"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.
"I told her, real proud.
"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.
"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid, Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'
"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well—is they many young people?'
"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more—but just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought, 'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'
"'Oh,let's,' she says, like a little girl.
"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch—she done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy andused, and we had a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.
"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when to do it. He see the funny in things—he see that the post-office looked like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too—he showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his pictures.
"But Minerva—I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny how justbeing together makes human beings, be they agent or be they cousin, more themselves than they was before!'
"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour, and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like I never felt in my parlour in my life—all kind of young and free and springy.
"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady. 'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'
"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've all three done thatagain and again. We know how it is down there evenings.'
"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway. I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around. To-night let'slook.'
"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges. In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys—little young things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the sheer fun ofhanging aroundon a spring night.
"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, 'whatis their mothers thinkin' of?'
"But something else was coming home to me.
"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'
"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis'Toplady, she kind of chuckled. And the crowd jostled us—more young folks, talking and laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more till we got up in the next block.
"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about. Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple, sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.
"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'
"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew Abe Luck's answering—but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air, and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little feeling that made me know the fun, the sheerfun, thatEm'ly thought she was having and that she had the right to.
"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady, soothin'.
"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper, but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to her 'good taste' is both of them.
"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them—theyounghumans that would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and when night come, and summer come, and the moon come—land, land! theywantedsomething, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.
"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every direction, each house with its parlour—four-piece plush set, mebbe, and ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even with somebody to set and talk to them—what was the parlour, compared to themagicthey was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh with—no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no automobiles—no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us all together. No wonder they took it for their own.
"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us all. And yet it comefrom their same longing for fun, for joy—and where was they to get it?
"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if only we had some place to invite 'em to!'
"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.
"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe dancin'? Not come!'
"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go that far.'
"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of what is.'
"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.
"'Ain't we—ain't we?' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'
"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she says.
"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks—'
"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four sides of my head at once.
"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every night out of the year andbuiltfor the young folks!'
"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never allow 'em to use the schoolhousethatway. The Board wouldn't think of it!'
"'WhoseBoard?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine and Friendship Village's? Come on—come on and put it to 'em,' I says, kind o' wild.
"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself. But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.
"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out right under their noses, an' not sense it?'
"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykesnot convinced but keeping still because us two talked it so hard.
"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried right up to them.
"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'
"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says, 'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was eleven months. But I ain't never felt so likeshieldin'her from somethin' as I feel to-night.'
"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to get some law goin', that's all.'
"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'
"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets. Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'emto?'
"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em off somewheres.Where to?What say, Silas?'
"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'
"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief. 'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'
"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis' Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'
"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.
"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady, frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the same.'
"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.
"'What you goin' todo?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee for this thing, same as the curfew is.'
"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got—that's what we've got. Them poor young things wants a good time—same as you and allof us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for 'em?'
"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' togeta place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'
"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things doin'.'
"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'—why, woman alive, who's goin' to donate the light an' the coal?You?'
"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, wasforthe good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.
"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for theirgood. It ain't for their foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'
"'Is arithmetic good an' moralsnot, Silas Sykes?' I says.
"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope', s'he,—'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they woulda church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops an' hearin' dance tunes?'
"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the United Statesgo. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme the cough drops.'
"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.
"Timothy groans. 'Dancin!' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'
"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself. 'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in forsomethin'.'
"'Iain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. 'Ibelieve the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'
"'Oh,rot!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does—it wasn't a real elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in enforcin' the lawas I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round accordin' to your cloth—an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'
"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'
"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street, wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for yourself to use it.
"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard somebody laugh—a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of singing. I was right onto them before they see me.
"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it ain't.'
"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the evergreens, was Minerva Beach,my own cousin, and the little, tired photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to sense where the minute really belonged—that's always a good thing to do, ain't it?—and then I says, cool as you please:
"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'
"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals than ordinary, too.
"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.
"Ain't it nice the way God has balancedtowns! He never puts in a Silas Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.
"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along. He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night—you an' Mis' Toplady.'
"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.
"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual, and went off down the path.
"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand. And then, 'Eppleby,' Isings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel just like I was going tocrow!'
"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I left my breakfast dishes standing—a thing I do for the very few—and I went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and leftherdishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew we could depend on—Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she wasn't in her mourning grief—we told 'em the whole thing. And we one and all got together and we see that here was something that could be done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big enough and unafraid.
"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes—all but Abagail, that hadpitched in to making the cakes—and we told her what we'd done, so she shouldn't have any of the blame.
"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because calm is grand lady.
"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women run things.'
"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an' women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four families.'
"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.
"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'
"We went off and left her—it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations. And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.
"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she comedownstairs in a little white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.
"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.
"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this town!'
"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was awful lonesome here, but I guess—'
"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.
"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.
"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and forth careless, and—'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you ever travelled anywheres?'
"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when—'
"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one place, unless,' she added, 'it'sawfulnice.'
"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the door. I see it like I never see it before—They was living. Them two young things out there on my porch, and all theyoung folks of Friendship Village, they was just living—trying to find a future and a life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of Friendship Village.
"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.
"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up. Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick building lookedconscious, and like it had just opened its eyes and turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the recitation-rooms we'd got the gas platesfor the candy making, and Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the cakes.
"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls, shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody—they come from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.
"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time they had that first night.
"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time, and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humblyhouses or doing I donno what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good time and having it—and having it.
"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.
"'Dancin'!' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'
"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'
"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno butmymarrow might get use' to it.'
"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle, and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh. Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.
"And so he done. Almost before I knew itthey stepped out onto us, setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from being brave, but from intending to jumpfirst.
"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it works.'
"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you? Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you? Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light for this night's performance?'
"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.
"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'
"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things to row, Timothy.'
"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'
"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window, whirled around.
"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But what you goingto do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'
"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:—
"'The town's nothin' butroots, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin' up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great, expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year, an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built itforchasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops there! Open the buildin' in the nameof public decency, but in the name of public decency, don't shut it up!'
"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up, quiet, on the bottom step.
"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin' school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'
"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing, the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking on.
"'Dancin'!' says Timothy, shuddering—but looking, too.
"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'
"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says. 'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'
"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'
"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'
"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a march on by the women!'
"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't anything more to worry over. But me—I waited out there in the entry till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.
"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green, but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and like both belonged to the household.
"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to do—it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started togo, but Robin says to me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're doing—if you don't mind.'
"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day, she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it without seeming to.'
"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off, seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.
"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with magnificentmacaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'
"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly—this green room.'
"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the room—the house?'
"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'
"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really wanted has failed us.'
"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.
"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of mediæval renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do you think you would like to live? Not to settledown, you know, but for the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'
"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.
"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained. 'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off, it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd like to be. We are becoming nomadic again—only this time we own the world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'
"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in and stay in spoke from her to Alex.
"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.
"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.
"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I know where things are going to come up.'
"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.
"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do you?'
"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'
"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them bloom. No?'
"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both laughed.
"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We want what the whole world can give.'
"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.
"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.
"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in this life: that's youand I. The world has got to teach us a number of things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old world.'
"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out, without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own, Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the Proudfits' conservatory.
"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to believing that destruction was a part of the process.
"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'
"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'
"'What are they for?' I ask' him.
"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come outslickery.'
"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works, destroying what comes outslickeryand leaving that alone that resists her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.
"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces with Chris in it:—
"'Supper, supper—here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d—' says he, some louder than saying and almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant: 'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for nothing.
"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'
"'It isn'tby, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet, did it?'
"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'
"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops, then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?' he says.
"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing to-day?' she asks.
"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its party. An' I'm to it.'
"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.
"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it—it talks wiv its lights. I saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would come,' he says, patient.
"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand, and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face bright with whatever she was thinking about.
"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow—a dear little fellow. And all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'
"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in aminute. 'How ours?' he asks. 'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'
"'No, no,' she says. 'Ours.To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let him be really ours.'
"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.
"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle that way with somebody's life.'
"She looked at him, not understanding.
"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely into the office of destiny—keeping, bringing-up, making, as you say—meddling with, I call it—anybody's life.'
"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.
"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'
"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.
"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible, as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort. She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what you are saving?'
"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'
"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.
"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.
"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'
"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love with her—unless he is the special kind—he begins thinking how much sweeter and softer andwomanershe is when she's just plain gentle. And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he remembers her being—that is, unless he's special, unless he's special. Like Alex got uneasy now.
"'My heavens, dear,' he says—and I judged Alex had got to be one of them men that lays alace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so solemnly believes they're keeping their temper—'My heavens, dear, don't misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The personal contact is going it a little too strong.'
"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.
"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental—in an age when everybody can do things better than one can do them oneself.'
"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy; he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of vague—commendably again;and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done then with a serious, settled look of Woman—the Woman everlasting, wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....
"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it didn't have no card.
"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless. 'It's Mr. Insley.'
"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little festivities.'
"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Whypoor?' she asks.
"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world, instead of wearing the world like a garment—when it would fit him.'
"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I almost jumped:
"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at all,' was what she said.
"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....
"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked. Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for, and he put it blunt.
"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I got to him. He was little—I picked him up quite easily and got him back into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'
"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.
"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought to go at once. I'll take him down now.'
"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father—is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly is he off?'
"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a street brawl in the City—it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought it would be, at most.'
"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a take-for-granted thing.
"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there with him.'
"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he. 'Impossible.'
"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris spied Insley, and come running to him.
"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself all over him.
"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever since.
"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something. Something about daddy—your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear heart—will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you that?'
"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.
"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will hego out, like my mama?'
"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.
"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'
"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.
"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me—needs me. Why, how could I do anything else?'
"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about him.
"'May I venture to remind you,' he says—like a little thin edge of something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and deep if you let it—'May I venture to remindyou that your aunt is announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your mind.'
"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind except this poor little thing here. Alex—it's early. He'll sleep after a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked Insley, quiet.
"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there with Chris and him and me—he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't. Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath,but that reaches down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to leave.
"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.
"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me. I've got to be here—but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you. Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'
"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess, Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a real dignity so that Robinsaid her good-by with a kind of wistfulness, as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that. For, after all, shewasgoing—there was no getting back of that. And when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.
"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have slipped into it, with shut sails—so still that Robin spoke of it with surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless it's when I first wake up in themorning; then any talking always seems like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.
"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have found him.
"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped being, except some great thing.'
"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense—though never in the consciousness—that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which she was moving along, assentin'.
"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was. I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then, with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her being near him seemed.
"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'
"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'
"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice—well, I tell you, his voice looked.
"'What do you mean?' he says—just said it a little and like he didn't dare trust it to say itself any more.
"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.
"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun, without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out just the way it wasa-purpose. There wasn't any unintentional assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful when he answered.
"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'llhave no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have rest before to-night.'
"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about, but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then. The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what might have been in his voice.
"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random, 'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'
"'The village?' she asked.
"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in are so—dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'
"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile. And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.
"Chris looked up in Insley's face.
"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on this new brown middie.'
"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty—and that time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped at the cottage gate.