The Friendship accommodation reaches the village 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!"
"Thy footfall is a silver thing,West——west!"
I said over to the beat of the wheels, but the words 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 flittings. 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 consternation 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 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 regarded, 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 padding 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 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 unwillingly either. And though I watched, as if much depended upon it, the great motor-car of the Proudfits vanishing before us into the dark, I could not forbear 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 commented 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.
Doctor June stood for a moment meditatively looking 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 meanuse'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."
"Who?" she demanded, but it was as if something 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 letanybody know't you saw me!" she charged him again.
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 Photographer 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 itinerant 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, 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, manifestly 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 comprehended, "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 f'om 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 perceptibly 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 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 rearrange. 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 unwilling 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 blameful 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 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 headstones 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."
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 regretted 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 instant have remembered it? Delia More's stepsister, 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—
"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 somebody 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. "I'm 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 answered 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 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-Mame-Bliss, save that her black week-day cloak was lined with wine broadcloth, and that she wore it wrong side outward 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 which 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 Clementina 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. Butnow—it wouldn't be the same. I know 'em. They always were cruel proud an' cruel pious. Mis' Proudfit, 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 Friendship 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 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.
"I heard that on the train," I said then awkwardly,—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 occurred 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 followed 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 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 apprehensive, 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 Calliope's cottage Delia More had come creeping, whom all Friendship would hold in righteous distaste. 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 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.
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'talwaysha' 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 suggestion and that he always preferred to agree, but I had not hoped for enthusiasm.
"That's thei-dea," said Timothy, heartily. "I do admire a surprise. But what I think is this," he added, "when'll we hev it?"
"To-night," I proposed boldly.
"Whew!" Timothy whistled. "Sudden for General—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 enthusiasm 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'I; 'it's goin' ontwo.' I'm a great hand to keep track. Throw off your things."
At that I began to feel her influence. Mis' Toplady is so huge and capable that her mere presence will modify my judgments; and instantly I fell wondering 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 proposal with some show of assurance, and I should 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 carpet, 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, expressing itself (since there are of late no forests to conquer) 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' Helman 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?"
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 reminded her, feeling guilty. "They wouldn't care to come, Mrs. Amanda, would they?"
But of course I was remembering Delia More's "Butnow—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, "youbeone!"
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. 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 Proudfits, "to worship goodness like a little god," nor do they commonly broaden their allegiance without distinguished 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 broadcloth side out to honour the occasion; Abigail Arnold, with a huge basket of gingerbread and jumbles 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 midnight 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 myself to have felt like an alien among them, remembering 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 whispered, "ef the house hain't pocket-dark, frontandback. What ef she's went in the country?"
"Sh—h!" whispered his great Amanda, masterfully. "It's the shades down. I'm nervous as a 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 entrance 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 passage, 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 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 followed 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 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.
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 doorway. 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' Proudfit, 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 letter in which the spirit of what had come to pass must have breathed—as a spirit will breathe—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 darkness. "I surmised first thing, most, when Delia described you. No; land, no!—Delia don't suspicion 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!"
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 minister of God, had steadfastly refused to be installed a 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. Perhaps, 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 coming 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,butwith a line about a patent medicine o' his set fine along at the bottom. He said that was no differ'nt 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 dedicated 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 sunset 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' 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 congregation catchin' cold an' takin' Hiram Gekerjeck'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, thoughtful, ''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.
"'Silas Sykes, 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 whatsoever 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 happened to be there because the Through was about due,—that's the one that don't stop here,—an' you 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 dedicated? 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, whetheryou're sacrilegious to deny a prayer-meetin' or any other good use to the church or to any other place, dedicated 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 shoutin', like questions, an' a-shoutin' further off. We 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'hafto 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 caper; seem's like hecan'tof, 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 Zittelhof's undertaking 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',' 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 scramblin' 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 belonged, I see by their dress, to some kind of a home for the homeless, an' I judged the man was takin' 'em somewheres, 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 remember 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—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 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 onessnuggled.
"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' theyallcried 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. Anyhow, 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-handkerchief? If you do,' he tells 'em, 'stand upquick!'
"They scrambled 'round like they was beetles an' 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-l-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 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 Travellers' 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' weain'tthe time. They want their 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 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