THE NEW NEIGHBORS
"You mus' be mighty clean, or mighty dirty, _one_," Mammy Lou called
out to me this morning as she looked up from the kitchen door and
espied me at the bath-room window with my robe wrapped around me
toga-fashion.
"Oh, excuse _me_," she continued with exaggerated politeness after a
moment in which I did not speak. "Of course you ain't to be spoke to
when you're breathin' like a heathen!"
I finished the prescribed number of breaths laid down in the rules for
Yogi breathing, which I am trying just now because I am so tired of
breathing the same old way, then looked down at mammy.
"A girl who can take a cold bath every morning and bait a fish-hook
can take care of herself in this life!" I answered. "You ought to be
proud of my courage."
"'Tain't no Christian notion for no girl to be wantin' to take care of
herself," she began to argue, but rather than get into a debate and
be routed, as she sometimes is, she suddenly assumed an air of
excitement and cried: "Listen! Wasn't that the thing hollerin'?"
"The thing" here referred to is the new inter-urban line which now
runs past our house, much to the chagrin of Mammy Lou, who calls it
the "interruption line," because it is "always drappin' somebody off
here right in the midst o' dinner time, when there ain't nothin' lef'
but backs and wings."
This very disconcerting thing has happened so many times that mother
found she would have to carry a full line of emergency tins in her
pantry, all bearing on their labels the comforting assurance that they
could be served hot in three minutes. These were ever small
consolation to Mammy Lou, however, and she always serves them with as
much humiliation as if the "Yankee beans" and "het-over peas" were the
proverbial dinner of herbs.
This morning, though, the lid was shut fast on the tinned diet
department and there was as much beautiful fried chicken sizzling
drowsily on the back of the stove as northern people always give us
Southerners credit for having. The best white and gold china was on
the table, and a tall vase of Paul Neron roses on the mantelpiece,
hiding father's bottle of rheumatism cure.
At mammy's suggestion that she heard the "thing" hollering I had
thrown on my clothes without waiting to wipe all the water out of my
ears, and had run down-stairs to see if mother needed me to pin her
collar down in the back, for I knew she would be wanting to look her
best this morning. We were all a little excited (things so seldom
happen here) and I noticed that father was using his most rheumatic
hand and arm every few minutes to take his watch out of his pocket;
yet he forgot to frown.
The Claybornes were coming, Waterloo, Rufe and Cousin Eunice. We were
feeling particularly anxious about the outcome of their visit, for
mother and I had conspired together that a few political talks with
Rufe _had_ to cure father of his rheumatism. So we were watching every
movement on his part with eager interest.
You must not imagine that we are unsympathetic with father when he
actually has an attack. We rub him and put hot things to his shoulder,
and I have actually gone so far as to let him explain the _primary
plan_ to me in words of one syllable that a child could understand,
just to get his mind diverted.
Like most high-spirited men, when father does get down into the depths
he tries to burrow clear on through to China. I wonder why this is?
Possibly it is on the same principle that effervescent drugs are kept
in blue bottles. I do not blame him, certainly, for rheumatism is
enough to get on anybody's nerves. The poor man has to try as many
different positions to get any ease sometimes as a worn-out alarm
clock that will run only on a certain side. So the summer has been a
hard one for us all, father waxing so melancholy here lately that if
he has a gum-boil he gives us directions for his cremation.
It was during one of these outbursts of pessimism that father took it
into his head to disfigure the landscape across the road from our
house with a row of smart cottages, which were to rent for so much a
month that they would prove a get-rich-quick scheme and so save us
from the humiliation of being cared for by the Masons in our old age,
which was another one of the notions in the train of rheumatic gloom.
Fortunately the first cottage cost so much more than it was worth that
the project for the rest was abandoned; and, after it was duly
insured, mother and I were secretly burning candles to our patron
saint for its incineration when it was rented to a family named
Sullivan. This Sullivan family consists of a father who drinks, just a
little, enough to keep him jolly all the time; a mother who is of such
a despondent nature that you wish she would drink; a daughter who
wears crimson silk gowns and jeweled combs to the post-office when she
goes for her mail every morning, yet withal has more beaus than any
other girl in the village, as is attested by the candy boxes piled
piano-high in her parlor; and a maiden aunt, Miss Delia Badger, who
dyes her hair. Now, this term, "maiden aunt," is usually employed to
denote a condition of hopelessness, but you will understand from the
dyed hair that, in this case, the condition is far from being
hopeless--else why the dye?
The pristine blackness of Miss Delia's crown of glory was beginning to
wear off, and in the stress of moving had not been replaced as soon as
it should have been, so, on the day that I made her acquaintance, her
hair displayed an iridescent sheen, shading from light tan to deep
purple. This made me so angry with father for having built the cottage
that I ran past him without a word of sympathy when I reached home,
although he was sitting on the front porch reading the paper and
making horrible faces every time he had to move his arm.
The next day, which was the second after their moving, when I turned
in at our gate after my morning tramp, I found that the Sullivans were
presenting a much more homelike view from the front of their house,
elaborate curtains showing at the parlor windows, and at the front
door a white panel of lace, a most lifelike affair, representing
Andrew Jackson mounted upon his fiery steed and lifting his high white
hat to an imaginary, though evidently enthusiastic, throng.
"_Now_, I reckon you're satisfied," I exclaimed to father as I came
into the house and found him cleaning his gun, one end of it resting
on the piano, and a pile of greasy rags perilously close to my
limp-backed copy of Gray's _Elegy_.
He quickly moved the gun and rags, but seeing that this offense was
not the cause of my wrath, he meekly inquired: "What?"
Mother came in at this juncture and I explained to them my indignation
over the Andrew Jackson.
"Jumping Jerusalem!" father said, thus admitting his horrified
surprise, but after a moment he parried.
"It may be Napoleon, or Frederick the Great."
"What difference would that make?" I demanded. "A warrior has no place
on a door-panel. Besides, it's 'Old Hickory.' I'd know that high white
hat anywhere! Wasn't I born and _raised_ in the shadow of it?"
"Dear me! But maybe you are mistaken," mother interposed gently. "It
is quite a distance across the road--it may be a peculiar pattern of
Batten--"
Before she had finished I darted up the steps and scrambled around in
the bureau drawer for my opera-glasses.
"Take these out to the porch and _look_," I begged, as I came down
again and found the two still facing each other with a quizzical
smile. She carried out my suggestion and presently came back, still
smiling.
"It's Andrew," she reported, reaching out for my opera-bag and
slipping the glasses into it; "it's Andrew beyond a doubt; but,
dearie, it _can't_ outlast two washings."
This assurance comforted me somewhat every time I had to look at the
military door-panel, but on cleaning days when the parlor curtains at
the cottage were tucked up and I discerned the large, colored portrait
of Mr. Roosevelt which smiled sunnily down from the space above the
mantelpiece there was no such consoling reflection.
About this time it was that I grew to know Neva, the daughter of the
house. Her family called her "Nevar," most nasally, after the manner
of "ordinary" people in the South; but I soon found qualities in her
that made me forgive the silk gowns and jeweled combs, aye, even the
Andrew Jackson.
In the first place I discovered that she entertained a most profound
admiration for me, especially for my pronunciation and finger-nails.
Of these she at once set about a frank imitation which later extended
to things more impersonal. Once, after I had shown her my books and
she had breathed a long, ecstatic sigh over the pictures in the
library I found that the hero of San Juan was falling into disfavor as
a parlor ornament. Neva had been especially impressed with a small
oval portrait of my childhood's hero, Lord Byron, which mother had
found once in a curio-shop in New Orleans and brought home to me.
"Who is he?" she asked, her eyes fixed admiringly on the matchless
face. I explained to her.
"Is he dead?" she inquired softly.
"Alas, yes!"
"But it certainly is swell to have his picture here," she volunteered.
"I reckon it's because he's dead that it is more quiet and elegant,
somehow, than a president's picture. Now Mr. Roosevelt looks so horrid
and _lively_!"
From this I gathered that the ex-president would sooner or later be
deposed, but I was surprised to find that it had happened much sooner
than I had expected, for the next time I visited the Sullivan home I
found Mr. Roosevelt's jolly face gone; and in its stead the gentle
features of William McKinley looked down on the candy-boxes and
pink-flowered cuspidors. That he was dead was evidenced by the black
border running mournfully around the print; and Neva called my
attention to the fact as soon as I came into the room.
"You see he looks quieter than Roosevelt because he's dead," she
elucidated, "although he isn't a poet! Papa said he'd buy me a poet
the next time he went up to the city--and oh, a green leather copy of
Gray's 'Prodigy!'--like yours!"
So, in trying to teach Neva the difference between presidents and
poets, I have been able to enliven some of the dull days; and she is
such a sweet little thing at heart that, if she never gets the
difference clear, my time is not ill-spent anyway.
But ah, _this_ morning the Claybornes were coming! And we were all out
at the gate in a twinkling when we finally did hear the shrill whistle
of the car! The first sight of Waterloo's sparkling little face
rewarded me for dressing while my ears were still wet. He had on a
Buster Brown suit of white linen, with red anchors embroidered in
their usual places, and a brave red badge setting forth his political
inclinations. Father's lame hand had already reached out for him.
"Hello, Uncle Dan!" he said cordially, paying no attention to the
feminine portion of the crowd. "Are you for it or 'ginst it?"
"I'm 'ginst it, too," father answered, drawing from his pocket a
similar badge.
"That's right! Now show me the mules!"
He and father led the way up the walk, followed by the rest of us,
with Grapefruit, escorted by a hilarious Lares and Penates, bringing
up the rear.
Grapefruit, be it known, is Waterloo's nurse, or, more properly
speaking, is a kind of jester to His Majesty. Her genuine name is
Gertrude, but she came to him when he was at such a tender age that
he corrupted it to Grapefruit, and Rufe says that if he had named her
Fragrant Pomegranate Vine it would not be any too good for her. She is
an ethereal little darky with wonderful powers of diversion. Cousin
Eunice tells about how she found her out in the side yard playing with
Waterloo one May morning long ago, and how his soul so clave unto her
soul that he refused to give her up.
Automobiles, red wagons, fire-engines, boxes of candy--all were
suggested in vain. "I want my little Grapefruit," he tearfully
insisted, over and over again, until the attractive one modestly
announced that she might be engaged to stay and amuse him by the week
for "seventy-five or fifty cents, or I'll stay for nothing if you'll
let me play on the piano."
Cousin Eunice joyfully agreed to the highest figure asked, with the
use of the piano thrown in, yea and the telephone, the type-writer, in
short, everything in the house except her tooth-brush. So Grapefruit
stayed, and at this period of their lives is as necessary a part of
the Claybornes' traveling outfit as their collapsible drinking-cup.
After breakfast was over we lingered in the dining-room a while, as is
our custom when we have interesting guests; and we women rested our
elbows on the table and talked, while the men lit their cigars and
pounded the table-cloth until the spoons jumped out of the saucers, so
vehement were their expressions about "that blackguard of a governor."
We women talked about Waterloo, of course.
"He's at the loveliest age, right now, I think," mother said, as our
three pairs of eyes wandered out in his direction to the long back
porch, where Grapefruit and Lares were making him a pack-saddle, so
they could "tote 'im" down to the lot. He was entirely too good to
walk that first morning.
"Yes, I rather dislike the thought of his growing into a great, rough,
short-haired boy," Cousin Eunice assented, looking at him fondly.
"That terrible age when they always smell like their puppies! But,
that's quite a while off. He is still a baby."
"I find that they are always more or less babies," mother said,
looking toward me, "--no matter what their age may be."
"Oh, this talk about ages reminds me of a book I brought for Ann to
read," Cousin Eunice said, rising from the table and starting toward
the front hall where their bags had been hastily dropped that we might
not delay Mammy Lou's hot breakfast. "Stay here, all of you, and wait
until I get it. It contains an interesting thought."
"Then it's that much ahead of most new books," Rufe remarked, his
attention having been attracted from his own line of talk by Cousin
Eunice starting to leave the dining-room.
"It isn't strictly new," she commented, returning in a few moments
with the book in her hand. "It was written several years ago. It's
nothing out of the ordinary in plot, and the thought which impressed
some of us in the 'Scribblers' Club' was concerning the age of Eve
when she was created. The heroine of the story is named Eve and is
young and fair, so the hero, a gallant soldier, remarks to her one day
as they are walking by the river bank at a stolen tryst, that he
fancies the first mother was at his sweetheart's identical age when
she was created. You see, it is quite a poetic fancy."
"More poetic than true. Soldiers don't talk that way," father said
drily. "How old did the book say this Eve was?"
"The author was too wise to tell in plain figures," she answered, "but
it was somewhere under the twenties--in the early flush of youth."
"Well, Adam was the first man who ever had the chance of a wife made
to order," father kept on. "Surely he had more sense than to take a
seventeen-year-old girl."
"No, you're wrong," Rufe disagreed. "I believe that Adam was too much
of a gentleman to look a gift wife in the mouth."
"I'll get the Concordance and see if there's any record of her age,"
mother said, bustling off toward her bedroom and returning in a moment
with her well-worn book, but she was unable to find any definite facts
about Eve on the morning of that first surgical operation.
"What difference does it make about the actual number of years?" Rufe
inquired, with an air of dismissing the subject. "The age of Eve is
that picturesque period which comes to a girl after her elbows are
rounded out."
My bared arms happened to be resting again on the table during this
discussion, and, as Rufe spoke, Cousin Eunice's eyes wandered in their
direction. "Then Ann's at it," she concluded triumphantly, and they
all stared at me curiously, as if the age of Eve were showing on me
like pock-marks!
"Ann doesn't seem nearly so old as she really is," mother began with a
kind of uneasy look. "You see, she has never been to school very
much, so her education--"
"Now, please don't begin about my education," I begged, for it is a
mooted question in my family whether or not I have any, father and I
maintaining that I have all that is necessary, mother wishing that it
had been more carefully directed along the conventional lines. "If I
should go to school until I'm as old as Halley's comet I couldn't
learn the things I don't like. And I know all the rest without going!
Don't people call me up for miles around to ask who wrote _Prometheus
Bound_ and how to spell 'candidacy?'"
"So you're satisfied with yourself?" Rufe teased.
"Far from it," I denied, "but I am certainly satisfied with the amount
of schooling _in schools_ I've had. Ugh, I hate the thought of it!"
"But how can you ever amount to anything without an education?" mother
persisted.
"Never fear," I assured her easily. "I'll amount to my destiny, no
matter whether I've ever seen inside a school or not. When I was a
child I always imagined I was cut out to be Somebody; and even now I
occasionally have a notion that Fate is watching me through her
lorgnette!"
"You and Jean Everett used to have such queer ideas about
yourselves--with your notions of marrying dukes and living in castles,
and all that kind of thing," Cousin Eunice said, after a moment of
amused thought.
"Jean still has her notions," Rufe broke in. "Our city editor is out
of his depth in love with her and I met her on the street the other
day and tried to bespeak her pity for the poor fellow. She assured me
that the man _she_ married would be so important the papers would all
get out an extra every time his assassination was attempted!"
"Well, she'd better decide to take Guilford then," I said warmly, for
it is a source of great satisfaction to me that my old friend, Jean
(still my best friend), is half-engaged to Guilford Houghton, a grave
young lawyer who is already making people take notice. He is a very
quiet, dignified young man, so tall and thin and straight that he
reminds me of a silk umbrella carefully rolled.
For a long time Jean seemed not to care much about him, but he kept
paying his court as persistently as a fly in wet weather until she was
finally won--half-way. He has very methodical ways, and calls to see
her only on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, but she devotes so much
time and care to her toilet for hours and hours preceding these visits
that we call them her "days of purification."
"Guilford is not so showy, maybe," she said to me one time, in
explanation of her fondness for him, which she tries hard to conceal,
"but he's so _dependable_. That's worth a lot to a girl who has been
engaged to four or five Apollos, all of them about as reliable as
drop-stitch stockings!"
"For my part, I admire Jean's ambition," father spoke up, although
none of us suspected that he was listening to our rambling talk. "I'd
rather see a girl with an ambition like that than one with none at
all--one of these little empty-headed gigglers whose age of Eve
announces its arrival by all the i's in her name being changed into
y's."
Waterloo came in at this point and demanded again that the mules be
shown him, so father and Rufe set out for the stables.
"Shall we walk around and look at things, too?" I asked Cousin Eunice
as we filed out on to the back porch. It is a habit with us two to
steal away for a quiet little talk the first few hours we are together
and take stock of each other's happenings since we met last.
"No," she answered, looking at me steadily. "The orchard and vineyard
are more beautiful in the afternoon. We'll walk all over the place
then. Besides, I have a notion that you'll want to tell me things
which will sound better in the afternoon sunshine."
"Not a thing," I denied, and wondered how a discussion of poetic
fancies at the breakfast table could make her so sentimental.
"Then you are wasting some mighty valuable time," she replied. "Most
normal girls of your age are brimful of plans and ideas." She would
have said secrets, as she intended to, but Mammy Lou hove in sight
just then with a big pan of butter-beans for me to shell for dinner.
Rufe had stopped her at the kitchen door with the usual query, "Well,
Mammy, you're not married again?"
"Naw, sir," she had admitted, with a self-conscious smile, "although I
did have a _boa'der_ all the spring."
Waterloo protested against even this slight pause in their progress
toward the stables, so with an amused smile Rufe forbore to continue
the conversation, but passed on and Mammy Lou ambled in our direction
just in time to hear part of Cousin Eunice's remark to me.
"Law, Miss Eunice, you can't git nothin' out o' _her_," she said
disgustedly, as she set the pan of beans down and began to fan herself
with her apron. "She's plen'y old enough, the Lord knows, to be takin'
notice, _although_ Mis' Mary don't think so. I heerd you-all talkin'
'bout certain ages at the breakfas' table, but I can tell you _she_
ain't at it. She don't look at nary one of 'em twicet; an' when the
shore-nuff age of Eve has come to a girl she begins eyin' ever' man
she meets to see if he's got a missin' rib that'll match with hern!"