"I donno," said Calliope, thoughtfully, "I donno but you can."
"No," Mis' Holcomb went on; "your soul's like yourself in the glass:
they ain't anything there."
"I donno," Calliope said again; "some mornin's when I wake up with the
sun shinin' in, I can feel my soul in me just as plain as plain."
Mis' Holcomb sighed.
"Life looks dreadful footless to me," she said.
"Well," said Calliope, "sometimes life _is_ some like hearin'
firecrackers go off when you don't feel up to shootin' 'em yourself.
When I'm like that, I always think if I'd go out an' buy a bunch or two,
an' get somebody to give me a match, I could see more sense to things.
Look here, Mame Bliss; if I get hold o' any folks to give the dinner
for, will you help me some?"
"Yes," Mis' Holcomb assented half-heartedly, "I'll help you. I ain't
nobody much in family, now Abigail's done what she has. They's only
Eppleby, an' he won't be home Thanksg'vin this year. So I ain't nothin'
else to do."
"That's the _i_-dee," said Calliope, heartily; "if everything's foolish,
it's just as foolish doin' nothin' as doin' somethin'. Will you bring
over a kettleful o' boiled potatoes to my house Thanksgivin' noon? An'
mash 'em an' whip 'em in my kitchen? I'll hev the milk to put in.
You--you don't cook as much as some, do you, Mame?"
Did Calliope ask her that purposely? I am almost sure that she did. Mis'
Holcomb's neck stiffened a little.
"I guess I can cook a thing or two beside mash' potatoes," she said, and
thought for a minute. "How'd you like a pan o' 'scalloped oysters an'
some baked macaroni with plenty o' cheese?" she demanded.
"Sounds like it'd go down awful easy," admitted Calliope, smiling. "It's
just what we need to carry the dinner off full sail," she added
earnestly.
"Well, I ain't nothin' else to do an' I'll make 'em," Mis' Holcomb
promised. "Only it beats me who you can find to do for. If you don't get
anybody, let me know before I order the oysters."
Calliope stood up, her little wrinkled face aglow; and I wondered at her
confidence.
"You just go ahead an' order your oysters," she said. "That dinner's
goin' to come off Thanksgivin' noon at twelve o'clock. An' you be there
to help feed the hungry, Mame."
When we were on the street again, Calliope looked at me with her way of
shy eagerness.
"Could you hev the dinner up to your house," she asked me, "if I do
every bit o' the work?"
"Why, Calliope," I said, amazed at her persistence, "have it there, of
course. But you haven't any guests yet."
She nodded at me through the falling flakes.
"You say you ain't got much to be thankful for," she said, "so I thought
mebbe you'd put in the time that way. Don't you worry about folks to eat
the dinner. I'll tell Mis' Holcomb an' the others to come to your
house--an I'll get the food an' the folks. Don't you worry! An' I'll
bring my watermelon pickles an' a bowl o' cream for Mis' Holcomb's
potatoes, an' I'll furnish the turkey--a big one. The rest of us'll get
the dinner in your kitchen Thanksgivin' mornin'. My!" she said, "seems
though life's smoothin' out fer me a'ready. Good-by--it's 'most noon."
She hurried up Daphne Street in the snow, and I turned toward my lonely
house. But I remember that I was planning how I would make my table
pretty, and how I would add a delicacy or two from the City for this
strange holiday feast. And I found myself hurrying to look over certain
long-disused linen and silver, and to see whether my Cloth-o'-Gold rose
might be counted on to bloom by Thursday noon.
IV
COVERS FOR SEVEN
"We'll set the table for seven folks," said Calliope, at my house on
Thanksgiving morning.
"Seven!" I echoed. "But where in the world did you ever find seven,
Calliope?"
"I found 'em," she answered. "I knew I could find hungry folks to do for
if I tried, an' I found 'em. You'll see. I sha'n't say another word.
They'll be here by twelve, sharp. Did the turkey come?"
Yes, the turkey had come, and almost as she spoke the dear Liberty
sisters arrived to dress and stuff it, and to make ready the pan of
custard, and to "stir up" the sunshine cake. I could guess how the
pleasant bustle in my kitchen would hurt them by its holiday air, and I
carried them off to see my Cloth-o'-Gold rose which had opened in the
night, to the very crimson heart of it. And I told them of the seven
guests whom, after all, Calliope had actually contrived to marshal to
her dinner. And in the midst of our almost gay speculation on this, they
went at their share of the task.
The three moved about their offices gravely at first, Libbie Liberty
keeping her back to us as she worked, Miss Viny scrupulously intent on
the delicate clatter of the egg-beater, Miss Lucy with eyes downcast on
the sage she rolled. I noted how Calliope made little excuses to pass
near each of them, with now a touch of the hand and now a pat on a
shoulder, and all the while she talked briskly of ways and means and
recipes, and should there be onions in the dressing or should there not
be? We took a vote on this and were about to chop the onions in when
Mis' Holcomb's little maid arrived at my kitchen door with a bowl of
oysters which Mis' Holcomb had had left from the 'scallop, an' wouldn't
we like 'em in the stuffin'? Roast turkey stuffed with oysters! I saw
Libbie Liberty's eyes brighten so delightedly that I brought out a jar
of seedless raisins and another of preserved cherries to add to the
custard, and then a bag of sweet almonds to be blanched and split for
the cake o' sunshine. Surely, one of us said, the seven guests could be
preparing for their Thanksgiving dinner with no more zest than we were
putting into that dinner for their sakes.
"Seven guests!" we said over and again. "Calliope, how did you do it?
When everybody says there's nobody in Friendship that's either sick or
poor?"
"Nobody sick, nobody poor!" Calliope exclaimed, piling a dish with
watermelon pickles. "Land, you might think that was the town motto.
Well, the town don't know everything. Don't you ask me so many
questions."
Before eleven o'clock Mis' Mayor Uppers tapped at my back door, with two
deep-dish cherry pies in a basket, and a row of her delicate, feathery
sponge cakes and a jar of pineapple and pie-plant preserves "to chink
in." She drew a deep breath and stood looking about the kitchen.
"Throw off your things an' help, Mis' Uppers," Calliope admonished her,
one hand on the cellar door. "I'm just goin' down for some sweet
potatoes Mis' Holcomb sent over this morning, an' you might get 'em
ready, if you will. We ain't goin' to let you off now, spite of what
you've done for us."
So Mis' Mayor Uppers hung up her shawl and washed the sweet potatoes.
And my kitchen was fragrant with spices and flavourings and an odorous
oven, and there was no end of savoury business to be at. I found myself
glad of the interest of these others in the day and glad of the stirring
in my lonely house. Even if their bustle could not lessen my own
loneliness, it was pleasant, I said to myself, to see them quicken with
interest; and the whole affair entertained my infinite leisure. After
all, I was not required to be thankful. I merely loaned my house, cosey
in its glittering drifts of turkey feathers, and the day was no more and
no less to me than before, though I own that I did feel more than an
amused interest in Calliope's guests. Whom, in Friendship, had she found
"to do for," I detected myself speculating with real interest as in the
dining room, with one and another to help me, I made ready my table. My
prettiest dishes and silver, the Cloth-o'-Gold rose, and my
yellow-shaded candles made little auxiliary welcomes. Whoever Calliope's
guests were, we would do them honour and give them the best we had. And
in the midst of all came from the City the box with my gift of hothouse
fruit and a rosebud for every plate.
"Calliope!" I cried, as I went back to the kitchen, "Calliope, it's
nearly twelve now. Tell us who the guests are, or we won't finish
dinner!"
Calliope laughed and shook her head and opened the door for Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, who entered, followed by her little maid,
both laden with good things.
"I prepared for seven," Mis' Holcomb said. "That was the word you sent
me--but where you got your seven sick an' poor in Friendship beats me.
I'll stay an' help for a while--but to me it all seems like so much
monkey work."
We worked with a will that last half-hour, and the spirit of the kitchen
came upon them all. I watched them, amused and pleased at Mis' Mayor
Uppers's flushed anxiety over the sweet potatoes, at Libbie Liberty
furiously basting the turkey, and at Miss Lucy exclaiming with delight
as she unwrapped the rosebuds from their moss. But I think that Mis'
Holcomb pleased me most, for with the utensils of housewifery in her
hands she seemed utterly to have forgotten that there is no use in
anything at all. This was not wonderful in the presence of such a
feathery cream of mashed potatoes and such aromatic coffee as she made.
_There_ was something to tie to. Those were real, at any rate, and
beyond all seeming.
Just before twelve Calliope caught off her apron and pulled down her
sleeves.
"Now," she said, "I'm going to welcome the guests. I can--can't I?" she
begged me. "Everything's all ready but putting on. I won't need to come
out here again; when I ring the bell on the sideboard, dish it up an'
bring it in, all together--turkey ahead an' vegetables followin'. Mis'
Holcomb, you help 'em, won't you? An' then you can leave if you want.
Talk about an old-fashion' Thanksgivin'. My!"
"Who _has_ she got?" Libbie Liberty burst out, basting the turkey. "I
declare, I'm nervous as a witch, I'm so curious!"
And then the clock struck twelve, and a minute after we heard Calliope
tinkle a silvery summons on the call-bell.
I remember that it was Mis' Holcomb herself--to whom nothing
mattered--who rather lost her head as we served our feast, and who was
about putting in dishes both her oysters and her macaroni instead of
carrying in the fair, brown, smoking bake pans. But at last we were
ready--Mis' Holcomb at our head with the turkey, the others following
with both hands filled, and I with the coffee-pot. As they gave the
signal to start, something--it may have been the mystery before us, or
the good things about us, or the mere look of the Thanksgiving snow on
the window-sills--seemed to catch at the hearts of them all, and they
laughed a little, almost joyously, those five for whom joy had seemed
done, and I found myself laughing too.
So we six filed into the dining room to serve whomever Calliope had
found "to do for." I wonder that I had not guessed before. There stood
Calliope at the foot of the table, with its lighted candles and its
Cloth-o'-Gold rose, and the other six chairs were quite vacant.
"Sit down!" Calliope cried to us, with tears and laughter in her voice.
"Sit down, all six of you. Don't you see? Didn't you know? Ain't we
soul-sick an' soul-hungry, all of us? An' I tell you, this is goin' to
do our souls good--an' our stomachs too!"
Nobody dropped anything, even in the flood of our amazement. We managed
to get our savoury burden on the table, and some way we found ourselves
in the chairs--I at the head of my table where Calliope led me. And we
all talked at once, exclaiming and questioning, with sudden thanksgiving
in our hearts that in the world such things may be.
"I was hungry an' sick," Calliope was telling, "for an old-fashion'
Thanksgivin'--or anything that'd smooth life out some. But I says to
myself, 'It looks like God had afflicted us by not givin' us anybody to
do for.' An' then I started out to find some poor an' some sick--an'
each one o' you knows what I found. An' I ask' myself before I got home
that day, 'Why not them an' me?' There's lots o' kinds o' things to do
on Thanksgivin' Day. Are you ever goin' to forgive me?"
I think that we all answered at once. But what we all meant was what
Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss said, as she sat flushed and smiling
behind the coffee-cups:--
"I declare, I feel something like I ain't felt since I don't know when!"
And Calliope nodded at her.
"I guess that's your soul, Mame Bliss," she said. "You can always feel
it if you go to work an' act as if you got one. I'll take my coffee
clear."
V
THE SHADOW OF GOOD THINGS TO COME
The Friendship accommodation reaches the village from the City at six
o'clock at night, and we call the train the Dick Dasher, because Dick
Dasher is its engineer. We "come out on the Dick Dasher" and we "go in
on the Through"; but the Through is a kind of institution, like
marriage, while the Dick Dasher is a thing more intimate, like one's
wedding. It was one winter night on the latter that I hardly heeded what
I overheard.
"The Lord will provide, Delia," Doctor June was saying.
"I ain't sure," came a piping answer, "as they is any Lord. An' don't
you tell anybody 'bout seein' me on this train. I'm goin' on
through--west."
"Thy footfall is a silver thing,
West----west!"
I said over to the beat of the wheels, but the words that I said over
were more insistent than the words that I heard. I was watching the eyes
of a motor-car carrying threads of streaming light, moving near the
track, swifter than the train. It belonged, as I divined, to the
Proudfits of Friendship, and it was carrying Madame Proudfit and her
daughter Clementina, after a day of shopping and visiting in the town.
And when I saw them returning home in this airy fashion,--as if they
were the soul and I in the stuffy Dick Dasher were the body,--I renewed
a certain distaste for them, since in their lives these Proudfits seemed
goblin-like, with no interest in any save their own picturesque
flittings. But while I shrugged at myself for judging them and held
firmly to my own opinion, as one will do, I was conscious all the time
of the gray minister in the aisle of the rocking coach, holding clasped
in both hands his big carpet-bag without handles. Over it I saw him
looking down in grieved consternation at the little woman huddled in the
rush seat.
"No Lord!" he said, "no Lord! Why, Delia More! You might as well say
there ain't no life in your own bones."
"So they isn't," she answered him grimly. "They keep on a-goin' just to
spite me."
"Delia More--_De_-lia More," the wheels beat out, and it was as if I had
heard the name often. Already I had noticed the woman. She had a kind of
youth, like that of Calliope, who had journeyed in town on the Through
that morning and who had somewhat mysteriously asked me not to say that
she had gone away. But Calliope's persistent youthfulness gives her a
claim upon one, while on this woman whom Doctor June perplexedly
regarded, her stifled youth imposed a forlorn aloofness, made the more
pathetic by her prettiness.
No one but the doctor himself was preparing to leave the train at
Friendship. He balanced in the aisle alone, while the few occupants of
the car sat without speaking--men dozing, children padding on the panes,
a woman twisting her thin hair tight and high. Doctor June looked at
those nearest to be sure of their tired self-absorption, but as for me,
who sat very near, I think he had long ago decided that I kept my own
thoughts and no others, since sometimes I had forgotten to give him back
a greeting. So it was in a fancied security which I was loath to be
violating, that he opened his great carpet-bag and took out a book to
lay on the girl's knee.
"Open it," he commanded her.
I saw the contour of her face tightened by her swiftly set lips as she
complied.
"Point your finger," he went on peremptorily. She must have obeyed, for
in a kind of unwilling eagerness she bent over the page, and the doctor
stooped, and together in the blurring light of the kerosene lamp in the
roof of the coach they made out something.
"... the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very
image of the things ..." I unwillingly caught, and yet not wholly
unwillingly either. And though I watched, as if much depended upon it,
the great motor-car of the Proudfits vanishing before us into the dark,
I could not forbear to glance at the doctor, who was nodding, his kind
face quickening. But the girl lifted her eyes and laughed with
deliberate scepticism.
"I don't take any stock," she said, and within me it was as if something
answered to her bitterness.
"No--no. Mebbe not," Doctor June commented with perfect cheerfulness.
"Some folks take fresh air, and some folks like to stay shut up tight.
But--'the shadow of good things to come.' I'd take that much stock if I
was you, Delia."
As he laid the book back in his bag, the train was jolting across the
switches beside the gas house, and the lights of Friendship were all
about the track.
"Why don't you get off?" he reiterated, in his tone a descending scale
of simple hospitality. "Come to our house and stop a spell. Come for
tea," he added; "I happen to know we're goin' to hev hot griddle-cakes
an' sausage gravy."
She shook her head sharply and in silence.
Doctor June stood for a moment meditatively looking down at her.
"There's a friend of yours at our house to-day, for all day," he
observed.
"I ain't any friends," replied the girl, obstinately, "without you mean
_use'_ to be. An' I don't know if I had then, either."
"Yes. Yes, you have, Delia," said Doctor June, kindly. "He was asking
about you last time he was here--kind of indirect."
"_Who?_" she demanded, but it was as if something within her wrung the
question from her against her will.
"Abel Halsey," Doctor June told her, "Abel Halsey. Remember him?"
Instead of answering she looked out the window at the Friendship Depot
platform, and:--
"Ain't he a big minister in the City?" I barely heard her ask.
"No," said Doctor June; "dear me, no. Abel's still gypsyin' it off in
the hills. I expect he's out there by the depot with the busses now,
come to meet me in his buggy. Better let him take us all home to
griddle-cakes, Delia?" he pressed her wistfully.
"I couldn't," she said briefly. And, as he put out his hand silently,
"Don't you let _any_body know't you saw me!" she charged him again.
When he was gone, and the train was slackening in the station, she moved
close to the window. If I had been lonely.... I must have caught a
certain cheer in the look of the station and in the magnificent, cosmic
leisure of the idlers: in Photographer Jimmy Sturgis, in his leather
coat, with one eye shut, stamping a foot and waiting for the mail-bag;
in old Tillie, known up and down the world for her waffles, and
perpetually peering out between shelves of plants and wax fruit set
across the window of the "eating-house"; in Peleg Bemus, wood-cutter,
stumping about the platform on his wooden leg, wearing modestly the
prestige he had won by his flute-playing and by his advantage of
New York experience--"a janitor in the far east, he was," Timothy
Toplady had once told me; in Timothy Toplady himself, who always
meets the trains, but for no reason unless to say an amazed and
reproachful--"Blisterin' Benson! not a soul wants off here"; and in Abel
Halsey, that itinerant preacher, of whom Doctor June had spoken. Abel
was a man of grace, Bible-taught, passioning for service, but within him
his gentle soul burned to travel, and his white horse, Major Mary, and
his road wagon and his route to the door of many a country church were
the sole satisfactions of his wanderlust; and next to these was his
delight to be at a railway station when any train arrived, savouring the
moment of some silent familiarity with distance. I delighted in them
all, and that night, as I looked, I wondered how it would seem to me if
I were returning to it after many years; and I could imagine how my
heart would ache.
As the train moved on, the girl whom Doctor June had called Delia More
turned her head, manifestly to follow for a little way each vanishing
light and figure; and as the conductor came through the car and she
spoke to him, I saw that she was in a tingle of excitement.
"You sure," she asked, "that you stop to the canal draw?"
"Uh?" said the conductor, and when he comprehended, "Every time," he
said, "every time. You be ready when she whistles." He hesitated,
manifestly in some curiosity. "They ain't a house in a mile f'om there,
though," he told her.
"I know that," she gave back crisply.
When I heard her speaking of the canal draw, I found myself wondering;
for a woman is not above wonder. There, where the trains stopped just
perceptibly I myself was wont to leave them for the sake of the mile
walk on the quiet highroad to my house. That, too, though it chanced to
be night, for I am not afraid. But I wondered the more because other
women do fear, and also because mine was the only house between the
canal draw and Friendship Village; and manifestly the shortest way to
reach the village would have been to alight at the station. But I held
my peace, for the affairs of others should be to those others an
efficient disguise; and moreover, the greater part of one's wonder is
wont to come to naught.
Yet, as I seemed to follow this woman out upon the snow and the train
kept impersonally on across the meadows, I could not but see that her
bags were many and looked heavy, and twice she set them down to
rearrange. I think a ghost of the road could have done no less than ask
to help her. And I did this with an abruptness of which I am unwilling
master, though indeed I had no need to assume impatience, for I saw that
my quiet walk was spoiled.
When I spoke to her, she started and shrank away; but there was an
austerity in the lonely white road and in the country silence which must
have chilled a woman like her; and her bags were many and seemed heavy.
"Much obliged to you," she said indistinctly. "I'd just as li've you
should take the basket, if you want."
So I lifted the basket and trudged beside her, hoping very much that she
would not talk. For though for my own comfort I would walk far to avoid
treading on a nest, or a worm, or a magenta flower (and I loathe
magenta), yet I am often blameful enough to wound through the sheerest
bungling those who talk to me when I would rather be silent.
The night was one clinging to the way of Autumn, and as yet with no
Winter hinting. The air was mild and dry, and the sky was starry. I am
not ashamed that on a quiet highroad on a starry night I love to be
silent, and even to forget concerns of my own which seem pressing in the
publicity of the sun; but I am ashamed, I own, to have been called to
myself that night by a little choking breath of haste.
"I can't go--so fast," my companion said humbly; "you might jest--set
the basket down anywheres. I can--"
But I think that she can hardly have heard my apology, for she stood
where she had halted, staring away from me. We were opposite the
cemetery lying in its fence of field stone and whitewashed rails.
"O my soul, my soul!" I heard her say. "I'd forgot the graveyard, or I
couldn't never 'a' come this way."
At that she went on, her feet quickening, as I thought, without her
will; and she kept her face turned to me, so that it should be away from
that whitewashed fence. And now because of the wound she had shown me, I
walked a little apart in the middle of the road for my attempt at
sympathy. So we came to the summit of the hill, and there the dark
suddenly yielded up the distance. The lamps of the village began to
signal, lights dotted the fields and gathered in a cosey blur in the
valley, and half a mile to westward the headlight that marked the big
Toplady barn and the little Toplady house shone out as if some one over
there were saying something.
"You live here in Friendship?" the girl demanded abruptly.
I could show her my house a little way before us.
"Ever go inside the graveyard?" she asked.
Sometimes I do go there, and at that answer she walked nearer to me and
spoke eagerly.
"Air all the tombstones standin' up straight, do you know?" she said.
"Hev any o' their headstones fell down on 'em?"
This I could answer too, definitely enough; for Friendship Cemetery, by
the vigilance of the Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality, is
kept in no less scrupulous order than the Friendship parlours.
"Well, that's a relief," she said; "I couldn't get it out o' my head."
Then, because she seemed of those on whom silence lays a certain
imaginary demand, "My mother an' father an' sister's buried there," she
explained. "They're in there. They all died when I was gone. An' I got
the notion that their headstones had tipped over on to 'em. Or Aunt
Cornie More's, maybe."