"Busy, busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy. And busy ..."
"There goes Ellen Ember, crazy again," we said, when we heard that cry of hers, not unmelodious nor loud, echoing along Friendship streets.
Then we usually ran to the windows and peered at her. Sometimes her long hair would be unbound on her shoulders, sometimes her little figure would be leaping lightly up as she caught at the lowest boughs of the curb elms, and sometimes her hand would be moving swiftly back and forth above her heart.
"If your heart is broken," she had explained to many, "you can lace it together with 'Busy, busy, busy ...' Sing it and see! Or mebbe your heart is all of a piece?"
Once, when I had gone to Miss Liddy's house, I had found Ellen in a skirt fashioned of an old plaid shawl of her father's, her bare shoulders wound in the rosy "nubia" that had been her mother's, and she was dancing in the dining-room, with surprising grace, as Pierrette might have danced in Carnival, and singing, in a sweet, piping voice, an incongruous little song:—
O Day of wind and laughter,A goddess born are you,Whose eyes are in the morningBlue—blue!
O Day of wind and laughter,A goddess born are you,Whose eyes are in the morningBlue—blue!
"I made that up," she had explained, "or I guess mebbe I remembered it from deep in my skull. I like the feel of it in my mouth when I speak the words."
I used to think that Miss Liddy was really a less useful citizen than Ellen. For though Miss Liddy worked painstakingly at her dressmaking, and even dreamed over it little partial dreams, Ellen, mad or sane, made a garden, and threw little nosegays over our fences, and exercised a certain presence, latent in the rest of us, which made us momentarily gentle and in awe of our own sanity.
When, one spring morning, a week before the Friendship Carnival, she passed down Daphne Street with her plaintive, musical "Busy, busy, busy ..." Doctor June and the young Reverend Arthur Bliss sat on Doctor June's screened-in porch discussing a deficit in the Good Shepherd's Orphans' Home fund for the fiscal year. Ever since the wreck of the Through, Friendship had contributed to the support of the Home,—having first understood then that the Home was its patient pensioner,—and now it was almost like a compliment that we had been appealed to for help.
Doctor June listened with serene patience to what his visitor would say.
"Tension," said the Reverend Arthur Bliss, squaring his splendid young shoulders, "tension. Warfare. We, as a church, are enormously equipped. We have—shall we say?—the helmets of our intelligence and the swords of our wills. Why, the joy of the fight ought to be to us like that of a strong man ready to do battle, oughtn't it—oughtn't it?"
Doctor June, his straight white hair outlining his plump pink face, nodded; but one would have said that it was rather less at the Reverend Arthur than at his Van Houtii spiræa, which nodded back at him.
"My young friend," said Doctor June, "will you forgive me for saying that it is fairly amazing to me how the church of God continues to use the terms of barbarism? We talk of the peace that passeth understanding, and yet we keep on employing metaphors of blood-red war. What does the modern church want of a helmet and a sword, if I may ask? Even rhetorically?"
"The Christian life is an eternal warfare against the forces of sin, is it not?" asked the Reverend Arthur Bliss in surprise.
"Let me suggest," said Doctor June, "that all good life is an eternal surrender to the forces of good. There's a difference."
The visitor from the city smiled very reverently.
"I see, sir," he said, "that you are one of those wonderful non-combatants. You are by nature sanctified—and that I can well believe."
"I am by nature a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly. "Often—often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath—note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it may pass him by."
"But surely, sir," said the young clergyman, "you agree with me that a man wins his way into the kingdom of light by both a staff and a sword?"
"You will perhaps forgive me for agreeing with nothing of the sort," said the doctor, mildly; "I hold that a man takes his way to the light by grasping whatever the Lord puts in his hand—a hammer, a rope, a pen—and grasping it hard."
"But the ungifted—what of the ungifted?" cried the Reverend Arthur Bliss.
"In this sense, there are none," said Doctor June, briefly.
"Busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took some steps of her dance before the gate, he questioned his host with uplifted brows.
"A little mad," the doctor said, nodding, "like us all. She sings in the streets of a glad morning, and dances now and then. We take ours out in tangential opinions. It is nearly the same thing."
The young clergyman's face lighted responsively at this, and then he deferentially clinched his argument.
"There is a case in point," said he. "That poor creature there—what has the Lord put in her hand?"
Doctor June looked thoughtful.
"Nothing," he declared, "for any fight. But I'm not sure that she isn't made to be a leaven. The kingdom of God works like a leaven, you know, my dear young friend. Not like a dum-dum bullet."
"But—that poor creature. A leaven?" doubted the Reverend Arthur Bliss.
"I shouldn't wonder," said Doctor June, "I shouldn't wonder. I'm not so sure as I used to be that I can recognize leaven at first sight."
"Ah, that's it!" cried his guest. "But a soldier, now, is a soldier!"
Then they smiled their lack of acquiescence, and went back to the figures for the fiscal year.
An hour later Doctor June stood alone on his garden walk, aimlessly poking about among his slips. He had done what he always did, following close on the heels of his well-established resolution never to do it again. He had pledged himself to try to raise one hundred dollars in Friendship for a pet philanthropy.
"It's a kind of dissipation with me," he said, helplessly, and wandered down to his gate. "If I read an article about the Congo Free State or Women in India, it acts on me like brandy. I go off my head and give away my substance, and involve innocent people. But then, of course, this is different. It is always different."
Then he heard Ellen's little song again. "Busy, busy, busy ..." she sang, and came round the corner from the town, catching at the lowest branches of the curb elms and laughing a little. At Doctor June's gate she halted and shook some lilacs at him.
"Here," she said, "put some on your coat for a patch on your heart so's the break won't show. Ain't the Lord made the sun shine down this morning? Did you know there's a Carnival comin' to town?"
"Like enough, Ellen," said Doctor June. "Like enough."
"Isone," she persisted. "They said about it in the Post-Office—I heard 'em. Dancin', an' parrots, an' jumpin' dogs."
He stood looking at her thoughtfully as she arranged her flowers, singing under breath.
"Ellen," he said, "will you tell Miss Liddy a few of us are going to meet here in my yard to-morrow afternoon, to talk over some money-raising? And ask her to come?"
"I will," Ellen sang it, "I will an' I will. Did you mean me to come, too?" she broke off wistfully.
"My stars, yes!" said Doctor June. "You're going to come early and help me, aren't you? I took that for granted."
"Here's your lilacs," said Ellen, tossing him a nosegay. "I'll tell Liddy while she's eatin'. Liddy don't like me to talk much when she's workin'. But when she eats I can talk, an' I'll tell her then."
She went on, singing, and Doctor June shook his head.
"I don't know but Mr. Bliss is right," he said, "though I hope I can keep my doubts to myself and not brag about 'em, just to be the style. But it does look as if poor Ellen Ember came into the world empty-handed. As if the Lord didn't give her much of anything to workwith."
Summons to a meeting to talk over money-raising is, in Friendship, like the call to festivity in a different life. The cause never greatly matters. Interests appear eclectically to range from ice to coral. For let the news get about that there is to be a bazaar for China, a home bakery sale for the missionary station at Trebizond, or a Japanese tea for the Friendship cemetery fund, and we all sew or bake or lend dishes or sell tickets with the same infinity of zeal. The enterprise in hand absorbs our sense of the ultimate object; as when, after three days of hand-to-hand battle to wrest money for the freedmen from the patrons of a Kirmess at the old roller-skating rink, dear Mis' Amanda, secretary and door-tender, handed over our $64.85 with the wondering question:—
"What do they mean by Freegman, anyway? What country is it they live in?"
It was no marvel that Doctor June's garden was filled, that yellow afternoon, with many eager for action. Some of us knew that there was an Orphans' Home fund deficit; but more of us knew only that we were to "talk over some money-raising." I remember how, from the garden seat against the spiræa, the doctor faced us, all scattered about the antlered walk and its triangle of green, erect on golden oak and bright velvet chairs from within doors. And when he had told us of the shortage to which we were party, instantly the talk emptied into channels of possible pop-corn social, chicken-pie supper, rummage sale, art and loan exhibit, Old Settlers' Entertainment, and so on. After which Doctor June rose, and stood touching thoughtfully at the leaves which grew nearest, while he essayed to turn our minds from chicken-pot-pie-part-veal, and bib-aprons, to the eternal verities.
"My friends," he said, "isn't there a better way? Let us, this time, give of our hearts' love to the little children of God, instead of buying pies and freezing ice cream in His name."
There was, of course, an instant's hush in the garden. We were not used to paradoxes, and we felt as concave images must feel when they first look upon the world. It was as amazing as if we had been told that God grieves with us instead of afflicting us, as we held.
"None of us has much money to give," Doctor June went on; "let us take the way that lies nearest our hand, and make a little money. God never permitted any normal human creature to come into His world unprovided with some means of making it better. Only, let us get outside our bazaar and chicken-pie faculties. Now what can we each do?"
We sat still for a little, tentatively murmuring; and then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss stood up by the sweet-alyssum urn.
"Speakin' of what we can do," she said, "doin' ain't easy. Not when you're well along in years. Your ways seem to stiffen up some. When I was a girl, I could 'a' been quite an elocutionist if I could 'a' had lessons. I had a reg'lar born sense o' givin' gestures. But I never took. An' now I declare I don't know of anything I could do. It's the same way, I guess, with quite a number of us."
Mis' Postmaster Sykes was in the arm-chair, and she sat still, queenly.
"I could do some o' my embroidery," she observed, "but it's quite expensive stuff, an' I don't know whether it would sell rill well here in Friendship. I'd be 'most afraid to risk. An' I don't do enough cookin', myself, to what-you-might-say know how, any more."
"Same with my sewing," observed Mis' Doctor Helman; "I put it all out now. I don't know as I could sew up a seam. That's the trouble, hiring everything done so."
Those who did not hire everything done preserved a respectful silence. And Doctor June looked up in the elm trees.
"The Lord," he said, "spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. The Lord said unto Moses, 'What is that in thine hand?' Moses had, you remember, nothing but a rod in his hand. But it was enough to let the people know that God had been with him—that the Lord had appeared unto him. Suppose the glory of the Lord, here in the garden, should ask us now, as it does ask, 'What is that in thine hand?' What have we got?"
There was silence again, and we looked at one another doubtfully.
"Land, Doctor!" said Libbie Liberty then, "I been tryin' for two years to earn a new parlour carpet, an' I ain't had nothin' in my hand to earn with. So I keep on sayin' Ilikean old Brussels carpet—they're so easy to sweep."
"My!" said Abigail Arnold, "I declare, I'd be real put to it to try to make extry money. 'Bout the only thing the Lord seems to 'a' put in my hand is time. I've got oodles o' that, layin' 'round loose."
Mis' Photographer Sturgis was in the big garden chair, wrapped in a shawl, her feet on an inverted flower-pot.
"I'm tryin' to think," she said, looking sidewise at the ground. "I donno's I know how I could earn a cent, convenient. It ain't real easy for women to earn. I think mebbe the Lord meant the men to be the Moseses."
Mis' Amanda Toplady's voice rolled out, deep and comfortable, like a complaisant giant's.
"Well said!" she remarked. "I'm drove to death all day. If anybody's to ask me what I got in my hand, I declare I guess I'd say, rill reverent: Dear Lord, I've got my hands full, an' that's about all I have got."
So we went on, saying much or little as was our nature, but we were all agreed that we were virtually helpless—for Calliope was out of town that week, and not present to shame us.
"What's in my hands?" said grim Miss Liddy Ember, finally, in her thin falsetto. "Well, I ain't got any rill, what-you-might-call hands. I just got kind o' cat's paws for my three meals a day an' my rent."
Then, by her sister's side, Ellen Ember stood up. We had hardly noticed her, sitting there quietly playing with some of the doctor's flowers. But now we saw that she had hurriedly twisted her splendid hair about her head, and by this we understood that she was herself again. We had seen her come to herself like this on the street, and then she would go hurrying home, the tears running down her face in shame for her unbound hair and her singing and dancing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining as she rose now, and she looked appealingly pretty, one hand, palm outward, half hiding her trembling mouth. By her soft eyes, too, we knew that she was herself again.
"You all know," she began, and dare not trust herself. "You all know ..." she said once more, and we understood what she would say. "What can I do?" she cried to us. "What is there I can do? I ain't got anything but my craziness! Oh, it seems like Iain'tmuch, an' so I'd ought todoall the more."
To soothe her, we took our woman's way of all talking at once. And then Doctor June called out cheerily that he felt the way Ellen did, that he wasn't a real Moses, for what had he—Doctor June—in his hand, and didn't we all know there was no money in pills? And then he told us how the Reverend Arthur Bliss was to be in town again on Wednesday of the next week, and would we not all think the matter over quietly, and meet with them on that evening, for cakes and tea?
"As many of you as can," he said, "come with a plan to earn a dollar, and tell how you mean to do it. Ellen, you and I'll preside at the meeting, and hear what the rest say, and keep real still ourselves, like proper officers."
But Ellen Ember would not be comforted. She stood with that one hand, palm outward, pressed against her lips, looking at us with big, brimming eyes.
"I ain't got nothin' but my craziness, you know," she said over. And then, as she was going through the gateway, she turned to Doctor June.
"Why, Wednesday's the first night o' the Carnival!" she cried. "You set the dollar meetin' on the first night o' the Carnival!"
"My stars!" cried Doctor June, gravely. "And I might have been selling pills on the grounds!"
All Friendship Village loves a Carnival. Once the word meant to me a Florentinefiestaday, with a feast of colour, and of many little fine things, "real, like laughter." Now when I say "carnival" I mean the painted eruption by night from the market square of some town like Friendship, when lines broaden and waver grotesquely, when the mirth is in great silhouettes and Colour goes unmasked.
I always make my way to such a place, for it holds for me the wonder of the untoward; as will a strolling Italian plodding past my house at night with his big, silent bear; or the spectacle of the huge, faded red ice-wagon, with powerful horses and rattling chains and tongs, and giants in blue denim atop the crystal; or the strange, copper world that dissolves in the fluid of certain sunsets. And that Wednesday night, a week later, on my way to the "dollar meeting" at Doctor June's, I turned toward the Friendship Carnival with some vestige of my youth clinging to the hem of things.
I gave my attention to them all: The pop-corn wagon, an aristocratic affair that looked like a hearse; the little painted canaries and love-birds, so out of place and patient that I thought they must have souls to form as well as we; the sad little live monkey, incessantly dodging white balls thrown at him by certain immortals (who, when they hit him, got pipes); and the giant who flung "Look! Look! Look! Look!" through a megaphone, while a good little dog toiled up a ladder and then stood at the ladder's top in a silence that was all nice reticence and dignity. Also, the huge Saxon fellow who, at the portal of the Arabian Court of Art and Regular Café Restaurant, sang a love-song through a megaphone—"Tenderly, dearest, I breathe thy sweet name," he hallooed, with his free hand beckoning the crowd to the Court of Art.
And then I saw the Lyric Dance Arcade and Indian Palace of Asiatic Mystery. And I found myself close to the platform, listening to the cry of a man in gilt knickerbockers.
"Ladies! Gentlemen! All!" he summoned. "Never in the history of the show business has there been anything resemblin' this. Come here—here—here—here! See Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the East, who is about to begin one of her most sublimely sensational dances. See her, see her, you may never again see her! Graceful, glittering, genteel. Graceful, glittering, gen-te-e-e-l. I am telling you about Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the East, in her ancient Asiatic dance, the most up-to-date little act in the entire show business to-day. Here she is, waiting for you—you—you. Everybody that's got the dime!"
Until he ceased, I had hardly noticed Zorah herself, standing in the canvas portico. The woman had, I then observed, a kind of appealing prettiness and a genuineness of pose. She was looking out on the crowd with the usual manner of simulated shyness, but to the shyness was given conviction by an uplifted hand, palm outward, hiding her mouth. I noted her small, stained face, her splendid unbound hair—and then a certain resemblance caught at my heart. And I saw that she was wearing a skirt made of a man's plaid shawl, and about her shoulders was a rosy, old-fashioned nubia. Her face and throat were stained, and so were her thin little arms—but I knew her.
The performance, as the man had said, was about to begin, and already he was giving Zorah her signal to go within. Somehow I bought a ticket and hurried into the tent. The seats were sparingly occupied, and I saw, as I would have guessed, no one whom I knew in the eager, stamping little audience. In their midst I lost the slim figure that had preceded me, until she mounted the platform and swept before the footlights a stately courtesy.
And there, in the smoky little tent, Ellen Ember began to dance, with her quite surprising grace—as Pierrette might have danced in Carnival. It was the charming, faery measure which she had danced for me in Miss Liddy's dining-room; and as she had sung to me then, so now, in a sweet piping voice, she sang her incongruous little song:—
O Day of wind and laughter,A goddess born are you,Whose eyes are in the morningBlue—blue!The slumbrous noon your body is,Your feet are the shadow's flight,But the immortal soul of youIs Night.
O Day of wind and laughter,A goddess born are you,Whose eyes are in the morningBlue—blue!The slumbrous noon your body is,Your feet are the shadow's flight,But the immortal soul of youIs Night.
It seemed to me that I sat for hours in that hot little place, cut off from the world, watching. Again and again, to the brass blare of some hoiden tune, she set the words of the lyric that "she liked the feel of," and she danced on and on. And when at last the music shattered off, and she ceased, and ran behind a screening canvas, somehow I made my way forward through the crowd that was clapping hands and calling her back, and I gained the place where she stood.
When I asked her to come with me, she nodded and smiled, with unseeing eyes, and assented quite simply, and then suddenly sat down before the lifted tent flap.
"But I must wait for my money," she said. "That's what I came for—my money. They thought I'd never earn my dollar, but I have."
At this I understood. And now I marvel how I talked at all to the man in gilt knickerbockers who arrived and haggled over the whole matter.
Zorah, he explained, the sure-enough Zorah, had took down sick in the last place they made, an' they'd had to leave her behind. An' when he told about it down town that morning, this little piece here had up an' offered. Somethin' had to be done—he left it to me if they didn't. He felt his duty to the amusement park public, him. So he had closed with her for a dollar for three fifteen-minute turns—he give two shillings a turn, on the usual, but she'd hung out stout for the even money. An' she'd danced her three, odd but satisfactory. You could hand 'em queer things in the show business, if you only dressed the part. Yes, sure, here was the dollar. Be on hand to-morrow night? No? Sufferin' snakes, but was we goin' to leave him shipwrecked?
Finally I got her away, and skirted the market-place with her dancing at my side, shaking her silver dollar in her shut palms and singing:—
"Busy, busy, busy all the day. An' then I earned my dollar, my dollar—they never thought I'd earn my dollar ..."
I remember, as we struck into the unlighted block where Miss Liddy's house stood, that I was struggling hard for my own serenity, so that for a moment I did not observe that Ellen stopped beside me. But I knew that she fell silent, and when I turned I saw her there on the dark walk hurriedly twisting her splendid hair about her head. And by that and by her silence I understood that she was suddenly herself, and of her own mind, as we say.
On this, "Ellen!" said I quickly, "how fine of you to have earned your Orphans' Home dollar so soon. But you have beaten us all!"
She had contrived to fasten her hair, and I saw her touching tentatively the folds of her strange dress. And so I made her know what she had done, as gently as I might, and with all praise I stilled her dismay and shame. And last I led her, as I was determined that I would do, past Miss Liddy's dark little house and on to the home of Doctor June.
I think that I would not have dared take Ellen, just as she was, in her plaid skirt and her rosy nubia, into that black and brown henrietta-cloth assembly, if I had remembered that there was to be a stranger present. But this, in the events of the hour, I had quite forgotten. I remembered as I entered the room and came face to face with the Reverend Arthur Bliss, talking of the figures for the fiscal year.
"—and the deficit," he was saying, "ought to be made up by us who are so well equipped to do it. With Paul, let us fight the good fight—of every day. This is to-day's fight. Now let us talk over our various weapons."
Doctor June looked thoughtfully at his young guest, and in the older face was a brooding tenderness, like the tenderness of the father who longs to hold the child in quiet, in his arms.
"Yes," said Doctor June, "'fighting' is one name for it. I am tempted to say that 'drudgery' is another name. Errantry, ministry, service, or whatever. It all comes to the same thing: 'What is that in thine hand?' Well, now, who of us is first?"
"I think," said I then, "that Ellen Ember is first."
She would have shrunk back from the doorway to the passage, but I put my arm about her, and then I told them. And when I had done, I remember how she threw up that pathetic hand of hers, palm outward, and this time it was over her eyes.
"I'm a disgrace to all of you!" she said, sobbing, "an' to the whole Good Shepherd's Home. But I guess anyhow it's all the way I had. Seems like I ain't got nothin' in the world but my craziness!"
There was silence for a moment, that rich silence which flowers in the heart. And then great Mis' Amanda Toplady spoke out, in her deep voice which now she some way contrived to keep firm.
"Well said!" she cried. "I come here to say I'd give a dollar outright to get red o' the whole thing, rather'n to fuss. But now I ain't goin' to stop at a dollar. Seems like a dollar for me wouldn't bemoral. I'm goin' to sell some strawberry plants—why, we got hundreds of 'em to spare. I can do it by turnin' my hand over. An' I expec' the Lord meant you should turn your hand over to find out what's in it, anyway."
I think that then we tried our woman's way of all talking at once, but I remember how the shrill voice of Abigail Arnold, of the home bakery, rose above the others:—
"Cream puffs!" she cried. "I got a rush demand for my cream puffs every Sat'day, an' I ain't been makin' 'em sole-because I hate to run after the milk an' set it. An' I was goin' to get out o' this by givin' fifty cents out o' the bakery till. An' me with my hands full o' cream puffs...."
"Hens—hens is what mine is," Libbie Liberty was saying. "My grief, I got both hands full o' hens. I wouldn't sell 'em because I can't bear to hev any of 'em killed—they're tame as a bag o' feathers, all of 'em. I guess I ben settin' the hens o' my hand over against the heathen an' the orphans. An' now I'm goin' to sell spring chickens...."
Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair was waving a corner of her shawl.
"C-canaries!" she cried. "I can rise canary-birds an' sell 'em a dollar apiece in the city. I m-meant to slide out account o' my health, but it was just because I hate to muss 'round b-boilin' eggs for the little ones. I'll raise a couple or two—mebbe more."
"My good land!" came Miss Liddy Ember's piping falsetto; "to think o' my sittin' up, hesitatin', when new dresses just falls off the ends o' my fingers. An' me in my right mind, too."
Dear Doctor June stood up among us, his face shining.
"Bless us," he said. "Didn't I have some spiræa in my hand right while I stood talking to you the other afternoon in my garden? And haven't I got some tricolored Barbary varieties of chrysanthemums, and some hardy roses and one thing and another to make men marvel? And can't I sell 'em in the city at a pretty profit? What I've got in my hand is seeds and slips—I see that plain enough. And my stars, out they go!"
Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Mayor Uppers, even Mis' Postmaster Sykes—ah, they all knew what to do, knew it as if somebody had been saying it over and over, and as if they now first listened.
But Ellen Ember sat crying, her face buried in her hands. And I think that she cannot have understood, even when Doctor June touched her hair and said something of the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump.
Last, the Reverend Arthur Bliss arose, and there was a sudden hush among us, for it was as if a new spirit shone in his strong young face.
"Dear friends," he said, "dear friends ..." And then, "Lord God," he prayed abruptly, "show me what is that in my hand—thy tool where I had looked for my sword!"
"I donno," Calliope said, as, on her return, we talked about Ellen Ember, "I guess I kind o' believe in craziness."
Calliope's laugh often made me think of a bluebird's note, which is to say, of the laughter of a child. Bluebirds are the little children among birds, as robins are the men, house-wrens the women, scarlet tanagers the unrealities and humming-birds the fairies.
"Only," Calliope added, "I do say you'd ought to hev some sort o' leadin' strap even to craziness, an' that I ain't got an' never had. I guess folks thinks I'm rill lunar when I take the notion. Only thing comforts me, they don't know how lunar I rilly can be."
Then she told me about 'Leven.
"A shroud, to look rill nice," Calliope said, "ought to be made as much as you can like a dress—barrin' t' you can't fit it. Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb an' I made Jennie Crapwell's shroud—it was white mull and a little narrow lace edge on a rill life-like collar. We finished it the noon o' the day after Jennie died,—you know Jennie was Delia's stepsister that they'd run away from—an' I brought it over to my house an' pressed it an' laid it on the back bedroom bed—the room I don't use excep' for company an' hang my clean dresses in the closet of.
"In the afternoon I went up to the City on a few little funeral urrants,—a crape veil for Jennie's mother an' like that,—you know Jennie died first. We wasn't goin' to dress her till the next mornin'—her mother wanted we should leave her till then in her little pink sacque she'd wore, an' the soft lavender cloth they use now spread over her careless. An' we wanted to, too, because sence Mis' Jeweler Sprague died nobody could do up the Dead's hair, an' Jennie wa'n't the exception.
"Mis' Sprague, she'd hed a rill gift that way. She always done folks' hair when they died an' she always got it like life—she owned up how, after she begun doin' it so much, she used to set in church an' in gatherin's and find herself lookin' at the backs of heads to see if they was two puffs or three, an' whether the twist was under to left or over to right—so's she'd know, if the time come. But none of us could get Jennie's to look right. We studied her pictures an' all too, but best we could do we got it all drawed back, abnormal.
"I was 'most all the afternoon in the City, an' it was pretty warm—a hot April followin' on a raw March. I stood waitin' for the six o'clock car an', my grief, I was tired. My feet ached like night in preservin' time. An' I was thinkin' how like a dunce we are to live a life made up mostly of urrants an' feetache followin'.Yet, after all, the right sort o' urrants an' like thatislife—an', if they do ache, 'tain't like your feet was your soul. Well, an' just before the car come, up arrove the girl.
"I guess she was towards thirty, but she seemed even older, 'count o' bein' large an' middlin' knowin'. First I see her was a check gingham sleeve reachin' out an' she was elbowed up clost by me. 'Say,' she says, 'couldn't you gimme a nickel? I'm starved hollow.' She didn't look it special—excep' as thin, homely folks always looks sort o' hungry. An' she was homely—kind o' coarse made, more like a shed than a dwellin' house. Her dress an' little flappy cape hed the looks o' bein' held on by her shoulders alone, an' her hands was midnight dirty.
"I was feelin' just tired enough to snap her up.
"'A nickel!' s'I, crisp, 'give you a nickel! An' what you willin' to give me?'
"She looked sort o' surprised an' foolish an' her mouth open.
"'Huh?' s'she, intelligent as the back o' somethin'.
"'You,' I says, 'are some bigger an' some stronger'n me. What you goin' to give me?'
"Well, sir, the way she dropped her arms down sort o' hit at me, it was so kitten helpless. I took that in rather than her silly, sort o' insultin' laugh.
"'I can't do nothin',' she told me—an' all to once I saw how it was, an' that that was what ailed her. I didn't stop to think no more'n as if I didn't hev a brain to my name. 'Well,' I says, 'I'll give you a nickel. Leastways, I'll spend one on you. You take this car,' I says, 'an' come on over to Friendship with me. An' we'll see.'
"She come without a word, like goin' or stayin' was all of a piece to her, an' her relations all dead. When I got her on the car I begun to see what a fool thing I'd done, seemin'ly. An' yet, I donno. I wouldn't 'a' left a month-old baby there on the corner. I'd 'a'bedto 'a' done for that, like you do—I s'pose to keep the world goin'. An' that woman was just as helpless as a month-old. Some are. I s'pose likely," Calliope said thoughtfully, "we got more door-steps than we think, if we get 'em all located.
"When we got to my house I pumped her a pitcher o' water an' pointed to the back bedroom door. 'First thing,' s'I, blunt, 'clean up'—bein' as I was too tired to be very delicate. 'An',' s'I, 'you'll see a clean wrapper in the closet. Put it on.' Then I went to spread supper—warmed-up potatoes an' bread an' butter an' pickles an' sauce an' some cocoanut layer cake. It looked rill good, with the linen clean, though common.
"I donno how I done it, excep' I was so ramfeezled. But I clear forgot Jennie Crapwell's shroud, layin' ready on the back bedroom bed. An' land, land, when the woman come out, if she didn't hev it on.
"I tell you, when I see her come walkin' out towards the supper table with them fresh-ironed ruffles framin' in her face, I felt sort o' kitterin'-headed—like my i-dees had fell over each other to get away from me. The shroud fit her pretty good, too, barrin' it was a mite long-skirted. An' somehow, it give her a look almost like dignity. Come to think of it, I donno but a shroud does become most folks—like they was rilly well-dressed at last.
"She come an' set down to table, quiet as you please—an' differ'nt. Your clothes don't make you, by any means, but they just do sort o' hem your edges, or rhyme the ends of you, or give a nice, even bake to your crust—I donno. They do somethin'. An' the shroud hed done it to that girl. She looked rill leaved out.
"How she did eat. It give me some excuse not to say anything to her till she was through with the first violence. I did try to say grace, but she says: 'Who you speakin' to? Me?' An' I didn't let on. I thought I wouldn't start in on her moral manners. I just set still an' kep' thinkin': You poor thing. Why, you poor thing. You're nothin' but a piece o' God's work that wants doin' over—like a back yard or a poor piece o' road or a rubbish place, or sim'lar. An' this tidyin' up is what we're for, as I see it—only some of us lays a-holt of our own settin' rooms an' butt'ry cupboards an' sullars an' cleans away onthemfor dear life, over an' over, an' forgets the rest. I ain't objectin' to good housekeepin' at all, but what I say is: Get your dust-rag big enough to wipe up somethin' besides your own dust. The Lord, He's a-housekeepin' too.
"So, with that i-dee, I got above the shroud an' I begun on the woman some like she was my kitchen closet in the spring o' the year.
"'What's your name?' s'I.
"''Leven,' s'she.
"'Leaven,' s'I, 'like the Bible?'
"'Huh?' s'she.
"'Why—oh,'leven',' s'I, 'that ain't a name at all. That's a number.'
"'I know it,' s'she, indiffer'nt, 'that was me. I was the 'leventh, an' they'd run out a'ready.'
"'For the land,' s'I, simple.
"An' that just about summed her up. They seemed to 'a' run out o' everything, time she come.
"She hadn't been taught a thing but eat an' drink. Them was her only arts. Excep' for one thing: When I ask' her what she could do, if any, she says like she had on the street corner:—
"'I can't do nothin'. I donno no work.'
"'You think it over,' s'I. She had rill capable hands—them odd, undressed-lookin' hands—I donno if you know what I mean?
"'Well,' s'she, sort o' sheepish, 'I can comb hair. Ma was allus sick an' me an' Big Lil—she's the same floor—combed her hair for her. But I could do it nicest.'
"Wan't that a curious happenin'—an' Jennie Crapwell layin' dead with her hair drawn tight back because none of us could do it up human?
"'Could you when dead?' s'I. 'I mean when them that has the hair is?'
"An' with that the girl turns pallor white.
"'Oh ...' s'she, 'I ain't never touched the dead. But,' s'she, sort o' defiant at somethin', 'I could do it, I guess, if you want I should.'
"Kind o' like a handle stickin' out from what would 'a' been her character, if she'd hed one, that was, I thought. An', too, I see what it'd mean to her if she knew she was wearin' a shroud, casual as calico.
"But when I told her about Jennie Crapwell, an' how they had a good picture, City-made, of her side head, she took it quite calm.
"'I'll try it,' she says, bein' as she'd done her ma's hair layin' down, though livin'. 'Big Lil always helps dress 'Em,' she says, 'an' guess I could do Their hair.'
"I got right up from the supper table an' took 'Leven over to Crapwell's without waitin' for the dishes. But early as I was, the rest was there before me. I guess they was full ten to Crapwell's when we got there, an' 'Leven an' I, we walked into the sittin'-room right in the midst of 'em—that is, of what wasn't clearin' table or doin' dishes or sweepin' upstairs. Mis' Timothy Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss was the group nearest the door—an' the both of 'em reco'nized that shroud the minute they clamped their eyes on it. But me, bein' back o' 'Leven, I laid my front finger on to my shut lips with a motion that must 'a' been armies with banners. An' they see me an' kep' still, sudden an' all pent up.
"'This,' s'I, 'is a friend o' mine. She's goin' to do up Jennie's hair from her City photograph.'
"Then I hustled 'Leven into the parlour where Jennie was layin' under the soft lavender cloth. Nobody was in there but a few flowers, sent early. An' it was a west window an' open, an' the sky all sunset—like the End. 'Leven hung back, but I took her by the hand an' we went an' looked down at Jennie in that nice, gentlin', after-supper light—'Leven in Jennie's shroud an' neither of 'em knew it.
"An' all out o' the air somethin' says to me, Now—now—like it will when you get so's you listen. I always think it's like the Lord had pressed His bell somewheres for help in His housekeepin'—oh, becausehowHe needs it!
"So I says, ''Leven, you never see anybody dead before. What's the differ'nce between her an' you?'
"'She can't move,' 'Leven says, starin' down.
"'Yes, sir,' s'I, 'that's it. She's through doin' the things she was born to do, an' you ain't.'
"With that 'Leven looks at me.
"'Ican'tdo nothin',' she says again.
"'Why, then,' says I, brisk, 'you're as good as dead, an' we'd best bury you, too. What do you think the Lord wants you 'round for?'
"An' she didn't say nothin', only stood fingerin' the shroud she wore.
"'Here,' s'I, then, 'is the comb. Here is Jennie's picture. The pins is in her hair. Take it down an' do it over.There'ssomethin' to do an' ease her mother about Jennie not lookin' natural.'
"An' with that I marched myself out an' shut the door.
"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb was high-eyebrows on the other side of it, an' they come at me liketicklookin' fortock.
"'Well,' s'I, 'itisJennie's shroud she's wearin'. But I guess we'll hev to bury 'Leven in it to get it underground.Iwon't tell her.'
"I give 'em to understand as much as I wanted they should know,—not includin' exactly how I met 'Leven. An' we consulted, vague an' emphatic, like women will. There wasn't time to make another one an' do it up an' all. An' anyway, I was bound not to let the poor thing know what she'd done. The others hated to, too—I donno if you'll know how we felt? I donno but mebbe you sense things like that better when you live in a little town.
"'Well said!' Mis' Amanda bursts out after a while, 'I'm reg'lar put to it. I can scare up an excuse, or a meal, or a church entertainment on as short notice as any, but I declare if I ever trumped up a shroud. An' you know an' I know,' she says, 'poor Jennie'd be the livin' last to want to take it off'n the poor girl.'
"'An',' s'I, 'even if I should give her somethin' else to put on in the mornin', an' sly this into the coffin on Jennie, I donno's I'd want to. The shroud,' s'I, ''s been wore.'
"Mis' Holcomb sort o' kippered—some like a shiver.
"'I donno what it is about its bein' wore first,' s'she, 'but I guess it ain't so much what it is as what it ain't. Or sim'lar.'
"An' I knew what she meant. I've noticed that, often.
"In the end we done what I'd favoured from the beginnin': We ask' Mis' Crapwell if we couldn't bury Jennie in her white mull.
"'Ashroud,' says Mis' Crapwell, grievin', 'made by a dressmaker with buttons?'
"'It's the part o' Jennie that wore it before that'll wear it now,' I says, reasonable, 'an' her soul never was buttoned into it anyways. An' it won't be now.'
"An' after a while we made her see it, an' that was the first regular dress ever wore to a buryin' in Friendship, by the one that was the one.
"I'll never forget when 'Leven come out o' that room, after she'd got through. We all went in—Mis' Crapwell an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb an' I, an' some more. An' I took 'Leven back in with me. An' as soon as I see Jennie I see it was Jennie come back—hair just as natural as if it was church Sunday mornin' an' her in her pew. We all knew it was so, an' we all said so, an' Mis' Crapwell, she just out cryin' like she'd broke her heart. An' when the first of it was over, she went acrost to 'Leven, an' 'Oh,' s'she, 'you've give her back to me. You give her back. God bless you!' she says to her. An' when I looked at 'Leven, I see the 'Huh?' look wasn't there at all. But they was a little somethin' on her face like she was proud, an' didn't quite want to show it—along of her features or complexion or somethin' never havin' had it spread on 'em before.
"Nex' mornin' o' course 'Leven put on the shroud again. I must say it give me the creeps to see her wearin' it, even if it did look like everybody's dresses. I donno what it is about such things, but they make somethin' scrunch inside o' you. Like when they got a new babtismal dish for the church, an' the minister's sister took the old one for a cake dish.
"S'I, to 'Leven, after breakfast:—
"We're goin' to line Jennie's grave this mornin'. I guess you'd like to go with us, wouldn't you?'
But I see her face with the old look, like the back o' somethin', or like you'd rubbed down the page when the ink was wet, an' had blurred the whole thing unreadable. An' I judged that, like enough, she knew nothin' whatever about grave-linin', done civilized.
"'I mean, I thought mebbe you'd like to help us some,' I says.
"'I would!' s'she, at that, rill ready an' quick. An' it come to me 't she knew now whathelpmeant. She'd learnt it the night before from Jennie's mother—like she'd learnt to answer a bell when Somebody pressed it. Only, o' course she never guessed Who it was ringin' it—like you don't at first.
"So I made up my mind I'd take her to the cemet'ry. We done the work up first, an' 'Leven spried 'round for me, wipin' the dishes with the wipin' cloth in a bunch, an' settin' 'em up wrong places. An' I did hev to go in the butt'ry an' laugh to see her sweep up. She swep' up some like her broom was a branch an' the wind a-switchin' it.
"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb stopped by for us, with the white cotton cloth an' the tacks, an' by nine o'clock we was over to the cemet'ry. The grave was all dug an' lined with nice pine boards, an' the dirt piled 'longside, an' the boards for coverin' an' the spades layin' near. Zittelhof was just leavin', havin' got in his pulley things to lower 'em. Zittelhof's rill up to date. Him an' Mink, the barber, keep runnin' each other to see who can get the most citified things. No sooner'd Zittelhof get his pulleys than Mink, he put in shower-baths. An' when Mink bought a buzz fan, Zittelhof sent for the lavender cloth to spread over 'em before the coffin comes. It makes it rill nice for Friendship.
"'Who's goin to get down in?' says Mis' Toplady, shakin' out the cloth.
Mis' Toplady always use' to be the one, but she can't do that any more since she got so heavy. An' Mis' Holcomb's rheumatism was bad that day an' the grave middlin' damp, so it was for me to do. An' all of a sudden I says:—
"''Leven, you just get down in there, will you? An' we'll tell you how.'
"'In the grave?' says 'Leven.
"I guess I'm some firm-mannered, just by takin' things for granted, an' I says, noddin':—
"'Yes. You're the lightest on your feet,' I says—an' I sort o' shoved at her, bird to young, an' she jumped down in, not bein' able to help it.
"'Here,' s'I, flingin' her an end o' cloth, 'tack it 'round smooth to them boards.'
"'Mother o' God,' says she, swallowin' in her breath.
"But she done it. She knelt down there in the grave, her poor, frowzy head showin,' an' she tacked away like we told her to, an' she never said another word. Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb didn't say nothin', either, only looked at me mother-knowin'. Them two—Mis' Toplady more'n anybody in Friendship, acts like bein' useful is bein' alive an' nothin' else is. They see what I was doin', well enough—only I donno's they'd 'a' called it what I did, 'bout the Lord's housekeepin' an all. An' I knew I couldn't gentle 'Leven into thei-dee, but I judged I could shock it into her—same as her an' the Big Lil kind have to hev. Some folks you hev to shooti-dees at, muzzle to brain.
"I donno if you've took it in that when you're in a grave, or 'round one, your talk sort o' veers that way? Ours did. Mis' Banker Mason's baby had just died in March, an' the choir'd made an awful scandal, breakin' down in the fifth verse of 'One poor flower has drooped and faded.' They'd stood 'em in a half circle where they could look right down on the little thing. An' when the choir got to