"My grief!" Calliope exclaimed. "It reminds me, I got my mother's
calicoes down to pass 'round and I never thought to take them in."
She went to her new golden oak kitchen cabinet--a birthday gift to
Calliope from the Friendship church for her services at its organ--and
brought us her mother's "calicoes"--a huge box of pieces left from every
wool and lawn and "morning housework dress" worn by the Marshes, quick
and passed, and by their friends. Calliope knew them all; and I listened
idly while the procession went by us in sad-colored fabrics--"black and
brown and gray--gray and brown and black."
I think that my attention may have wandered a little, for I was recalled
by some slight stir made by Hannah Hager. She had risen and was bending
toward Calliope, with such leaping wistfulness in her eyes that I
followed her look. And I saw among the pieces, like a bright breast in
sober plumage, a square of chambray in an exquisite color of rose.
"Oh--" said little Hannah softly, "hain't that just _beauti_-ful?"
"Like it, Hannah?" Calliope asked.
"My!" said the little maid fervently.
"It was a dress Gramma Hawley made for Lyddy Eider when she was a little
girl," Calliope explained. "I dunno but what it was the last one she
made for her. Pretty, ain't it? Lyddy always seemed to hanker some after
pink. Gramma mostly always got her pink." Calliope glanced at Hannah,
over-shoulder. "Why don't you get a pink one for _then_?" she asked
abruptly; and, "When is it to be, Hannah?" she challenged her,
teasingly, as we tease for only one cause.
On which I had pleasure in the sudden rose-pink of Hannah's face, and
she sank back in her seat at the table corner in the particular,
delicious anguish that comes but once.
"There, there," said Calliope soothingly, "no need to turn any more
colors, 's I know of. Land, if they ain't enough sandwiches left to fry
for my dinner."
When, presently, Calliope and I were in the dining-room and I was
watching her "redd up" the table while Hannah clattered dishes in the
kitchen, I asked her who Hannah's prince might be. Calliope told me
with a manner of triumph. For was he not Henry Austin, that great,
good-looking giant who helped in the post-office store, whose baritone
voice was the making of the church choir and on whom many Friendship
daughters would not have looked unkindly?
"I'm so glad for her," Calliope said. "She ain't hed many to love
besides Gramma Hawley--and Gramma's so wrapped up in Lyddy Eider. And
yet I feel bad for Hannah, too. All their lives folks here'll likely
say: 'How'd he come to marry _her_?' It's hard to be that kind of woman.
I wish't Hannah could hev a wedding that would show 'em she _is_
somebody. I wish't she could hev a wedding dress that would show them
how pretty she is--a dress all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the
right places and little unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of
having if you weren't real up in dress," Calliope explained. "A dress
like Lyddy Eider always has on."
"Calliope!" I said then, laughing. "I believe you would be a regular
fashion plate, if you could afford it."
"I would," she gravely admitted, "I'm afraid I would. I love nice
clothes and I just worship colors." She hesitated, looking at me with a
manner of shyness. "Sit still a minute, will you?" she said, "I'd like
to show you something."
She went upstairs and I listened to Hannah Hager, clattering kitchen
things and singing:
"He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons,
To tie up my bonny brown ha--ir."
Pink chambray and the love of blue ribbons and Miss Lydia Eider in her
dress that was "dressmaker-made." These I turned in my mind, and I found
myself thinking of my visit to the town in the next week, for which
Madame Josephine was preparing; and of how certain elegancies are there
officially recognized instead of being merely divined by the wistful
amateur in color and textile. How Calliope and Hannah would have
delighted, I thought idly, in the town's way of pretty things to wear,
such as Josephine could make; the way that Lydia Eider knew, in her
frocks that were "dressmaker-made." Indeed, Calliope and Hannah and
Lydia Eider had been physically cast in the same mold of prettiness and
of proportion, but only Lydia had come into her own.
And then Calliope came down, and she was bringing a long, white box. She
sat before me with the box on her knee and I saw that she was flushing
like a girl.
"I expect," she said, "you'll think I'm real worldly-minded. I dunno.
Mebbe I am. But when I get out in company and see everybody wearing the
dark shades like they do here in Friendship so's their dresses won't
show dirt, I declare I want to stand up and tell 'em: 'Colors! Colors!
What'd the Lord put colors in the world for? Burn up your black and
brown and gray and get into somethin' _happy_-colored, and see the
difference it'll make in the way you feel inside.' I get so," Calliope
said solemnly, "that when I put on my best black taffeta with the white
turnovers, I declare I could slit it up the back seam. And I've felt
that way a long time. And that's what made me--"
She fingered the white box and lifted the cover from a mass of
tissue-paper.
"When Uncle Ezra Marsh died sixteen years ago last Summer," she said,
"he left me a little bit of money--just a little dab, but enough to mend
the wood-shed roof or buy a new cook-stove or do any of the useful
things that's always staring you in the face. And I turned my back flat
on every one of them. And I put the money in my pocket and went into the
city. And there," said Calliope breathlessly, "I bought this."
She unwrapped it from its tissues, and it was yards and yards of
lustrous, exquisite soft silk, colored rose-pink, and responding in
folds almost tenderly to the hand that touched it.
"It's mine," Calliope said, "mine. My dress. And I haven't ever hed the
sheer, moral courage to get it made up."
And that I could well understand. For though Calliope's delicacy of
figure and feature would have been well enough become by the soft pink,
Friendship would have lifted its hands to see her so and she would
instantly have been "talked about."
"Seems to me," Calliope said, smoothing the silk, "that if I could have
on a dress like this I'd feel another kind of being--sort o' free and
liberty-like. Of course," she added hurriedly, "I know well enough a
pink dress ain't what-you-might-say important. But land, land, how I'd
like one on me in company! Ain't it funny," she added, "in the city
nobody'd think anything of my wearing it. In the city they sort of seem
to know colors ain't wicked, so's they look nice. I use' to think,"
Calliope added, laughing a little, "I'd hev it made up and go to town
and wear it on the street. All alone. Even if it was a black street. I
guess you'll think I'm terrible foolish."
But with that the idea which had come to me vaguely and as an
impossibility, took shape; and I poured it out to Calliope as a thing
possible, desirable, inevitable.
"Calliope!" I said. "Bring the silk to my house. Let Madame Josephine
make it up. And next week come with me to the city--for the opera. We
will have a box--and afterward supper--and you shall wear the pink
gown--and a long, black silk coat of mine--"
"You're fooling--you're _fooling_!" Calliope cried, trembling.
But I made her know how in earnest I was; for, indeed, on the instant my
mind was made up that the thing must be, that the lonely pink dress must
see the light and with it Calliope's shy hopes, long cherished. And so,
before I left her, it was arranged. She had agreed to come next morning
to my house, if Madame Josephine were willing, bringing the rose-pink
silk.
"Me!" she said at last. "Why, me! Why, it's enough to make all the
_me's_ I've been turn over in their graves. And I guess they hev turned
and come trooping out, young again."
Then, as she stood up, letting the soft stuff unwind and fall in shining
abandon, we heard a little noise--tapping, insistent. It was very near
to us--quite in the little passage; and as Calliope turned with the silk
still in her arms the door swung back and there stood Grandma Hawley.
She was leaning on her thick stick, and her gray lace cap was all awry
and a mist of the fine, driving rain was on her gray hair.
"I got m' feet wet," she said querulously. "M' feet are wet. Lyddy's
gone to Mis' Sykes's. I comeback to stay a spell till it dries off
some--"
"Grandma!" Calliope cried, hurrying to her, "I didn't hear you come in.
I never heard you. Come out by the kitchen fire and set your feet in
the oven."
Calliope had tossed the silk on the table and had run to the old woman
with outstretched hand; but the outstretched hand Grandma Hawley did not
see. She stood still, looking by Calliope with a manner rather than an
expression of questioning.
"What is't?" she asked, nodding direction.
Calliope understood, and she slightly lifted her brows and her thin
shoulders, and seemed to glance at me.
"It's some pink for a dress, gramma," she said.
Grandma Hawley came a little nearer, and stood, a neat, bent figure in
rusty black, looking, down at the sumptuous, shining lengths. Then she
laid her brown, veined hand upon the silk--and I remember now her
fingers, being pricked and roughened by her constant needle, caught and
rubbed on the soft stuff.
"My soul," she said, "it's pink silk."
She lifted her face to Calliope, the perpetual trembling of her head
making her voice come tremulously.
"That's what Abe Hawley was always talkin' when I married him," she
said. "'A pink silk dress fer ye, Minnie. A fine pink silk to set ye
off,' s' 'e over an' over. I thought I was a-goin' to hev it. I hed the
style all picked out in my head. I know I use' to lay awake nights an'
cut it out. But, time the cookin' things was paid for, the first baby
come--an' then the other three to do for. An' Abe he didn't say pink
silk after the fourth. But I use' to cut it out in the night, fer all
that. I dunno but I cut it out yet, when I can't get to sleep an' my
head feels bad. My head ain't right. It bothers me some, hummin' and
ringin'. Las' night m' head--"
"There, there, gramma," said Calliope, and took her arm. "You come along
with me and set your feet in the oven."
I had her other arm, and we turned toward the kitchen. And we were
hushed as if we had heard some futile, unfulfilled wish of the dead
still beating impotent wings.
In the kitchen doorway Hannah Hager was standing. She must have seen
that glowing, heaped-up silk on the table, but it did not even hold her
glance. For she had heard what Grandma Hawley had been saying, and it
had touched her, who was so jealously devoted to the old woman, perhaps
even more than it had touched Calliope and me.
"Miss Marsh, now," Hannah tried to say, "shall I put the butter that's
left in the cookin'-butter jar?" And then her little features were
caught here and there in the puckers of a very child's weeping, and she
stood before us as a child might stand, crying softly without covering
her face. She held out a hand to the old woman, and Calliope and I let
her lead her to the stove. My heart went out to the little maid for her
tears and to Calliope for the sympathy in her eyes.
Grandma Hawley was talking on.
"I must 'a' got a little cold," she said plaintively. "It always settles
in my head. My head's real bad. An' now I got m' feet wet--"