well, no. Of course you wouldn't know. Well, Delia don't suspicion you but she said I should tell you something. 'You tell her,' she says to me, 'you tell her I say I guess I take stock now,' she says; 'tell her that: I guess I take stock now." At this my heart leaped up so that I hardly know what I said in answer. "Delia's out here now," Calliope called from the dark steps. "The Proudfits brought us. Delia's goin' home with 'em to stay." Thus I saw the eyes of the Proudfits' motor, with the threads of streaming light, about to go skimming from my gate. And in that kindly security was Delia More. "Calliope," I cried after her because I could not help it, "tell Delia More I take stock, too !" VII THE BIG WIND OF Abel Halsey, that young itinerant preacher, I learned more on a December day when Autumn seemed to have come back to find whether she had left anything. Calliope and I were resting from a racing walk up the hillside, where the squat brick Leading Church of Friendship overlooks the valley pastures and the village. Calliope walks like a girl, and with our haste and the keen air, her wrinkled cheeks were as rosy as youth. " Don't it seem like some days don't belong to any month, but just whim along, doin' as they please ?" Calliope said. "Months that might be snowin' an* blowin' the expression off our face hev days when they sort o' show summer hid inside, secret an' holy. That's the way with lots o' things, ain't it ? That's the way," she added thoughtfully, "Abel feels about the Lord, I guess. Abel Halsey, you know." They had told me how Abel, long ordained a min- ister of God, had steadfastly refused to be installed a 70 8o FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE pastor of any church. He was a devout man, but the love of far places was upon him, and he lived what Friendship called "a-gypsyin'" off in the hills, now to visit a sick man, now to preach in a country schoolhouse, now to marry, or bury, or help with the threshing. These lonely rides among the hills and his custom of watching a train come in or rush by out of the distance were his ways of voyaging. Per- haps, too, his little skill at the organ gave him, now and then, an hour resembling a journey. But in his first youth he had meant to go away in earnest far away, to the City or some other city. Also, though Calliope did not speak of it again, and I think that the others kept a loyal silence because of my strangerhood, I had known, since the home com- ing of Delia More, that Abel Halsey had once had another dream. "You wasn't here when the new church was built," Calliope said, looking up at the building proudly. "That was the time I mean about Abel. You know, before it was built we'd hed church in the hall over the Gekerjeck's drug store; an' because it was his hall, Hiram Gekerjeck, he just about run the church, picked out the wall paper, left the stair door open Sundays so's he could get the church heat, till the whole service smelt o' ether, an* finally hed church announcements printed as a gift, to with a line about a patent medicine o' his set fine along at the bottom. THE BIG WIND 81 He said that was no different than advertisin' the printin'-offices that way, like they do. But it was that move made Abel Halsey him an' Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb an' Postmaster Sykes, the three elders, set to to build a church. An' they done it too. An' to them four I declare it seemed like the buildin' was a body waitin' for its soul to be born. From the minute the sod was scraped off they watched every stick that went into it. An' by November it was all done an' plastered an' waitin' its pews an' it was a-goin' to be dedi- cated with special doin's music from off, an' strange ministers, an' Reverend Arthur Bliss from the City. I guess Abel an' the elders hed tacked printed invites to half the barns in the county. "I rec'lect it was o' Wednesday, the one next before the dedication, an' windy-cold an' wintry. I'd been havin' a walk that day, an' 'long about five o'clock, right about where we are, I'd stood watchin' the sun- set over the Pump pasture there, till I was chilled through. The smoke was rollin' out o' the church chimney because they was dryin' the plaster, an' I run in there to get my hands warm an' see how the plaster was doin'. An' inside was the three elders, walkin' 'round, layin' a finger on a sash or a post the kind o' odd, knowledgeable way men has with new buildin's. The Ladies' Aid had got the floor broom-clean, an' the lamp-chandelier filled an* 82 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE ready; an* the foreign pipe-organ that the Proudfits had sent from Europe was in an' in workin' order, little lookin'-glass over the keyboard an' all. It seemed rill home-like, with the two big stoves a-goin', an' the floor back of 'em piled up with the chunks Peleg Bemus had sawed for nothin'. Everything was all redded up, waitin' for the pews. "Timothy Toplady was puttin' out his middle finger stiff here an' there on the plaster. "It's dry as a bone,' he says, 'but what I say is this, le's us leave a fire burn here all night, so's to be sure. I'd hate like death to hev the whole con- gregation catchin' cold an' takin' Hiram Geker- jeck's medicine.' "I rec'lect Eppleby Holcomb looked up sort o' dreamy Eppleby always goes round like he'd swallowed his last night's sleep. "'The house o' God,' he says over; 'ain't that curious? Nothin' about it to indicate it's the house o' God but the shape no more'n's if 'twas a buildin' where the Holy Spirit never come near. An' yet right here in this place we'll mebbe feel the big wind an' speak with Pentecostal tongues.' ""T seems like,' says Postmaster Sykes, thought- ful, "t seems like we'd ought to hev a little meetin* o' thanks here o' Sat'day night little informal praise meetin' or somethin.' "Timothy shakes his head decided. THE BIG WIND 83 " ' Silas Sy kes, what you talkin' ? ' he says. ' Why, the church ain't dedicated yet. A house o' God,' s'e, 'can't be used for no purpose whatso*?wr without it's been dedicated.' "'So it can't so it can't,' says the postmaster, apologetic, knowin' he was in politics an' that the brethren was watchin' him, cat to mouse, for slips. " ' I s'pose that's so,' says Eppleby, doubtful. But he's one o' them that sort o' ducks under situations to see if they're alike on both sides, an' if they ain't, he up an' questions 'em. Timothy, though, he was differ'nt. Timothy was always goin' on about constituted authority, an' to him the thing was the thing, even if it was another thing. 'That's right,' he insists, his lips disappearin' with certainty. ' I s'pose we hadn't reely ought even to come in here an' stan' 'round, like we are.' "He looks sidlin' over towards me, warmin' my hands rill secular by the church stove. An' I felt like I'd been spoke up for when somebody says from the door: 'You better just bar out the carpenters o' this world, friends, an' done with it!' " It was Abel Halsey, standin' in the entry, lookin' as handsome as the law allows. An' I see he hap- pened to be there because the Through was about due, that's the one that don't stop here, an' you 84 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE can always get a good view of it from this slope. You know Abel never misses watchin' a fast train go 'long, if he can help himself. "'What's the i-dea?' Abel says. 'How can you pray at all in closets an* places that ain't been dedi- cated ? I shouldn't think they'd be holy enough,' s'e. 'That/ says the postmaster, sure o' support, 'ain't the question.' "'I thought it couldn't be,' says Abel, amiable. 'Well, what is the question? Whether prayer is prayer, no matter where you're prayin' ?' '"Oh, no,' says Eppleby Holcomb, soothin', "it ain't that.' "'I thought it couldn't be that,' says Abel. 'Is it whether the Lord is in dedicated spots an* nowheres else?' '"Abel Halsey,' Timothy tarts up, 'you needn't to be sacrilegious.' "But,' says Abel, 'the question is, whether you're sacrilegious to deny a prayer-meetin' or any other good use to the church or to any other place, dedi- cated or not. Well, Timothy, I think you are.' "Timothy clears his throat an' dabs at the palm of his hand with his other front finger. But before he could lay down eternal law, we sort o' heard, almost before we knew we heard, folks hurryin' past out here on the frozen ground. An' they was shout- in', like questions, an' a-shoutin' further off. We THE BIG WIND 85 looked out, an' I can remember how the whole slope up from the village there was black with folks. "We run outside, an' I know I kep' close by Abel Halsey. An' I got hold o' what had happened when somebody yelled an answer to his askin'. You probably heard all about that part. It was the day the Through Express went off the track down there in the cut beyond the Pump pasture. "We run with the rest of 'em, me keepin' close to Abel, I guess because he's got a way with him that makes you think he'd know what to do no matter what. But when he was two-thirds o' the way acrost the pasture, he stops short an' grabs at my sleeve. "'Look here,' he says, '-you can't go down there. You mustn't do it. We donno what'll be. You stay here,' he says; 'you set there under the cottonwood.' "You kind o' haf to mind Abel. It's sort o' grained in that man to hev folks disciple after him. I made him promise he'd motion from the fence if he see I could help any, an' then I se' down under that big tree down there. I was tremblin' some, I know. It always seems like wrecks are somethin' that happen in other states an' in the dark. But when one's on ground that you know like a book an' was brought up on, when it's in the daylight, right by a pasture you've been acrost always an' where you've walked the ties, well, I s'pose it's the same feelin' as when a man you know cuts up a state's prison 86 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE caper; seem's like he cant of, because you knew him. "Half the men o' Friendship run by me, seems though. The whole town'd been rousted up while we was in the church talkin' heresy. An' up on the high place on the road there I see ZittelhoPs under- taking wagon, with the sunset showin' on its nickel rails. But not a woman run past me. Ain't it funny how it's men that go to danger of rail an' fire an* water but when it's nothin' but birth an' dyin* natural, then it's for women to be there. "When I'd got about ready to fly away, waitin' so, I see Abel at the fence. An' he didn't motion to me, but he swung over the top an' come acrost the stubble, an' I see he hed somethin' in his arms. I run to meet him, an' he run too, crooked, his feet turnin' over with him some in the hard ground. The sky made his face sort o' bright; an' I see he'd got a child in his arms. "He didn't give her to me. He stood her down side o* me a little thing of five years old, or six, with thick, straight hair an' big scairt eyes. "'Is she hurt, Abel?' I says. "No, she ain't hurt none,' he answers me, 'an* they's about seventeen more of 'em, her age, an' they ain't hurt, either. Their coach was standin' up on its legs all right. But the man they was with, he's stone dead. Hit on the head, somehow. An'/ THE BIG WIND S; Abel says, 'I'm goin' to throw 'em all over the fence to you.' "The little girl jus' kep' still. An' when we took her by each hand, an' run back toward the fence with her, her feet hardly touchin' the ground, she kep' up without a word, like all to once she'd found out this is a world where the upside-down is consider'ble in use. An' I waited with her, over there this side the cut, hearin' 'em farther down rippin' off fence rails so's to let through what they hed to carry. "Time after time Abel come scramblm' up the sand-bank, bringin' 'em two 't once little girls they was, all about the age o' the first one, none of 'em with hats or cloaks on; an' I took 'em in my arms an' set 'em down, an' took 'em in my arms an' set 'em down, till I was fair movin' in a dream. They be- longed, I see by their dress, to some kind of a home for the homeless, an' I judged the man was takin' 'em son Adheres, him that Abel said'd been killed. Some'd reach out their arms to me over the fence an' some was afraid an' hung back, but some'd just cling to me an' not want to be set down. I can re- member them the best. "Abel, when he come with the last ones, he off with his coat like I with my ulster, an' as well as we could we wrapped four or five of 'em up one that was sickly, an' one little delicate blonde, an' a little lame girl, an' the one the others called her Mitsy 88 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE that'd come over the fence first. An' by then half of 'em was beginnin' to cry some. An' the wind was like so many knives. "'Where shall we take 'em to, Abel?' I says, beside myself. 'Take 'em?' he says. 'Take 'em into the church ! Quick as you can. This wind is like death. Stay with 'em till I come.' "Somehow or other I got 'em acrost that pasture. When I look at the Pump pasture now, in afternoon like this, or in Spring with vi'lets, or when a circus show's there, it don't seem to me it could 'a' been the same place. I kep' 'em together the best I could some of 'em beggin' for 'Mr. Middie Mr. Middie,' the man, I judged, that was dead. An' finally we got up here in the road, an' it was like the end o' pain to be able to fling open the church door an' marshal 'em through the entry into that great, big, warm room, with the two fires roarin'. "I got 'em 'round the nearest stove an' rubbed their little hands an' tried not to scare 'em to death with wantin' to love 'em; an' all the while, bad as I felt for 'em, I was glad an' glad that it was me that could be there with 'em. They was twenty, when I come to count 'em so's to keep track, twenty little girls with short, thick hair, or soft, short curls, an' every one with something baby-like left to 'em. An' when we set on the floor round the stove, the THE BIG WIND 89 coals shone through the big open draft into their faces, an' they looked over their shoulders to the dark creepin' up the room, an* they come closer 'round me an' the closest-up ones snuggled. "Well, o' course that was at first, when they was some dazed. But as fast as their blue little hands was warm an' pink again, one or two of 'em begun to whimper, natural an' human, an' up with their arm to their face, an' then begun to cry right out, an' some more joined in, an' the rest pipes up, askin' for Mr. Middie. An' I thought, ' Sp'osin' they all cried an' what if Abel Halsey stayed away hours.' I donno. I done my best too. Mebbe it's because I'm use' to children with my heart an' not with my ways. Any- how, most of 'em was cryin' prime when Abel finally got there. "When he come in, I see Abel's face was white an' dusty, an' he had his other coat off an' gone too, an' his shirt-sleeves was some tore. But he comes runnin' up to them cryin' children an' I wish't you could 'a' seen his smile Abel's smile was always kind o' like his soul growin' out of his face, rill thrifty. " ' Why, you little kiddies ! ' s'e, ' cryin' when you're all nice an' warm ! Le's see now,' he says grave. 'Anybody here know how to play Drop-the-hand- kerchief ? If you do,' he tells 'em, 'stand up quick! 9 "They scrambled 'round like they was beetles an* 90 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE you'd took up the stone. They was all up in a minute, an* stopped cryin', too. With that he catches my handkerchief out o' my hand an' flutters it over his head an' runs to the middle o' the room. "Come on!' he says. 'Hold o' hands every one o' you hold o' hands. I'm goin' to drop the handkerchief, an' you'd better hurry up.' "That was talk they knew. They was after him in a secunt an' tears forgot, them poor little things, laughin' an' hold o' hands, an' dancin' in a chain, an' standin' in a ring. An' when he hed 'em like that, an' still, Abel begun runnin' 'round to drop the handkerchief; an' then he turns to me. "Only two killed, thank God,' he says as he run; 'the conductor an' M-i-d-d-1-e-t-o-n,' he spells it, an' motions to the children with the handkerchief so's I'd know who Middleton was. 'An' not a scrap o' paper on him,' he goes on, 'to tell what home he brought the children from or where he's goin' with 'em. Their mileage was punched to the City but we don't know where they belong there, an' the conductor bein' gone too. The poor fellow that had 'em in charge never knew what hurt him. Hit from overhead, he was, an' his skull crushed . . / "It was so dark in the church by then we could hardly see, but the children could keep track o' the white handkerchief. He let it fall behind the little girl he'd brought me first, Mitsy, an' she catches THE BIG WIND 91 it up an' sort o' squeaks with the fun an' runs after him. An' while he doubles an' turns, 'They've telegraphed ahead,' he says, 'to two or three places in the City. But even if we hear right off, we can't get 'em out o' Friendship to-night. They'll hev to stay here. The Commercial Trav- ellers' Hotel an' the Depot House has both got all they can do for some of 'em hurt pretty bad. They couldn't either hotel take 'em in . . .' "Then he lets Mitsy catch him an' he ups with her on his shoulder an' run with her on his back, his face lookin' out o' her blue, striped skirts. " We'll hev to house 'em right here in the church,' he says. "'Here ?' says I; 'here in the church ?' 'You know Friendship,' he says, hoppin' along. 'Not half a dozen houses could take in more'n two extry, even if we hed the time to canvass. An' we ain't the time. They want .heir s-u-p-p-e-r right now,' he spells it out, an' lit out nimble when Mitsy dropped the handkerchief back o' the little blond girl. Then he let the little blond girl catch them, and he took her on his shoulders too, an' they was both shoutin' so 't he hed to make little circles out to get where I could hear him. ' ' I've seen Zittelhof,' he told me. ' He was down there with his wagon. He'll bring up enough little canvas cots from the store. An' I thought 92 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE mebbe you'd go down to the village an' pick up some stuff they'll need bedding an' things. An' get the women here with some supper. Come on now,' he calls out to 'em; 'everybody in a procession an' sing!' "He led 'em off with " * King William was King James's son,' an' he sings back to me, for the secunt line, " ' Go now, go quick, I bet they're starved ! ' "So I got into my coat, tryin' to think where I should go to be sure o' not wastin' time talkin'. Lots o' folks in this world is willin', but mighty few can be quick. "I knew right off, though, where I'd find some- body to help. The Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality was meetin' that afternoon with Mis' Toplady, an' I could cut acrost their pasture " Calliope nodded toward the little Toplady house and l v .e big Toplady barn "an' that's what I done. An' when I got near enough to the house to tell, I see by the light in the parlour that they was still there. An' I know when I got into the room, full as I was o' news o' them little children an' the wreck an' the two killed an' all them that was hurt there was the Sodality settlin' whether the lamb's wool comforter for the bazaar should be tied with pink for daintiness or brown for durability. THE BIG WIND 93 "'Dainty!' says I, when I got my breath. 'They's sides to life makes me want to pinch that word right out o' the dictionary same as I would a bug/ I says. "That was funny, too," Calliope added thought- fully, " because I like that word, speakin' o' food an' ways to do things. But some folks get to livin' the word same's if it was the law. "I guess they thought I was crazy," she went on, "but I wasn't long makin' 'em understand. An' I tell you, the way they took it made me love 'em all. If you want to love folks, just you get in some kind o' respectable trouble in Friendship, an' you'll see so much lovableness that the trouble'll kind o' spindle out an' leave nothin' but the love doin' business. My land, the Sodality went at the situa- tion head first, like it was somethin' to get acrost before dark. An' so it was. " I remember Mis' Photographer Sturgis : 'There ! ' she says, 'most cryin'. ' If ever I take only a pint o' milk, I'm sure as sure to want more before the day's out. None of us is on good terms with each other's milkman. Where we goin' to get the milk,' she says, ' for them poor little things ? ' "'Where?' says Mis' Toplady you know how big an' comfortable an' settled she is ' Where ? Well, you needn't to think o' where. I expect the Jersey won't be milked till I go an' milk her,' 94 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE she says, 'but she gives six quarts, nights, right along now, an* sometimes seven. Now about the bread/ "Mis' Postmaster Sykes use' to set sponge twice a week, an' she offered five loaves out o' her six baked that day. Mis' Holcomb had two loaves o' brown bread an' a crock o' sour cream cookies. An' Libbie Liberty bursts out that they'd got up their courage an' killed an' boiled two o' their chickens the day before an' none o' the girls'd been able to touch a mouthful, bein' they'd raised the hens from egg to axe. Libbie said she'd bring the whole kettle along, an' it could be het on the church stove an' made soup of. So it went on, down to even Liddy Ember, that was my partner an' silly poor, an' in about four minutes everything was provided for, beddin* an' all. "Mis' Toplady had flew upstairs, gettin' out the linen, an' she was comin' down the front stairs with her arms full o' sheets an' pillow slips when through the front door walks Timothy Toplady, come in all excited an' lookin' every which way. Seems he'd barked his elbow in the rescue work an' laid off for liniment. "'Oh, Timothy,' says his wife, 'them poor little children. We've been plannin' it all out.' ''Who's goin' to take 'em in?' says Timothy, tryin' to roll up his overcoat sleeve for fear the THE BIG WIND 95 Sodality'd be put to the blush if he got to his elbow any other way. "'They're all warm in the church/ Mis' Toplady says; * we're goin' to leave 'em there. Zittelhof's goin' to take up canvas cots. We're gettin' the bedding together,' she told him. "Timothy looked up, sort o' wild an* glazed. "'Canvas cots,' s'e, 'in the house o' the Lord?' "'Why, Timothy,' says his wife, helpless, 'it's all warm there now, an* we don't know what else. We thought we'd carry up their supper to 'em ' "Supper,' says Timothy, 'in the house o' the Lord?' "Then Mis' Toplady spunks up some. : 'Why, yes,' she says; 'I'm goin' to milk the Jersey an' take up the two pails.' "Timothy waves his barked arm in the air. " ' Never ! ' s'e. ' Never. We elders'll never con- sent to that, not in this world ! ' "At that we all stood around sort o' pinned to the air. This hadn't occurred to nobody. But his wife was back at him, rill crispy. "'Timothy Toplady,' s'she, 'they use churches for horspitals an' refuges,' she says. "'They do,' says Timothy, solemn, 'they do, in necessity, an' war, an' siege. But here's the whole o' Friendship Village to take these children in, an' it's sacrilege to use the house o' God for any 96 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE purpose whatever while it's waitin' its dedication. It's stealin', he says, 'from the Lord Most High/ "I never see anybody more het up. We all tried to tell him. Nobody in Friendship has a warm spare room in winter, without it's the Proudfits, an' they was in Europe an' their house locked. Mebbe six of us, we counted up afterwards, could 'a' took in two children to sleep in a cold room, or one child to sleep with some one o' the family. But as Abel said, where was the time to canvass round ? An' what could we do with the other little things ? But Timothy wouldn't listen to nothin'. "Amanda,' s'e in a married voice, 'what I say is this, I forbid you to carry a drop o' Jersey milk or any other kind o' milk up to that church/ "With that he was out the front door an' liniment forgot. "Mis' Sykes spatted her hands. "'He'll find Silas Sykes an' Eppleby,' she says to Mis' Holcomb. 'Quick. Le's us get our hands on my bread an' your cookies. Them poor little things 'way past their supper hour.' "'An' none of 'em got mothers/ says Mis' Sturgis, 'just left 'round with lockets on, I sp'ose, an' wrecked an' hungry. . . / "'An' one o' 'em lame/ Mame Holcomb puts in, down on her knees tryin' to sort out her overshoes. The Sodality never could tell its own overshoes. THE BIG WIND 97 "Well, they scattered so quick it made you think o' mulberry leaves, some years, in the first frost an' I was left alone with Mis' Toplady. "'Here,' she says to me then, all squintin' with firmness, 'you take along all the linen an' com- fortables you can lug. Timothy didn't mention them. An' leave the rest to me' "I went over that in my mind while I stumbled along back to the church, loaded down. But I couldn't make much out of it. I knew Timothy Toplady : that he was meek till he turned an' then it was look out. An' I knew, too, that Timothy could run Silas Sykes, the postmaster's political strength, like you've noticed, makin' him kind o' wobbled in his own judgment of other things. I didn't know how Eppleby Holcomb'd be it might turn out to be one o' the things he'd up an' ques- tion, civilized, but I wa'n't sure. Anyhow, the cream cookies an' the two loaves wasn't so vital as them five loaves o' bread. "When I got back to the church, here it was all lit up. Abel had lit the chandelier on a secular scene ! Bless 'em, it surely was secular, though, accordin' to my lights, it was some sacred too. Six or seven of the little things was buildin' a palace out o' the split wood, with the little lame girl for queen. The little blonde an' the one that was rill delicate lookin' had gone to sleep by the stove on $ FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Abel's overcoat. Mitsy, she run from somewheres an' grabbed my hand. An* Abel had the rest over by the other stove tellin' 'em stories. I heard him say dragon, an* blue velvet, an' golden hair. "I hadn't more'n got inside the door before Zittelhof's wagon come with the cots. An' Mis' Zittelhof was with him, her arms full o' bedclothes she'd gathered up around from folks. I never said a word to Abel about the trouble with Timothy. I donno if Abel rilly heard us come in, he was so excited about his dragon. An' Mis' Zittelhof an' I began makin' up the cots. On the first one I laid the two babies that was asleep on the floor. They never woke up. Their little cheeks was warm an* pink, an' one of 'em had some tears on it. When I see that, I clear forgot the church wasn't dedicated, an' I thanked God they was there, safe an' by a good fire, with somebody 'tendin' to 'em. "The bed-makin' an' the story-tellin' an' the palace-buildin' went on, an' I kep' gettin' exciteder every minute. When the door opened, I couldn't tell which was in my mouth, my heart or my tongue. But it was only Libbie Liberty with the big iron kettle o' chicken broth an' a basket o' cups an' spoons. She se' down the kettle on the stove an' stirred up the fire under it, an' it was no time before the whole church begun to smell savoury as a kitchen. An' then in walks Mis' Holcomb with THE BIG WIND 99 her brown bread an' cream cookies. An* we fair jumped up an' down when Mis' Sykes come breathin' in the door with them five loaves o* wheat bread safe, an' butter to match. "Still, we was without milk. There wasn't a sign o' Mis' Toplady. An' any minute Timothy might get there with Silas in tow. Mis' Sykes was nervous as a witch over it, an' it was her proposed we set the children up on the cots an' begin' feedin' 'em right away. I run down the room to tell Abel, an' then I hed to tell him why we'd best hurry. "Abel laughs a little when he heard about it. "'Dear old Timothy,' he says, 'servin' his God accordin' to the dictates of his own notions. Wait a minute till I release the princess.' "When he said that, I was afraid he must be telling a worldly story with royalty in. An' I begun to get troubled myself. But I heard him end it: 'So the Princess found her kingdom because she learnt to love every living thing. She saved the lives of the hare an' the goldfinch. An' don't you ever let any living thing suffer one minute and maybe you'll find out some of the things the Princess knew.' An', royalty or not, I felt all right about Abel's story-telling after that. "Then we all brisked round an' begun settin' the children up on the cots two or three to a cot, with one of us to wait on 'em. An' both the little ioo FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE sleepy ones woke up, too. An* when we sliced an' spread the bread an' dished the hot chicken broth an* see how hungry they all seemed, I declare if one of us could feel wicked. The little things'd begun to talk some by then, an' they chatted soft an' looked up at us, an' that little Mitsy she'd got so she'd kiss me every time I'd ask her. An' I was perfectly shameless. I donno's the poor little thing got enough to eat. But sometimes when things go blue I like to think about that. I guess we was all the same. Our principal feelin* was how dear they was, an' to hurry up before Timothy Toplady got there, an' how we wish't we hed more milk. "Then all of a sudden while we was flyin' round, I happened to go past the front door, an' I heard a noise in the entry. I thought o' Timothy an' Silas, comin' with sheriffs an' firearms an' I didn't know what Silas havin' politics back of him, so; an' I rec'lect I planned, wild an' contradictory, first about callin' an instantaneous congregational meetin' to decide which was right, an' then about telegraphin' to the City for constituted authority to do as we was doin', an' then about Abel fightin' Timothy an' Silas both, if it come rilly necessary. "I got hold o' Mis' Sykes an' Mame Holcomb, an' told 'em quiet. 'Somethin's the matter out- side there,' I says to 'em, kind o' warnin', 'an' I THE BIG WIND' ;>> :> tea- thought you two'd ought to know it.' An' we all three come 'round by the entry door, careless, an listened. An' the noise kep' up, kind o' soft an* obstinate, an' we couldn't make it out. "'We'd best go out there an' see,' says Mis' Sykes, low; 'the dear land knows what men will do.' "So we watched our chance an' slipped out an' I guess, for all our high ways, we was all three wonderin' inside, was we rilly doin' right. You know your doubts come thick when there's a noise in the entry. But Mis' Sykes acted as brave as two, an' it was her shut the door to behind us. "An' there, right by that stone just outside the entry o' the church, set Mis' Timothy Toplady, milkin her Jersey cow. "We could just see her, dim, by the light o' the transom. She was on the secunt pail, an' that was two-thirds full. She hed her back toward us, an' she didn't hear us. She set all wrapped up in a shawl, a basket o' cups side of her, an' the Jersey standin' there, quiet an' demure. An' beyond, in the cut an' movin' acrost the Pump pasture, it was thick with lanterns. " But before we three'd hed time to burst out like we wanted to, we sort o' scrooched back again. Because on the other side o' the cow we heard Timothy Toplady's voice. He'd just got there, some breathless, an' with him, we see, was Eppleby, io. < FR-teNDSHIP VILLAGE "Amanda/ says Timothy, 'what in the Dominion o' Canady air you doin' ?' "'I shouldn't think you would know/ says Mis' Toplady, short. 'You don't do enough of it.' "She hed him there. Timothy always will go down to the Dick Dasher an' shirk the chores. "Amanda/ says Timothy, 'you've disobeyed me flat-footed.' "'No such thing/ s'she, milkin' away like mad for fear he'd use force; 'I ain't carried a drop o' milk here. I've drove it/ she says. "Timothy groaned. "' Milkin' in the church/ he says. "No, sir/ says Amanda, back at him; 'I'm out- side on the sod, an' you know it.' "An' then my hopes sort o' riz, because I thought I heard Eppleby Holcomb laugh soft sort of a half-an'-half chuckle. Like he'd looked under the situation an' see it wasn't alike on both sides. An' 't the same time Mis' Toplady, she changed her way, an', "'Timothy/ s'she, 'you hungry?' "'I'm nigh starved/ says Timothy. 'It must be eight o'clock/ s'e, 'but I ain't the heart to think o' that.' "'No/ s'she, 'so you ain't. Not with them poor babies in there hungrier'n you be an' nowheres to go/ THE BIG WIND 103 "With that she got done milkin' an' stood up an' picked up her two pails we could smell the sweet, warm milk from where we was. "'Timothy,' s'she, 'the worst sacrilege that's done in this world is when folks turns their backs on any little bit of a chance that the Lord gives 'em to do good in, like He told 'em. Who was it, I'd like to know, said, "Suffer little children"? Who was it said, "Feed my lambs"? No "when" or "where" about that. Just do it. An' no occasion to hem an' haw about it, either. The least you can do for your share in this, as I see it, is to keep your silence and drive the cow back home. The oven's full o' bake' sweet potatoes an' they must be just nearin' done.' " I see Timothy start to wave his arms an' I donno what he would 'a' said if it hadn't been settled for 'im. For then, like it was right out o' the sky, the church organ begun to play soft. For a minute we all looked up, like the Shepherds must of when the voices of the night told 'em the spirit o' God was in the world, born in a little child. It was Abel, I knew right away it was Abel, an' he was just gentlin' round soft on the keys, kind o' like he was askin' a blessin' an' rockin' a cradle an' doin' all the little nice things music can. An' with that Mis' Sykes, she throws open the church door. ?04 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "I'll never forget how it looked inside all warm an' lamp-lit an' with them little things bein' fed an' chatterin' soft. An' up in the loft set Abel, play in' away on the foreign organ before it'd been dedicated. An' then he begun singin' low an' there's somethin' about Abel 't you just baf to listen, whatever he says or does. Even Timothy hed to listen though I think he was some struck dumb, too, an' that kep' him controlled for a minute like it will. An' Abel sung : '"The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. . . .' "An* at the first line, before we'd rilly sensed what it was he said, every one o' them little children in the midst o' their supper slips off the edge o' the cots an' kneeled down there on the bare floor, just like they'd been told to. Oh, wasn't it wonderful ? An' yet it wasn't it wasn't. We found out, when folks come for 'em the next mornin', it was the children's prayer that they sung every day o' their lives at their Good Shepherd's Orphans' Home soft an' out o' tune an' with all their little hearts, just as they went ahead an' sung it with Abel, clear to the end. I guess they didn't know everybody don't kneel down all over the world when they hear the Twenty-third Psalm. THE BIG WIND 105 "Abel seen 'em in the little lookin'-glass over the keyboard. An' when he'd got done he set there perfectly still with his head down. An* Mis' Sykes an* Mis' Holcomb an' Eppleby an' I bowed our heads too, out there in the entry. An' so, after a minute, did Timothy. I couldn't help peekin' to see. "An' then, when the children was all a-rustlin' up, Mis' Toplady she jus' hands her two pails o' milk over to Timothy. '"You take 'em in,' she says to him, her eyes swimmin'. 'I've come off without my handker- chief.' "Timothy looks round him, kind o' helpless, but Eppleby stood there an' pats him on the arm. "'Go in go in, brother, 5 Eppleby says gentle. 'I guess the church's been dedicated. I feel like we'd heard the big wind an' I guess, mebbe, the Pentecostal tongues.' "An' Timothy he's an awful tender-hearted man in spite o' bein' so notional Timothy just went on in with the milk, without sayin' anything. An' Eppleby side of him. An' we 'most shut the door on Silas Sykes, comin' tearin' up on account o' Timothy leavin' him urgent word to come, with- out explainin' why. An' when Silas see the inside o' the church, all lit up an' chicken supper for the children an' the other two elders there with the io6 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE milk, he just rubs his hands an* beams like he sec his secunt term. I donno's it'd ever enter Silas Sykes's head't there was anything wrong with any- thing, providin' somebody wasn't snappin' him up for it. I guess it's like that in politics. "We took the milk around an', bake' sweet po- tatoes forgot, Timothy stood up by the stove, be- tween Eppleby an' Silas, an' watched us an* the Jersey must 'a' picked her way home alone. An* Abel, he just set there to the organ, gentlin' 'round soft on the keys so it made me think o' God movin' on the face o' the waters. An' movin' on the face of everything else too, dedicated or not. It was like we'd felt the big wind, same as Eppleby said. An* somethin' in it kind o' hid, secret an* holy.'* VIII THE GRANDMA LADIES Two weeks before Christmas Friendship was thrown into a state of holiday delight. Mrs. Proud- fit and her daughter, Miss Clementina, issued in- vitations to a reception to be given on Christmas Eve at Proudfit House, on Friendship Hill. The Proudfits, who had rarely entertained since Miss Linda went away, lived in Europe and New York and spent little time in the village, but, for all that, they remained citizens in absence, and Friendship always wrote out invitations for them whenever it gave "companies." The invitations the postmaster duly forwarded to some Manhattan bank, though I think the village had a secret conviction that these were never received " sent out wild to a bank in the City, so." However, now that old courtesies were to be so magnificently returned, every one believed and felt a greater respect for the whole financial world. The invitations enclosed the card of Mrs. Nita Ordway, and the name sounded for me a note of 107 io8 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE other days when, before my coming to Friendship Village, we two had, in the town, belonged to one happy circle of friends. "I thought at first mebbe the card'd got shoved in the envelope by mistake," said Mis' Holcomb- that-was-Mame-Bliss. "I know once I got a Christmas book from a cousin o' mine in the City, an' a strange man's card fell out o' the leaves. I sent the card right straight back to her, an' Cousin Jane seemed rill cut up, so I made up my mind I'd lay low about this card. But I hear everybody's got 'em. I s'pose it's a sign that it's some Mis' Ordway's party too only not enough hers to get her name on the invite. Mebbe she chipped in on the expenses. Give a third, like enough." However that was, Friendship looked on the Christmas party as on some unexpected door about to open in its path, and it woke in the morning conscious of expectation before it could remember what to expect. Proudfit House ! A Christmas party ! It touched every one as might some giant Santa Claus, for grown-ups, with a pack of heart' s- ease on his back. When Mrs. Ordway arrived in the village, the excitement mounted. Mrs. Nita Ordway was the first exquisitely beautiful woman of the great world whom Friendship had ever seen "beautiful like in the pictures of when noted folks was young," THE GRANDMA LADIES 109 the village breathlessly summed her up. To be sure, when she and her little daughter, Viola, rode out in the Proudfits* motor, nobody in the street appeared to look at them. But Friendship knew when they rode, and when they walked, and what they wore, and when they returned. It was a happiness to me to see Mrs. Ordway again, and I sat often with her in the music room at Proudfit House and listened to her glorious voice in just the songs that I love. Sometimes she would send for her little Viola, so that I might sit with the child in my arms, for she was one of those rare children who will let you love them. "I like be made some Mention to," Viola some- times said shyly. She was not afraid, and she would stay with me hour-long, as if she loved to be loved. She was like a little come-a-purpose spirit, to let one pretend. A day or two after the invitations had been re- ceived, I was in my guest room going over my Christmas list. Just before Christmas I delight in the look of a guest room, for then the bed is spread with a brave array of pretty things, and when one arranges and wraps them, the stitches of rose and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and the breath of sachets make one glad. I was lingering at my task when I heard some one below, and I recognized her voice. :io FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Calliope!" I called gladly from the stairs, and bade her come up to me. Calliope is one of the women in whose presence one can wrap one's Christmas gifts. She came into the room, bringing a breath of Winter, and she laid aside her tan ulster and her round straw hat, and straightway sat down on the rug by the open fire. "Well said!" she cried contentedly, "a grate fire upstairs ! It's one of the things that never seems real to me, like a tower on a house. I'd as soon think o' havin' a grate fire up a tree an' settin' there, as in my chamber. Anyway, when it comes Winter, upstairs in Friendship is just a place where you go after something in the bureau draw' an' come down again as quick as you can. I s'pose you got an invite to the party?" "Yes," I said, "and you will go, Calliope?" But instead of answering me : "My land!" she said, "think of it ! A party like that, an' not a low-necked waist in town, nor a swallow-tail ! An' only two weeks to do any- thing in, an* only Liddy Ember for dressmaker, an' it takes her two weeks to make a dress. I guess Mis' Postmaster Sykes has got her. They say she read her invite in the post-office with one hand an' snapped up that tobacco-brown net in the post- office store window with the other, an' out an' up THE GRANDMA LADIES ni to Liddy's an' hired her before she was up from the breakfast table. So she gets the town new dress. Mis' Sykes is terrible quick-moved." "What will you wear, Calliope?" I asked. "Me I never wear anything but henriettas," she said. "I think the plainer-faced you are, the simpler you'd ought to be dressed. I use' to fix up terrible ruffled, but when I see I was reg'lar plain- faced I stuck to henriettas, mostly gray " "Calliope," I said resolutely, "you don't mean you're not going to the Proudfit party?" She clasped her hands and held them, palms outward, over her mouth, and her eyes twinkled above them. "No, sir," she said, "I can't go. You'll laugh at me!" she defended. "Don't you tell!" she warned. And finally she told me. "Day before yesterday," she said, "I went into the City. An' I come out on the trolley. An' I donno what possessed me, I ain't done it for months, but when we crossed the start of the Plank Road, I got off an' went up an' visited the Old Ladies' Home. You know I've always thought," she broke off, " well, you know I ain't a rill lot to do with, an' I always had an i-dee that mebbe sometime, when I got older, I might " I nodded, and she went on. "Well, I walked around among 'em up there H2 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE canary birds an* plants an' footstools an* the whole thing fixed up so cheerful that it's pitiful. Red wall-paper an' flowered curtains an' such, all fair yellin' at you, * We're cheerful cheerful cheerful!' till I like to run. An' it come over me, bein' so near Christmas an' all, what would they do on Christmas ? So I asked a woman in a navy- blue dress, seein' she flipped around like she was the flag o' the place. 'The south corridor/ she answers, them's the highest payin" Calliope threw in, "'chipped in an' got up a tree, an' there's gifts for all,' s'she. 'The west corridor' them's the local city ones ' all has friends to take 'em away for the day. The east corridor' they're from farther away an' middlin' well-to-do 'all has boxes comin' to 'em from off. But the north corridor,' s'she, scowlin' some, 'is rather a trial to us. J "An' I was waitin' for that. The north cor- ridor is all charity old ladies, paid for out o' the fund; an' the president o' the home has just died, an' the secretary's in the old country on a pleasure trip, an' the board's in a row over the policy o' the home, an' the navy-blue matron dassent act, an' altogether it looked like the north corridor was goin' to get a regular mid-week Wednesday instead of a Christmas. An' I up an' ast' her to take me down to see 'em.' 5 THE GRANDMA LADIES 113 It was easy to see what Calliope had done, I thought : she had promised to sper 1 Christmas Eve over there in the north corridor, reading aloud. "They was nine of 'em," she went on, "nice old grandma ladies, with hands that looked like they'd ought to 'a' been tyin' little aprons an* cuttin' out cookies an' squeezin' somebody else's hand. There they set, with the wall-paper doin' its cheerfulest, loud as an insult, one of 'em with lots o' white hair, one of 'em singin' a little, some of 'em tryin' to sew or knit some. My land!" said Calliope, "when we think of 'em sittin' up an' down the world with their arms all empty an' Christmas comin' on ain't it a wonder Well, I stayed 'round an' talked to 'em," she went on, "while the navy-blue lady whisked her starched skirts some. She seemed too busy 'tendin' to 'em to give 'em much attention. An' they looked rill pleased when I talked to 'em about their patchwork an' knittin', an' did they get the sun all day, an' didn't the canary sort o' shave somethin' off'n the human ear-drum, on his tiptop notes ? An' when I said that, Grandma Holly her with lots o' white hair says : "'I donno but it does,' she says, 'but I don't mind; I'm so thankful to see somethin' around that's little an young. 9 "That sort o' landed in my heart. It*L just what I'd been thinkin' about 'em. ii4 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Little, young things/ s'l, sort o' careless, 'make a lot o' racket, } u know.' "At that old Mis' Burney pipes up her that brought up her daughter's children an' her son- in-law married again an' turned her out: "I use' to think so/ she says quiet; 'the noise o' the children use' to bother me terrible. When they reely got to goin' I use' to think I couldn't stand it, my head hurt me so. But now/ s'she, 'I get to thinkin' sometimes I wouldn't mind a horse-fiddle if some of 'em played it.' "'They're lots o' company, the little things/ says old Mis' Norris she'd kep' mislayin' her teeth an' the navy-blue lady had took 'em away from her that day for to teach her, so I couldn't hardly understand what she said. 'Mine was named Ellen an' Nancy/ I made out. "Some o' you remember my Sam/ -- Mis' Ail- ing speaks up then, an' she begun windin' up her yarn an' never noticed she was ravellin' out her mit- ten, 'he was an alderman/ she was goin' on, but old Mis' Winslow cuts in on her: "It don't matter what he was when he was man-grown/ s'she. 'Man-grown can get along themselves. It's when they're little bits o' ones/ she says. "'Little!' says Grandma Holly. 'Is it little you mean ? Well, my Amy's two little feet use* THE GRANDMA LADIES 115 to be swallowed up in my hand so/ she says, shuttin' her hand over to show us. "Well, so they went on. I give you my word I stood there sort o' grippin' up on my elbows. I'd always known it was so like you do know things are so. But somehow when you come to feel they're so, that's another thing. And I was feelin' this in my throat 'bout as big as an orange. I'd thought their hands looked like they'd ought to be tyin' up little aprons, but I never thought o' the hands bein' rill lonesome to do the tyin', an' thinkin' about it, too. An' now I understood 'em like I see 'em for the first time, rill face to face. Somehow, we ain't any too apt to look at people that way," said Calliope. "You see how I mean it. "Then comes the navy-blue woman an' says it's time for their hot milk, an' they all looked up, kind o' hopeful. An' I see that the navy-blue one had got 'em trained into the i-dee that hot milk was an event. She didn't like to hev 'em talk much about the past, she told me, when she see what we was speakin' of, because it gener'lly made some of 'em cry, an' the i-dee was to keep the spirit of the home bright an' cheerful. 'So I see,' s'l, dry. An' there was Christmas comin' on, an' nothin' to break the general cheerfulness but hot milk. Well," Calliope said, "I s'pose you'll think I'm terrible foolish, but I couldn't help what I done " ii6 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "I don't wonder at it," said I, warmly; "you promised to spend Christmas Eve with them and read aloud to them, didn't you, Calliope?" "No!" Calliope cried; "I didn't do that. I should think they'd be sick to death o' bein' read aloud to. I should think they'd be sick to death bein' cheered up by their surroundin's. No I invited the whole nine of 'em to come over an' spend Christmas Eve with me." "Calliope!" I cried, "but how" "I know it," she exclaimed, "I know it. But they're all well an' hardy. The charity corridor ain't expected in the infirmary much. An' Jimmy Sturgis is goin' to bring 'em over free in the closed 'bus I'll fill it with hot bricks an' hot flat-irons an' bed-quilts. An' my land ! you'd ought to see 'em when I ask' 'em. I don't s'pose they'd had an invite out in years. The navy-blue lady looked like I'd nipped a mountain off'n her shoulders, too. An' now," said Calliope, "what on top o' this earth will I do with 'em when I get 'em here ?" What indeed ? I left my task and sat by her on the rug before the fire, and we talked it over. But all the while we talked, I could see that she was keeping something back some plan of which she was doubtful. "I ain't no money to spend, you know," she said, "an' I won't let anybody else spend any for me, for THE GRANDMA LADIES 117 this. Folks has plans enough o' their own without mine. But I kep' sayin' to myself, all the way home when my knees give down at the i-dee of what I was goin' to do: 'Calliope, the Lord says, "Give." An* He meant you to give, same's those that hev got. He didn't say, "Everybody give but Calliope, an' she ain't got much, so she'd ought to be let off." He said, "Give."' An' He didn't mention all nice things, same's I'd like to give, an' most everybody does give " she nodded toward my bed, brave with its Christmas array. "He didn't mention givin' things at all. An' so," said Calliope, "I thought o' somethin' else." She sat with brooding eyes on the fire, her hands clasped about her knees. "The Lord Christ," said Calliope, "didn't hev nothin' of His own. An' yet He just give an' give an* give. An' somehow I got the /-dee," she finished, glancing up at me shyly, "that mebbe Christmas ain't really all in your stocking foot, after all. I ain't much to spend, and mebbe that sounds some like sour grapes. But it seems like a . good many beautiful things is free to all, an' that they's ways to do. Well, I've thought of a way " "Calliope," I said, "tell me what you have really planned for the old-lady party. You have planned ?" "Well, yes," she said, " I hev. But mebbe you'll think it ain't anything. First I thought o' tea, an* ti8 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE thin bread-an'-butter sandwiches it seems some like a party when you get your bread thin. An* I've got apples in the house we could roast, an' corn to pop over the kitchen fire. But then I come to a stop. For I ain't nothin* else, an* I've spent every cent I can spend a'ready. But yet I did want to show 'em somethin' lovely an' differ'nt from what they see, so's it'd seem as if somebody cared, an' as if they'd been in Christmas, too. An' all of a sudden it come to me, why not invite in a few little children o' somebody's here in Friendship ? So's them old grandma ladies " She shook her head and turned away. "I expec'," she said, "you think I'm terrible foolish. But wouldn't that be givin', don't you think? Would that be anything?" I have planned, as will fall to us all, many happy ways of keeping festival; but I think that never, even in days when I myself was happiest, have I so delighted in any event as in this of Cal- liope's proposing. And when at last she had gone, and the dusk had fallen and I lighted candles and went back to my pleasant task, some way the stitches of pink and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and the breath of the sachets were not greatly in my thoughts ; and that which made me glad was a certain shining in the room, but this was not of candle-light, or firelight, or winter starlight. THE GRANDMA LADIES 119 With the days the plans for the Proudfit party or rather the plans of the Proudfit guests went merrily forward. It was, they said, like "in the Oldmoxon days," when the house in which I was now living had been the Friendship fairyland. Some take their parties solemnly, some joyously, some feverishly; but Friendship takes them vitally, as it takes a project or the breath of being. Like the rest of the world, the village sank Christmas in festivity. It could not see Christmas for the Christmas plans. Speculation was the delight of meetings, and every one conspired in terms of toilettes. "Likely," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame- Bliss, "Mis' Banker Mason'll wear her black-an'- white foulard. Them foulards are wonderful dur- able you can't muss 'em. She got hers when Gramma Mason first hurt her back, so's if any- thing happened she'd be part mournin', an' if any- thing didn't, she'd have a nice dress to wear out places. Ain't it real convenient, white standin' for both companies an' the tomb, so?" And " Mis' Photographer Sturgis has the best of it, bein' an invalid, till a party comes up," said Libbie Liberty. "She gets plenty enough food sent in, an' flowers, an' such things, an' she's got nails hung full o' what I call sympathy clo'es, to wear durin* sympathy calls. But when it comes to a real what uo FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE you might say dress-up dress, I guess she'll hev to be took worse with her side an' stay in the house." Abigail Arnold contributed : "Seems Mis' Doctor Helman had a whole wine silk dress put away with her dyin' things. She always thought it sounded terrible fine to hear about the dead havin* dress-pattern after dress- pattern laid away that hadn't never been made up. So she'd got together the one, but now she an' Elzabella are goin' to work an' make it up. I guess Mis' Helman thinks her stomach is so much better 't mebbe she'll be spared till after the holidays when the sales begin." Even Liddy Ember had promised to go and to take Ellen, and Ellen went up and down the winter streets singing sane little songs about the party, save on days when she "come herself again," and then she planned, as wildly as anybody, what she meant to wear. And Liddy, whose dream had always been to do "reg'lar city dress-makin', with helpers an' plates an' furnish the findin's at the shop," and whose lot instead had been to cut and fit "just the durable kind," was blithely at work night and day on Mis' Postmaster Sykes's tobacco-brown net. We understood that there were to be brown velvet butterflies stitched down the skirt, and if her Lady Washington geranium flowered in time, Mis' Sykes was said to lav bread and milk THE GRANDMA LADIES 121 nightly about the roots to encourage it, she was to wear the blossom in her hair. ("She'll be gettin' herself talked about, wearin' a wreath o' flowers on her head, so," said some.) But then, Mis' Sykes was recognized to be "one that picks her own steps." " Mis' Sykes always dresses for company accordin* to the way she gets her invite," Calliope observed. "A telephone invite, she goes in somethin' she'd wear home afternoons. Word o' mouth at the front door, she wears what she wears on Sundays. Written invites, she rags out in her rill best dress, for parties. But engraved," Calliope mounted to her climax, "a bran' new dress an' a wreath in her hair is the least she'll stop at." But I think that, in the wish to do honour to so distinguished an occasion, the temper of Mis' Sykes, and perhaps of Ellen Ember too, was the secret temper of all the village. IX "NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH*' I DARESAY that excitement followed excitement when news of Calliope's party got abroad. But of this I knew little, for I spent those next days at the Proudfits' with Nita Ordway and little Viola, and though I thought often of Calliope, I chanced not to see her again until the holidays were almost upon us. In the late afternoon, two days before Christmas, I dropped in at her cottage to learn how pleasantly the plans for her party matured. To my amazement I found her all dejection. "Why, Calliope," I said, "can't the grandma ladies come, after all?" Yes, they could come ; they were coming. "You are never sorry you asked them ?" I pressed her. No. Oh, no; she was glad she had asked them. "Something is wrong, though," I said sadly thinking what a blessed thing it is to be so joyous a spirit that one's dejections are bound to be taken seriously. MM "NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH " 123 " Well/' said Calliope, then, "it's the children. No it ain't, it's Friendship. The town's about as broad as a broom straw an' most as deep. Anything dif- fer'nt scares 'em like something wore out'd ought to. Friendship's got an i-dee that Christmas begins in a stocking an' ends off in a candle. It thinks the rest o' the days are reg'lar, self-respecting days, but it looks on Christmas like an extry thing, thrown in to please 'em. It acts as if the rest o' the year was plain cake an' the holidays was the frostin' to be et, an' everybody grab the best themselves, give or take." "Calliope !" I cried for this was as if the moon had objected to the heavens. "Oh, I know I'd ought not to," she said sadly; "but don't folks act as if time was give to 'em to run around wild with, as best suits 'em ? Three hundred an' 'leven days a year to use for themselves, an' Sun- days an' Christmas an' Thanksgivin' to give away looks to me a rill fair division. But, no. Some folks act like Sundays an' holidays was not only the frostin', but the nuts an' candy an' ice-cream o' things their ice-cream, to eat an' pass to their own, an' scrape the freezer." And then came the heart of the matter. "T seems," said Calliope, "there's that children's Christmas tree at the new minister's on Christmas Eve. But that ain't till ha'-past seven, an' I done my best 124 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE to hev some o' the children stop in here on their way, for my little party. An' with one set o' lungs their mas says no, they'd get mussed for the tree if they do. I offered to hev 'em bring their white dresses pinned in papers, an' we'd dress 'em here I think the grandma ladies'd like that. But their mas says no, pinned in papers'd take the starch out an' their hair'd get all over their heads. An' some o' the mothers says indignant: 'Old ladies from the poor- house end o' the home well, I should think not ! Children is very easy to take things. If you'd hed young o' your own, you'd think more, Calliope,' they says witherin'." Her little wrinkled hands were trembling at the enormity. "I donno," she added, "but I was foolish to try it. But I did want to get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for them old ladies to see. An', my mind, they ain't much so rilly lovely as little young children, together in a room." "But, Calliope," I said in distress, "isn't there even one child you can get ?" "No, sir," she said. "Not a one. I been every- where. You know they ain't any poor in Friend- ship. We're all comfortable enough off to be over- particular." "But wouldn't you think," I said, "at Christmas time " "NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH" 125 "Yes, you would," Calliope said, "you would. You'd think Christmas'd make everything kind o* softened up an' differ'nt. Every time I look at the holly myself, I feel like I'd just shook hands with somebody cordial." None the less for Calliope had drunk deep of the wine of doing and she never gave up any project at four o'clock on the day before Christmas I saw the closed 'bus driven by Jimmy Sturgis fare briskly past my house on its way to the " start of the Plank Road," to the Old Ladies' Home. Within, I knew, were quilts and hot stones of Calliope's providing; and Jimmy had hung the 'bus windows with cedar, and two little flags fluttered from the door. It all had a merry, holiday air as Jimmy shook the lines and drew on swiftly through the snow to those wistful nine guests, who at last were to be "in Christmas," too. " If they can't do nothin' else," Calliope had said, "they can talk over old times, without hot milk interferin'. But I wish, an' I wish seem's though there'd ought always to be a child around on Star o' Bethlehem night, don't it?" I dined alone that Star of Bethlehem night, and to dine alone under Christmas candles is never a cheerful business. The Proudfit car was to come for me soon after eight, and at eight I stood waiting at the window of my little living room, saying to myself that if I were to drop from the air to a deserted country 126 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE road, I should be certain that it was Christmas Eve. You can tell Christmas Eve anywhere, like a sugar- plum, with your eyes shut. It is not the lighted houses, or the close-curtained windows behind which Christmas trees are fruiting; nor yet, in Friendship, will it be the .post-office store or the home bakery windows, gay with Christmas trappings. But there is in the world a subdued note of joyful preparation, as if some spirit whom one never may see face to face had on this night a gift of perceptible life. And in spite of my loneliness, my heart upleaped to the note of a distant sleigh-bell jingling an air of "Home, going Home, Christmas Eve and going Home." Then, when the big Proudfit cai came flashing to my door, I had a sweet surprise. For from it, through the snowy dark, came running a little fairy thing, and Viola Ordway danced to my door with her mother, muffled in furs. "We've been close in the house all day," Mrs. Ordway cried, " and now we've run away to get you. Come!" As for me, I took Viola in my arms and lifted her to my hall table and caught off her cloak and hood. I can never resist doing this to a child. I love to see the little warm, plump body in its fine white linen emerge rose-wise, from the calyx cloak; and I love that shy first gesture, whatever it may be, of a child so emerging. The turning about, the freeing of soft "NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH" 127 hair from the neck, the smoothing down of the frock, the half-abashed upward look. Viola did more. She laid one hand on my cheek and held it so, looking at me quite gravely, as if that were some secret sign of brotherhood in the unknown, which she remem- bered and I, alas ! had forgotten. But I perfectly remembered how to kiss her. If only, I thought, all the empty arms could know a Viola. If only all the empty arms, up and down the world, could know a Viola even just at Christmas time. If only Over the top of Viola's head I looked across at Nita Ordway, and a sudden joyous purpose lighted all the air about me as a joyous purpose will. Oh, if only And then I heard myself pouring out a marvellous jumble of sound and senselessness. "Nita !" I cried, "you are not a Friendship Village mother ! You are not afraid. Viola is not going to the new minister's Christmas tree. Oh, don't you see ? It's still early surely we have time ! The grandma ladies must see Viola!" I remember how Nita Ordway laughed, and her answer made me love her the more as is the way of some answers. "I don't catch it I don't," she said, "but it sounds delicious. All courage, and old ladies, and ample time for everything! If I said, 'Of course/ would that do ?" Already I was tying Viola's hood, and next to 128 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE taking off a child's hood I love putting one on surely every one will have noticed how their mouths bud up for kissing. While we sped along the Plank Road toward Calliope's cottage, I poured out the story of who were at her house that night, and why, and all that had befallen. In a moment the great car, devouring its own path of light, set us down at Calliope's gate, and Calliope herself, trim in her gray henrietta, her wrinkled face flushed and shining, came at our summons. And I pushed Viola in before us little fairy thing in a fluff of white wraps and white furs. "Look, Calliope!" I cried. Calliope looked down at her, and I think she can hardly have seen Mrs. Ordway and me at all. She smote her hands softly together. " Oh," she said, " if it isn't ! Oh a child for Star o' Bethlehem night, after all !" She dropped to her knees before Viola, touching the little girl's hand almost shyly. There was in Calliope's face when she looked at any child a kind of nakedness of the woman's soul; and she, who was so deft, was curiously awkward in such a presence. "They're out there in the dinin' room," she whis- pered, "settin' round the cook stove. I saw they felt some better out there. Le's us leave her go out alone by herself, just the way she is." And that was what we did. We said something -NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH" 129 to Viola softly about "the poor grandma ladies, with no little girl to love," and then Calliope opened the door and let her through. We peeped for a moment at the lamp-lit crack. The dining room was warm and bright, its table covered with red cotton and set with tea-cups, shelves of plants blooming across the windows, cedar green on the walls. The odour of pop-corn was in the air, and above an open griddle hole apples bobbed on strings tied to the stove-pipe wing. And there about the cooking range, with its cheery opened hearth, Cal- liope's Christmas guests were gathered. They were exquisitely neat and trim, in black and brown cloth dresses, with a brooch, or a white apron, or a geranium from a window plant worn for festival. I recognized Grandma Holly, with her soft white hair, and I thought I could tell which were Mis' Ailing and Mis' Burney and Mis' Norris. And the faces of them all, the gentle, the grief-marked, even the querulous, were grown kindly with the knowledge that somebody had cared about their Christmas. The child went toward them as simply as if they had been friends. They looked at her with some murmuring of surprise, and at one another ques- tioningly. Viola went straight to the knee of Grandma Holly, who was nearest. "'At lady tied my hood too tight," she referred unflatteringly to me, "p'eas do it off." 130 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Grandma Holly looked down over her spectacles, and up at the other grandma ladies, and back to Viola. The others gathered nearer, hitching forward rocking-chairs, rising to peer over shoulders breathlessly, with a manner of fearing to touch her. But because of the little uplifted face, waiting, Grandma Holly must needs untie the white hood and reveal all the shining of the child's hair. "Nen do my toat off," Viola gravely directed. At that Grandma Holly crooned some single in- distinguishable syllable in her throat, and then off came the cloak. The little warm, plump body in its fine linen emerged, rose-wise, and Viola smoothed down her frock, and freed her hair from her neck, and glanced up shyly. By the stir and flutter among them I understood that they were feeling just as I feel when a little hood and cloak come off. Viola stood still for a minute. "I like be made some 'tention to," she suggested gently. Ah and they understood. How they under- stood ! Grandma Holly swept the little girl in her arms, and I know how the others closed about them with smiles and vague unimportant words. Viola sat quietly and happily, like a little come-a-purpose spirit to let them pretend. And it was with them all as if something long pent up went free. Calliope left the door and turned toward us. "NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH" 131 "Seems like my throat couldn't stand it," she said, . . . and it seemed to me, as we three sat together in the dim little parlor, that Nita Ordway must cherish Viola for us all for the grandma ladies and Calliope and me. Half an hour later we three went out to the dining room. Viola ran to her mother when she entered. Nita took her in her arms and sat beside the stove, her cloak slipping from her shoulders, the soft peach tints of her gown shot through with shining lines and the light caught in her collar of gems. "I did want to get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for them old ladies to see," Calliope had said. "Oh," said Grandma Holly, and she laid her brown hand on Viola's hand, "ain't she dear an little an young?" "I wish't she'd talk some," begged old Mis' Norris. "Ain't she good, though, the little thing?" Mis' Ailing said. "Look at how still she sets. Not wigglin' 'round same as some. It was just that way with Sam when he was small he'd set by the hour an' leave me hold him " A little bent creature, whose name I never learned, sat patting Viola's skirt. "Seems like I'd gone back years," we heard her say. Grandma Holly held up one half-closed hand. 132 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Like that," she told them, "my Amy's feet was so little I could hold 'em like that, an' I see hers is the same way. She's wonderful like Amy was, her age." I cannot recall half the sweet, trivial things that they said. But I remember how they told us stories of their own babies, and we laughed with them over treasured sayings of long-ago lips, or grieved with them over silences, or rejoiced at glad things that had been. Regardless of the Proudfit party, we let them talk as they would, and remember. Then of her own accord Nita Ordway hummed some haunting air, and sang one of the songs that we all loved the grandma ladies and Calliope and I. It was a sleepy song, whose words I have forgotten, but it was in a kind of universal tongue which I think that no one can possibly mistake. And out of the lullaby came all the little spirits, freed in babyhood or "man- grown," and stood at the knees of the grandma ladies, so that I was afraid that they could not bear it. When the song was done, Viola suddenly sat up very straight. "I got a litty box," she announced, "an' I had a parasol. An' once a boy div me a new nail. An' once I didn' feel berry well, but now I am. An' once " Their laughter was like a caress. Before it was done, we heard a stamping without, and there was NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH" 133 Jimmy Sturgis, with a spray of holly in his old felt hat and the closed 'bus at the door. We helped Calliope to get their wraps and to fill the 'bus with hot stones from the oven and with many quilts, and we made ready a basket of pop-corn and apples and of the cedar hung around the little room. They stood about us to say good-by, or to tell us some last bit of the news of their long-past youth dear, wrinkled faces framed in broad lines of bonnet or hood, and smiling, every one. "This gray shawl I got on me is the very one I used to wrap Amy in to carry her through the cold hall," said Grandma Holly. " My land-a-livin' ! seems's if I'd been with her to-night, over again !" Their way of thanks lay among stumbling words and vague repetitions, but there was a kind of glory in their grateful faces, and one always remembers that. "Merry Prismas, gramma ladies!" Viola cried shrilly at the 'bus door, and within they laughed like mothers as they answered. And Jimmy Sturgis cracked his whip, and the sleigh-bells jingled. Nita Ordway and Viola and I stood for a moment with Calliope at her gate. "Come!" we begged her, "now go with us. We are all late together. There is no reason why you should not op with us to the Christmas party." But Cahiope shook her head. 134 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said, "but oh, I couldn't. I've hed too rilly a Christmas to come down to a party anywheres." When Nita and Viola and I reached Proudfit House, the guests were all assembled, but we knew that Mrs. Proudfit and Miss Clementina would be the first to forgive us when they understood. The big colonial home was bright with scarlet- shaded candles and holly-hung walls; there was mistletoe on the sconces, and in the great hall there were tuneful strings. On the landing of the stairs stood Mrs. Proudfit and Miss Clementina, charm- ingly pretty in their delicate frocks, and wholly gay and gracious. ("They seem lively like in pictures where folks don't make a loud sound a-talkin'," said Friendship. "I s'pose it's somethin' you learn in the City.") And Friendship wore its loyalty like a mantle. Twelve years had passed, and yet one and another said under breath and sighed, "If only Miss Linda could 'a' been here, too." All Friendship Village was there, save / bel Halsey, who was at the Good Shepherd's Home Christmas tree in the City, and, perhaps one would say, Delia More, who had begged to be allowed to help in the kitchen " an* be there that way." Even Peleg Bemus was in his place in the orchestra, sitting " Ti *th closed eyes, playing his flute, and keeping audible time with "NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH" 135 his wooden leg, quite as he did when he played his flute at night, on Friendship streets. And there was Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in the tobacco-brown net, with butterflies stitched down the skirt and the Lady Washington geranium in her hair and forever near her went little Miss Liddy Ember with an almost passionate creative pride in the gown of her hand, so that she would murmur her patron an occasional warning: "Mis' Sykes, throw back your shoulders, you hev to, to bring out the real set o' the basque;" or, " Don't forget you want to give a little hitch to the back when you stand up, Mis' Sykes." And to one and another Liddy said proudly, "I declare if I didn't get that skirt with the butterflies just like a magazine cover." And there, too, was Ellen Ember, wearing a white book muslin and a rosy "nubia" that had been her mother's; and Ellen's face was uplifted, and of pale distinction under the bronze glory of her hair, but all that evening she smiled and sang and wondered, in utter absence of the spirit. ("Oh," poor Miss Liddy said, "I do so want Ellen to come herself before supper. She won't remember a thing she eats, an' she don't have much that's tasty an' good. It'll be just like she missed the whole thing, in spite of all the chore o' comin'.") And there were Mis' Doctor Helman in her new wine silk; Mis' Banker Mason in the black-and-white foulard de- signed to grace a festival or to respect a tomb; Mis 1 136 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Sturgis, in a put-away dress that was a surprise to everyone; Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Eppleby, and the "Other" Holcombs; Abigail Ar- nold, the Gekerjecks, Mis' Toplady and Timothy, even Mis' Mayor Uppers no one was forgotten. And save poor Ellen every one was aglow with the sweet satisfaction of having sent abroad a brave array of pretty things, with stitches of rose and blue on flowered fabrics, with the flutter of ribbons, and the breath of sachets, and with many a gift of substance to those less generously endowed. To them all the delight of the season was in the gifts of their hands and in the night's merry-making, and in the joy of keeping holiday. Here, as Calliope had said, Christ- mas, begun in a stocking, was ending in a candle. And yet it was Star of Bethlehem night, the night of Him who " didn't mention givin' things at all." X LONESOME. I CALLIOPE and I were talking over the Proudfit party, as I had grown to like to talk over most things with her, when I said something of two of the guests whom I did not remember before to have seen : a little man of shy gravity and an extremely pretty girl who, if she looked at any one but him, did so quite un- detected. "That's Eb Goodnight," Calliope replied, "him of the new-born spine. Wasn't it like the Proudfits to ask them ?" And, at my question : "Some folks," Calliope said, "has got spines and some folks hasn't. But what I say is, nobody can tell which is which. Because now and then the soft- spine' kind just hardens up all in a minute same as steel. So when I meet a stranger that sort o' sops along through life, limp and floppy, I never judge him. I just say, 'You look some like a loose shutter, but mebbe you can fair bang the house down, if you 137 138 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE rilly get to blowin'.' It was that way with Eb Good- night. " I donno how it is other places. But I've noticed with us here in Friendship an* I've grown to the town from short dresses to bein'-careful-what-I-eat I've often noticed't when folks seems not to have any backbone to speak of, or even when they go 'round sort o' crazy they's usually some other reason, like enough. Sensitive or sick or lonesome, or like that. It was so with Eb an' it was so with Elspie. Elspie, though, was interestin' on account o' bein' not only a little crazy, but rill pretty besides. But Eb, he was the kind that a sign-board is more inter- estin' than. An' yet - With that she paused, looking down some way of her own thought. I knew Calliope's "an* yet." It splendidly conceded the entire converse of her argu- ment. "Eb come here to Friendship," she went on, "less public than Elspie did. Elspie come official, as an inmate o' the county house. Eb, he sort o' crep' in town, like he crep' everywhere else. He introduced himself to me through sellin' needles. He walked in on me an' a two-weeks ironin' one mornin' with, 'Lemme present myself as Ebenezer Goodnight, sewin' needles, knittin' needles, crochet hooks an* shuttles an* anything o' that,' an' down he set an' never opened his mouth about his needles again. LONESOME. I 139 Eb was real delicate, for an agent. He just talked all the time about Friendship an' himself. 'The whol' blame* town's kin/ s'e; 'I never see such a place. .Everybody's kin, only just me. Air you,' he ask' me wistful, * cousin' of 'em all, too ?' "'Mis' Sprague that's dead was connected up with me by marriage an' Mis' Sykes is my mother's secunt cousin,' I owned up.' "'That's it again,' s'e, sighin'. 'I'm the odd number, dum it,' he says sorrowful. "Well, an' he hed sort of an odd-number way about him, too. He went along the street like he didn't belong. I donno if you know what I mean, but he was always takih' in the tops o' buildin's an' lookin' at the roads an' behavin' like he noticed the way you don't when you live in a town. Yes, Ebenezer Goodnight went around like he see things for the first time. An' somehow he never could join in. When he walked up to a flock o' men, he stood side of 'em, an' not with 'em. An' he shook hands sort o' loose an' temporary like he meant somethin' else. An' he just couldn't bear not to agree with you. If he let out't the sky was blue an' you said, No, pink, he'd work around till he'd dyed bis sky pink, too. That man would agree to things he never heard of. Let Peleg Bemus be tellin' one o' his eastern janitor adventures, an' Eb'd set an'agree with him, past nod- din' an' up to words, all about elevators an' Ferris HO FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE boats an' Eyetalians an' things he'd never laid look to. He seemed to hev a spine made mostly o' molasses. An' sometimes I think your spine's your soul. " Eb hed been lonelyin' 'round the village a month or so when Sum Merriman, that run the big rival business to the post-office store, an' was fire chief besides, took him an' his peddler's pack into the dry goods end an' Eb was tickled. He went down first mornin' in his best clo'es, a-wearin' both collar an' cuffs. But when somebody remarked on the clo'es, he didn't hev backbone enough to keep on wearin' 'em he slimpsed right back to his peddler duds an' done his best to please. An' he did please he made a rill first-rate merchant clear up till June o' the year. An' then Sum Merriman, his employer, he went to work an' died. "Sum died a Tuesday, an', bein' it never rains but it pours, an' piles peelin's on ashes, or what- ever it is they say, it was the Tuesday that the poorhouse burnt down just like it knew the fire chief was gone. The poorhouse use' to be across the track, beyond the cemetery an' quite near my house. An' the night it burnt I was settin' on the side stoop without anything over my head, just smellin' in the air, when I see a little pinky look on the sky beyond the track. It wasn't moon-time, an' they wa'n't nothin' to bonfire that time o' year, an' I set still, pre- tendin' it was rose-bushes makin' a ladder an' LONESOME. I 141 buildin' a way of escape by night. It was such a nice evenin' you couldn't imagine anything rilly happenin' bad. But all at once I heard the fire- engine bell potindin' away like all possessed an' then runnin' feet, like when they's an accident. I got to the gate just as somebody come rushin' past, an' I piped up what was the matter. 'Poorhouse's afire,' s'e. 'Poorhouse,' s'l. 'My land!' An' I out the gate an' run alongside of him, an' he sort o' slowed down for me, courteous. "Then I noticed it was Eb Goodnight lonelier'n ever now that his employer bed died that day. I'd never see Eb hustle that much before, an' the thought went through my head, kind o' wonderin', that he was runnin' as if the fire was a real relation o'his an' he was sent for. 'Know anything else about it?' I ask' him, keepin' up. 'Not much,' s'e, 'but I guess it's got such a head-start the whol' thing'll go like a shell.' An' when we got to the top o' the bank on the other side o' the track, we see it was that way the poorhouse'd got such a head-start burnin' that nothin' could save it, though Timothy Toplady, that was town marshal an' chairman o' the county board, an' Silas Sykes an' Eppleby Holcomb, that was managers o' the poorhouse, an' some more, went puffin' past us, yellin', ' Put it out run fer water why don't you do suthin' ?' an' like that, most beside theirselves. 142 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "'Them poor critturs,' says I, 'oh, my, them poor critturs in the home' for there must V ben twenty o' the county charges all quartered in the buildin'. An' when we come to the foot o' the poorhouse hill, land, land, I never see such Bedlam. "The fire had started so soon after dusk that the inmates was all up yet. An* they was half of 'em huddled in a bunch by the side-yard stile an' half of 'em runnin' 'round wild as anything. The whol' place looked like when you hev a bad dream. It made me weak in my knees, an' I was winded any- way with runnin', an' I stopped an' leant up against a tree, an' Eb, he stopped too, takin' bearin's. An' there I was, plump against Elspie, standin' holdin' her arms 'round the tree trunk an' shiverin' some. "'Elspie,' s'l, 'why, you poor child.' "'No need to rub that in,' s'she, tart. It's the one word the county charges gets sensitive about an' Eb, he seemed to sense that, an' he ask' her, hasty, how the fire started. He called her 'Miss,' too, an' I judged that 'Miss' was one o' them poultice words to her. " ' I donno,' s'she, ' but don't it look cheerful ? The yard's all lit up nice, like fer comp'ny,' she says, rill pleased. "It sort o' uncovered my nerves to hear her so unconcerned. I never hed understood her none of us hed. She was from outside the state, but LONESOME. I 143 her uncle, Job Ore, was on our county board an' he got her into our poorhouse like you can when you're in politics. Then he up an' died an' went home to be buried, an' there she was on our hands. She wa'n't rill crazy we understood't she hadn't ben crazy at all up to the time her mother died. Then she hadn't no one to go to an' she got queer, an' the poorhouse uncle stepped in; an' when he died, he died in debt, so his death wa'n't no use to her. She was thirty odd, but awful little an' slim an' scairt-lookin', an' quite pretty, I allus thought; an' I never see a thing wrong with her till she was so unconcerned about the fire. "Elspie,' s'l, stern, 'ain't you no feelin'/ s'l, 'for the loss o' the only home you've got to your back?' "Oh, I donno,' s'she, an' I could see her smilin' in that bright light, 'oh, I donno. It'll be some place to come to, afterwards. When I go out walkin',' s'she, 'I ain't no place to head for. I sort o' circle 'round an' come back. I ain't even a grave to visit,' s'she, ' an' it'll be kind o' cosey to come up here on the hill an' set down by the ashes like they belonged. 9 "I know I heard Eb Goodnight laugh, kind o' cracked an' enjoyable, an' I took some shame to him for makin' fun o' the poor girl. "She's goin' clear out o' her head,' thinks I, 'an' you'd better get her home with you, short off.' 144 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE So I put my arm around her, persuadish, an' I says: 'Elspie,' I says, 'you come on to my house now for a spell/ I says. But Eb, he steps in, prompter' n I ever knew him I'd never heard him do a thing decisive an* sudden excep' sneeze, an' them he always done his best to swallow. 'I'll take her to your house,' he says to me; 'you go on up there to them women. I won't be no use up there,' he says. An' that was reasonable enough, on account o' Eb not bein' the decisive kind, for fires an' such. "So Eb he went off, takin' Elspie to my house, an' I went on up the hill, where Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes an' Eppleby was rushin' round, wild an' sudden, herdin' the inmates here an' there, vague an' energetic. I didn't do much better, an' I done worse too, because I burned my left wrist, long an' deep. When I got home with it, Eb was settin' on the front stoop with Elspie, an' when he heard about the wrist, he come in an' done the lightin' up. An' Elspie, she fair su'prised me. "'Where do you keep your rags ?' s'she, brisk. "'In that flour chest I don't use,' I says, 'in the shed.' " My land ! she was back in a minute with a soft piece o' linen an' the black oil off the clock shelf that I hadn't told her where it was, an' she bound up my wrist like she'd created that burn an' understood it up an' down. LONESOME. I 145 "Now you get into the bed/ she says, 'without workin' the rag off. I'm all right,' s'she. 'I can lock up. I like hevin' it to do,' she told me. "But Eb puts in, kind o' eager: "Lemme lock up the shed it's dark as a hat out there an' you might sprain over your ankle,' he says awkward. An' so he done the lockin' up, an' it come over me he liked hevin' that little householdy thing to do. An' then he went off home that is, to where he stopped an' hated it so. "Well, the poorhouse burnt clear to the ground, an' the inmates hed to be quartered 'round in Friend- ship anyhow that night, an' nex' day I never see Friendship so upset. I never see the village roust itself so sudden, either. Timothy an' the managers was up an' doin' before breakfast next mornin', an' no wonder. Timothy Toplady, he had three old women to his farm. Silas Sykes, he'd took in Foolish Henzie an' another old man for his. An' Eppleby Holcomb, in his frenzy he'd took in five, an' Mame was near a lunatic with havin' 'em to do for. An' all three men bein' at the head o' the burned buildin', they danced 'round lively makin' provision, an' they sent telegrams, wild an' reckless, without countin' the words. An' before noon it was settled't the poor- house in Alice County, nearest us, should take in the inmates temporary. We was eatin' dinner when Timothy an' Silas come in to tell Elspie. I wished L I 4 6 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE Eppleby had come to tell her. Eppleby does every- thing like he was company, an' not like he owned it. "Eb was hevin' dinner with us too. He'd been scallopin' in an' out o' the house all the forenoon, an* I'd ask' him to set down an' hev a bite. But when he done even that, he done it kind of alien. Peleg Bemus, playin' his flute walkin' along the streets nights, like he does, seems more a rill citizen than Eb use* to, eatin' his dinner. Elspie, she'd got the whol' dinner she was a rill good cook, an' that su'prised me as much as her dressin' my wrist the night before. She'd pampered me shameful all that mornin' too, an' I'd let her when you've lived alone so long, it's kind o' nice to hev a person fussin* here an' there, an' Elspie seemed to love takin' care o' somebody. I declare, it seemed as if she done some things for me just for the sake o' doin' 'em she was that kind. Timothy an' Silas wouldn't hev any dinner, it was a boiled piece, too, bein' as dinners o' their own was gettin' cold. But they set up against the edge o' the room so's we could be eatin' on. "'Elspie,' says Timothy, 'yoa must be ready to go sharp seven o'clock Friday mornin'.' "' Go where?' says Elspie. She hed on a black- an'-white stripe o' mine, an' her cheeks were some pink from standin' over the cook stove, an' she looked rill pretty. LONESOME. I 147 "Timothy, he hesitated. But, "'To the Alice County poorhouse,' says Silas, blunt. Silas Sykes is a man that always says 'bloody* an' 'devil' an' 'coffin' right out instead o' 'bandaged' an' 'the Evil One,' an' 'casket.' '"Oh !' says Elspie. 'Oh, . . .' an' sort o' sunk down an' covered her mouth with her wrist an' looked at us over it. '"The twenty o' you'll take the Dick Dasher,' says Timothy, then, 'an' it'll be a nice train ride for ye/ he says, some like an undertaker makin' small talk. But he see how Elspie took it, an' so he slid off the subjec' an' turned to Eb. "Little too early to know who's goin' to take the Merriman store, ain't it ?' s'he, cheerful. Timothy ain't so everlastin' cheerful, either, but he always hearties himself all over when he talks, like he was a bell or a whistle an' he hed it to do. "Eb, he dropped his knife on the floor. 'Yes, yes,' he says flurried, 'yes, it is ' like he was rushin' to cover an' a 'yes' to agree was his best protection. "Oh, well, it ain't so early either,' Silas cuts in, noddin' crafty. "No, no,' Eb agrees immediate, 'I donno's 'tis so very early, after all.' "I'm thinkin' o' takin' the store over myself,' says Silas Sykes, tippin' his head back an' rubbin' thought- 148 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE ful under his whiskers. 'It'd be a good idee to buy it in, an' no mistake/ "'Yes/ says Eb, noddin', 'yes. Yes, so't would be/ "I donno's I'd do it, Silas, if I was you,' says Timothy, frownin' judicial. 'Ain't you gettin' some stiff to take up with a new business ?' But Timothy is one o' them little pink men, an' you can't take his frowns much to heart. "'No,' says Eb, shakin' his head. 'No. No, I donno's I would take it either, Mr. Sykes/ "I was goin' to say somethin' about the wind blowin' now east, now west, an' the human spine makin' a bad weathercock, but I held on, an' pretty soon Timothy an' Silas went out. "Seven o'clock Friday A.M., now!' says Silas, playful, over his shoulder to Elspie. But Elspie didn't answer. She was just sittin' there, still an' quiet, an' she didn't eat another thing. "That afternoon she slipped out o' the house somewheres. She didn't hev a hat what few things she did hev hed been burnt. She went off without any hat an' stayed most all the afternoon. I didn't worry, though, because I thought I knew where she'd gone. But I wouldn't 'a' asked her, I'd as soon slap anybody as quiz 'em, an' besides I knew't somebody'd tell me if I kep' still. Friendship'll tell you everything you want to know, if you lay low LONESOME. I 149 long enough. An' sure as the world, 'bout five o'clock in come Mis' Postmaster Sykes, lookin' troubled. Folks always looks that way when they come to interfere. Seems't she'd just walked past the poorhouse ruins, an' she'd see Elspie settin' there side of 'em, all alone "' sin gin ? says Mis' Sykes, impressive, like the evil was in the music, ' sittin' there singin', like she was all possessed. An' I come up behind her an* plumped out at her to know what she was a-doin'. An' she says: "I'm makin' a call," just like that; "I'm makin' a call," s'she, smilin', an' not another word to be got out of her. * An ' says Mis' Sykes, 'let me tell you, I scud down that hill, one goose pimple. 9 "Let her alone/ says I, philosophic. 'Leave her be.' " But inside I ached like the toothache for the poor thing for Elspie. An' I says to her, when she come home : "'Elspie,' I says, 'why don't you go out 'round some an' see folks here in the village ? The minister's wife'd be rill glad to hev you come,' I says. "Oh, I hate to hev 'em sit thinkin' about me in behind their eyes,' s'she, ready. "'What?" says I, blank. "'It comes out through their eyes,' she says. 'They keep thinkin': Poor, poor, poor Elspie. If i 5 o FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE they was somebody dead't I could go to see,' she told me, smilin', 'I'd do that. A grave can't poor you/ she told me, 'an' everybody that's company to you does.' "'Well!' says I, an' couldn't, in logic, say no more. "That evenin' Eb come in an' set down on the edge of a chair, experimental, like he was testin' the cane. "'Miss Cally,' s'e, when Elspie was out o' the room, 'you goin' t' let her go with them folks to the Alice County poorhouse ? ' "I guess I dissembulated some under my eyelids bein' I see t' Eb's mind was givin' itself little lurches. "'Well,' s'l, 'I don't see what that's wise I can do besides.' "He mulled that rill thorough, seein' to the back o' one hand with the other. "'Would you take her to board an' me pay for her board ?' s'e, like he'd sneezed the /-dea an' couldn't help it comin', "'Goodness!' s'l, neutral. " Eb sighed, like he'd got my refusal Eb was one o' the kind that always thinks, if it clouds up, 't the sun is down on 'em personally. "'Oh,' s'l, bold an' swift, 'you great big ridiculous man! 9 "An* I'm blest if he didn't agree to that. LONESOME. I 151 "'I know I'm ridiculous/ s'he, noddin', sad. 'I know I'm that, Miss Cally.' "'Well, I didn't mean it that way/ s'l, reticent an* said no more, with the exception of what I'd rilly meant. "'Why under the canopy/ I ask' him, for a hint, 'don't you take the Sum Merriman store, an' run it, an' live on your feet ? I ain't any patience with a man/ s'l, 'that lives on his toes. Stomp some, why don't you, an' buy that store ?' "An' his answer su'prised me. '"I did ask Mis' Fire Chief fer the refusal of it/ he said. 'I ask' her when I took my flowers to Sum, to-day they was wild flowers I'd picked myself/ he threw in, so's I wouldn't think spendthrift of him. 'An' I'm to let her know this week, for sure.' ' ' Glory, glory, glory/ s'l, under my breath like I'd seen a rill live soul, standin' far off on a hill somewheres, drawin' cuts to see whether it should come an' belong to Eb, or whether it shouldn't. XI LONESOME. II "All that evenin' Eb an' Elspie an* I set by the cook stove, talking an' they seemed to be plenty to talk about, an' the air in the room was easy to get through with what you hed to say it was that kind of an evenin'. Eb was pretty quiet, though, excep' when he piped up to agree. 'Gettin' little too hot here, ain't it ?' I know I said once; an' Eb see right off he was roasted an' he spried 'round the draughts like mad. An' a little bit afterwards I says, with malice the fourth thought: 'I can feel my shoulders some chilly/ I says an' he acted fair chatterin'- toothed himself, an' went off headfirst for the wood- pile. I noticed that, an' laughed to myself, kind o* pityin'. But Elspie, she never noticed. An' when it come time to lock up, I 'tended to my wrist an' let them two do the lockin'. They seemed to like to I could tell that. An' Elspie, she let Eb out the front door herself, like they was rill folks. "Nex' day I was gettin' ready for Sum Merriman's 152 LONESOME. II 153 funeral, it was to be at one o'clock, when Elspie come in my room, sort o' shyin' up to me gentle. "Miss Cally,' s'he, 'do you think the mourners'd take it wrong if Fs to go to the funeral ?' "'Why, no, Elspie,' I says, su' prised; 'only what do you want to go for ?' I ask' her. " ' Oh, I donno,' s'she. ' I'd like to go an' I'd like to ride to the graveyard. I've watched the funerals through the poorhouse fence. An' I'd kind o' like to be one o' the followers, for once all lookin' friendly an' together so^ in a line.' Go with me then, child,' I says. An' she done so. " Bein' summer, the funeral flowers was perfectly beautiful. They was a rill hothouse box from the Proudfits; an' a anchor an' two crosses an' a red geranium lantern; an' a fruit piece made o' straw flowers from the other merchants; an' seven pillows, good-sized, an' with all different wordin', an' so on. The mound at the side o' the grave was piled knee- high, an' Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, I heard, said it seemed like Sum was less dead than almost anybody Yd died in Friendship, bein' the grave kind o' spoke up, friendly, when you see the flowers. She went home rill cheerful from the funeral an' was able to help get the supper for the out-o'-town relations, a thing no widow ever thinks of, anyway till the next day though Sum was her second husband, so it was a little different than most. 154 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Well, a few of us waited 'round the cemetery afterwards to fix the flowers on the top o' the sod, an* Elspie, she waited with me fussin' quiet with one thing an* another. Eb, he waited too, standin' 'round. An* when it come time for us women to lay the set pieces on, I see Elspie an* Eb walkin' off toward the top o' the cemetery hill. It's a pretty view from there, lookin' down the slope toward the Old Part, where nobody remembered much who was buried, an' it's a rill popular walk. I liked seein' 'em go 'long together some way, lookin' at 'em, Elspie so pretty an' Eb so kind o' gentle, you could 'a' thought they was rill folks, her sane an* him with a spine. I slipped off an' left 'em, the cemetery bein' so near my house, an' Eb walked home with her. ' Poor things,' I thought, ' if he does go back to peddlin' an' she has to go to the Alice County poor- house, I'll give 'em this funeral afternoon for a bright spot, anyhow.' "But I'd just about decided that Elspie wa'n't to go to Alice County. I hadn't looked the /-dee in the face an' thought about it, very financial. But I ain't sure you get your best lights when you do that. I'd just sort o' decided on it out o' pure shame for the shabby trick o' not doin' so. I hadn't said any- thing about it to Timothy or Silas or any o' the rest, because I didn't hev the strength to go through the arguin' agony. When the Dick Dasher had pulled LONESOME. II 155 out without her, final, I judged they'd be easier to manage. An' that evenin' I told Elspie just to sort o' clamp myself to myself; an' I fair never see anybody so happy as she was. It made me ashamed o' myself for not doin' different everything I done. "I was up early that Friday mornin', because I judged't when Elspie wasn't to the train some o' them in charge'd come tearin' to my house to find out why. I hadn't called Elspie, an' I s'posed she was asleep in the other bedroom. I was washin' up my breakfast dishes quiet, so's not to disturb her, when I heard somebody come on to the front stoop like they'd been sent for. 'There,' thinks I, 'just as I expected. It's one o' the managers/ "But it wa'n't a manager. When I'd got to the front door, lo an' the hold ! there standin' on the steps, wild an' white, was the widow o' the day before's funeral Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, lookin' like the grave bed spoke up. She'd got up early to go alone to the cemetery, an', my house bein' the nearest, she'd come rushin' back to me with her news. "Cally!' s'she, from almost before she laid eyes on me, 'Cally! Somebody's stole every last one o' the flowers off'n Sum's grave. An the ribbins/ "She was fair beside herself, bein' as the loss hed piled up on a long sickness o' Sum's, an' a big doctor's bill consequent, an' she nervous anyhow, an' a good 156 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE deal o* the ribbin tyin' the stems was silk, both sides. "Til hev out the marshal/ s'she, wild. 'Til send for Timothy. They can't hev got far with 'em. Fll know/ s'she, defiant, 'whether they's anything to the law or whether they ain't.' " I hed her take some strong coffee from breakfast, an' I got her, after some more fumin's an' fustin's, to walk back to the cemetery with me, till we give a look around. I do as many quick-moved things as some, but I allus try, first, to give a look around. "An' another thing/ s'l to her, as we set out, 'are you sure, Mis' Fire Chief, that you got to the right grave ? The first visit, so/ I says, ' an' not bein' accustomed to bein' a widow, lately, an' all, you might 'a' got mixed in the lots.' "While she was disclaimin' this I looked up an' see, hangin' round the road, was Eb. He seemed some sheepish when he see me, an' he said, hasty, that he'd just got there, an' it come over me like a flash't he'd come to see Elspie off. An' I marched a-past him without hardly a word. "We wasn't mor'n out o' the house when we heard a shout, an* there come Silas an' Timothy, tearin' along full tilt in the store delivery wagon, wavin' their arms. "'It's Elspie Elspie!' they yelled, when they was in hearin'. 'She ain't to the depot. She'll be left. Where is she ?' LONESOME. II 157 " I hadn't counted on their comin* before the train ieft, but I thought I see my way clear. An* when they come up to us, I spoke to 'em, quiet. '"She's in the house, asleep,' s'l, 'an* what's more, in that house she's goin' to stay as long as she wants. But,' s'l, without waitin' for 'em to bu'st out, 'there's more important business than that afoot for the marshal;' an' then I told 'em about Sum Merriman's flowers. ' An',' s'l, 'you'd better come an' see about that now an' let Eppleby an' the others take down the inmates, an' you go after 'em on the 8.05. It ain't often,' s'l, crafty, 'that we get a thief in Friendship.' "I hed Timothy Toplady there, an* he knew it. He's rill sensitive about the small number o' arrests he's made in the village in his term. He excited up about it in a minute. "'Blisterin' Benson!' he says, 'ain't this what they call vandalism ? Look at it right here in our midst like a city!' says he, fierce an' showin' through some gleeful. "Why, sir,' says Silas Sykes, 'mebbe it's them human goals. Mebbe they've dug Sum up,' he says, 'an mebbe ' But I hushed him up. Silas Sykes always grabs on to his thoughts an' throws 'em out, dressed or undressed. He ain't a bit o' reserve. Not a thought of his head that he don't part with. If he had hands on his forehead, you could tell what time he is I think you could, anyway. 158 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE "Well, it was rill easy to manage 'em, they bem f men an' susceptible to fascinations o' lawin' it over somethin'. An' we all got into the delivery wagon, an* Eb, he come too, sittin' in back, listenin' an* noddin', his feet hangin' over the box informal. "I allus remember how the cemetery looked that mornin'. It was the tag end o' June an' in June cemeteries seems like somewheres else. The Sodality hed been tryin' to get a new iron fence, but they hadn't made out then, an 5 they ain't made out now an' the old whitewashed fence an' the field stone wall was fair pink with wild roses, an' the mulberry tree was alive with birds, an' the grass layin' down with dew, an' the white grave- stones set around, placid an' quiet, like other kind o' folks that we don't know about. Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she went right through the wet grass, cross lots an' round graves, holdin' up her mournin' an' showin' blue beneath kind o' secular, like her thinkin' about the all-silk ribbin at such a time. Sure enough, she knew her way to the lot all right. An' there was the new grave, all sodered green, an* not a sprig nor a stitch to honour it. "'Now!' says Mis' Merriman, rill triumphant. "'Land, land!' s'l, seein' how it rilly was. "Timothy an' Silas, they both pitched in an' talked at once an' bent down, technical, lookin' for tracks. But Eb, he just begun seemin' peculiar LONESOME. II 159 an' then he slipped off somewheres, though we never missed him, till, in a minute, he come runnin' back. ' ' Come here ! ' he says. ' Come on over here a little ways,' he told us, an' not knowin' anything better to do we turned an' went after him, wonderin' what on the earth was the matter with him an' ready to believe 'most anything. "Eb led us past the vault where Obe Toplady, Timothy's father, lays in a stone box you can see through the grating tiptoe ; an' round by the sample cement coffin that sets where the drives meet for advertisin' purposes, an' you go by wonderin' whose it'll be, an' so on over toward the Old Part o' the cemetery, down the slope of the hill where every- body's forgot who's who or where they rest, an' no names, so. But it's always blue with violets in May like Somebody remembered, anyhow. "When we got to the top o' the hill, we all looked down the slope, shinin' with dew an' sunniness, an' little flowers runnin' in the grass, thick as thick, till at the foot o' the hill they fair made a garden, a garden about the size of a grave, knee-deep with flowers. From where we stood we could see 'em hothouse roses an' straw flowers, an' set pieces, an' a lot o' pillows, an' ribbins layin' out on the grass. An' there, side of 'em, broodin' over 'em lovin', set Elspie, that I'd thought was in my house asleep. "Mis' Fire Chief, she wasn't one to hesitate. 160 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE She was over the hill in a minute, the blue edge o 1 petticoat bannerin' behind. "Up-M my word/ s'she, like a cut, 'if this ain't a pretty note. What under the sun are you doin' sittin' there, Elspie, with my flowers ? ' " Elspie looked up an' see her, an* see us streamin* toward her over the hill. 'They ain't your flowers, are they ?' s'she, quiet. 'They're the dead's. I was a-goin' to take 'em back in a minute or two, anyway, an' I'll take 'em back now/ "She got up, simple an' natural, an' picked up the fruit piece an' one o' the pillows, an' started up the hill. ''Well, I nev-er,' says Mis' Merriman; 'the very bare brazenness. Ain't you goin' to tell me what you're doin' here with the flowers you say is the dead's, an' I'm sure what was Sum's is mine an' the dead's the same ' "She begun to cry a little, an' with that Elspie looks up at her, troubled. "I didn't mean to make you cry,' she says. 'I didn't mean you should know anything about it. I come early to do it I thought you wouldn't know/ "'Do what? 9 says Mis' Merriman, rill snappish. "Elspie looks around at us then as if she first rilly took us in. An' when she sees Eb an' me LONESOME. II 161 standin* together, she give us a little smile an* she sort o' answered to us two. "'Why/ she says, 'I ain't got anybody, anywheres here, dead or alive, that belongs. The dead is all other folks's dead, an* the livin' is all other folks's folks. An* when I see all the graves down here that they don't nobody know who's they are, I thought mebbe one of 'em wouldn't care if I kind of adopted it.' "At that she sort o' searched into Mis' Merriman's face, an' then Elspie's head went down, like she hed to excuse herself. "I thought,' she said, 'they must be so dead an' no names on 'em an' all an' their live folks all dead too by now nobody'd care much. I thought of it yesterday when we was walkin' down here,' she said, 'an' I picked out the grave it's the littlest one here. An' then when we come back past where the funeral was, an' I see them flowers seemed like I hed to see how 'twould be to put 'em on my grave, that I'd took over. So I come early an' done it. But I was goin' to lay 'em right back where they belong I truly was.' "I guess none of us hed the least /'-dea what to say. We just stood there plain tuckered in the part of us that senses things. All, that is, but one of us. An' that one was Eb Goodnight. "I can see Eb now, how he just walked out o* 162 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE the line of us standin' there, starin', an' he goes right up to Elspie an' he looks her in the face. "'You're lonesome,' s'he, kind o' wonderin'. 'You're lonesome. Like other folks.' "An* all to once Eb took a-hold o' her elbow not loose an' temporary like he shook hands, but firm an' four-cornered; an' when he spoke it was like his voice hed been starched an' ironed. "'Mis' Fire Chief,' s'he, lookin' round at her, Ts to let you know this week whether I'd take over the store. Well, yes,' he says, ' if you'll give me the time on it we mentioned, I'll take it over. An' if Elspie'll marry me an' let me belong to her, an' her to me.' "'Marry you?' says Elspie, understandin' how he'd rilly spoke to her. 'Me? 9 "Eb straightened himself up, an' his eyes was bright an' keen as the edge o' somethin'. "'Yes, you,' he says gentle. 'An' me/ "An' then she looked at him like he was lookin' at her. An' it come to me how it'd been with them two since the night they'd locked up my house together. An* I felt all hushed up, like the weddin' was beginnin*. "But Timothy an' Silas, they wa'n't feelin' so hushed. "Look a-here!' says Timothy Toplady, all pent up- 'She ain't discharged from the county house yet.' LONESOME. II 163 "'I don't care a dum* says Eb, an' I must say I respected him for the ' dum ' that once. '"Look a-here,' says Silas, without a bit o' deli- cacy. 'She ain't responsible. She ain't ' '"She is too,' Eb cut him short. 'She's just as responsible as anybody can be when they're lonesome enough to die. 7 ought 'a' know that. Shut up, Silas Sykes,' says Eb, all het up. 'You've just et a hot breakfast your wife hed ready for you. You don't know what you're talkin' about.' "An* then Eb sort o' swep' us all up in the dust- pan. "No more words about it,' s'he, 'an' I don't care what any one o' you says Mis' Cally nor none o' you. So you might just as well say less. Tell 'em, Elspie!' "She looked up at him, smilin' a little, an' he turned toward her, like we wasn't there. An' I nudged Mis' Merriman an' made a move, an' she turns right away, like she'd fair forgot the funeral flowers. An' Timothy an' Silas actually followed us, but talkin' away a good deal like men will. " None of us looked back from the top o' the hill, though I will own I would 'a' loved to. An' about up there I heard Silas say: "'Oh, well. I am gettin' kind o' old an* some stiff to take a new business on myself.' "An' Timothy, he adds absent: 'I don't s'pose, 1 64 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE when you come right down to it, as Alice County'll rilly care a whoop.' "An* Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she wipes up her eyes, an', 'It does seem like courtin' with Sum's flowers,' she says, sighin', 'but I'm rill glad for Eb.' "An' Eb not bein' there to agree with her, I says to myself, lookin' at the mornin' sun on the cemetery an' thinkin' o' them two back there among the baskets an' set pieces I says, low to myself: "Oh, glory, glory, glory.' " For I tell you, when you see a livin' soul born in somebody's eyes, it makes you feel pretty sure you can hev one o' your own, if you try." XII OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY WHEN the Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality had its Evening Benefit at my house, Delia More came to help in the kitchen. She steadfastly refused to be a guest. " I'd love bein' 'round there," she said, "over the stove, or that way. But I can't cant be company yet. When I think of it, it's like a high swing." So she stayed in the kitchen, and it was charac- teristic of Friendship that when its women learned that she was there, they all went either deliberately or for a drink of water to speak with her. And they all did learn that she was there. "Who you got in the kitchen?" was a part of the small talk from guest to hostess. The men stayed "in the other part of the house," Doctor June and Eppleby Holcomb sending by me some cordial word to Delia. I think that they cannot do these things anywhere else with such beautiful delicacy. When my other guests had taken leave, Calliope 165 x66 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE stayed to help in the search for Mis' Postmastef Sykes's pickle fork and two of Mis' Helman's napkins (the latter marked with L because the store had been out of papier-mache H's, and it didn't matter what letter so long as you knew it meant you) and all the other borrowed articles whose mislaying made any Sodality gathering a kind of panic. More- over, Calliope had been helping and we, and Delia, had been far too busy to taste supper. We would have said that the true life of the evening was done instead of just beginning. But when we entered the kitchen, we found Delia More serving the supper on an end of the baking table, while warming his hands at the range stood Abel Halsey. "I came in across the track, from the hills," Abel explained to me. "I didn't know you had doings till I tied and blanketed an' I came on in anyhow, back way. I'm in luck too. I haven't had supper." We four sat down in that homely cheer, and before us was the Sodality's exquisite cookery. It was good to have Abel there. Since my coming to Friendship I had seen him often, and my wonder at him had deepened. He was alive to the finger-tips and by nature equipped to conquer through sheer mentality, but he seemed deliberately to have fore- gone the prizes for the tasks of the lower places. Not only so, but he who understood all fine things seemed to regard his tastes as naivete, and to have OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY 167 won away from them, as if he had set " above all wisdom and subtlety" the unquenchable spirit which he knew. And withal he was so merry, so human, so big, and so good-looking. "Handsome as Calvert Oldmoxon," the older ones in Friendship were accustomed to say, save Calliope, whom I had never heard say that, but I myself, if I had not had my simile already selected, would have said "as Abel Halsey." If a god were human, I think that Abel would have been very like a god. And to this opinion his experiences were continually bearing witness. That night, for example, he was in the merriest humour, and told us a tale of how, that day, the sky had fallen. There had been down on the Pump pas- ture, deep fog, white and thic^ and folded in, and above him blue sky, when he had emerged on the Hill Road and driven on with his eyes shut. ("When I need an adventure," he said, "I just trot old Major Mary with my eyes shut. Courting death isn't half as costly as they think it is.") And when he had opened his eyes, the sky was gone, and everything was white and thick and folded in and fabulous. Obviously, as he convinced us, the sky had fallen. But he had driven on through it and in it, and had found it, as I recall his account, to be made of inex- tinguishable dreams. These, Abel ran on, are on the other side of the sky for anybody who claims 168 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE them, and our sandwiches were, above all sand- wiches, delicious. He was so merry that Calliope and I, by a nod or a smile of understanding, played our role of merely, so to say, proving that the films were right for you may have an inspired con- versational photographer, but unless you are properly prepared chemically he can get no pictures. As Calliope had said of her evening with Eb and Elspie, "the air in the room was easy to get through with what you had to say it was that kind of evening." Sometimes I wonder if an hour like that is real time; or is it, instead, a kind of chronometrical fairy, hav- ing no real existence on the dial, but only in essence. As I think of it now the hour, if it was an hour, was simply a background for Delia More. For it was not only Calliope ail who responded to Abel's light-hearted talk, but, little by little, it was Delia too. Perhaps it was that faint spark in her fanned to life on the night of her coming home, so that she "took stock" which we now divined faintly quickening to Abel's humour, his wisdom, even his fancies. Save in her bitterness, on that first night, I had not heard her laugh ; and it was as if something were set free. I could not help looking at her, but that did not matter, for she did not see me. She was listening to Abel with an almost childish delight in her face; and in her eyes was the look of one in a place before unvisited. OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY 169 Some while after we had moved away from thft table and sat together about the cooking range, we heard the questioning horn of a motor. We knew that it would belong to the Proudfits, since for us in Friendship there exists no other motor, and more- over this one was standing at my gate. Abel went out there and came back to tell us that the car had been in town to fetch the Proudfits' lawyer, and that Madame Proudfit had kindly sent it for Delia "and spoilt everything," he added frankly. As he said that, Abel looked at her, and I saw that a dream may persist through personality itself. As I have said, if a god were human, Abel would have been like a god; and in nothing more so than in this under- standing of the immortalities. Calliope stood up and caught, and held, my eyes in passing. "Let's you and Abel and I take Delia home in the automobile," she said; "there ain't anything so good for folks as fresh air." I brought a warm wrap for Delia, a crimson cloak of mine which, so to say, drew a line about her, defining her prettiness; and in the starlight we set off along the snowless Plank Road, Delia and Abel and I in the tonneau of the machine, and I silent. It had befallen strangely that over this road Delia More and I should be faring in the Proudfits' car, and beside her Abel Halsey as if, for such as 170 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE he and she, a dream may, just possibly, come back. "See," she said to Abel, "the sky has gone back up again." "Yes," Abel assented, "one of the things even the sky can't do is to change the way things are." "Oh, I know, I know ..." said Delia More. "I want you to feel that," said Abel, gently. "Things are the way things are, and no use trying to leave them out of it. Besides, you need them. They're foundation. Then you build, and build better. That's all there is to it, Delia." She was silent, and Abel sat looking up at the stars. "All there is to it except what I said about the other side of the sky," he said. "And then me. I'll help." From my thought of these two I remember that I drifted on to some consideration of myself, for their presence opened old paths where were in durance things that did their best to escape, and were dis- quieting. I thought also of Calliope, of whose story I had heard a little from one and another. And it seemed to me that possibly Delia More's laughter and her wistfulness summed us all up. When we drew up at the entrance to Proudfit House we all alighted, Calliope and Abel and I to walk home. But while we were saying good night to Delia, the door opened and Clementina Proudfit OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY 171 stood against the light. The car was to wait, she said, to take Mr. Baring, the lawyer, to the mid- night train. And then, as she saw her: "Calliope!" she cried, "I never wanted anybody so much. Come in and make Mr. Baring a cup of your good coffee you will, Calliope ? Mother and I will be with him for half an hour yet. Come, all of you, and help her." We went in, lingering for a moment by the draw- ing-room fire while Miss Clementina went below stairs; and I noted how, in that room colourful and of fair proportion, Abel Halsey in his shabby clothes moved as simply as if the splendour were not there. He stood looking down at Delia, in her white dress, the crimson cloak catching the firelight; while Calliope and I, before a length of Beauvais tapestry, talked with spirit about both tapestry and coffee-making. (" My grandmother use' to crochet faces an' figgers in her afaghans, too," Calliope commented, "an* when I looked at 'em they use' to make me feel kind o' mad. But with these, I don't care at all.") And when Miss Clementina returned, "Now," Calliope said to me, "you come with me an' help about the coffee, will you ? An' Delia, you an' Abel stay here. Nothin' will put me out o' my head so quick nothin as too many flyin' 'round the kitchen when I'm tryin' to do work." 172 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE We went downstairs, and Miss Clementina re- joined her mother and the lawyer in the library, and Delia and Abel were left alone together in the firelight. If I had been a dream, and had been intending to come back at all, I think that I must have come then. "Pray, why don't you?" said Calliope to me almost savagely on the kitchen stairs. The coffee-making was a slow process and a silent one. Calliope and I were both absorbed in what had so wonderfully come about : That Delia More, who was dead, was alive again; or rather, that her spirit, patient within her through all the years of its loneliness, was coming forth at the sound of Abel's voice. We were alone in the kitchen, and when the coffee was over the flame, we stood at the window looking out on the black kitchei. gardens. There lay the yellow reflection of the room, with that unreality of all window-mirrored rooms, so that if one might walk within them one would almost certainly wear one's self with a difference. "Ain't it like somethin' bright was in the inside o' the garden," Calliope put it, "just the way I told you Abel feels about everything ? That they's some- thing inside, hid, kind of secret an' holy like the dreams he said was in the sky. I guess mebbe he's believed that about Delia all these years. An' now he's bringin' it out. Oh," she said, "the kitchen is OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY 173 where you can tell about things best. Seems to me youd ought to know somethin' about Delia an' Abel." And I wanted to hear. "Abel see Delia first," Calliope told me then, "to the Rummage Sale that the Cemetery Auxiliary, that the Sodality use' to be, give. That is to say, they didn't give it, as it turned out they just had it, you might say. Abel was twenty-five or so, an' he'd just come here fresh ordained a minister. We found he wa'n't the kind to stop short on, Be good yourself an' then a crown. No, but he just went after the folks that was livin' along, moral an' step- pickin', an' he says to us, 'What you sittin' down here for, enjoyin' yourselves bein' moral ? Get out an' help the rest o' the world,' he says. But every- body liked him in spite o' that, an' he was goin' to be installed minister in our church. "Then the Rummage Sale come on an' he met Delia. Delia was eighteen an' just back from visitin' in the City, with her veil a new way, an' I never see prettier. She was goin' to take charge o' the odd waists table, an' Abel was runnin' 'round helpin' Abel wa'n't the white-cuff kind, like some, but he always pitched in an' stirred up whatever was a-stewin'. He come bringin' in an armful o' old shoes somebody'd fetched down, an' just as she was beginnin' on the odd waists, sortin' 'em over, 174 FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE he met Delia. I remember she looks up at him from under that veil an* from over a red basque she'd picked off the pile, an', ' Mr. Halsey,' she says, 'I've a notion to buy this myself an' be savin'/ That took Abel Delia was so pretty an' fluffy that hearin' her talk savin' was about like seein' a butter- fly washin' out its own wings. 'Do,' says he, 'the red is beautiful on you,' s'e, shovin' the blame off on to the red. An' when he got done with the shoes he come over to help on the waists too I was lookin' over the child sizes, next table, an' I see the whole business. "I will say their talk was wonderful pretty. It run on sort o' easy, slippin' along over little laughs an' no hard work to keep it goin'. Abel had a nice way o' cuttin' his words out sharp like they was made o' somethin' with sizin' on the back an' stayed where he put 'em. An' his laugh would sort o' clamp down soft on a joke an' make it double funny. An' Delia, she was right back at him, give for take, an' though she was rill genial, she was shy. An* come to think of it, Abel was just as full o' his fancyin's then as he is now. "'Old clothes,' he says to her, 'always seems to me sort o' haunted.' "'Haunted ?' I know she asks him, wonderin*. "'All steeped in what folks have been when they've wore 'em/ s'e, 'an' givin' it out again.' OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY 17$ "'Oh . . .' Delia says,