_When the New Race comes--those whom Hudson calls "that blameless,
spiritualized race that is to follow"--surely they will look back with
some sense of actual romance upon the faint tapers which we now light,
both individual and social tapers. They will make their allowance for
us, as do we for the ambiguous knights of chivalry. And while the New
Race will shudder at us--at our disorganization with its war, its
poverty and its other crime--yet I think that they will love us a little
for our ineffectual ministries, as already we love them for exceeding
our utmost dream._
Don't you love a love-story; starting right before your eyes as casual
as if it was preserves getting cooked or parsley coming up? It doesn't
often happen to me to see one start, but once it did. It didn't start
like anything at all that was going to be anything, but just still and
quiet, same as the stars come out. I guess that's the way most great
things move, isn't it? Still and quiet, like stars coming out. Or
similar to stars.
It was the time of the Proudfits' big what-they-called week-end
parties, and it was the Saturday of the biggest of them, when a dozen
city people came down to Friendship Village for the lark. And with them
was to come a Piano Lady and a Violin Man--and a man I'd known about in
the magazines, a Novel-and-Poem Man that writes the kind of things that
gets through all the walls between you and the world, so's you can talk
to everything there is. I was crazy to see the Novel-and-Poem Man--from
behind somewheres, though, so's he wouldn't see me and look down on me.
And when Miss Clementina Proudfit asked me to bring her out some things
from the city Saturday night, chocolate peppermints and red candles and
like that, and said she'd send the automobile to the train for me to
fetch up the things and see the decorations, I was real pleased. But I
was the most excited about maybe seeing the Poem-and-Novel Man.
"What's he like, Miss Clementina?" I ask' her. "When I hear his name I
feel like when I hear the President's. Or even more that way."
"I've never met him," she says. "Mother knows him--he's her lion, not
mine."
"He writes lovely things," I says, "things that makes you feel like
everybody's way of doing is only lukewarm, and like you could just bring
yourself to a boil to do good and straighten things out in the world, no
matter what the lukewarm-way folks thought."
Miss Clementina looked over to me with a wonderful way she
had--beautiful face and beautiful eyes softening to Summer.
"I know--know," she says; "I dread meeting him, for fear he doesn't mean
it."
I knew what she meant. You can mean a thing you write in a book, or that
you say in talk, or for other folks to do. But meaning it for _living_
it--that's different.
I came out from the city that night on the accommodation, tired to death
and loaded down with bundles for everybody in Friendship Village. Folks
used to send into town by me for everything _but_ stoves and wagons,
though I wouldn't buy anything there except what you can't buy in the
village: lamb's-wool for comforters, and cut-glass and baby-pushers, and
shrimps--that Silas won't keep in the post-office store, because they
don't agree with his stomach. Well, I was all packages that night, and
it was through dropping one in the seat in front of me that I first saw
the little boy.
He was laying down, getting to sleep if he could and pulling his eyes
open occasional to see what was going on around him. His mother had had
the seat turned, and she sat there beyond him, facing me, and I noticed
her--flat red cheeks, an ostrich feather broke in the middle, blue and
red stone rings on three fingers, and giving a good deal of attention to
studying the folks around her. She was the kind of woman you see and
don't look back to, 'count of other things interesting you more.
But the little boy, he was different. He wasn't more than a year old,
and he didn't look that--and his cheeks were flushed and his eyelashes
and mouth made you think "My!" I remember feeling I didn't see how the
woman could keep from waking him up, just to prove he was hers and she
could if she wanted to.
Instead of that, all she did was continually to get up and go out of the
car. Every station we stopped at--and the accommodation acts like it was
made for the stations and not the stations for it--she was up and out,
as if the town was something swimming up to the car-door to speak to
her. She'd leave the baby asleep in the seat, and I wondered what would
happen if he woke up while she was gone, and started to roll. She stayed
every time up till after the train started--I didn't wonder it made her
cold, and that after a bit she put on her coat before she went. And once
or twice she carried out her valise with her, as if she might have
expected somebody to be there to get it. "Mebbe she's got somebody's
laundry," thinks I, "and mebbe a stranger has asked her to bring it out
on the train and she can't remember what station it's to be put off at."
They send things to stations along the way a lot on the
accommodation--everybody being neighbors, so.
Well, when we got to the Junction, out she went again, cloak and valise
and all. But I didn't think much about her then, because at the Junction
it's always all excitement, being that's where they switch the parlor
car off the train, and whoever is in it for Friendship Village has to
come back in the day coach for the rest of the way, and be just folks.
And among those that came back that night was the Brother-man.
I dunno if you'll know what I mean by that name for him. Some men are
just men, like they thought God made them just for the pleasure of
making them. And some men are flying around like they wanted to prove
that the Almighty didn't make a mistake when He created them. But there
are some men that just live like God hadn't made them so much as that
they're a piece of Him, and they haven't forgotten it and they feel
kindly toward all the other pieces. Well, this man was one of the
Brother-men. I knew it the minute I saw him.
By the time he came in the car, moving leisurely and like getting a seat
wasn't so interesting as most other things, there wasn't a seat left,
excepting only the turned one in front of the little chap asleep. The
man looked around idle for a minute and see that they wasn't cloak or
valise keeping that seat, and he sat down and opened the book he'd had
his finger in the place all the time, and allowed to read.
There's consid'rable switching to do at the Junction, time we get
started; and the jolts and bounces did just exactly what I thought they
would do--woke the little chap up. From before the train started he
begun stirring and whimpering--that way a baby does when it wants
nothing in the world but a hand to be laid on it. Isn't it as if its
mother's hand was a kind of healing that big folks forget about needing?
By the time the train was out on the road in earnest, the little chap,
he was in earnest, too. And he just what-you-might-say yelled. But no
mother came. They wasn't a mother's hand with big red and blue rings on
three fingers to lay on the little boy's back. And there wasn't a mother
of him anywhere's in sight.
In a minute or two the Brother-man looked up. He hadn't seemed to see
the baby before or to sense that he _was_ a baby. And he looked at him
crying and he laid his book down and he looked all around him,
perplexish, and then he looked over to me that was looking at him
perplexish, too. And being he was a man and I wasn't, I got right up and
went round there and picked the little chap up in my arms and sat down
with him.
"His ma went out of the car somewheres," I explained it.
He had lifted his hat and jumped up, polite as if he was the one I'd
picked up. And he stood looking down at me.
"I wonder if I couldn't fetch her," he says--and his voice was one of
the voices that most says an idea all alone. I mean you'd most have
known what he meant if he'd just spoke along without using any
words--oh, well, I dunno if that sounds like anything, but I guess you
know the kind I mean. The Novel-and-Poem Man's stories are the same
kind, being they say so much that never does get set up in type.
The baby didn't stop crying at all--seems as though your hands don't
have the right healing unless--unless--well, it didn't stop nor even
halt. And so I says, hesitating, I says: "You wouldn't know her," I
says. "I been watching her. I could find her better--if so be you
wouldn't mind taking the baby."
The Brother-man put out his arms. I remember I looked up in his face
then, and he was smiling--and his smile talked the same as his voice.
And his face was all full of what he meant. He had one of those Summer
faces like Miss Clementina's--just a general liking of the minute and a
special liking for all the world. And what he said made me think of
Summer, too:
"_Mind?_" says he. "Why it's like putting your cap over a butterfly."
He took the little fellow in his arms, and it was then that I first
sensed how beautiful the Brother-man was--strong and fine and quiet,
like he done whatever he done, and said whatever he said, _all over
him_, soul and all, and didn't just speak with his muscles, same as
some. And the baby, he was beautiful, too, big and fine and healthy and
a boy, only not still a minute nor didn't know what quiet meant. But he
stopped crying the instant the man took him, and they both looked at
each other like--oh, like they were more alike than the years between
them wanted to let them think. Isn't it pitiful and isn't it
wonderful--when two folks meet? Big or little, nice or horrid, pleasant
or cross, famous or ragged or talking or scairt--it don't make any
differ'nce. They're just brother-pieces, broke off the same way. That
was how the Brother-man looked down at the little chap, and I dunno but
that was how the little chap looked up at him. Because the little thing
threw out his arms toward him, and we both see the letter under his
blanket pinned to his chest.
All of a sudden, I understood what had happened--almost without the use
of my brain, as you do sometimes.
"Sit down a minute," I said to the Brother-man. "I guess mebbe this
letter tells where she is."
And so it did. It was written in pencil, spelled irregular and addressed
uphill, and the direction told the story even before the letter did. "To
Anybody," the direction was. And the inside of the letter said:
"Take care of my Baby. I ain't fit and never was and now don't
think to be anywheres long. Don't look for me. The baby would be
best off with anybody but me, and don't think to be anywheres long
and so would be orphant quite soon sure. He ain't no name so best
not put mine except.