Chapter IV: Part 4

"For sixty years," she answered my thought of her, "I've never known what it was to couldn't bear anybody, not without I had a reason. They ain't much of anybody I what you might say don't like, without they're malicious or ugly a-purpose. Ugly by nature, ugly an' can't help it, ugly an' don't know it--I can forgive all them. An' Mis' Johnson ain't ugly at all--she's just a real sweet little slip of a thing, doin' her hard-workin' best. But when I first see her in church that day, I says to myself: 'I'll give that little piece two months to carry the sail she's carryin' here to-day; four months to hev folks tired of her, an' six months to get herself the cold shoulder all 'round.' An' I hold to what I said. An' when her baby-blue nineteen-inch feather swings in an' 'round, an' when she tells how things ought to be, I kind o' bristle all over me. I'm ashamed of it--an' yet, do you know, I like to give in to it?" Calliope said solemnly. "I donno what's come over me. Hev you heard where the Java entertainment's put to be?"

I had not heard, nor was I sure just why it was of Java, save that Friendship is continually giving entertainments with foreign names and practising a wild imperialism to carry out an effect of foreign parts. And since, at the missionary meeting which had projected the affair, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had told about _their_ Java entertainment in _their_ church at home, that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda Toplady, who was president of the society, had appointed her chairman of the Java entertainment committee.

"And," Calliope informed me, "she's picked out the engine-house for it. Yes, sir,--the fire-engine house. No other place was _quaint_ enough. No other place lent itself to decoration probabilities--or somethin' like that. She turned her back flat on the church an' went round to empty stores, lookin' for _quaint-ity_. One while I thought she'd hev us in the Chinese laundry, she seemed that took with the tomato-coloured signs on the walls. But, finally, she lit on the engine-house; an' when she see the big, bare engine-room, with the big, shinin' engine in it, an' harnesses hangin' from them rough board beams in a kind of avenoo, an' the board walls all streaked down, she spatted her hands an' 'lowed we'd hev our Java there. 'What a dear, quaint place,' s's she,--'so _flexible_!' She held out about the harnesses bein' so quaintly picturesque an' the fire-engine a piece o' resistance--or somethin' like that. An' she rents the room, without ay, yes, no, nor boo. My way of thinkin', a chairman ought to hev boo for a background, even if she _is_ chairman. That's where she wants the statue an' the nut butter an' the cap an' gown. Can we borrow 'em of you?"

"The engine-house!" I repeated incredulously. "You cannot mean the fire-engine house, Calliope?"

"I do," Calliope said firmly, "the quaint, flexible fire-engine house. They ain't been a fire in Friendship in over two years, so Mis' Johnson says we ain't got that to think of--an' I donno as we hev. An' they never use the engine any more, now they've got city water, excep' for fires in the country, and then nobody ever gets in to give the alarm till the house is burned down an' no need to bother goin'. Even if they do get in in some sort of season, the department has to go to the mayor to get a permit to go outside the city limits. It was so when the Topladys' barn burned. Timothy told 'em, when they come gallopin' up after it was most done smokin', that if they had held off a little longer they could have been a sight of help to him in shinglin' the new one. Oh, no, they ain't much of any danger of our being disturbed by a fire in them two hours to-night. Anyhow, they can't be a fire. Mis' Oliver Wheeler Johnson said so."

We laughed like children as we loaded my "Java" stuffs on the wagon. Calliope was a valiant helper to Mrs. Johnson, and so I told her. She was standing in the wagon box, one arm about my palm, the other free for driving.

"I'm the chairman o' the refreshments, too," she confessed. "Oh, well. Yourself you can boss round, you know," she threw back, smiling; "anybody can do that. But your feelin's you're some cramped about runnin'."

It is certain that Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson was signally unfitted for a future in Friendship Village. She was a woman of some little world in which she had moved before she came to us, and in the two worlds she perceived no difference. Or, where she saw a difference, she sought to modify it by a touch when a breath would have been too much, and the only factor of potency would have been a kind of potency of spirit, which she did not possess.

The Oliver Wheeler Johnsons had moved to Friendship only three months before, and nobody had looked for them at church on their first Sunday. "Movin' so, you want your Sabbath to take some rest in, an' you ain't expected to dress yourself up an' get out to Sunday service an' face strangers," the village said--and when the two walked into church while the responses were being made nearly everybody lost the place.

They were very young, and they were extremely well dressed.

"He's got on one o' the long coats," comment ran after church, "an' he's got a real soft-speakin' voice. But he seems to know how to act."

And, "I declare, nice white gloves an' a nineteen-inch baby-blue ostrich feather durin' movin' seems some like puttin' on."

And, "The back of her dress fits her just like the front, an' I must say she knows it. No pullin' down the jacket or hitchin' the strings forward for _her_, when she stands up!"

As Miggy, who first told me about that day, had said, "That Sunday morning, Mis' Oliver Wheeler Johnson was the belle of the congregation."

After service that day, instead of going directly home or waiting to be addressed, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had spoken to the woman with whom she had been seated. It was Mis' Postmaster Sykes.

"Thank you so much," Mrs. Johnson said, "for letting us share your pew. May I present my husband? We have come to Friendship to live, and we shall be coming here to church. And I shall want to join your Ladies' Aid Society and your Missionary Circle and, perhaps, be in the Sunday-school right away. I--I think I'll be less homesick--"

"Actually," Mis' Sykes said afterward, "she took my breath clear away from me. I never heard of such a thing. Of course, we're real glad to hev our newcomers Christian people, but we want quiet Christians. An' did you notice how she was when I give her an introduction around? Why, she up an' out with somethin' to say to everybody. Just a neat little 'How d' do' wouldn't do for her to remark. I always suspicion them talkative-at-first kind. It's like they'd been on the stage or brought up in a hotel."

When she first came to the Ladies' Aid and the missionary meetings, Mrs. Johnson "said something." She was "up to her feet" three or four times at each session with suggestion, information, or description of how they did in her home church. And some way I think that what chiefly separated her from the village was the way that inevitable nineteen-inch blue ostrich plume on the little woman's hat bobbed and won attention and was everywhere at once. Or, perhaps--such creatures of wax we are to our impressions--it may have been little Mrs. Johnson's mere way of lifting her small, pointed chin when she talked, and of frowning and over-emphasizing. Or it may have been that she stood with her hands clasped behind her in what seemed to Friendship exaggerated ease, or that she smiled arbitrarily and ingratiatingly as she talked when there was absolutely nothing at which to smile. I think that these made her seem as alien to us as, in varied measure, certain moral defects might have done.

Moreover, she mentioned with familiarity objects and usages of which Friendship Village knew nothing: Carriage shoes, a new cake of soap for each guest, some kind of ice served, it was incredulously repeated, "in the middle o' the meal!" She innocently let fall that she sent to the city for her letter-paper. She had travelled in a state-room on a train, and she said so. She knew a noted woman. She used, we saw from the street, shaded candles on the table when she and her husband were at supper alone. She thought nothing of ordering Jimmy Sturgis and the bus to take her down town to her marketing on a rainy day. She had inclined to blame the village that Daphne Street was not paved, instead of joining with the village to blame somebody else. Above all, she tried to buy our old furniture. I do not know that another might not have done all these quite without giving offence, and, indeed, rather have left us impressed with her superior familiarity with an envied world. But by the time of the Java entertainment Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had innocently alienated half Friendship Village. And this morning Calliope merely voiced what I knew to be the sentiment of most of Mrs. Johnson's neighbours and acquaintances. For these people are the kindly of earth; but they are of earth, where reign both the centrifugal and centripetal forces,--and the control is not always so swift as science and the human heart could wish.

At five o'clock to-day--the day set for the Java evening entertainment--I made my way to the engine-house. This was partly because I wished to be as much as possible with Calliope during her few days in the village, and partly it was because the affair would belong to the class of festivity which I am loath to miss, and I think that, for Friendship's sake, I will never willingly pass by a "hall" in which is to be found a like diversion. Already on the great room, receiving its final preparation, had descended something of the excited spirit of the evening: the heat, the insufficient light, the committee members' shrill, rollicking children sliding on the floor, the booths which in all bazaars contain with a precision fairly bewildering the same class of objects; and the inevitable sense of hurry and silk waists and aching feet and mustn't-take-your-change-back. But to all these things the Java engine-house affair would add an element of novelty, almost a flavour of romance. Certainly the room lent itself to "decoration probabilities," as Calliope had vaguely quoted; it had been a roller-skating rink, utilized by the fire-department on the decline of the pastime, and there was, as Mrs. Johnson's _pièce de résistance_, the fire-engine.

I had never before been in the engine-house--you know how there will be commonplace enough spots in your own town to which you never go: the engine-house, the church belfry, the wood yard, upstairs over this store and that, and grocery cellars whose sloping trap-doors, open now and then to the walk, are as alien as the inside of the trunks of your trees. When I stepped in the engine-house, it seemed insistently a place in which I had never been before. And this may have been partly because the whole idea of a village fire-department is to me singular: the waiting horses and ladders and hose, whose sole reason for being is merely ameliorative, and never human and preventive; that pealing of the sharp, peculiar, terrifying alarm and summons first imprinting something on the very air, stabbing us with _Halt_ while we count the bell strokes for the ward, and then clanging the wild fury of the quick-stroke command to help.

To-day the great glittering fire-engine, flanked by hose-cart and hook-and-ladder wagon, occupied almost wonderingly the head of the room which had been invaded, and an inspired committee had garlanded the engine with paper roses and American flags. The flag of the Netherlands, copied from a dictionary and wrought in red-white-and-blue cambric with a silver crown, drooped meditatively from the smoke-stack; a scarlet fez and a peacock-feather fan hung on the supply hose; and on the tongue-bracer was fixed a pink sofa cushion from Mis' Amanda Toplady's parlour, with an olive Indian gentleman in a tinsel zouave jacket stamped on the cover. On the two big sliding doors, back of which stood the fire company's horses, were tacked innumerable Javanese trifles more picturesque than authentic; and on outlying booths and tables there were others. Directly before the engine was to be the tea-table, where Mis' Postmaster Sykes was to serve Java tea from a Java canister, loaned by the Post-office store.

As soon as I entered I sought out Calliope's booth, a huge affair constructed of rugs whose red-tongued, couchant dogs and bounding fawns somewhat marred the Eastern effect. And within, I found myself in a circle of the Friendship women whom I know best--all of them tired with that deadly tiredness born of a day's work at a church fair of any nation. But at once I saw that it was not merely fatigue which was disquieting them.

Calliope was leaning against a bit of Bagelen blue, loaned by the new minister's wife. And she said to me as if, I thought, in explanation of what I was to hear,--"I guess we're all pretty tired. Most of us look like we wanted to pant. I'm all of a shake, myself."

When Mis' Postmaster Sykes spoke unsmilingly, I understood:--

"It ain't the bein' tired," she disclaimed; "tired I can stand an' hev stood since my own birth. But it's the bein' commanded 'round--me, _commanded_--by that little I'm-the-one-an'-you-do-as-I-say out there!"

"Land-a-livin' an' a-dyin'!" said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "I declare if I know whether I'm on foot or on horseback. It's bad enough to hev to run a fair, without you've got to be run yourself, too. Ain't it enough for Mis' Johnson to be made chairman without her wantin' to boss besides? She might as well say to me, 'Mis' Holcomb, you do everything the opposite way from the way you've just done it,' an' hev it over with."

Mis' Amanda Toplady--even that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda--shook her head.

"Mis' Johnson surely acts used to bein' bowed down to," she admitted; "she seems fair bent on lordin' it. My land, if she wasn't bound to borrow my Tea rose plant that's just nearin' ready to bud."

Calliope laughed, a little ruefully, and wholly in sympathy.

"Honest," she said, "I guess what's the matter with all of us ain't so much what she does as the particular way she does it. It's so with some folks. They just seem to sort of _set_ you all over, when you come near 'em--same as the cold does to gravy. We'd all ought to wrostle with the feelin', I expect."

"I expect we had," said Mis' Holcomb, "but you could wrostle all your days with vinegar an' it'd pucker your mouth same way."

"Funny part," Calliope observed, "everybody feels just alike about her. When she skips around so sort o' momentous, we all want to dodge. I felt sorry for her, first, because I thought she was in for nervous prostration. But after a while I see it wasn't disease--it was just her feelin' so up an' down significant, you might say."

"I donno," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "but it's part the way she says her _a_'s. That real _a_-soundin' _a_ kind," she explained vaguely.

"She's so right an' left cuffy--I guess that's the whole thing," Calliope put it in her rich idiom.

"Well," said Mis' Amanda, sadly, "there must be somethin' we could like her for, even if it was only her husband."

"He ain't what I'd call much, either," Calliope dismissed Mr. Oliver Wheeler Johnson positively; "he's got too soft-speakin' a voice. I like a man's voice to rumble up soft from his chest an' not slip down thin from his brain."

I remember that I listened in a great wonder to these women whom I had seen at many an office of friendliness to strangers and aliens. Yet as I looked across the floor at that little Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson--who, in the hat with the blue plume, was everywhere, directing, altering, objecting, arranging, commanding and, especially, doing over--I most unwillingly felt much as they felt. If only Mrs. Johnson had not continually lifted her little pointed chin. If only she had not perpetually and ingratiatingly smiled when there was nothing at which to smile at all.

Then Abigail Arnold hurried up to us with a tray of cups for the Java tea.

"Calliope," she said to the chairman of the refreshments, "Mis' Johnson jus' put up her little chin an' says, 'What! ain't we no lemons for the tea?'"

Calliope compressed her lips and lifted their thin line tight and high.

"Lemins," she replied, "ain't necessarily found in Java. I've a good big mind to go home to bed."

Then we saw little Mrs. Johnson's blue linen dress hurrying toward us with the waving line of the blue feather above her, like a last little daring flourish by the artist of her. She was really very pretty and childish, with a manner of moving in wreaths and lines and never in solids. Her little feet twinkled along like the signature to the pretty picture of her. But yet she was not appealing. She was like an overconfident child whom you long to shut in a closet. Yes, I understand that I sound like a barbarian in these days of splendid corrective treatment of children who are studied and not stormed at. And in this treatment I believe to the uttermost. And yet, overconfidence in a child is of all things the most--I will amend what I said: Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson was like an overconfident child whom you long to shut in a closet because of your ignorance of what else on earth to do. No doubt there is a better way, but none of us knew it. And she came toward us intent, every one felt, on some radical change in arrangements, though the big room was now in the pink of appointment and ready to be left while the committee went home to sup on "just sauce and bread-and-butter," and to don silk waists.

We saw little Mrs. Johnson hurrying toward us, upon a background of the great, patient room, all-tolerant of its petty bedizening. And then Mrs. Johnson, we in Calliope's booth, the sliding, rollicking children, and all the others about stood still, at the sharp, peculiar terrifying alarm and summons which seemed to imprint something on the very air, stabbing us with _Halt_ that we might count the bell strokes for the ward, and clanging a wild fury of the quick-stroke command to help. For the first time in two years the Friendship fire alarm was sounding from the tower above our heads.

There was a panting sweep and scurry for the edges of the room, as instantly a gong on the wall sounded with the alarm, and the two big sliding doors went back, scattering like feathers the innumerable Javanese trifles that had been tacked there. Forward, down the rug-hung vista, plunged the two big horses of the department. We saw the Java tea-table borne to earth, the Javanese exhibits adorning outlying counters swept away, and all the "decoration probabilities" vanish in savage wreck. Then the quaintly picturesque harnesses fell to the horses' necks, their hoofs trampled terrifyingly on the loose boards of the floor, and forth from the yawning doors the horses pounded, dragging the _pièce de résistance_, with garlands on its sides, the pink zouave cushion crushed beneath it, and the flag of the Netherlands streaming from the stack. Horses rushed thither in competition, came thundering at the doors, and galloped to place before the two carts. I think not a full minute can have been consumed. But the ruin of the Java entertainment committee's work was unbelievably complete. Though there had been not a fire in Friendship Village in two years, that night, of all nights, Jimmy Sturgis's "hay-barn," for the omnibus horses, "took it on itself," it was said, "to go to work an' burn up." And Jimmy's barn is outside the city limits, so that the _pièce de résistance_ had to be used. And Jimmy is in the fire-department, so that the company galloped informally to the rescue without the benefit of the mayor's authority.

As the last of the department disappeared, and the women of the committee stood looking at one another--tired with the deadly tiredness of a day such as theirs--a little blue linen figure sprang upon a chair and clasped her hands behind her, and a blue ostrich feather lifted and dipped as she spoke.

"Quickly!" Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson cried. "All hands at work now! Mrs. Sykes, will you set up the tea-table? You can get more dishes from my house. Mrs. Toplady, this booth, please. You can make it right in no time. Mrs. Holcomb, you will have to do your booth entirely over--you can get some things from my house. Miss Marsh--ah, Calliope Marsh, you must go to my house for my lace curtains--"

She smiled ingratiatingly and surely arbitrarily, for we all knew full well that there was absolutely nothing to smile at. And with that Calliope's indignation, as she afterward said, "kind of crystallized and boiled over." I remember how she stood, hugging her thin little arms and speaking her defiance.

"I donno how you feel, Mis' Johnson," she said dryly, "but, _my_ idea, Bedlam let loose ain't near quaint enough for a Java entertainment. Nor I don't think it's what you might say real Java, either. Things here looks to me too flexible. I'm goin' home an' go to bed."

There was no doubt what the rest meant to do. With one impulse they turned toward the door as Calliope turned, and silently they took the way that the _pièce de résistance_ had taken before them. Little Mrs. Johnson stood on her chair making many gestures; but no one went back.

Calliope looked straight before her.

"My feet ache like I done my thinkin' with 'em," she said, "an' my head feels like I'd stood on it. An' what's it all for?"

"Regular clock performance," Mis' Postmaster Sykes assented. "We've ticked hard all day long an' ain't got a thing out of it. I often think it's that way with my housework, but I did think the Ladies' Missionary could tick, when it _did_ tick, for eternity. I'm tuckered to the bone."

"Nobody knows," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was Mame-Bliss, "how my poor neck aches. It's there I suffer first an' most."

Mis' Amanda Toplady, who was walking behind the rest, took three great steps and caught us up and spoke, a little breathlessly:--

"Land, land," she said, "I guess I'll go home an' pop some corn. Seems to me it'd smell sort of cosy an' homelike an' soothin' down. It's a grand thing to smell when you're feelin' far off from yourself."

Calliope laughed a little then.

"Well," she said, "anyhow I ain't got my silk waist to get into--and I didn't hev a nice one to put on anyway. I was wishin' I had, and now my wish has come true by bein' took away from me, bodily--like they will. But just the same--"

She turned on the walk and faced us, and hugged her thin little arms.

"A while ago," she said, "I give that little woman there six months to get herself the cold shoulder all around. Well, the time ain't up yet--but both my shoulders feels stone cold!"

IX

THE COLD SHOULDER

There is something more about Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson.

Did you ever look through an old school-book of your own and, say, on the history picture of Vesuvius in eruption impose your own memory of Pompeii, visited in these twenty years since you studied about it; and have you not stared hard at the time between and felt yourself some one other than that one who once dreamed over the Vesuvius picture? Or, years after you read the Letters, you have made a little mark below Cicero's cry from exile, "Oh, that I had been less eager for life!" and you look at the cry and at the mark, and you and one of these become an anachronism--but you are not sure which it is that so becomes. So now, in reading over these notes some while after I have set them down, I am minded here to give you my look ahead to the end of the summer and to slip in some account of what happened as a closing of the tale. And I confess that something about me--perhaps it is the Custodian herself--likes this way of pretending a freedom from time and of looking upon its fruit to say which seeds have grown and which have not.

Friendship Village is not superstitious, but when curious coincidences occur we do, as we say, "take down note." And it did seem like a judgment upon us that, a little time after the Java fiasco, and while indignation was yet at high noon, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson fell ill.

At first I think we affected not to know it. When she did not appear at church, none of us mentioned it for a Sunday or two. Then when some one casually noted her absence we said, "Oh, wasn't she? Got little cold, likely." That we saw her no more down town or "brushing up" about her door we facilely laid to chance. When the village heard that her maid--who always offended by talking almost in a whisper--had once or twice excused her mistress to callers, every one shut lips and hardened hearts and said some folk acted _very_ funny about their calling duties. But when, at the twelve o'clock breakfast of the new minister's wife--("Like enough breakfast at noon was a real Bible custom," the puzzled devotees solved that amazing hour), Mrs. Johnson did not appear, the village was forced to admit that something must be wrong.

Moreover, against its will the behaviour of young Mr. Johnson was gravely alarming Friendship. Mr. Johnson was in real estate and insurance in the city, and this did not impress the village as a serious business. "Because, what does he _sell_!" as Abigail Arnold said. "We know he don't own property. He rents the very house they live in. A doctor's a doctor an' he gives pills, an' a store's a store with the kind o' thing you need. But it don't seem like that man could make a real good livin' for her, dealin' vague in nothin' that way." His income, it was felt, was problematical, and the village had settled it that what the Oliver Wheeler Johnsons' had was chiefly wedding presents "an' high-falutin' tastes." But, in the face of the evidence, every afternoon at three o'clock the young husband ordered a phaëton from Jimmy Sturgis and came home from the city to take his wife to drive. Between shutters the village saw that little Mrs. Johnson's face did look betrayingly pale, and the blue ostrich plume lay motionless on her bright hair.

"I guess Mis' Johnson's real run down," her acquaintances said to one another uneasily. Still we did not go to see her. The weeks went by until, one morning, Calliope met the little new Friendship doctor on the street and asked him about his patient.

"I up an' ask' him flat out," Calliope confessed afterward; "not that I really cared to be told, but I hated to know I was heathenish. You don't like the feelin'. To know they ain't heathens is all that keeps some folks from _bein_' 'em. Well, so I ask' him. 'Doctor Heron,' s'I, 'is that Mis' Johnson real sick, or is she just sickish?' He looks at me an'--'Looks pretty sick, don't she?' s'e. 'Well,' s'I, 'I've seen folks look real rich that wa'n't it by right-down pocketbook evidence.' 'Been to see her?' s'e. 'No,' s'I, short. 'Might drop in,' s'e, an' walks off, lookin' cordial. That little Doctor Heron is that close-mouthed I declare if I don't respect him same as the minister an' the pipe-organ an' the skippin' hills."

So, as midsummer passed and found the little woman still ailing, I obeyed an idle impulse and went one evening to see her. I recall that as soon as I had crossed her threshold the old influence came upon me, and I was minded to run from the place in sheer distaste of the overemphasis and the lifted, pointed chin and the fluttering importances of her presence. I was ashamed enough that this should be so, but so it was; and I held my ground to await her coming to the room only by a measure of will.

I sat with Mrs. Johnson for an hour that evening. And it would seem that, as is the habit of many, having taken my own way I was straightway possessed to draw others after me. There are those who behave similarly and who set cunningly to work to gain their own ends, as, for example, I did. For one night soon I devised a little feast, which I have always held to be a good doorway to any enterprise, and, at the Friendship-appointed supper hour of six, I made my table as fair as possible, as has been done in like case ever since butter was first served "in a lordly dish." And my guests were Calliope, without whom no festival is wholly in keeping, and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Mis' Postmaster Sykes, and that great, tolerant Mis' Amanda Toplady.

Because they had arrived so unsuspectingly I own myself to have felt guilty enough when, in that comfortable half-hour after a new and delectable dessert had been pronounced upon, I suggested with what casualness I might summon that we five pay a visit that night to Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson.

"Land!" said Mis' Holcomb, "I've thought I would an' then I've thought I wouldn't till I feel all two-faced about myself. I donno. Sometimes I think one way an' sometimes I think the other. Are you ever like that?"

"I s'pose," said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, majestically, "that them in our position ought to overlook. I donno's 'twould hurt us any to go," she added graciously.

Calliope's eyes twinkled.

"That's it," she said; "let them that's got the social position to overlook things be Christian an' overlook 'em."

That great Mis' Amanda Toplady folded her hands, dimpled like a baby giant's.

"I'd be glad to go," she said simply; "I've got some grape jell that looks to me like it wasn't goin' to keep long, an' I'd be thankful to be on terms with her so's I could carry it in to her. They ain't a single other invalid in Friendship."

Calliope sprang to her feet and crossed her little arms, a hand hugging either shoulder.

"Well said!" she cried; "do let's go! I'm sick to death of slidin' off the subject whenever it comes up in my mind."

So, in the fair October dusk, we five went down the Plank Road--where Summer lingers late. The air was gentle with the soft, impending dark. I wonder why the colonnade of sweet influences, down which we stepped, did not win us to themselves. But I remember how, instead, our imminent visit drew us back to the days of Mrs. Johnson's coming, so that presently we were going over the incident of the Java entertainment, and, as Calliope would have put it, "crystallizing and boiling over" again in the old distaste.

But when we reached the little cottage of the Johnsons, our varied motives for the visit were abruptly merged in a common anxiety. For Doctor Heron's buggy stood at the gate and the little one-story cottage was dark save for a light in what we knew to be a corner bedroom. The hallway was open to the night, but though we could distinctly hear the bell jingle in the kitchen no one answered the summons. Then, there being somewhere about a murmur of voices, Calliope stepped within and called softly:--

"Doctor, Doctor Heron--you there? Is they anything we can do?"

The doctor came momentarily to the lighted doorway down the hall.

"That you, Calliope?" he said. "You might come here, will you? Tell the rest to sit down somewheres. And you tell Mr. Johnson he can come."

On which, from out the dark living room, some one emerged very swiftly and without a word pushed by us all where we were crowded in the passage and strode down to the little lighted chamber. Calliope hurried after him, and we four shrank back in sudden dread and slipped silently into the room which the young husband had left, and stood together in the dimness. Was she so sick? In that room he must have heard the door-bell as we had heard it, and yet he had not answered. Was it possible that we had come too late?

While we waited we said nothing at all, save that great Mis' Amanda Toplady, who said three times or four, "Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'm always waitin' till somethin's too late--either me or the other thing." It seemed very long before we heard some stir, but it can have been only a few minutes until the doctor came down the little hall and groped into the room. In answer to all that we asked he merely occupied himself in lighting a match and setting it deliberately to the candles on the table and adjusting their shades. They were, we noted afterward, the same candles whose presence we had detected and derided at those long ago tête-à-tête suppers in that house. The light glowed on the young doctor's pale face as he looked at us, each in turn, before he spoke. And when he had done with his slow scrutiny--I think that we cannot wholly have fancied its accusation--he said only:--

"Yes, she's pretty sick. I can't tell yet."

Then he turned and closed the outer door and stood leaning against it, looking up the hall.

"Miss Marsh!" he called.

But why did the man not tell us something, we wondered; and there flashed in my mind Calliope's reference to the pipe-organ and the skipping hills. At all events, Calliope would tell us.

And so she did. We heard her step in the hall, coming quickly and yet with a manner of exceeding care. I think that with the swift sense which wings before intelligence, the others understood before they saw her, even as I understood. Calliope stopped in the doorway as if she could trust herself to go no farther. And she was holding something in her arms.

"Calliope," we said; "Calliope...."

She looked down at that which she held, and then she looked at us. And the tears were in her eyes, but her face was brighter than I have ever known it.

"It's a baby," she said, "a little bit of a baby. _Her_ baby. An' it makes me feel--it makes me feel--oh," she broke off, "don't it make you feel that way, too?"

We looked at one another, and avoided one another's look, and then looked long at the baby. I do not remember that we said anything at all, or if we did so, that it bore a meaning. But an instant after Calliope gave the baby to the nurse who appeared in the doorway, we all tiptoed down to the kitchen by common consent. And it was plain that Mrs. Johnson's baby made us feel that way, too.

In our desire to be of tardy service we did the most absurd things. We took possession of the kitchen, rejoicing that we found the supper dishes uncared for, and we heated a great kettle of water, and washed and wiped and put away, as softly as we could; and then we "brushed up around." I think that only the need of silence kept us from cleaning windows. When the nurse appeared--who had arrived that day unknown of Friendship--we sprang as one to do her bidding. We sent the little maid to bed, we tidied the living room, walking tiptoe, and then we went back through the kitchen and sat down on the little side "stoop." And all this time we had addressed one another only about the tasks which we had in hand.

After a little silence,

"The milkman was quite late this morning," observed Mis' Holcomb.

"Well, he's begun to deliver in cans instead o' bottles," Mis' Sykes explained; "it takes him some longer to get around. He says bottles makes his wife just that much more to do."

Then we fell silent again.

It was Calliope, sitting on the porch step outside, where it was dark, who at last had the courage to be articulate.

"I hope--I _hope_," she said, "she's goin' to be all right."

Mis' Sykes shaded her eyes from the bracket lamp within.

"I'll go bail," she said, "that little you-do-as-I-say chin'll carry her through. I'm glad she's got it."

Just then we heard the thin crying of the child and we could divine Calliope, that on the step where she sat she was hugging her arms and rocking somewhat, to and fro.

"Like enough," she said, "oh, like enough--folks ain't so cramped about runnin' their own feelin's as they think they are!"

To this we murmured something indefinite in sound but positive enough in sense. And we all knew what we all knew.

"Let's go out around the house to the front gate," said that great Mis' Amanda Toplady, abruptly. "Have any of you ladies got two handkerchiefs?"

"I've got two," said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, "an' I ain't used either one. Do you want the one with essence or the one without?"

"I ain't partial," said Mis' Amanda.

We rose and stumbled along the grassy path that led round the house. At the gate we met Doctor Heron.

"Well," he said slowly, "well." And after a moment, "Will--will any of you be here in the morning?" he asked.

"Yes," we all said simply.

"That's good," he commented shortly, "I didn't know."

We five had to separate at the first corner to go our home ways, and we stood for a moment under the gas-light. I remember how, just then, Peter's father came singing past us, like one of the Friendship family who did not understand his kinship. Even as we five had not understood ours.

"You haven't got a shawl, hev you?" Mis' Sykes said to me solicitously.

"The nights have been some chilly on a person's shoulders for a day or two now," said Mis' Holcomb.

Calliope put her hand up quickly to her throat.

"Quit," she said. "All of you. Thank God. An' shake hands. I tell you, after this I bet I'll run my own feelin's about folks or I'll bring down the sky an' make new feelin's! Oh," said Calliope, "don't her--an' _now_--an' the baby--an'--oh, an' that bright star winkin' over that hitchin' post, make things seem--easy? Good night. I can't stand out here any longer."

But when we had gone away a few steps, Calliope called us back. And as we turned again,

"To bring down the sky," she repeated, "I bet that's the way God meant us to do. They ain't any of us got enough _to_ us to piece out without it!"

X

EVENING DRESS

I have said that Daphne Street has been paved within the past year, but I had not heard of the manner in which the miracle had been wrought until the day when Calliope's brief stay in the village ended and she came to tell me good-by--and, more than incidentally, to show me some samples of a dress which she might have, and a dress which she wouldn't have, and a dress which she had made up her mind to have.

"We don't dress much here in Friendship Village," she observed. "Not but what we'd like to, but we ain't the time nor the means nor the places to wear to. But they was one night--"

She looked at me, as always when she means to tell a story, somewhat with the manner of asking a permission.

"None of the low-neck' fashion-plates used to seem real to us," she said. "We used to look at 'em pinned up in Lyddy Ember's dressmakin' windows, ah-ahing in their low pink an' long blue, an' we'd look 'em over an' think tolerant enough, like about sea-serpents. But neither the one nor the other bit hold rill vital, because the plates was so young an' smilin' an' party-seemin', an' we was old an' busy, like you get, an' considered past the dressin' age. Still, it made kind of a nice thing to do on the way home from the grocery hot forenoons--draw up there on the shady side, where the street kitters some into a curve, an' look at Lyddy's plates, an' choose, like you was goin' to get one.

"Land knows we needed some oasises on that street from the grocery up home. Daphne Street, our main street, didn't always use' to be what it is now--neat little wooden blocks an' a stone curb. You know how it use' to be--no curb an' the road a sight, over your shoe-tops with mud in the wet, an' over your shoe-tops with sand when it come dry. We ladies used to talk a good deal about it, but the men knew it meant money to hev it fixed, an' so they told us hevin' it fixed meant cuttin' the trees down, an' that kept us quiet--all but the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality.

"Mis' Postmaster Sykes was president o' the Sodality last year, you know,--she's most always president of everything,--an' we'd been workin' quite hard all that winter, an' had got things in the cemetery rill ship-shape--at least I mean things _on_ the cemetery was. An' at one o' the July meetin's last summer Mis' Sykes up an' proposed that we give over workin' for the dead an' turn to the livin', an' pave the main street of Friendship Village.

"'True,' she says, 'our constitution states that the purpose of our Sodality shall be to keep up the graves of our townspeople an' make 'em attractive to others. But,' says she, 'when they ain't enough of us dead to occupy all the time, the only Christian way to remedy that is to work for folks before they die, while we're waitin' for their graves.'

"This seemed reasonable, an' we voted unanimous to pave Daphne Street. An' on the way home Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Timothy Toplady an' I see Timothy Toplady settin' in the post-office store, an' we went in to tell him an' Silas Sykes about it. But before we could start in, Silas says, eyebrows all eager, 'Ain't you heard?'

"'Heard what?' says his wife, kind o' cross, bein' he was her wedded husband an' she _hadn't_ heard.

"''Bout Threat Hubbelthwait,' says Silas, lookin' at Mis' Toplady an' me, bein's Mis' Sykes was his wife. 'Drunk again,' says Silas, 'an' fiddlin' for dear life, an' won't let anybody into the hotel. Mis' Hubbelthwait has gone over to her mother's, an' the hired girl with her; an' Threat's settin' in the bar an' playin' all the hymn tunes he knows.'

"It wasn't the first time it had happened, you know. Threat an' his wife an' the hired girl keep the only hotel in Friendship Village--when Threat is sober. When he isn't, he sometimes closes up the house an' turns out whoever happens to be there, an' won't let a soul in--though, of course, not much of anybody ever comes to Friendship anyway, excep' now an' then an automobile on its way somewheres. An' there Threat will set in the bar, sometimes most of one week, sometimes most of two, an' scrape away on the only tunes he knows--all hymns, 'Just As I Am,' an' 'Can A Little Child Like Me?' Threat don't mean to be sacrilegious; he shows that by never singin' them two hymns in church, when they're give out.

"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, when Silas got through, 'what men are!'

"'We ain't so much as woman, lemme tell you,' says Silas, right crisp. Which wasn't what he meant, an' we all laughed at him, so he was a little mad to start with.

"'The Sodality's decided to pave Daphne Street,' Mis' Sykes mentions then, simple.

"'Pave _what_?' shouts Silas--Silas always seems to think the more you do in sound the more you'll do in sense.

"'Do _what_ to Daphne Street?' says Timothy, whirlin' from the peanut roaster.

"'Pave Daphne Street,' says Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' me, wonderin'.

"Silas wrapped his arms around his own shoulders.

"'When,' says he, lettin' his head lurch with his own emphasizin', 'did the Common Council hear about this?'

"'They ain't heard, about it,' says Mis' Sykes, 'no more'n we ever hear anything about them.'

"Silas an' Timothy is both aldermen, an' rill sensitive over it. I guess the Common Council always _is_ a delicate subject, ain't it?

"Mebbe it wasn't a rill diplomatic way to begin, but it hadn't entered the Sodality's head that the town wouldn't be glad to hev the pavin' done if the Sodality was willin' to do it. Ain't it a hard thing to learn that it ain't all willingness, nor yet all bein' capable, that gets things done in the world? It's part just edgin' round an' edgin' round.

"What did the Common Council do that night but call a special meetin' an' vote not to order any city pavin' done that present year. Every member was there but Threat Hubbelthwait, who was fiddlin', an' every vote was switched by Silas an' Timothy to be unanimous, excep' Eppleby Holcomb's vote. Eppleby, we heard afterwards, said that when a pack o' women made up their minds to pave, they'd pave if it was to pave--some place that Eppleby hadn't ought to 'a' mentioned; an' he was goin' to be on the pavin' side. But then, Eppleby is the gentlest husband in Friendship Village, an' known to be.

"Sodality met special next day, not so much to do anything as to let it be known that we'd took action. This we done by votin' to lay low till such time as we could order the wooden blocks. We preferred to pave peaceable, it bein' hot weather.

"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss an' Mis' Mayor Uppers an' I walked home together from that meetin'. It was a blisterin' July afternoon--one of them afternoons that melts itself out flat, same as a dropped pepp'mint on a brick walk, an' you're left stickin' in it helpless as a fly, an' generally buzzin'. I rec'lect we was buzzin'--comin' down Daphne Street in that chokin' dust an' no pavement.

"'It's a dog's life, livin' in a little town--in some respects,' I remember Mis' Sykes says.

"'Well,' says Mis' Toplady, tolerant, 'I know. I know it is. But I'd rather live in a little town an' dog it out than go up to the city an' turn wolf, same as some.'

"An' yet we all felt the same, every one of us. They ain't a woman livin' in a little place that don't feel the same, now and again. It's quiet an' it's easy housework, an' you get to know folks well. But oh, none of it what you might say _glitters_. An' they ain't no woman whatever--no matter how good a wife an' mother an' Christian an' even housekeeper she is--that don't, 'way down deep in her heart, feel that hankerin' after some sort o' _glitter_.

"So it was natural enough that we should draw up at Lyddy's dressmakin' window an' rest ourself. An' that afternoon we'd have done so, anyway, for she hed been pinnin' up her new summer plates--Lyddy don't believe in rushin' the season. An' no sooner had we got a good look at 'em--big coloured sheets they was, with full-length pictures--than Mis' Toplady leaned 'way forward, her hands on her knees, an' stood lookin' at 'em the way you look at the parade.

"'Well, look-a-there,' she says. 'Look at that one.'

"The one she meant was a woman with her hair all plaited an' fringed an' cut bias, an' with a little white hat o' lilacs 'bout as big as a cork; an' her dress--my land! Her dress was long an' rill light blue, an' seemed like it must have been paper, it was so fancy. It didn't seem like cloth goods at all, same as we hed on. It was more like we was wearin' meat an' vegetable dresses, an' this dress was dessert--all whipped cream an' pink sugar an' a flower on the plate.

"'Dear land!' says Mis' Toplady, lookin' 'round at us strange, 'do they do it when they get gray hair? I didn't know they done it when their hair was gray.'

"We all looked, an' sure enough, the woman's hair was white. 'Afternoon Toilette for Elderly Woman,' it said underneath, plain as plain. Always before the plates hed all been young an' smilin' an' party-seemin', an' we'd thought of all that as past an' done for, with us, along with all the other things that didn't come true. But here was a woman grayer than any of us, an' yet lookin' as live as if she'd been wearin' a housework dress.

"'Why,' says Mis' Sykes, starin', 'that must be a new thing this season. I never heard of a woman well along in years wearin' anything but brown or navy blue or gray,--besides black.' Mis' Sykes is terribly dressy, but even she never yet got anywheres inside the rainbow, except in a bow at the chin.

"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, wistful, 'wouldn't it seem like heaven to be able to wear colours without bein' talked about?'

"An' Mis' Mayor Uppers--her that her husband grew well off bein' mayor, an' never'd been back to Friendship Village since he was put out of office, she says low:--

"'You ladies that has husbands to keep thinkin' well of you, I should think you'd think about this thing. Men,' she says, 'loves the light shades.'

"At that Mis' Toplady turned around on us, an' we see her eyes expressin' i-dees.

"'Ladies,' says she, impressive, 'Mis' Uppers is right. We hadn't ought to talk back or show mad. We ladies of the Sodality had ought to be able to get our own way peaceable, just by takin' it, the way the Lord give women the weapons to do.'

"We see that somethin' was seethin' in her mind, but we couldn't work our way to what it was.

"'Ladies,' says she, an' stepped up on the wooden step to Lyddy's dressmakin' shop, 'has the husbands of any one of us seen us, for twenty years, dressed in the light shades?'

"I didn't hev any husband to answer for, but I could truthfully say of the rest that you'd think black an' brown an' gray an' navy had exhausted the Lord's ingenuity, for all the attention they'd paid to any other colour He'd wove with.

"'Let's the Sodality get up an evenin' party, an' hev it in post-office hall, an' invite our husbands an' buy new dresses--light shades an' some lace,' says Mis' Toplady, lettin' the i-dee drag her along, main strength.

"Mis' Sykes was studyin' the fashion-plate hungry, but she stopped an' stepped up side o' Mis' Toplady.

"'Well, sir,' she said, 'I donno but 'twould help us to work the pavin' of Daphne Street. Why, Silas Sykes, for one, is right down soft-hearted about clothes. He always notices which one of their waists the choir's got on. I heard him say once he wasn't goin' to church again till they bought somethin' new.'

"Mis' Holcomb nodded. 'Five years ago,' she said, 'I went up to the city with Eppleby. An' I saw him _turn around_ to look after a woman. I'll never forget the sensation it give me--like I was married to a man that wasn't my husband. The woman had on a light pink dress. I know I come home an' bought a pink collar; I didn't think I could go any farther, because she was quite young. Do you s'pose....'

"Mis' Toplady pointed at Lyddy's fashion-plate. 'I should go,' she says, 'just as far as my money would let me go.'

"Mis' Uppers stood lookin' down to the walk. 'The mayor,' she says--she calls him 'the mayor' yet--'was terrible fond o' coloured neckties. He was rill partial to green ones. Mebbe I didn't think enough about what that meant....'

"Mis' Toplady came down off the step. 'Every man is alike,' says she, decided. 'Most of us Friendship ladies thinks if we give 'em a clean roller towel we've done enough towards makin' things pretty; an' I think it's time, as wives, we took advantage of the styles.'

"'An',' says Mis' Sykes, the president, rill dreamy for her, but firm, 'I think so, too.'