Out there in the soft night, the world looked different. I donno if you’ll know what I mean, but it was like the world I knew had suddenly slipped inside another world—like a shell; and the other one was bigger and better and cut in a pattern that we haven’t grown to—yet. In the west a little new moon was showing inside the gold circle of the big coming full moon. And it seemed to me as if the world that I was in must be just the little thin promise of the world that could be—if we knew. Sometimes we do know. Sometimes, for just a minute, we see it. That night was a night when I know that I saw. After you see, you never forget.
“Life is something else than what we think it is,” I says to myself as I ran along the road in thedark. “It’s something better than we think it is.”
As I ran, I stopped in to Mis’ Beach’s house and asked for something. “Oh, Mis’ Beach,” I says, “Oh, David! Will you let me take something? Will you let me borrow the clock you put together without anybody telling you how? Just for this evening?”
They said they would and they didn’t question that, particular, either. And I took the clock. And being David was going for the yeast, he came out with me, and we went on together. He ran beside me, the little lad, with his hand in mine. And as I ran, it seemed to me that I wasn’t Calliope Marsh any more, but that I was the immemorial woman, running with the immemorial child, toward the hope of the better thing, always the better thing.
Past the Post-Office Hall I went, already lighted for the Business Meeting, and on to Abigail Arnold’s Home Bakery.
Abigail was sitting, dressed and ready, with her list in her hand. But when she saw me she burst out with some strange excitement in her face:
“Calliope!” she says. “Silas has been here. He said you hadn’t handed in your report. I—I don’t think he expects you to go to the meeting. I know he didn’t expect me.”
“Didn’t he now?” I says. “Very well then, he didn’t. Are you ready?”
“But, Calliope——” says she.
“Are you a business woman in this town, or are you not?” I asked her.
Abigail has had her Bakery for twenty years now, and has paid off its mortgage that her husband bequeathed her.
“Come,” says I. And she did.
We went down the street to the Post-Office store building, all lighted up. We went up the stairs, and slipped into some seats by the door. I don’t think Silas, the chairman, see us come in. He can’t of, because he failed to explode. He just kept on conducting the meeting called to consider the future prosperity of Friendship Village and balancing on his toes.
While they talked, I set there, looking at them. Sixty men or so they were—the men that had made Friendship Village. Yes, such as it was, these men had made it. It was Silas that had built up his business and added to it, till he employed forty-two folks. Timothy Toplady had done the same and had encouraged three-four others to come in to open up new things for the town. It was Timothy stood back of Zittelhof when he added furniture to his undertaking business, and that started theagitation for the cheese factory out in the hills, and that got the whole county excited about having good roads. And it was these men and Eppleby Holcomb and some others that had got the new bridge and the water works and more than these. And while I set there looking at them, it come flooding over me the skill and the energy and the patience and the dogged hard work that it had meant for them sixty men to get us where we were, and from my heart I was thankful to ’em. And then I put my mind on what they were a-saying:
“An up-to-date, hustling little town,” I kept hearing. “The newer business methods.” “Good openings.” “Opportunities for hustlers.” “Need of live wires.” “Encourage industry.” “Advance the town, advance the town, advance the town.” And the thoughts that had been formed in no account clots in my head suddenly took shape in one thought, with the whole of day-light turned on to it.
So, as quick as the business part seemed to me to be done, I rose up and told Silas we had our reports to make, Abigail and me, about the Evening Club.
“Well,” says Silas, “this whole thing is being done irregular. Most irregular. But you go on ahead, and we’ll be glad to listen if you thinkyou have anything to say, bearing on to—er—what we’re up to.”
And that was all right, and I took it so, because it was meant right.
I donno what there was to be afraid of. All of those men we’d known for years. We’d worked with ’em shoulder to shoulder in church affairs. We’d stood equal to ’em in school affairs, and often agreed with ’em. We’d even repeatedly paid one of ’em our taxes. And yet because it was a Business Men’s meeting, we felt kind of abashed or askant or something, Abigail and me.
Abigail reported first, about the thirty odd she’d been to see. “But,” she winds up, “Calliope’s got something to say that I agree to, over and above the report. We’ve talked it over, her and me, and—” she adds with her nice dignity, “as a Friendship Village business woman, I’m going to leave her speak for me.”
So I said what I had to say about them I’d been to see, and what they had said about the club. And then I come to the heart of it, and I held up David’s little clock. I told ’em about it, and about him. I suppose everybody else has stories to tell like David’s, about the folks, young or old, that is living graves, little or big, of the kind of skill and energy and patience thatthey’ve never had the chance or the courage or the little will-power inside ’em—to develop. And there it stays in ’em, undeveloped, till they die. I believe it’s truer of all of us—of you and me—than we’ve any idea of. And this is what I tried to say to ’em that night, when I showed ’em David’s little clock. I didn’t say anything about the girls to Mis’ Cripps’s boarding house—I kept them, and the rest of ’em, in my heart, along with that crocheted dress up to the County House, and Grandma Stuart’s wreck of a home—the man’s knife, the child’s ring, the door-key. And I says:
“Now, we’ve visited all these folks that the Evening Club was thought of for. And we’ve found most of ’em in favor of having the club. I’m free to confess that I hoped some of ’em wouldn’t be. I hoped some of ’em would say they’d rather be paid better wages than to be give a club. But perhaps it’s all right. Mebbe the club is one step more we’ve got to take before we can get down to the big thing underneath it all. But it ain’t the last step—and I’d almost rather not bother with it—I’d almost rather get on to the big thing right away.”
“May I ask,” snaps out Silas, clean forgetting his chairmanshipping and acting like he wastalking to me in the Post-Office store beside the cheese, “may I ask what you mean by the ‘big thing’?”
“Oh,” I says, “that’s what I’ve been thinking about while I set here. Oh,” I says, “you men—you’ve made the town. You’ve done everything once. Do it again—now when the next thing is here to do. You’ve done your best with your own property and your own homes. Now do your best with folks!”
“Ain’t that the purpose of this here club we’re a-talking about?” says Silas. “Ain’t that what I been a-saying? What do you mean—folks?” Silas winds up, irritable. Silas knows customers, agents, correspondents, partners, clients, colleagues, opponents, plaintiffs, defendantsandcompetitors. But he don’t knowfolks.
“Folks,” I says. “Why, folks, Silas. Why, here in this room with you that we say have made Friendship Village, are setting them sixty-one employees of yours that have helped make it too. And all the tens that will come afterward, and that have come before to help to make the village by the work of their hands. They belong—they’re the village. They’re us. Oh, let’s not do thingsforthem—let’s do thingswiththem. Let’s meet all together, employersand employees, men and women, and let’s take up together the job of being a town. Let’s not any of us have more than our share, and then deal out little clubs, and old furniture, and magazines, and games to the rest of us. You men are finding out that all your old catch words about advancing the town and making business opportunities, have got something lacking in them, after all. And us women are beginning to see that twenty houses to a block, each keeping clean and orderly and planted on its own hook, each handing out old clothes and toys down to the Flats, each living its own life of cleanliness and home and victual-giving-at-Christmas, that that ain’t being a town after all. It isn’t enough. Oh, deep inside us all ain’t there something that says, I ain’t you, nor you, nor you, nor five thousand of you. I’m all of you. I’m one. ‘When,’ it says, ‘are you going to understand, that not till I can act like one, one united one, can I give any glimpse whatever of what people might be?’ Don’t let’s us go on advancing business and multiplying our little clubs and philanthropies. Instead, let’s get together—in the kind of meetings they use’ to have in the old first days in America—and let’s just talk over the next step in what’s to become of us. Let’s dream—real far. Let’s dream fartherthan gift-giving—and on up to wages—and mebbe a good deal farther than that. Let’s dream the farthest that folks could go....”
I didn’t know but they’d think I was crazy. But I’d be glad to be that kind of crazy. And the glory is that more folks and more folks are getting crazy the same way.
But they didn’t think so—I know they didn’t. Because when I got through, they clapped their hands, hard and hearty—all but Silas, that don’t think a chairman had ought to show any pleased emotion. And times now when I’m lonesome, I like to remember the rest of the talk, and it warms my heart to remember it, and I like to think about it.
For we give up having the club. Nobody said much of anything more about it, after we got Silas silenced. And this was the notice we put the next night in the FriendshipEvening Daily. Nobody knows better than I the long road that there is to travel before we can really do what we dreamed out a little bit about. Nobody better than I knows how slow it is going to be. But I tell you, it is going to be. And the notice we put in the paper was the first little step we took. And I believe that notice holds the heart of to-day.
It said:
“Will all them that’s interested in seeing Friendship Village made as much a town as it could be, for all of us and for the children of all of us, meet together in Post-Office Hall to-morrow night, at 7 o’clock, to talk over if we’re doing it as good as we could.”
“Will all them that’s interested in seeing Friendship Village made as much a town as it could be, for all of us and for the children of all of us, meet together in Post-Office Hall to-morrow night, at 7 o’clock, to talk over if we’re doing it as good as we could.”
For there was business. And then there was big business. But the biggest business is taking employers and employees, and all men and women—yes, and inmates too—and turning them into folks.
Aunt Elliswrote to me:
“Dear Calliope: Now come and pay me the visit. You’ve never been here since the time I had sciatica and was cross. Come now, and I’ll try to hold my temper and my tongue.”
I wrote back to her:
“I’ll come. I was saving up to buy a new cook-stove next fall, but I’ll bring my cook-stove and come in time for the parade. I did want to see that.”
She answered:
“Mercy, Calliope, I might have known it! You always did love a circus in the village, and these women are certainly making a circus parade of themselves. However, we’ll even drive down to see them do it, if you’ll really come. Now you know how much I want you.”
“I might have known,” I said to myself, “that Aunt Ellis would be like that. The poor thing has had such an easy time that she can’t help it. She thinks what’s been, is.”
She wrote me that she was coming in from the country an hour after my train got there, butthat the automobile would be there for me. And I wrote her that I would come down the platform with my umbrella up, so’s her man would know me; and so I done, and he picked me out real ready.
When we got to her big house, that somehow looked so used to being a big house, there was a little boy sitting on the bottom step, half asleep, with a big box.
“What’s the matter, lamb?” I says.
“Beg pad’, ma’am, he’s likely waitin’ to beg,” says the chauf—— that word. “I’d go right by if I was you.”
But the little fellow’d woke up and looked up.
“I can’t find the place,” he says, and stuck out his big box. The man looked at the label. “They ain’t no such number in this street,” says he. “It’s a mistake.”
The little fellow kind of begun to cry, and the wind was blowing up real bitter. I made out that him and his family made toys for the uptown shops, and somebody in our neighborhood had ordered some direct, and he was afraid to go home without the money. I didn’t have any money to give him, but I says to the chauf——
“Ask him where he lives, will you? And see if we’d have time to take him home before Mis’ Winthrop’s train gets in.”
The chauf—— done it, some like a prime minister, and he says, cold, he thought we’d have time, and I put the baby in the car. He was a real sweet little fellow, about seven. He told me his part in making the toys, and his mother’s, and his two little sisters’, and I give him the rest o’ my lunch, and he knew how to laugh when he got the chance, and we had a real happy time of it. And we come to his home.
Never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget the looks of that back upstairs place he called home, nor the smell of it—the smell of it. The waxy woman that was his mother, in a red waist, and with a big weight of hair, had forgot how to look surprised—that struck me as so awful—she’d forgot how to look surprised, just the same as a grand lady that’s learned not to; and there was the stumpy man that grunted for short instead of bothering with words; and the two little girls that might of been anybody’s—if they’d been clean—one of ’em with regular portrait hair. I stayed a minute, and give ’em the cost of about one griddle of my cook-stove, and then I went to the station to meet Aunt Ellis. And I poured it all out to her, as soon as she’d give me her cheek to kiss.
“So you haven’t had any tea!” she said, getting in the automobile. “I’m sorry you’ve been so annoyed the first thing.”
“Annoyed!” I says over. “Annoyed! Well, yes,” I says, “poor people is real annoying. I wonder we have ’em.”
I was dying to ask her about the parade, but I didn’t like to; till after we’d had dinner in front of snow and silver and sparkles and so on, and had gone in her parlor-with-another-name, and set down in the midst of flowers and shades and lace, and rugs the color of different kinds of preserves, and wood-work like the skin of a cooked prune. Then I says:
“You know I’m just dying to hear about the parade.”
She lifted her hand and shut her eyes, brief.
“Calliope,” she says, “I don’t know what has come over women. They seem to want to attract attention to themselves. They seem to want to be conspicuous and talked about. They seem to want——”
“They want lots o’ things,” says I, dry, “but it ain’t any of them, Aunt Ellis. What time does the parade start?”
“You’re bound to see it?” she says. “When I think of my dear Miss Markham—they used to say her school taught not manners, butmanner—and what she would say to the womanhood of to-day.... We’ll drive down if you say so, Calliope—but I don’t know whether I can bear it long.”
“Manner,” I says over. “Manner. That’s just what we’re trying to learn now, manner of being alive. We haven’t known very much about that, it seems.”
I kept thinking that over next day when we were drawn up beside the curb in the car, waiting for them to come. “We’re trying to learn manner at last—the manner of being alive.” There were lots of other cars, with women so pretty you felt like crying up into the sky to ask there if we knew for sure what all that perfection was for, or if there was something else to it we didn’t know—yet. And thousands of women on foot, and thousands of women in windows.... I looked at them and wondered if they thought we were, and life was, as decent as we and it could be, and, if not, how they were preparing to help change it. I thought of the rest that were up town in colored nests, and them that were down town in factories, and them that were to home in the villages, and them that were out all along the miles and miles to the other ocean, just the same way. And here was going to come this little line of women walking along the street,a little line of women that thought they see new life for us all, and see it more abundant.
“Manner,” I says, “we’re just beginning to learn manner.”
Then, way down the avenue, they began to come. By ones and by fours and by eights, with colors and with music and with that that was greater than all of them—the tramp and tramp of feet; feet that weren’t dancing to balls, nor racking up and down in shops buying pretty things to make ’em power, nor just paddling around a kitchen the same as mine had always done—but feet that were marching, in a big, peaceful army, towards the place where the big, new tasks of to-morrow are going to be, that won’t interfere with the best tasks of yesterday no more than the earth’s orbit interferes with its whirling round and round.
“That’s it,” I says, “that’s it! We’ve been whirling round and round, manufacturing the days and the nights, and we never knew we had an orbit too.”
So they come, till they begun to pass where we were—some heads up, some eyes down, women, women, marching to a tune that was being beat out by thousands of hearts all over the world. I’d never seen women like this before. I saw them like I’d never seen them—I felt I wasone of ’em like I’d never known that either. And I saw what they saw and I felt what they felt more than I ever knew I done.
Then I heard Aunt Ellis making a little noise in her breath.
“The bad taste of it—the bad taste of it, Calliope!” she said. “When I was a girl we used to use the word ladylike—we used to strive to deserve it. It’s a beautiful word. But these——”
“We’ve been ladylike,” says I, sad, “for five or ten thousand years, and where has it got us to?”
“Oh, but, Calliope, they like it—they like the publicity and the notoriety and the——”
I kept still, but I hurt all over me. I can stand anything only hearing that they like it—the way Aunt Ellis meant. I thought to myself that I bet the folks that used to watch martyrs were heard to say that martyrs prob’ly thought flames was becoming or they wouldn’t be burnt. But when I looked at Aunt Ellis sitting in her car with her hand over her eyes, it come over me all at once the tragedy of it—of all them that watch us cast their old ideals in new forms—their old ideals.
All of a sudden I stood up in the car. The parade had got blocked for a minute, and right infront of the curb where we stood I saw a woman I knew; a little waxy-looking thing, that couldn’t look surprised or exalted or afraid or anything else, and I knew her in a minute—even to the red calico waist and the big weight of hair, just as I had seen her by the toy table in her “home” the night before. And there she was, marching. And here was Aunt Ellis and me.
I leaned over and touched Aunt Ellis.
“You mustn’t mind,” I says; “I’m going too.”
She looked at me like I’d turned into somebody else.
“I’m going out there,” I says, “with them. I see it like they do—I feel it like they do. And them that sees it and feels it and don’t help it along is holding it back. I’ll find my way home....”
I ran to them. I stepped right out in the street among them and fell in step with them, and then I saw something. While I was making my way through the crowd to them the line had passed on, and them I was with was all in caps and gowns. I stopped still in the road.
“Great land!” I says to the woman nearest, “you’re college, ain’t you? And I never even got through high school.”
She smiled and put out her hand.
“Come on,” she says.
Whatever happens to me afterward, I’ve had that hour. No woman that has ever had it will ever forget it—the fear and the courage, the pride and the dread, the hurt and the power and the glory. I don’t know whether it’s the way—but what is the way? I only know that all down the street, between the rows of watching faces, I could think of that little waxy woman going along ahead, and of the kind of place that she called home, and of the kind of a life she and her children had. And I knew then and I know now that the poverty and the dirt and some of the death in the world is our job, it’s our job too. And if they won’t let us do it ladylike, we’ll do it just plain.
When I got home, Aunt Ellis was having tea. She smiled at me kind of sad, as a prodigal guest deserved.
“Aunt Ellis,” I says, “I’ve give ’em the rest of my cook-stove money, except my fare home.”
“My poor Calliope,” she says, “that’s just the trouble. You all go to such hysterical extremes.”
I’d heard that word several times on the street. I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Was that hysterics to-day?” I says. “I’ve often wondered what they’re like. I’ve neverhad the time to have them, myself. Well,” I says, tired but serene, “if that was hysterics, leave ’em make the most of it.”
I looked at her, meditative.
“Miss Markham and you and the women that marched to-day and me,” I says. “And a hundred years from now we’ll all be conservatives together. And there’ll be some big new day coming on that would startle me now, just the same as it would you. But the way I feel to-night, honest—I donno but I’m ready for that one too.”
Hecame to my house one afternoon when I was just starting off to get a-hold of two cakes for the next meeting of the Go-lightly club, and my mind was all trained to a peak, capped with the cakes.
Says he: “Have you got rooms to let?”
For a minute I didn’t answer him, I was so knee deep in looking at the little boy he had with him—the cutest, lovin’est little thing I’d ever seen. But though I love the human race and admire to see it took care of, I couldn’t sense my way clear to taking a boy into my house. Boys belongs to the human race, to be sure, just as whirling egg-beaters belongs to omelettes, but much as I set store by omelettes I couldn’t invite a whirling egg-beater into my home permanent.
Says I: “Not to boys.”
He laughed—kind of a pleasant laugh, fringed all round with little laughs.
“Oh,” he says, “we ain’t boys.”
“Well,” says I, “one of you is. And I don’t ever rent to ’em. They ain’t got enough silence to ’em,” I says, as delicate as I could.
Just then the little lad himself looked up innocent and took a hand without meaning to.
“Is your doggy home?” says he.
“Yes,” I says, “curled up on the back mat.” I felt kind of glad I didn’t have to tell him I didn’t have one.
“I’d like,” says he, grave, “tofluffleit till you’re through.”
“So do,” says I, hearty, and he trotted round the house like a little minister.
I kind o’ tiptoed after him, casual. All of a sudden I wanted to see what he done. His father come behind me on the boards, and we saw the little fellow bend over and pat Mac, my water spaniel, as gentle as if he’d been cut glass. The little boy looked awful cute, bending over, his short hair sticking out at the back. I can see him yet.
“How much,” says I, “would you want to pay for your room?”
“Well,” says his father, “not much. But I give a guess your price is what it’s worth—no more, no less.”
I hadn’t paid much attention to him before that, but I see now he was a wonderful, nice-spoken little man, with the kind of eyes that look like the sitting-room—and not like the parlor. I can’t bear parlor eyes.
“Come and look at the room,” says I, and rented it to him out of hand. And Mr. Dombledon—his name was—and Donnie—that was the little fellow—went off for their baggage, and I went off for my cakes; and what they was reflecting on I donno, but my own reflect was that it’s a wise minute can tell what the next one is going to pop open and let out. But I like it that way. I’m a natural-born vaudevillian. I love to see what’s coming next.
Well, the next thing was, after I got my two club cakes both provided for, that it turned out Mr. Dombledon was an agent, selling “notions, knick-knacks and anything o’ that,” he told me; and he use’ to start out at seven o’clock in the morning, with his satchel in one hand and his little boy, more or less, in the other.
“Land,” says I to him after a few days, “don’t your little boy get wore to the bone tramping around with you like that?”
“Some,” says he; “but I carry him part of the way.”
“Carry him?” says I, “and tote that heavy knick-knack notion satchel?”
“Well,” says he, “I don’t mind it. What I’m always thinking is this: What if I didn’t have him to tote.”
“True enough,” says I, and couldn’t say another word.
But of course the upstart and offshoot of that was that before the week was out, I’d invited Mr. Dombledon to leave the little fellow with me, some days, while he went off. And he done so, grateful, but making a curious provision.
“It’d be grand for him,” says he; “they’s only just one thing: Would—would you promise not to leave him hear anybody say anything anyways cross?”
“Well,” says I, judicious, “I donno’s I’m what-you-might-say cross. Not systematic. But—I might be a little crispy.”
“I ain’t afraid o’ you,” says he, real flattering. “But don’t leave him hear anybody—well, snap anybody up.”
“All right,” says I, “I won’t. I like,” I says, “to get out o’ the way of that myself.”
“Well, and then,” he says, “I guess you’ll think I’m real particular. But—would you promise not to leave him go outside the yard?”
“Sure,” says I, “only when I’m with him.”
“I guess you’ll think I’m real particular,” he says again, in his kind of gentle voice without any sizin’ to it, “but I mean not even then. Days when you’re goin’ out, I’ll take him with me.”
“Sure,” says I, wondering all over me, butnot letting on all I wondered, like you can’t in society. And I actually looked forward to having the little thing around the house with me, me that has always been down on mice, moths, bats and boys.
The next thing was, Would he stay with me? And looking to this end I contrived, some skillful, to be baking cookies the first morning his pa went off. Mis’ Puppy had happened in early to get some blueing, and she was sitting at one end of my cook table when Donnie came trotting out with his father, that always preferred the back door. (“It feels more like I lived here,” says he, wishful, “if you let me come in the back door.” And I was the last one to deny him that. Once when I went visiting, I got so homesick to go in the back door that it was half my reason for leaving ’em.)
“Now then,” I says to the little fellow that morning, “you just set here with us and see me make cookies. I’ll cut you out a soldier cooky,” says I.
“Wivbuttins?” he asks, and climbed up on his knees on a chair by the table and let his father go off without him, nice as the nicest. “I likes ’em wiv buttins,” he says—and Mis’ Puppy sort of kindled up in her throat, like a laugh that wants to love somebody.
I donno as I know how to say it, but he was the kind of a little chap that, when you’re young, you always thinkyourlittle chap is going to be. Then when they do come, sometimes they’re dear and all that, but they ain’t quite exactly the way you thought of them being—though you forget that they ain’t, and you forget everything but loving ’em. But it was like this little boy was the way you’d meant. It wasn’t so much the way he looked—though he was beautiful, beautiful like some of the things you think and not like a calendar—but it was the way hewas, kind of close up to you, and his breath coming past, and something you couldn’t name gentling round him. His father hadn’t been gone ten minutes when the little thing let me kiss him.
“ ‘At was my last one,” he explained, sort of sorry, to Mis’ Puppy. “But you can have a bite off my soldier. That’s a better kiss.”
Mis’ Puppy watched him for a while—he was sitting close down by the oven door to hear his soldier sayHurrahthe minute he was baked, if you please—and she kind of moved like her thoughts scraped by each other, and she says—and spells one word of it out:
“Where do you s’pose his m-o-t-h-e-r is?”
“My land, d-e-d,” I answers, “or she’d besetting over there kissing the back of his neck in the hollow.”
“I’ve got,” says Mis’ Puppy, “kind of an idea she ain’t. Your boarder,” she says, “don’t look to me real what you might call a widower. He ain’t the air of one that’s had things ciphered out for him,” says she. “It’s more like he was still a-browsing round the back o’ the book for the answer.”
And that was true, when you come to think of it; he did seem sort of quick-moved and hopeful, more like when you sit down to the table than when you shove back.
I told Mis’ Puppy, private, what his father had said to me about his not hearing anything spoke cross; and she nodded, like it was something she’d got all thought out, with tags on.
“I was a-wondering the other day,” she says, dreamy, “what I’d of been like if nobody had ever yipped out at me. I s’pose none of us knows.”
“Likewise,” says I, “what we’d be like if we’d never yipped out to no one else.”
“That’s so,” she says, “ain’t it? The two fits together like a covered bake-dish.”
“Ain’t you ’fraid he’ll shoot the oven door down if you don’t let him out pitty quick?” says Donnie, trying to see how near he could get his ear to the crack to hear that “Hurrah.”
Four days the little boy done that, stayed with me as contented as a kitten while his father went agenting; and then the fifth day he had to take him with him, because there come on what I’d been getting the cakes for—the quarterly meeting of the Go-lightly club.
The Go-lightly club is sixteen Red Barns ladies—and me—that’s all passed the sixty-year-old mark, and has had to begin to go lightly. We picked the name as being so literal, grievous-true as to our powers and, same time, airy and happy sounding, just like we hope we’ll be clear up to the last of the last of us. We had a funny motto and, those days, it use’ to be a secret. We’d lit on it when we was first deciding to have the club.
“What do wewanta club for anyhow?” old Mis’ Lockmeyer had said, that don’t really enjoy anything that she ain’t kicked out at first.
“Why,” says little Mis’ Pettibone, kind of gentle and final, “just to kind of make life nice.”
“Well,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, “we got to go awful light on it, our age.”
And we put both them principles into our constitution:
“Name: The name of this club shall be the Go-lightly club, account of the character of its members.“Object: The object of this club shall be to make life nice.“No officers. No dues. No real regular meetings.“Picnic supper when any.”
“Name: The name of this club shall be the Go-lightly club, account of the character of its members.
“Object: The object of this club shall be to make life nice.
“No officers. No dues. No real regular meetings.
“Picnic supper when any.”
And Mis’ Wilme had insisted on adding:
“Every-day clothes or not so much so.”
“Every-day clothes or not so much so.”
Our next meeting was going to be at Mis’ Elkhorn’s that lives out of town about two miles along the old Tote road, and we was looking forward to it considerable. We’d put it off several times; one week the ice-cream sociable was going to be, and one week the circus was to the next town, and so on—we never like to interfere with any other social going-ons.
None of us having a horse, we hired the rig—that’s the three-seat canopy-top from the livery—and was all drove out together by Jem Meddledipper. And it was real nice and festive, with our lunch baskets all piled up in the back and, as Mis’ Wilme put it: “Nothing to do till time to set the pan-cakes.” And when we got outside the City limits—we’re just a village, but we’ve got ’em marked “City Limits,” because that always seems the name of ’em—Mis’ Pettibone, that’s a regular one for entering into things—you know some just is and some just ain’t and the two never change places on no occasionwhatever—she kind of pitched in and sung in her nice little voice that she calls her sopralto, because it ain’t placed much of any place. She happened on a church piece—I donno if you know it?—the one that’s got a chorus that goes first
“Loving-kindness”
“Loving-kindness”
“Loving-kindness”
all wavy, like a little stream trickling along; and then another part chimes in,
“Loving-kindness”
“Loving-kindness”
“Loving-kindness”
all wavy, like another little stream trickling along, and then everybody clamps down on
“Loving-kindness—oh, how great!”
“Loving-kindness—oh, how great!”
“Loving-kindness—oh, how great!”
like the whole nice sweep of the river? Well, that was the one she sung. And being it’s a terrible catchy tune, and most of us was brought up on it and has been haunted by it for days together from bed to bed, we all more or less joined in with what little vocal pans we had, and we sung it off and on all the way out.
We was singing it, I recollect, when we come in sight of the Toll Gate House. The Toll Gate House has been there for years, ever since the Tote road got made into a real road, and then it got paid for, and the toll part stopped; and now the City rents the house—there’s a placewe always say “City” again—to most anybody, usually somebody poor, with a few chickens and takes in washings and ain’t much of any other claim to being thought of, as claims seem to go.
“Who lives in the Toll Gate House now, I wonder?” says Mis’ Pettibone, breaking off her song.
“Land, nobody,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer; “it’s all fell in on itself—my land,” she says, “the door’s open. Let’s stop and report ’em, so be it’s been tramps.”
So we made Jem Meddledipper stop, and somebody was just going to get out when a woman come to the door.
She was a little woman, with kind of a pindling expression, looking as if she’d started in good and strong, but life had kind of shaved her down till there wasn’t as much left of her, strictly speaking, as’d make a regular person. A person, but not one that looks well and happy the way “person” means to you, when you say the word. She had on a what-had-been navy-blue what-had-been alpaca, but both them attributes had got wore down past the nap. A little girl was standing close beside her—a nice little thing, with her hair sticking up on top like a candle-flame, and tied with a string.
“My land,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer right out,“are you livin’here?” Mis’ Lockmeyer is like that—she always wears her face inside-out with all the expression showing.
But the woman wasn’t hurt. She smiled a little, and when she smiled I thought she looked real sweet.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. It—it don’t look real like it, does it?”
“Well,” puts in Mis’ Pettibone, “gettin’ settled so——”
“Oh,” says the woman, “I been here a month.”
And Mis’ Lockmeyer, wishing to make amends and pull her foot out, planted the other right along side of it instead.
“Do you sell anything? Or sew anything? Or wash and iron anything?” she asks.
And the woman says: “I sew and wash and iron anything I can do home, with my little girl. But I ain’t a thing in the world to sell.”
“Of course you ain’t,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer soothing, and hoping to make it better still.
“Well,” says Mis’ Puppy hearty, “I tell you what. We’ll be out to see you in a little bit, if you want us to.”
My land, the woman’s face—I donno whether you’ve ever seen anybody’s face lit up from the inside with the light fair showing through all the pores like little windows? Hers done it. Shedidn’t say nothing—she just done that. And we drove on.
“Land,” says Mis’ Pettibone, thoughtful, “how like each other folks are, no matter how not-like they seem to the folks you think they ain’t one bit like.”
“Ain’t they—ain’t they?” says I, hearty. And I guess we all felt the same.
Nobody was absent to the club that afternoon, but Mis’ Elkhorn’s sitting-room was big enough so’s we could get in. None of us could bear a parlor club meeting. Our ideas always set in our heads to a parlor-meeting, called to order by rapping on something. But here at Mis’ Elkhorn’s we were out in the sitting-room, with the red table-spread on and the plants growing and the spice-cake smelling through the kitchen door. And you’d think things would of gone as smooth as glass.
Instead of which, I donno what on earth ailed us. But when we got to sitting down, sewing, it was like some kind of little fine dislocation had took place in the air.
Mis’ Puppy had brought a centre-piece to work on, big as a rug, all drawn work and hemstitching and embroidery. And somehow Mis’ Pettibone, that only embroiders useful, couldn’t stand it.
“My, Mis’ Puppy,” she says, “I shouldn’t think you could get a bit of house-work done, making that so lavish.”
Mis’ Puppy shut her lips so tight it jerked her head.
“I don’t scrub out continual, same as some,” she says.
“If you mean me,” says Mis’ Pettibone, tart, “I guess I can do house-work as easy as the most.”
“I heard there’s those that can—where it don’t show,” says Mis’ Puppy, some goaded beyond what she meant.
“Mean to say?” snaps Mis’ Pettibone.
“Oh, nothin’,” says Mis’ Puppy, “only to them that their backs the coat fits.”
“I never was called shiftless since I was born a wife and a house-keeper,” says Mis’ Pettibone, bordering on tearful.
“Oh,wasyou born a house-keeper, Mis’ Pettibone?” says Mis’ Puppy, sweet.
Then Mis’ Pettibone went in and set on the foot of the bed where we’d laid our things, and cried; and one or two of us went in and sort o’ poored her.
And, land, when we’d got her to come out, the first thing we heard was Mis’ Lockmeyer pitching into Mis’ Wilme.
“Anybody that can say I don’t make ice-cream as cheap as the best ain’t any of an ice-cream judge,” she was saying hot, “be they you or be they better.”
“I wasn’t saying a word aboutcheap,” says Mis’ Wilme, “I was talking aboutgood.”
“Well,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, “I thought I made it good.”
“Not with the little dab of cream you was just mentioning, you can’t,” says Mis’ Wilme, firm. “It ain’t reasonablenorchemical.”
“Don’t you think your long words is goin’ to impress me,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, more and more het up.
“Well, ladies,” says Mis’ Elkhorn, humorous, “nobody can make it any colder’n anybody else, anyhow.”
Somebody pitched in then, hasty and peaceful, and went to talking about Cemetery; and it looked like we was launched on a real quiet subject.
“I guess we’ve all got more friends up there then we’ve got in town,” says I. “When we go up there to walk on Sundays, I declare if I had to bow to all the graves I recognize I’d be kep’ busy.”
“I know,” says Mis’ Wilme, “when my niece was here from the City she said she had eightyon her calling list. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve got that many if I count the graves I know.’ ”
“Most of my acquaintances,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, sighing, “is in their coffins. I says to my husband when I looked over theDailythe other night: That most of the Local Items and Supper Table Jottings for me now would have to be dated Cemetery Lot.”
“I know, ladies,” says Mis’ Puppy, dreamy, “but ain’t it real aristocratic to live in a place so long that you know all the graves. We ain’t got much else to be aristocratic about. But that’s real like them county families you read about,” she says.
And up flared Mis’ Pettibone. “I donno’s there’s any need to make it so pointed to us that ain’t lived here so very long,” she said, “and that ain’t any friends at all in your Cemetery.”
“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Puppy, indulgent, “of course there’s them distinctions in any town.”
I was just feeling thankful from my bones out that they hadn’t met to my house, with Donnie staying home, when Mis’ Elkhorn come in from the kitchen to tell us supper was ready. And when she opened the door the smell of hot waffles come a dilly-nipping in, and it made me feel so kind of cozy and busy and alive and glad that I burst right out:
“Shucks, ladies!” I says. “So be we peck around for ’em I bet we could find things to fuss over right till the hearse backs up to the door.”
They all laughed a little then, but that was part from feeling embarrassed at going out to supper, like you always are. And when we did get out there, everybody scrabbled around to get away from whoever had just been her enemy. We didn’t say much while we et—like you don’t in company; and I set there thinking:
“The Go-lightly club. The Go-lightly club. To make life nice.” And I thought how we’d sung that song of ours all the way out. And I made up my mind that, after supper, when they was feeling limber from food, I’d try to say something about it.
But I didn’t. I just got started on it—introduced by telling ’em some nice little things about Donnie’s sayings and doings to my house, when Mis’ Lockmeyer broke in, sympathetic.
“Ain’t he a great care?” says she.
“Yes,” says I, “he is. And so is everything on top of this earth that’s worth having. Life thrown in.”
And then I see they was all rustling to go home—giving reasons of clothes to sprinkle or bread to set or grandchild to put to bed or plants to cover up. So I kep’ still, and mogged alonghome with ’em. But I did say to Mis’ Pettibone on the back seat:
“We better quit off club. If we can’t meet folks without laying awake nights over the things that’s been said to us, we better never meet. ‘To make life nice,’ ” says I. “Ain’t club a travnasty, or whatever that word is?”
“I know it,” she says awful sober, and I see she was grieving some too. And we was all pretty still, going home. So still that we could all hear Jem Meddledipper, that had caught the run o’ that tune from us in the afternoon and was driving us home by it, and the wheels went round to it—
“Lovin’-kindness ... lovin’-kindness ... lovin’-kindness,oh, how great,”
—and it was sung considerable better than any of us had sung it.
But anyway, the result of leaving early was that we got to the Toll Gate House before dark, and I’ll never forget the thing we saw. Standing in the door of the little house was the woman we’d spoke with in the afternoon, and she was wearing the same ex-blue alpaca. But now she’d been and got out from somewheres and put on a white straw hat, with little pink roses all around it. And like lightning I sensed thatshe’d watched for us to come back and had gone and got the hat out and put it on, so’s to let us know she had that one decent thing to wear.
“Jem,” I says, “stop.”
I donno rightly why, but I clambered down out of the rig, and I says to the woman: “Let me come in a minute—can I? I want to talk to you about—about some sewing,” says I, that’s sewed every rag I’ve had on my back most ever since I was clothed in any. But all of a sudden, her getting out that hat made me feel I just had to get up close to her, like you will.
But when I stepped inside, I forgot all about the sewing.
“My land, my dear,” I says, or it might have been, “My dear, my land,” I was that taken-back and upset, “you’d ought to have this ceiling mended.”
For the plaster had fell off full half of it and the roof leaked; and there wasn’t very much of any furniture, to clap the climax.
“The City won’t do anything,” says she. “They’re going to tear it down. And the rent ain’t much—so I want to stay.”
“Well,” says I, “I’m going to bring you out some napkins to hem next week—can I?”—me having bought new before then so’s to have some work for Missionary Society, so why notnow? And her face lit up that same way from inside.
When I’d got back in the rig, and we’d drove a little way by, I spoke to the rest about her going and putting on the hat. Some of ’em had sensed it, and some of ’em hadn’t—like some will and some won’t sense every created thing. And when we all did get a-hold of it—well, I can’t hardly tell you what it done. But there was something there in the rig with us that hadn’t been there before, and that come with a rush now, and that done a thing to us all alike. I can’t rightly say what it was, or what it done; but I guess Mis’ Puppy come as near it as anybody:
“Oh, ladies,” she says, kind of hushed, “don’t that seem like—well, don’t it make you feel—well, I donno, but ain’t it just....”
She kind of petered off, and it was Mis’ Pettibone, her enemy, that answered.
“Don’t it, Mis’ Puppy?” she says, “Don’tit?” And we all felt the same way. Or similar. And we never said a word, but we told each other good night, I noticed, about three times apiece, all around. And out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, I says:
“Ladies! I invite the Go-lightly club to meet with me to-morrow afternoon.Don’t bring anything but sandwiches and your plates and spoons. I’ll open the sauce and make the tea and whip up some drop sponge cakes. And meantime, let’s us get together everything we can for her.”
And though hardly anybody in the village ever goes to anything two days in succession, they all said they’d come.
By the time they got there next day we had carpet to sew out of some of our attics, and some new sheets to make, and some white muslin curtains out of Mis’ Puppy’s back room. And I explained to them that we couldn’t rightly put it to vote whether we should furnish up the Toll Gate House, because we didn’t have any president to put the motion, so the only way was to go ahead anyhow and do it; which we done; and which, if not parli-mental, was more than any mental, because it was out of our hearts.
Right while we was in the midst of things, in come my roomer, Mr. Dombledon. He’d come in the back door, as usual, and plumped into the sitting-room before he saw we were there. He’d had Donnie with him that day, because I had to be out most of the forenoon, and I called to them to stop, because I wanted the ladies should see the little fellow.
Donnie shook hands with us, all around, like a little general, and then: “What’s these?” says he, with his hands on the curtains in my lap. “A nighty for me?”
“No, lambin’,” says I. “It’s curtains for a lady.”
“Are you that lady?” he says.
“No, lambin’,” says I. “A lady that ain’t got any curtains.”
But this he seemed to think was awful funny, and he laughed out—a little boy’s laugh, and kep’ it up.
“Ladies always has curtains,” says he, superior.
“I donno,” says I. “I saw one yesterday that didn’t even have a carpet.”
“Where?” asks Mr. Dombledon.
It kind of surprised me to hear him speak up—of course I’d introduced him all around, same as you do roomers and even agents in a little town, where you behave in general more as if folks were folks than you do in the City where they ain’t so much folks as lawyers, ladies, milkmen, ministers, and so on. But yet I hadn’t really expected Mr. Dombledon to volunteer.
“Down on the Tote road,” I says, “the old Toll Gate House. You ain’t familiar with it, I guess.”
“Is thisherscurtains?” asks Donnie. “Andcan I have some pink peaches sauce like in the kitchen?”
“They’sherscurtains,” says I, “and if you’d just as soon make it plums, you shall have all of them in the kitchen that’s good for you.” And off he went outdoors making up a song about pink plums.
All of a sudden his father spoke up again.
“Do—do you need any more help?” he says.
“Sure we do,” says I.
“Well,” he says, gentling with the words careful, “I’m kind of sure-moved with a needle.”
“Then,” says I, “mebbe you’ll needle this carpet seam that’s pulling my fingers off in pairs. We’d be grateful,” says I, ready.
So down he sat and begun to sew, and I never see handier. He whipped up the seam as nice and flat as a roller machine. And things was going along as fine as salt and as smooth as soap when Mis’ Puppy picked up from the pile of things a red cotton table-cover.
“Well,” she says, “I donno where we solicited this from, but whoever give it shows their bringing up. Holes. And not only holes, but ink. And not only so, but look there where their lamp set. Would you think anybody of a donatin’ mind would donate such a thing as this?”
And Mis’ Pettibone spoke up sour and acid and bitter in one:
“I give that table-spread, Mis’ Puppy,” says she. “And it come off our dining-room table. We don’t throw things away to our house before the new is wore off. Anything more to say?”
“A grea’ deal,” says Mis’ Puppy, unflabbergasted, “but I’m too much of a lady to say it.”
“A lady ...” says Mis’ Pettibone, and done a little mock-at-her laugh.
Quick as a flash, and before anybody could say a word more, up hopped Mr. Dombledon and got out of the room. I followed him out on the side porch, thinking he was took sick; and there he stood, staring off acrost my wood lot.
“What is it, Mr. Dombledon?” I says.
“Don’t you mind me,” he says, “I got hit in a sore spot. I—guess I’ll be stayin’ out here a little while.”
Pretty soon he went out and sat on the wood pile, and I took some supper out to him on a pie-tin, and I told him then that we wanted to have Donnie to the table with us.
He looked up at me kind of suffering.
“I wouldn’t want to refuse you anything,” he says, “but—will they say any more things like that?”
Right with the sweep of my wondering at him, that I’d never heard a man speak like him before, come a sweep of shame and of grieving and of being kind of mad, too.
“No, sir,” says I. “We won’t have any more of that. What’s the good o’ being hostess if you can’t turn your guests out of the house?”
I went back into the house, and marched into the sitting-room. I donno what I was going to say, but I never had to say it. For there was Mis’ Puppy, wiping her eyes on the red table-cover she’d scorned, and she was sitting on the arm of Mis’ Pettibone’s chair.
“Them things hadn’t ought to be said, ladies,” says she, as well as she could. “I can’t take back what I said about the table-cover, being it’s what I think. But I wish I’d kep’ my mouth shut, and I don’t care who knows it.”
I thought then, and I still think, it was one of the honestest and sweepingest apologies I ever heard.
And all at once everybody kind of got up and folded their work, and patted somebody on the elbow; and I see we was feeling a good deal the way we had in the rig the night before; and it come to me, kind of big and dim, that with the job we was doing, we couldn’t possibly nipout at one another, like we would in just regular society. And all I done was to sing out, “Your supper’s ready and the toast’s on the table.” And we all went out, lion and lamb, and helped to set Donnie up on my ironing-stool for a high chair. And it made an awful pleasant few minutes.
We met three afternoons all together to sew for the Toll Gate House. And when we begun to plan to take the things to her, and get the roof mended, we realized we didn’t know her name.
“Ain’t that kind of nice?” says Mis’ Pettibone, dreamy. “And here we’re just as interested in her as if her father’d been our butcher, or something that’d make a real tie.”
“How shall we give these things to her?” says Mis’ Puppy. “Don’t let’s us let it be nasty, same as charity is.”
And it was Mis’ Lockmeyer, her of all the folks under the canopy, that set forward on the edge of her chair and thought of the thing to do. “Ladies,” she says, “there’s one more pair of curtains to hem. Why don’t we get her to one of our houses to hem ’em, and make her spend the day? And get her roof fixed and her ceiling mended and this truck in, and let it all be there when she gets home?”
“That’s what wewilldo,” says we, with one set of common eyebrows expressing our intention.
We decided that I’d be the one to ask her down, being I was the one that first went in her house, and similar. She said she’d come ready enough, and bring the little girl; and it made it real convenient, because Mr. Dombledon had gone off on one of his two-days tramps and taken Donnie with him. And the living minute I’d started her in sewing on the things we’d saved for her to sew, and set the little girl to playing with some of the things I’d fixed up for Donnie, I was out of the house and making for the Toll Gate.
Land, land, the things we’d found we could spare and that we’d piled in that house—stuff that we hadn’t known we had and that we couldn’t miss if we’d tried, but had hung on to sole and only because we were deformed into economizing that way. Honestly, I believe more folks economizes by keeping old truck around than is extravagant by throwing new stuff away. I don’t stand up for either, but I well know which has the most germs in. What we’d sent we’d cleaned thorough. And it was clean as wax there—but the roof was being mended and the ceiling was being fixed and carpets were going down. And when we gotdone with it, I tell you that little house looked as cozy as a Pullman car—and I don’t know anything whatever that looks cozier after you’ve set up in the day coach all night. And lions and lambs laying down together on swords and plow-shares were nothing to the way we worked together all day long. We had to jump to keep out of the way of being “been-nice” to so’s to get a chance to be nice ourselves. I liked to be there. I like to think about it since.
At five o’clock, old Mis’ Lockmeyer, dead-tuckered, was standing in the door with a corner of her apron caught up in the band, when Jem drove me away.
“Leave her come out any time now,” she says, “we’re ready for her. Mebbe she’ll be mad but, land—even if she is, I can’t be sorry we done it. It’s been as enjoyable,” she says, “as anything I’ve ever done.”
I looked back at her, and at all the other women back of her and in the windows, and at Mis’ Pettibone and Mis’ Puppy leaning on the same sill, and I nodded; and Mis’ Puppy—well, it was faint and ladylike, but just the same the look that we give each other was far, far more than a squint, and it was bordering on, and right up to, a regular wink.
When I come in sight of my house I was sobusy thinking how she’d like hers that I didn’t see for a minute what my front yard had in it. And when I did see, my heart kind of wentplap!—but a pleasant plap. My front yard looked so exactly the way I’d used to dream of it looking, and it never had. It was little and neat and green, with flowers and a white door-step as usual, but out in front was a little girl, with my clothes-rope doubled up for lines, and she was driving round and round the pansy bed a little boy. Just before I got to the gate, and before they saw me, they dropped the rope and went off around the house hand in hand, like they’d known each other all their days.
“I wish everybody was like that,” thinks I, and went in my front door and through to the dining-room.
And there, sitting on my couch with their arms around each other, was the Toll Gate House lady and my roomer, Mr. Dombledon.
“Well,” says I. “Sudden—but real friendly!”
I see I had to say something, for they didn’t seem real capable of it. And besides, I’d begun to suspicion, deep in the part of the heart that ain’t never surprised at love anywheres.
Mr. Dombledon come over to me—and now his eyes were like the sitting-room with all the curtains up.
“Oh, ma’am!” he says, “how did you know? How did you find out?”
“Know?” I says. “I know less all the time. And I ain’t found out yet. I’m a-waiting for you to tell me.”
“We’re each other’s wife and husband,” says he, neat but shy.
They told me as well as they could, now together, now separate, now both keeping still. I made it out more by means of the air than by means of words, anyhow. But this thing that he said came home to me then, and it’s never left me since:
“Nothin’ come between us,” he says. “No great trouble or sorrow or like that, same as some. It was just every day that wore us out. We got to snappin’ and snarlin’—like you do. We done it at everything—whenever either of us opened our heads, the other one took ’em up on it. We done it because we was tired. And we done it because we didn’t have much to do with—nor no real home. And we done it for no reason too, I guess ... an’ that come to be the oftenest of all. It got hold of us. That was what ailed me that day at your meeting—I’d always run from it now same as I would from the pest. Itisthe pest.... Well, finally I went off with Donnie and left Pearlwith her. Then when I found out she’d come here, I come here too, a-purpose. But I couldn’t go and face her, even then. And it’s been six months. And now we both know.”
I stood there looking at those two little people, shabby and or’nary-seeming; and I could have said something right past the lump in my throat if only I could of thought how to put it. But I couldn’t—like you can’t. Only—I knew.
“Where is he?” I heard her saying. “Where is he?”
I knew who she meant, and I went and got him. He come running in with his swing-board on him for a breast-plate. And his mother never said a word—she just gathered him up, swing-board and all, and kissed him at the back of his neck, there in the hollow that had been a-waiting for her.
“She made me cookies wiv buttins on!” he give out, for my biography. And it was enough for me.
Mr. Dombledon had his little girl’s hands in his, swinging her arms back and forth, and never saying a word.
Pretty soon I sent ’em off down the road, Donnie and Pearl ahead, they two behind, carrying my ex-roomer’s things. And I knew how, at the Toll Gate House, everything waswarm and bright and furnished andsuppered, waiting for them. And life was nice.
I went and stood out on my porch, looking off acrost my wood lot, thinking. I was thinking about the two of them, and about us women. And I knew I’d been showed the little bit of an edge to something that’s so small it don’t seem like anything, and so sordid we won’t any of us let on it comes near us, and so big it reaches all over the world.