wearing the pearls that the senator had lately given her. And--she
would come home weary. She wished that for just one night out of these
gold-and-glory public nights they two might linger over a small table
whose simple meal was lighted by the lamp of home. Oh, just for once
to be only a gray-haired man and his gray-haired wife, in life’s calm
closing day, looking steadfastly out into the fading sky, in whose
deepening twilight would presently shine, like a beacon, the evening
star! No light save that, and the bedtime candle; no noise, no glitter;
no great orchestra, only the dear every-day music of the tea-kettle,
and the cricket, and the settling log.
[Illustration: Why, it was just such a little house as she had dreamed
of!]
The car swung around a corner; the Little Brown House was left behind.
She had left behind so much, she thought. Old neighbors, old faiths,
old friends, old simplicities. She had advanced, but to what? What, of
all the great essentials, had she gained? In all this success, what was
hers--to _keep_?
At dinner she met her youngest daughter, married to a title incidental
to a big blond Englishman of unimpeachable morals and a goodly
rent-roll. The other daughter, Milly, had married the millions of
Kilian van Cuypt. Dick, the only son, had married a virtually penniless
Virginian, but Dick’s wife brought connections. The children had all
done well: she was satisfied with things as they were; but at dawn she
admitted again that she was tired, too tired to sleep.
The Little Brown House crept into her mind soothingly. In the room
shaded by that one great tree the lights would long since have been
out. That would be a very simple room; the toilet articles wouldn’t be
of crystal and of hammered gold, for instance; there would be no inlaid
and priceless furniture: it would be just dear and clean and cozy;
after a quiet day one might pass there a quieter night.
She wondered what it would be like, living in a little brown house.
Whimsically she lay awake and furnished it, room by room. At first she
failed to note the significance of her omissions, the curious sense of
rest and freedom which the mere thought of eliminating a great retinue
of servants gave her. Little brown houses haven’t room for retinues;
one had perhaps a little maid whom one really knew, and in whose
affairs one was interested. It occurred to her that she knew just about
as much of the lives of _her_ servants as she knew about the man in the
moon. But in little brown houses one might come into pleasant human
contact with one’s few necessary helpers. She surmised that this was
the right way, the good way, the Galilean Carpenter’s way.
_The Carpenter!_
Her thoughts drifted back to her girlhood’s churchgoing, the
churchgoing of people in little homes, who have sometimes not enough,
sometimes just enough, but never, oh never, too much. Of a sudden she
remembered her mother’s sweet untrained soprano, her father’s stern
bass:
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!”
And her mother had had but one best cashmere; her father a sacred suit,
religiously laid out on the bed of a Sunday morning!
There had been Wednesday-night prayer-meetings; she had gone, a little,
little girl, holding tight to the hired girl’s hard, kind hand. She
wondered, with a tightening of the heart, what had become of Martha.
Perhaps she was some gray-haired grandmother to-night; perhaps Martha
too slept under the stars and the night wind and the grass, in a corner
of that old cemetery wherein, lying very close together, her own father
and mother rested.
How calm and serene those two time-worn faces had been! The simplicity
of their lives and their faith seemed to make a deeper gulf between
her and them than death or years. As in a dream she remembered the
quavering voice of their oldest friend reading over them:
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, ... the love of God, ... the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost....”
Ah, but to them these things had been the real and the essential--“the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” To her
they had been for many a year but empty echoes, to which one listened,
if one listened at all, with polite inattention and unemotion.
And then she thought with astonishment, “Why, perhaps _they_ succeeded,
who held fast to things they were never to lose; perhaps it is _we_ who
fail--we who have only the things we can touch with our hands.” In her
carved and lace-hung bed, which had cost more than all the furniture in
her father’s house, she began to weep softly; but as if those tears had
cleared her vision she saw what she might do.
The senator was more than scrupulous about his wife’s more than liberal
allowance; if was a very easy matter for her to purchase the Little
Brown House. Never, she thought, had the mere possession of any one
thing given her so much pure pleasure.
It wasn’t, however, the sort of house you can furnish by a wholesale
order at the nearest furniture store. No, indeed; you have to hunt
carefully for things to put into little brown houses. Piece by piece
the senator’s wife found her belongings: here an old dresser, there an
old chair or an older table; all good and solid and beautiful, with
the beauty of being _lived with_.
She was tired of the pitiless bright glare of electricity; so on her
dining-table stood a softly shaded family lamp. The sort of lamp _you_
used to sit beside once, long ago, while your brother and your sister
studied their lessons near by, and your mother, a stocking of yours on
her hand, looked up, smiling, from time to time to answer your many
questions; and your father twinkled over his glasses and his paper at
all of you. You remember now, don’t you? You wouldn’t take anything
life might offer, for just that memory, would you? And isn’t it strange
that, looking back at them now that they’ve gone, just these simplest
memories seem somehow the holiest?
Upstairs the bedrooms, all in freshest dimity, and smelling of lavender
and rosemary, begged you to come in and lie down and rest a while. And
you didn’t need to look at the Unrevised Version on a stand by the bed
to know that they were rooms you could _pray_ in. On the wall in the
front room hung, in a blackened frame, a sampler, a nice moral sampler,
with an edging of painfully prim flowers, “Work’d by Anne Alice Hardy,
Aged 12 Yrs.” Anne Alice was the senator’s wife’s mother; and the
sampler had lain for years at the bottom of a trunk, because, among the
notable pictures on the walls of the great new house, there wasn’t room
for anything so crude.
When with loving exactitude the Little Brown House of dreams had been
wrought into reality the senator’s wife drew a long breath of relief.
She said with a smile and a sigh:
“Now I need flowers, and a cat, and a canary, and a friend.”
Getting flowers, and a cat, and a canary do not present difficulties;
getting a friend does. The senator’s wife knew exactly what she wanted;
she knew that the Little Brown House must spell happiness, and home,
and hope to any who were to dwell therein.
Face after face flitted through her mind, to be dismissed. The social
secretary? _She_ despised little brown houses! The senator’s wife began
to wonder if, perhaps, people do not build great houses more to please
social secretaries, and visitors, and butlers, and footmen, and maids,
than to live and be happy in themselves!
Apply to the pastor of her church? But he too was one for whom
the bigger houses are built. Her friends? Fashionable friends
are--acquaintances. They would smile to one another, with lifted
eyebrows, over their bridge-tables, if they knew.
Her husband? Never, never, never he: he was with all his heart and soul
a man of his times; never was he to know that the high place he had
coveted and won for her wasn’t her ideal realized.
The Little Brown House remained closed, and dark at night when a
friendly light should have streamed through its windows. Every time
she walked through its homy rooms--rooms which seemed to be complaining
of not being allowed to be home--the Little Brown House asked
reproachfully:
“You who have so much, haven’t you one, just one real friend you can
share my simple secret with? Why, those you regard as utter failures
can call in friend and neighbor to share their joys and sorrows! Do you
know why? Because Just-Enough, and more often Not-Enough, draw folks
together brotherlily; but Too-Much cuts you off from your kind.
“Why do you come, senator’s wife, to me, who am only a little brown
house, and keep me empty? You must share me--or leave me!”
Among her charities were several Homes for women--women that haven’t
any homes of their own, and that nobody on earth wants in theirs. Her
name figured on their lists of patronesses and on their many boards.
And while the social secretary attended to all the mere business
details, and she had but to sign the necessary checks, she made it a
rule to appear at each annual function, exquisitely gowned, smiling,
affable, a being from another sphere almost.
The price that one insensibly pays for Too-Much is that one insensibly
forgets one is just folks; the whole great toiling wonderful terrible
race becomes to one--the common people. Just as if all that has been
created in our common universe hadn’t been made by our common God for
His common people!
The senator’s wife, naturally enough, had drifted into this common
error. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel kindly; why, she wished to
help--with checks. But she simply couldn’t imagine that people who had
nothing at all could be just like herself. So she had never looked at
any one face among all these faces to know it from its fellows: these
were just the faces of old women in Homes.
It was only because the Little Brown House was so insistent in its
demands, making her thoughtful, that she found herself watching at one
of these sad receptions the strong, serene face of Anne O’Driscoll.
Moved by a sudden impulse, she approached the middle-aged woman, who
was looking about her with the merry courage of Irish eyes.
“I hope,” she began, “that you’re happy here?”
Anne O’Driscoll’s voice hadn’t the usual complacent sureness of the
grateful reply.
“My two eyes,” said she, after a pause, “went back on me last winter,
an’ I could sew no more. I’m too old to find payin’ work, though I’m
too young, I’m thinkin’, for _this_. But I’m grateful for the shelter,
ma’am, for I’d been alone and sick.”
“Alone and sick!” The sheltered and beloved woman shuddered slightly.
“I’m sorry, Mrs.--Mrs.--”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am, but I’m used to it--the being alone--for a
good many years. An’ I’m no Mrs., but just Anne O’Driscoll.”
“You aren’t unhappy here, at least?”
“I’d be less so, ma’am, if I’d the hopes of gettin’ work, an’ my cat
Blinkie back. I minded losin’ Blinkie most of all, I think. Ah, he was
a fine cat, an’ more knowin’ than most folks, Blinkie was!”
“And you couldn’t bring him here? Why, the very idea, wanting and not
being able to keep--just a _cat_!”
“Why, ma’am,” said Anne gently, “you couldn’t expect the Home to take
you an’ your cat too. Just think now, if we’d all be allowed to bring
what we liked with us--this one a cat, and t’other one a dog, and
another one a parrot, might be! Oh, no ma’am, it wasn’t to be expected;
so I let Blinkie go to the grocer on the corner’s wife, that’d always
wanted him. If you’re to keep things yourself you must have a home
that’s yours to keep them in.” There wasn’t the faintest trace of
bitterness in her voice.
An old woman, plain, unlettered; an old cat that she couldn’t keep:
could anything be more _banal_? But Anne looked something like her own
old aunt, her father’s sister, dead these many years.
“May I,” said the senator’s wife, “call you Anne?”
“Why, of course, ma’am, if you like.” Anne was neither flustered nor
flattered by the great lady’s notice, just simply and pleasantly
responsive.
“Anne,” said the lady after a pause, “Anne, don’t you think you’d like
a really, truly home, where you’d grow old gently and in peace and
surety, with enough work to make things worth while, and not enough
money to spoil things, and a cushion in the sun for Blinkie, and
flowers in the windows--and--somebody else to help, Anne?” Her voice
was a bit breathless.
“There’s women,” said Anne softly, “that’s born to ache for a home all
their days, an’ never do they find nor keep it. I’m one of ’em.”
The senator’s wife wondered a little at herself. She had known Anne but
a few minutes; Anne was a plain woman, a woman in a Home, and she knew
that she was going to tell Anne all about the Little Brown House; and
Anne would understand!
“Will you come with me to-morrow, Anne, to see a little brown house
that needs somebody--and I think that somebody’s you--to take care of
it?”
Over Anne’s face fell an autumn fairness of emotion. She lifted humid
eyes.
“To-morrow, then!” said the senator’s wife, delicate finger on lip.
“And remember, it’s a secret, Anne.”
She came for Anne in her big new car, and together they went over the
Little Brown House. Anne fingered the table-cloths and towels and
bed-linen lingeringly, and laid her hand on the shining tables with a
loving touch.
“You like it, then?” asked the senator’s wife. Anne began to cry
for answer. And after the senator’s wife, seated beside her on the
chintz-hung sofa, had explained things, Anne took the white hand in her
brown one.
“Dear heart! To think you were like that all along, underneath, an’ me
thinkin’ you weren’t anything but just a fine lady!” she wondered. “I’m
thinkin’ it’s a grand thing, now, to be a fine lady, because women’s
women; that’s all they be--thank God!” She lifted her head, and the
other woman saw, not admiration nor flattery nor envy, but love, real
love, look at her out of the eyes of a friend.
As they shut the door of the Little Brown House after them, they heard
through the open windows of the house next door the painfully measured
splashing of “Silvery Waves” spilled over a piano by childish fingers.
“Why, we’ve got neighbors!” said the senator’s wife gaily. “I’d
forgotten _that_. And we’re neighbors too, aren’t we? Anne, after a
while you must send things over on a tray, and we hope they’ll be
neighborly and just drop in when they can. Isn’t it nice, Anne? And
after they’ve called on you, you must tell me all about them. I hope
they’ve got _little children_. We’ll give their little girl a doll, and
their boy a train of cars, won’t we? My little grandson dotes so on
trains of cars!”
When she could come, between whiles, she found herself in the midst of
a pleasant neighborhood life; and all about her were the soft noises
and sights and smells of home. Anne’s pride in the place was almost
piteous. How clean and sweet it was; how everything was polished, and
how it shone and twinkled; but nothing was fussy and not-to-be-used!
The neighbors whom she began to meet knew and accepted her as the Lady
Who Came to See Anne. They didn’t wonder she liked to come to see
Anne: they liked to come too.
Next door was a mother of six. They had all come over to see Anne, and
Blinkie had purred over the baby. Anne had given all of them little
cakes that bound them to her forever. She was going to have the whole
noisy, hungry, beautiful brood of them once a week to tea. Anne reveled
in their company.
“You know,” she told the senator’s wife, “I’d never much of a home at
best, Miss Barbara, me bein’ out all day, workin’. So I’d no chance of
knowin’ little children, except I’d see them on the street, an’ have
to take out my love o’ them in passin’. Why, I’ve known me to be happy
for a whole long day because a little thing in its carriage waved its
hand an’ gave me a smile, passin’ by. Now, thanks be to God an’ you,
I’ve got a real home, an’ a chance to have them about me a bit, though
they’re none o’ my own. I look forward all week to the time they’ll
come, an’ the noise they’ll make, an’ the joy o’ them, an’ the way
they’ll look, an’ talk, an’ laugh. Miss Barbara, I’m thinkin’ this is
the kind of a house that _likes_ to have children under its roof; and
there’ll be more an’ more o’ them comin’ by an’ by. An’--you wouldn’t
be mindin’ if I called in, one or two at a time, the old women that’s
got to stay on in the Home, Miss Barbara? They’re tired, sometimes, of
just havin’ to keep alive, an’ a day here’d hearten them, maybe. I’d
like to share.”
The senator’s wife looked about her. It _was_ the sort of house that
likes to shelter the young and call in the old and the poor for warmth
and kindliness.
“Have them all, Anne. And tell me all about it afterward. You dear,
dear woman, you!”
“I’d most forgotten to tell you about the Westerner, hadn’t I? The
lady next door brought him first, Miss Barbara, him bein’ a great
friend o’ the children’s. An’ he’s the clearest-eyed, softest-spoken,
brownest-faced man ever I clapped my two eyes on. Right around the
corner from us he is, him keepin’ house by himself, except for the
passel o’ men that’s always comin’ to set with him. I ain’t one
for praisin’ up men-folks’ housekeepin’, Miss Barbara; so one day
I upped an’ sent him a tray--a big heavy one at that, jest to show
him! He brought it back himself, him havin’ no servant, an’ he was
that kind an’ sociable I took to him like the children do. I like
Westerners--they’re so just _themselves_, ain’t they? He’s real glad
we’re neighbors, he says, an’ him an’ his friends’ll be glad to be of
any service to us. I told him us bein’ women-folks an’ the best cooks,
they’d better come over an’ neighbor with us holidays. The nicest man
ever I knew, Miss Barbara--it’s him fixed our kitchen-window shelves.”
The senator’s wife smiled appreciatively, then went up-stairs for her
usual half-hour of quiet thought and rest by that shaded window.
Outside the day was rather dark, and the tree was bare now to the
autumn winds. She sat with her hands in her lap, thoughtfully. The
senator hadn’t been so well of late. He looked, she thought, more gray
and old.
“Why, it’s getting so we just see each other going up and down stairs!”
she thought indignantly and sorrowfully. “We’re getting old too, Hugh
and I are. Oh, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair. We aren’t even sharing any
more--I _can’t_ share his work, and he _won’t_ share my house!”
That was perhaps the most strenuous winter either of them had known.
They crossed each other’s orbits frenziedly. At her affairs he showed
his fine worn face for a few dutiful minutes, then disappeared. And
when at times they did go out together, the usual tactful hostess,
following immemorial custom, separated them.
In the midst of this mad swirl Christmas drew near. To the senator’s
wife Christmas had come to mean merely a long list of gifts, dutifully
checked over with her secretary: you gave just as you received; you
had to. You knew that from the housekeeper down every one in the house
must be remembered; the secretary saw to it that they were. There was
no planning; no hiding of things half done when somebody came into the
room; no mysterious hints nor smiles; no air of subdued eagerness; no
tender sacrifices that make gifts doubly precious.
But at the Little Brown House things were different. Anne had made with
her own skilful hands something for everybody: for the little Maid Who
Helped; for the Mother of Six and her brood; for the old women from the
Home; for the Man around the Corner, who was so glad to be neighborly;
and for the senator’s wife. Anne even had a tree; and they were all to
come for a while on Christmas eve, except, perhaps, Miss Barbara.
“I wish,” said Anne, looking up from the cake she was whisking
together, “that you’d put on your plainest frock. Miss Barbara, and
come. It’d make Christmas more like Christmas as it ought to be for
me.” Her eyes implored the senator’s wife with so much of love and
longing that the heart in her warmed anew to Anne.
“The senator and I have simply got to attend our daughter’s Christmas
Eve reception, but I think, by close management, I _might_ get
here--from half-past six until nearly nine, say. And I could drive
home and dress, and nobody be the wiser for my pleasantest Christmas
secret!” She thought for a moment, and laughed like a girl: “Anne, I’m
coming!”
The senator was to accompany her to their daughter’s. She knew that
until then she wouldn’t see him; she knew, too, that some beautiful and
costly gift, chosen with exquisite care, would be lying by her plate on
Christmas morning. No, he wasn’t forgetful, nor neglectful, any more
than she herself; he was only--too busy.
It was quite half-past seven when she reached the Little Brown House on
Christmas Eve. When she opened the door she knew that Christmas itself
had arrived before her; for the house was alive with young children,
as all self-respecting houses would be if they had the chance. You
heard the children’s shouts, and their mothers’ worried admonitions,
and Anne’s cheerful, “There, there, let ’em be! It’s Christmas Eve, an’
Christmas Eve’s children’s eve. Ay, my dearies, laugh, do! An’ when
Miss Barbara comes we’ll open that settin’-room door; an’ then you’ll
see what you’ll see--bless you!”
“Miss Barbara” came in to be swallowed in a warm sea of joyous
welcomings. She wore what she considered a plain dress; but the Mother
of Six, and the women with her, looked upon its lustrous folds almost
with awe; only the baby disregarded it, and sat upon it, and kicked
his feet against it unconcernedly.
The sitting-room door had been opened; they were in the midst of
gift-giving, and receiving, and exclamations when the doorbell rang.
“That,” said Anne, pausing, with the Baby’s jumping-jack in her hand,
“will be that Westerner from ’round the corner. I’ll let him in, Miss
Barbara; he’ll want to stay with the children here for a while, I know.”
The senator’s wife heard the front door open and close, and men’s feet
in the hall, and the Westerner saying in his pleasant out-of-doors
voice full of the burr of R’s:
“Here’s a bunch of real holly, and some real mistletoe to hang up;
and here’s my oldest friend along with me--he’s an old friend of
those kids, too. We’ve brought you a few things to add to the tree
for ’em. Say, now, it sure makes us two old chaps feel right good and
Christmassy to get in here with you women and kids to-night!”
Anne and the Westerner came in together. The other man followed more
slowly, looking about him with merry eyes. He was a very, very big man,
and he seemed to fill the whole doorway in which he stood. Then the
children saw him, and shouted rapturous welcomings; and he returned
these with somewhat of a tender wistfulness in his smile.
From her sofa the senator’s wife looked up; their eyes met,
incredulously. She rose to her feet, putting down the baby.
But Anne had advanced to him, holding out a friendly hand.
“I know you’re the Big Man That Plays with the Children!” she said
cordially. “I’m sure glad to meet you at last, Neighbor; welcome, an’ a
Merry, Merry Christmas to you!”
He returned her greeting cordially; then the senator’s wife came
forward. Her eyes were large.
“You!” said she faintly. “You--neighbor--playing with children. You
here!”
“You!” said the senator. “Here to-night--why, Barbara, my dear!”
“I come--when I can find time--Anne keeps house--” she began.
He nodded. “I go around to Jack’s--when I can find time. One’s got to
have a few friends one can visit, don’t you think?”
The baby set up a great wail, because he was a baby, and he had had
enough of presents, and play, and grown-ups; and he wanted to go home
and be put to bed. The Mother of Six picked him up, and her friends
gathered the rest of the brood and their belongings together and
carried them off, with many Christmas wishes tossed back and forth.
Anne beckoned the Westerner into the dining-room and pointed to the
table.
“No real gentlemen,” said she, “will refuse to fall to an’ help eat up
a lady’s pie that she’s made with her own hands for Christmas.”
“I am,” said the Westerner, “a long-fanged wolf on pie. An’ if you’ll
cut yours in just halves, I’ll be everlasting grateful to you, ma’am.”
And he sat down, turning his back upon the sitting-room door.
The senator and his wife came to each other slowly, he looking down
upon her whimsically, she looking up at him with eyes of pure wonder.
“Why, Barbie, is there ever any reading a woman? I’d never guess that
you’d come visiting a little house like this--”
“This little house,” said she, “is mine: I bought it. I’ve wanted just
this little house all my life, and I wasn’t honest or brave enough to
tell you so.”