When a house in the neighborhood has been vacant for two years, and all
of a sudden the neighborhood sees furniture being moved into that house,
excitement, as Silas Sykes says, reigns supreme and more than supreme.
And so it did in Friendship Village when the Oldmoxon House got a new
tenant, unbeknownst. The excitement was specially strained because the
reason Oldmoxon House had stood vacant so long was the rent. And whoever
had agreed to the Twenty Dollars was going to be, we all felt, and as
Mis' Sykes herself put it, "a distinct addition to Friendship Village
society."
It was she gave me the news, being the Sykeses are the Oldmoxon House's
nearest neighbors. I hurried right over to her house--it was summer-warm
and you just ached for an excuse to be out in it, anyway. We drew some
rockers onto her front porch where we could get a good view. The
Oldmoxon double front doors stood open, and the things were being set
inside.
"Serves me right not to know who it is," says Mis' Sykes. "I see men
working there yesterday, and I never went over to inquire what they
were doing."
"A body can't do everything that's expected of them," says I, soothing.
"Won't it be nice," says Mis' Sykes, dreamy, "to have that house open
again, and folks going and coming, and maybe parties?" It was then the
piano came out of the van, and she gave her ultimatum. "Whoever it is,"
she says, pointing eloquent, "will be a distinct addition to Friendship
Village society."
There wasn't a soul in sight that seemed to be doing the directing, so
pretty soon Mis' Sykes says, uneasy:
"I don't know--would it seem--how would it be--well, wouldn't it be
taking a neighborly interest to step over and question the vans a
little?"
And we both of us thought it would be in order, so we did step right
over to inquire.
Being the vans had come out from the City, we didn't find out much
except our new neighbor's name: Burton Fernandez.
"The Burton Fernandezes," says Mis' Sykes, as we picked our way back. "I
guess when we write that name to our friends in our letters, they won't
think we live in the woods any more. Calliope," she says, "it come to me
this: Don't you think it would be real nice to get them up a
reception-surprise, and all go there some night as soon as they get
settled, and take our own refreshments, and get acquainted all at once,
instead of using up time to call, individual?"
"Land, yes," I says, "I'd like to do that to every neighbor that comes
into town. But you--" says I, hesitating, to her that was usually so
exclusive she counted folks's grand-folks on her fingers before she
would go to call on them, "what makes you--"
"Oh," says Mis' Sykes, "you can't tell me. Folks's individualities is
expressed in folks's furniture. You can't tell me that, with those
belongings, we can go wrong in our judgment."
"Well," I says, "_I_ can't go wrong, because I can't think of anything
that'd make me give them the cold shoulder. That's another comfort about
being friends to everybody--you don't have to decide which ones you want
to know."
"You're so queer, Calliope," says Mis' Sykes, tolerant. "You miss all
the satisfaction of being exclusive. And you can't _afford_ not to be."
"Mebbe not," says I, "mebbe not. But I'm willing to try it. Hang the
expense!" says I.
Mis' Sykes didn't waste a day on her reception-surprise. I heard of it
right off from Mis' Holcomb and Mis' Toplady and two-three more. They
were all willing enough, not only because any excitement in the village
is like a personal present to all of us, but because Mis' Sykes was
interested. She's got a real gift for making folks think her way is the
way. She's a real leader. Everybody wears a straw hat contented till,
somewheres near November, Mis' Sykes flams out in felt, and then you
begin right off to feel shabby in your straw, though new from the store
that Spring.
"It does seem like rushing things a little, though," says Mis' Holcomb
to me, very confidential, the next day.
"Not for me," I says. "I been vaccinated."
"What do you mean?" says she.
"Not even the small-pox can make me snub them," I explains.
"Yes, but Calliope," says Mis' Toplady in a whisper, "suppose it should
turn out to be one of them awful places we read about. They have good
furniture."
"Well," says I, "in that case, if thirty to forty of us went in with our
baskets, real friendly, and done it often enough, I bet we'd either
drive them out or turn them into better neighbors. Where's the harm?"
"Calliope," says Mame Holcomb, "don't you draw the line _nowheres_?"
"Yes," I says, mournful. "Them on Mars won't speak to me--yet. But short
of Mars--no. I have no lines up."
We heard from the servant that came down on Tuesday and began cleaning
and settling, that the family would arrive on Friday. We didn't get much
out of him--a respectable-seeming colored man but reticent, very. The
fact that the family servant was a man finished Mis' Sykes. She had had
a strong leaning, but now she was bent, visible. And with an item that
appeared Thursday night in the Friendship Village _Evening Daily_, she
toppled complete.
"Professor and Mrs. Burton Fernandez," the _Supper Table Jottings_ said,
"are expected Friday to take possession of Oldmoxon House, 506 Daphne
street. Professor Fernandez is to be engaged for some time in some
academic and scholastic work in the City. Welcome, Neighbors."
"Let's have our reception-surprise for them Saturday night," says Mis'
Sykes, as soon as she had read the item. "Then we can make them right at
home, first thing, and they won't need to tramp into church, feeling
strange, Next-day morning."
"Go on--do it," says I, affable.
Mis' Sykes ain't one to initiate civic, but she's the one to initiate
festive, every time.
Mis' Holcomb and Mis' Toplady and me agreed to bake the cakes, and Mis'
Sykes was to furnish the lemonade, being her husband keeps the
Post-office store, and what she gets, she gets wholesale. And Mis' Sykes
let it be known around that on Saturday night we were all to drop into
her house, and go across the street together, with our baskets, to put
in a couple of hours at our new neighbors', and make them feel at home.
And everybody was looking forward to it.
I've got some hyacinth bulbs along by my side fence that get up and
come out, late April and early May, and all but speak to you. And it
happened when I woke up Friday morning they looked so lovely, I couldn't
resist them. I had to take some of them up, and set them out in pots and
carry them around to a few. About noon I was going along the street with
one to take to an old colored washerwoman I know, that never does see
much that's beautiful but the sky; but when I got in front of Oldmoxon
House, a thought met me.
"To-day's the day they come," I said to myself. "Be kind of nice to have
a sprig of something there to welcome them."
So my feet turned me right in, like your feet do sometimes, and I rang
the front bell.
"Here," says I, to that colored servant that opened the door, "is a posy
I thought your folks might like to see waiting for them."
He started to speak, but somebody else spoke first.
"How friendly!" said a nice-soft voice--I noticed the voice particular.
"Let me thank her."
There came out from the shadow of the hall, a woman--the one with the
lovely voice.
"I am Mrs. Fernandez--this is good of you," she said, and put out her
hands for the plant.
I gave it to her, and I don't believe I looked surprised, any more than
when I first saw the pictures of the Disciples, that the artist had
painted their skin dark, like it must have been. Mrs. Fernandez was dark
too. But her people had come, not from Asia, but from Africa.
Like a flash, I saw what this was going to mean in the village. And in
the second that I stood there, without time to think it through,
something told me to go in, and try to get some idea of what was going
to be what.
"May I come inside now I'm here?" I says.
She took me into the room that was the most settled of any. The piano
was there, and a good many books on their shelves. As I remember back
now, I must just have stood and stared at them, for impressions were
chasing each other across my head like waves on a heaving sea. No less
than that, and mebbe more.
"I was trying to decide where to put the pictures," she said. "Then we
shall have everything settled before my husband gets home to-morrow."
We talked about the pictures--they were photographs of Venice and of
Spain. Then we talked about the garden, and whether it was too late for
her to plant much, and I promised her some aster plants. Then I saw a
photograph of a young girl--it was her daughter, in Chicago University,
who would be coming home to spend the Summer. Her son had been studying
to be a surgeon, she said.
"My husband," she told me, "has some work to do in the library in the
City. We tried to live there--but we couldn't bear it."
"I'm glad you came here," I told her. "It's as nice a little place as
any."
"I suppose so," she says only. "As nice as--any."
I don't think I stayed half an hour. But when I came out of there I
walked away from Oldmoxon House not sensing much of anything except a
kind of singing thanksgiving. I had never known anything of her people
except the kind like our colored wash-woman. I knew about the negro
colleges and all, but I guess I never thought about the folks that must
be graduating from them. I'd always thought that there might be somebody
like Mis' Fernandez, sometime, a long way off, when the Lord and us his
helpers got around to it. And here already it was true of some of them.
It was like seeing the future come true right in my face.
When I shut the gate of Oldmoxon House, I see Mis' Sykes peeking out her
front door, and motioning to me. And at the sight of her, that I hadn't
thought of since I went into that house, I had all I could do to keep
from laughing and crying together, till the street rang with me. I
crossed over and went in her gate; and her eye-brows were all cocked
inquiring to take in the news.
"Go on," she says, "and tell me all there is to tell. Is it all so--the
name--and her husband--and all?"
"Yes," I says, "it's all so."
"I knew it when I see her come," says Mis' Sykes. "Her hat and her veil
and her simple, good-cut black clothes--you can't fool me on a lady."
"No," I says. "You can't fool me, either."
"Well now," says Mis' Sykes, "there's nothing to hinder our banging
right ahead with our plan for to-morrow night, is there?"
"Nothing whatever," I says, "to hinder me."
Mis' Sykes jerked herself around and looked at me irritable.
"Why don't you volunteer?" says she. "I hate to dig the news out of
anybody with the can-opener."
I'd have given a good deal to feel that I didn't have to tell her, but
just let her go ahead with the reception surprise. I knew, though, that
I ought to tell her, not only because I knew her through and through,
but because I couldn't count on the village. We're real democratic in
the things we know about, but let a new situation stick up its head and
we bound to the other side, automatic.
"Mis' Sykes," I says, "everything that we'd thought of our new neighbor
is true. _Also_, she's going to be a new experience for us in a way we
hadn't thought of. She's dark-skinned."
"A brunette," says Mis' Sykes. "I see that through her veil--what of
it?"
"Nothing--nothing at all," says I. "You noticed then, that she's
colored?"
I want to laugh yet, every time I think how Mis' Postmaster Sykes looked
at me.
"_Colored!_" she says. "You mean--you can't mean--"
"No," I says, "nothing dangerous. It's going to give us a chance to see
that what we've always said could be true sometime, away far off, is
true of some of them now."
Mis' Sykes sprang up and began walking the floor.
"A family like that in Oldmoxon House--and my nearest neighbors," says
she, wild. "It's outrageious--outrageious."
I don't use my words very good, but I know better than to say
"outrageious." I don't know but it was her pronouncing it that way, in
such a cause, that made me so mad.
"Mis' Sykes," I says, "Mis' Fernandez has got a better education than
either you or I. She's a graduate of a Southern college, and her two
children have been to colleges that you and I have never seen the inside
of and never will. And her husband is a college professor, up here to
study for a degree that I don't even know what the letters stands for.
In what," says I, "consists your and my superiority to that woman?"
"My gracious," says Mis' Sykes, "ain't you got no sense of fitness to
you. Ain't she black?"
"Her skin ain't the same color as ours, you're saying," I says. "Don't
it seem to you that that reason had ought to make a cat laugh?"
Mis' Sykes fair wheeled on me. "Calliope Marsh," says she, "the way you
set your opinions against established notions is an insult to your
kind."
"Established notions," I says over after her. "'Established notions.'
That's just it. And who is it, of us two, that's being insulting to
their kind now, Mis' Sykes?"
She was looking out the window, with her lips close-pressed and a
thought between her narrowed eye-lids.
"I'll rejoin 'em--or whatever it is you call it," she says. "I'll rejoin
'em from living in that house next to me."
"Mis' Sykes!" says I. "But their piano and their book-cases and their
name are just the same as yesterday. You know yourself how you said
folks's furniture expressed them. And it does--so be they ain't using
left-overs the way I am. I tell you, I've talked with her, and I know.
Or rather I kept still while she told me things about Venice and
Granada where she'd been and I hadn't. You've got all you thought you
had in that house, and education besides. Are you the Christian woman,
Mis' Sykes, to turn your nose up at them?"
"Don't throw my faith in my face," says she, irritable.
"Well," I says, "I won't twit on facts. But anybody'd think the Golden
Rule's fitted neat onto some folks to deal with, and is left flap at
loose ends for them that don't match our skins. Is that sense, or ain't
it?"
"It ain't the skin," she says. "Don't keep harping on that. It's them.
They're different by nature."
Then she says the great, grand motto of the little thin slice of the
human race that's been changed into superiority.
"You can't change human nature!" says she, ticking it out like a clock.
"Can't you?" says I. "_Can't_ you? I'm interested. If that was true, you
and I would be swinging by our tails, this minute, sociable, from your
clothes-line."
By this time she didn't hear anything anybody said back--she'd got to
that point in the argument.
"If," she says, positive, "if the Lord had intended dark-skinned folks
to be different from what they are, he'd have seen to it by now."