festival; but I think that never, even in days when I myself was
happiest, have I so delighted in any event as in this of Calliope's
proposing. And when at last she had gone, and the dusk had fallen and I
lighted candles and went back to my pleasant task, some way the stitches
of pink and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and
the breath of the sachets were not greatly in my thoughts; and that
which made me glad was a certain shining in the room, but this was not
of candle-light, or firelight, or winter starlight.
With the days the plans for the Proudfit party--or rather the plans of
the Proudfit guests--went merrily forward. It was, they said, like "in
the Oldmoxon days," when the house in which I was now living had been
the Friendship fairyland. Some take their parties solemnly, some
joyously, some feverishly; but Friendship takes them vitally, as it
takes a project or the breath of being. Like the rest of the world, the
village sank Christmas in festivity. It could not see Christmas for the
Christmas plans.
Speculation was the delight of meetings, and every one conspired in
terms of toilettes.
"Likely," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "Mis' Banker Mason'll
wear her black-an'-white foulard. Them foulards are wonderful
durable--you can't muss 'em. She got hers when Gramma Mason first hurt
her back, so's if anything happened she'd be part mournin', an' if
anything didn't, she'd have a nice dress to wear out places. Ain't it
real convenient,--white standin' for both companies an' the tomb, so?"
And "Mis' Photographer Sturgis has the best of it, bein' an invalid,
till a party comes up," said Libbie Liberty. "She gets plenty enough
food sent in, an' flowers, an' such things, an' she's got nails hung
full o' what I call sympathy clo'es, to wear durin' sympathy calls. But
when it comes to a real what you might say dress-up dress, I guess
she'll hev to be took worse with her side an' stay in the house."
Abigail Arnold contributed:--
"Seems Mis' Doctor Helman had a whole wine silk dress put away with her
dyin' things. She always thought it sounded terrible fine to hear about
the dead havin' dress-pattern after dress-pattern laid away that hadn't
never been made up. So she'd got together the one, but now she an'
Elzabella are goin' to work an' make it up. I guess Mis' Helman thinks
her stomach is so much better 't mebbe she'll be spared till after the
holidays when the sales begin."
Even Liddy Ember had promised to go and to take Ellen, and Ellen went up
and down the winter streets singing sane little songs about the party,
save on days when she "come herself again," and then she planned, as
wildly as anybody, what she meant to wear. And Liddy, whose dream had
always been to do "reg'lar city dress-makin', with helpers an' plates
an' furnish the findin's at the shop," and whose lot instead had been to
cut and fit "just the durable kind," was blithely at work night and day
on Mis' Postmaster Sykes's tobacco-brown net. We understood that there
were to be brown velvet butterflies stitched down the skirt, and if her
Lady Washington geranium flowered in time,--Mis' Sykes was said to lay
bread and milk nightly about the roots to encourage it,--she was to wear
the blossom in her hair. ("She'll be gettin' herself talked about,
wearin' a wreath o' flowers on her head, so," said some.) But then, Mis'
Sykes was recognized to be "one that picks her own steps."
"Mis' Sykes always dresses for company accordin' to the way she gets her
invite," Calliope observed. "A telephone invite, she goes in somethin'
she'd wear home afternoons. Word o' mouth at the front door, she wears
what she wears on Sundays. Written invites, she rags out in her rill
_best_ dress, for parties. But _engraved_," Calliope mounted to her
climax, "a bran' new dress an' a wreath in her hair is the least she'll
stop at."
But I think that, in the wish to do honour to so distinguished an
occasion, the temper of Mis' Sykes, and perhaps of Ellen Ember too, was
the secret temper of all the village.
IX
"NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH"
I daresay that excitement followed excitement when news of Calliope's
party got abroad. But of this I knew little, for I spent those next days
at the Proudfits' with Nita Ordway and little Viola, and though I
thought often of Calliope, I chanced not to see her again until the
holidays were almost upon us. In the late afternoon, two days before
Christmas, I dropped in at her cottage to learn how pleasantly the plans
for her party matured.
To my amazement I found her all dejection.
"Why, Calliope," I said, "can't the grandma ladies come, after all?"
Yes, they could come; they were coming.
"You are never sorry you asked them?" I pressed her.
No. Oh, no; she was glad she had asked them.
"Something is wrong, though," I said sadly--thinking what a blessed
thing it is to be so joyous a spirit that one's dejections are bound to
be taken seriously.
"Well," said Calliope, then, "it's the children. No it ain't, it's
Friendship. The town's about as broad as a broom straw an' most as deep.
Anything differ'nt scares 'em like something wore out'd ought to.
Friendship's got an i-dee that Christmas begins in a stocking an' ends
off in a candle. It thinks the rest o' the days are reg'lar,
self-respecting days, but it looks on Christmas like an extry thing,
thrown in to please 'em. It acts as if the rest o' the year was plain
cake an' the holidays was the frostin' to be et, an' everybody grab the
best themselves, give or take."
"Calliope!" I cried--for this was as if the moon had objected to the
heavens.
"Oh, I know I'd ought not to," she said sadly; "but don't folks act as
if time was give to 'em to run around wild with, as best suits 'em?
Three hundred an' 'leven days a year to use for themselves, an' Sundays
an' Christmas an' Thanksgivin' to give away looks to me a rill fair
division. But, no. Some folks act like Sundays an' holidays was not only
the frostin', but the nuts an' candy an' ice-cream o' things--_their_
ice-cream, to eat an' pass to their own, an' scrape the freezer."
And then came the heart of the matter.
"'T seems," said Calliope, "there's that children's Christmas tree at
the new minister's on Christmas Eve. But that ain't till ha'-past seven,
an' I done my best to hev some o' the children stop in here on their
way, for _my_ little party. An' with one set o' lungs their mas says no,
they'd get mussed for the tree if they do. I offered to hev 'em bring
their white dresses pinned in papers, an' we'd dress 'em here--I think
the grandma ladies'd like that. But their mas says no, pinned in
papers'd take the starch out an' their hair'd get all over their heads.
An' some o' the mothers says indignant: 'Old ladies from the poorhouse
end o' the home--well, I should think not! Children is very easy to take
things. If you'd hed young o' your own, you'd think more, Calliope,'
they says witherin'."
Her little wrinkled hands were trembling at the enormity.
"I donno," she added, "but I was foolish to try it. But I did want to
get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for them old ladies to see. An', my
mind, they ain't much so rilly lovely as little young children, together
in a room."
"But, Calliope," I said in distress, "isn't there even one child you can
get?"
"No, sir," she said. "Not a one. I been everywhere. You know they ain't
any poor in Friendship. We're all comfortable enough off to be
overparticular."
"But wouldn't you think," I said, "at Christmas time--"
"Yes, you would," Calliope said, "you would. You'd think Christmas'd
make everything kind o' softened up an' differ'nt. Every time I look at
the holly myself, I feel like I'd just shook hands with somebody
cordial."
None the less--for Calliope had drunk deep of the wine of doing and she
never gave up any project--at four o'clock on the day before Christmas I
saw the closed 'bus driven by Jimmy Sturgis fare briskly past my house
on its way to the "start of the Plank Road," to the Old Ladies' Home.
Within, I knew, were quilts and hot stones of Calliope's providing; and
Jimmy had hung the 'bus windows with cedar, and two little flags
fluttered from the door. It all had a merry, holiday air as Jimmy shook
the lines and drew on swiftly through the snow to those wistful nine
guests, who at last were to be "in Christmas," too.
"If they can't do nothin' else," Calliope had said, "they can talk over
old times, without hot milk interferin'. But I wish, an' I wish--seem's
though there'd ought always to be a child around on Star o' Bethlehem
night, don't it?"
I dined alone that Star of Bethlehem night, and to dine alone under
Christmas candles is never a cheerful business. The Proudfit car was to
come for me soon after eight, and at eight I stood waiting at the window
of my little living room, saying to myself that if I were to drop from
the air to a deserted country road, I should be certain that it was
Christmas Eve. You can tell Christmas Eve anywhere, like a sugar-plum,
with your eyes shut. It is not the lighted houses, or the
close-curtained windows behind which Christmas trees are fruiting; nor
yet, in Friendship, will it be the post-office store or the home bakery
windows, gay with Christmas trappings. But there is in the world a
subdued note of joyful preparation, as if some spirit whom one never may
see face to face had on this night a gift of perceptible life. And in
spite of my loneliness, my heart upleaped to the note of a distant
sleigh-bell jingling an air of "Home, going Home, Christmas Eve and
going Home."
Then, when the big Proudfit car came flashing to my door, I had a sweet
surprise. For from it, through the snowy dark, came running a little
fairy thing, and Viola Ordway danced to my door with her mother, muffled
in furs.
"We've been close in the house all day," Mrs. Ordway cried, "and now
we've run away to get you. Come!"
As for me, I took Viola in my arms and lifted her to my hall table and
caught off her cloak and hood. I can never resist doing this to a child.
I love to see the little warm, plump body in its fine white linen emerge
rose-wise, from the calyx cloak; and I love that shy first gesture,
whatever it may be, of a child so emerging. The turning about, the
freeing of soft hair from the neck, the smoothing down of the frock, the
half-abashed upward look. Viola did more. She laid one hand on my cheek
and held it so, looking at me quite gravely, as if that were some secret
sign of brotherhood in the unknown, which she remembered and I, alas!
had forgotten. But I perfectly remembered how to kiss her. If only, I
thought, all the empty arms could know a Viola. If only all the empty
arms, up and down the world, could know a Viola even just at Christmas
time. If only--
Over the top of Viola's head I looked across at Nita Ordway, and a
sudden joyous purpose lighted all the air about me--as a joyous purpose
will. Oh, if only--And then I heard myself pouring out a marvellous
jumble of sound and senselessness.
"Nita!" I cried, "you are not a Friendship Village mother! You are not
afraid. Viola is not going to the new minister's Christmas tree. Oh,
don't you see? It's still early--surely we have time! The grandma ladies
_must_ see Viola!"
I remember how Nita Ordway laughed, and her answer made me love her the
more--as is the way of some answers.
"I don't catch it--I don't," she said, "but it sounds delicious. All
courage, and old ladies, and ample time for everything! If I said, 'Of
course,' would that do?"
Already I was tying Viola's hood, and next to taking off a child's hood
I love putting one on--surely every one will have noticed how their
mouths bud up for kissing. While we sped along the Plank Road toward
Calliope's cottage, I poured out the story of who were at her house that
night, and why, and all that had befallen. In a moment the great car,
devouring its own path of light, set us down at Calliope's gate, and
Calliope herself, trim in her gray henrietta, her wrinkled face flushed
and shining, came at our summons. And I pushed Viola in before
us--little fairy thing in a fluff of white wraps and white furs.
"Look, Calliope!" I cried.
Calliope looked down at her, and I think she can hardly have seen Mrs.
Ordway and me at all. She smote her hands softly together.
"Oh," she said, "if it isn't! Oh--a child for Star o' Bethlehem night,
after all!"
She dropped to her knees before Viola, touching the little girl's hand
almost shyly. There was in Calliope's face when she looked at any child
a kind of nakedness of the woman's soul; and she, who was so deft, was
curiously awkward in such a presence.
"They're out there in the dinin' room," she whispered, "settin' round
the cook stove. I saw they felt some better out there. Le's us leave her
go out alone by herself, just the way she is."
And that was what we did. We said something to Viola softly about "the
poor grandma ladies, with no little girl to love," and then Calliope
opened the door and let her through.
We peeped for a moment at the lamp-lit crack. The dining room was warm
and bright, its table covered with red cotton and set with tea-cups,
shelves of plants blooming across the windows, cedar green on the walls.
The odour of pop-corn was in the air, and above an open griddle hole
apples bobbed on strings tied to the stove-pipe wing. And there about
the cooking range, with its cheery opened hearth, Calliope's Christmas
guests were gathered.
They were exquisitely neat and trim, in black and brown cloth dresses,
with a brooch, or a white apron, or a geranium from a window plant worn
for festival. I recognized Grandma Holly, with her soft white hair, and
I thought I could tell which were Mis' Ailing and Mis' Burney and Mis'
Norris. And the faces of them all, the gentle, the grief-marked, even
the querulous, were grown kindly with the knowledge that somebody had
cared about their Christmas.
The child went toward them as simply as if they had been friends. They
looked at her with some murmuring of surprise, and at one another
questioningly. Viola went straight to the knee of Grandma Holly, who was
nearest.
"'At lady tied my hood too tight," she referred unflatteringly to me,
"p'eas do it off."
Grandma Holly looked down over her spectacles, and up at the other
grandma ladies, and back to Viola. The others gathered nearer, hitching
forward rocking-chairs, rising to peer over shoulders--breathlessly,
with a manner of fearing to touch her. But because of the little
uplifted face, waiting, Grandma Holly must needs untie the white hood
and reveal all the shining of the child's hair.
"Nen do my toat off," Viola gravely directed.
At that Grandma Holly crooned some single indistinguishable syllable in
her throat, and then off came the cloak. The little warm, plump body in
its fine linen emerged, rose-wise, and Viola smoothed down her frock,
and freed her hair from her neck, and glanced up shyly. By the stir and
flutter among them I understood that they were feeling just as I feel
when a little hood and cloak come off.
Viola stood still for a minute.
"I like be made some 'tention to," she suggested gently.
Ah--and they understood. How they understood! Grandma Holly swept the
little girl in her arms, and I know how the others closed about them
with smiles and vague unimportant words. Viola sat quietly and happily,
like a little come-a-purpose spirit to let them pretend. And it was with
them all as if something long pent up went free.
Calliope left the door and turned toward us.
"Seems like my throat couldn't stand it," she said, ... and it seemed to
me, as we three sat together in the dim little parlor, that Nita Ordway
must cherish Viola for us all--for the grandma ladies and Calliope and
me.
Half an hour later we three went out to the dining room. Viola ran to
her mother when she entered. Nita took her in her arms and sat beside
the stove, her cloak slipping from her shoulders, the soft peach tints
of her gown shot through with shining lines and the light caught in her
collar of gems. "I did want to get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for
them old ladies to see," Calliope had said.
"Oh," said Grandma Holly, and she laid her brown hand on Viola's hand,
"ain't she _dear an' little an' young_?"
"I wish't she'd talk some," begged old Mis' Norris.
"Ain't she good, though, the little thing?" Mis' Ailing said. "Look at
how still she sets. Not wigglin' 'round same as some. It was just that
way with Sam when he was small--he'd set by the hour an' leave me hold
him--"
A little bent creature, whose name I never learned, sat patting Viola's
skirt.
"Seems like I'd gone back years," we heard her say.
Grandma Holly held up one half-closed hand.
"Like that," she told them, "my Amy's feet was so little I could hold
'em like that, an' I see hers is the same way. She's wonderful like Amy
was, her age."
I cannot recall half the sweet, trivial things that they said. But I
remember how they told us stories of their own babies, and we laughed
with them over treasured sayings of long-ago lips, or grieved with them
over silences, or rejoiced at glad things that had been. Regardless of
the Proudfit party, we let them talk as they would, and remember. Then
of her own accord Nita Ordway hummed some haunting air, and sang one of
the songs that we all loved--the grandma ladies and Calliope and I. It
was a sleepy song, whose words I have forgotten, but it was in a kind of
universal tongue which I think that no one can possibly mistake. And out
of the lullaby came all the little spirits, freed in babyhood or
"man-grown," and stood at the knees of the grandma ladies, so that I was
afraid that they could not bear it.
When the song was done, Viola suddenly sat up very straight.
"I got a litty box," she announced, "an' I had a parasol. An' once a boy
div me a new nail. An' once I didn' feel berry well, but now I am. An'
once--"
Their laughter was like a caress. Before it was done, we heard a
stamping without, and there was Jimmy Sturgis, with a spray of holly in
his old felt hat and the closed 'bus at the door.
We helped Calliope to get their wraps and to fill the 'bus with hot
stones from the oven and with many quilts, and we made ready a basket of
pop-corn and apples and of the cedar hung around the little room. They
stood about us to say good-by, or to tell us some last bit of the news
of their long-past youth--dear, wrinkled faces framed in broad lines of
bonnet or hood, and smiling, every one.
"This gray shawl I got on me is the very one I used to wrap Amy in to
carry her through the cold hall," said Grandma Holly. "My land-a-livin'!
seems's if I'd been with her to-night, over again!"
Their way of thanks lay among stumbling words and vague repetitions, but
there was a kind of glory in their grateful faces, and one always
remembers that.
"Merry Prismas, gramma ladies!" Viola cried shrilly at the 'bus door,
and within they laughed like mothers as they answered. And Jimmy Sturgis
cracked his whip, and the sleigh-bells jingled.
Nita Ordway and Viola and I stood for a moment with Calliope at her
gate.
"Come!" we begged her, "now go with us. We are all late together. There
is no reason why you should not go with us to the Christmas party."
But Calliope shook her head.
"I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said, "but oh, I couldn't. I've
hed too rilly a Christmas to come down to a party anywheres."
* * * * *
When Nita and Viola and I reached Proudfit House, the guests were all
assembled, but we knew that Mrs. Proudfit and Miss Clementina would be
the first to forgive us when they understood.
The big colonial home was bright with scarlet-shaded candles and
holly-hung walls; there was mistletoe on the sconces, and in the great
hall there were tuneful strings. On the landing of the stairs stood Mrs.
Proudfit and Miss Clementina, charmingly pretty in their delicate
frocks, and wholly gay and gracious. ("They seem lively like in pictures
where folks don't make a loud sound a-talkin'," said Friendship. "I
s'pose it's somethin' you learn in the City.") And Friendship wore its
loyalty like a mantle. Twelve years had passed, and yet one and another
said under breath and sighed, "If only Miss Linda could 'a' been here,
too."
All Friendship Village was there, save Abel Halsey, who was at the Good
Shepherd's Home Christmas tree in the City, and, perhaps one would say,
Delia More, who had begged to be allowed to help in the kitchen "an' be
there that way." Even Peleg Bemus was in his place in the orchestra,
sitting with closed eyes, playing his flute, and keeping audible time
with his wooden leg,--quite as he did when he played his flute at night,
on Friendship streets. And there was Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in the
tobacco-brown net, with butterflies stitched down the skirt and the Lady
Washington geranium in her hair--and forever near her went little Miss
Liddy Ember with an almost passionate creative pride in the gown of her
hand, so that she would murmur her patron an occasional warning: "Mis'
Sykes, throw back your shoulders, you hev to, to bring out the real set
o' the basque;" or, "Don't forget you want to give a little hitch to the
back when you stand up, Mis' Sykes." And to one and another Liddy said
proudly, "I declare if I didn't get that skirt with the butterflies just
like a magazine cover." And there, too, was Ellen Ember, wearing a white
book muslin and a rosy "nubia" that had been her mother's; and Ellen's
face was uplifted, and of pale distinction under the bronze glory of her
hair, but all that evening she smiled and sang and wondered, in utter
absence of the spirit. ("Oh," poor Miss Liddy said, "I do so want Ellen
to come herself before supper. She won't remember a thing she eats, an'
she don't have much that's tasty an' good. It'll be just like she missed
the whole thing, in spite of all the chore o' comin'.") And there were
Mis' Doctor Helman in her new wine silk; Mis' Banker Mason in the
black-and-white foulard designed to grace a festival or to respect a
tomb; Mis' Sturgis, in a put-away dress that was a surprise to every
one; Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Eppleby, and the "Other"
Holcombs; Abigail Arnold, the Gekerjecks, Mis' Toplady and Timothy, even
Mis' Mayor Uppers--no one was forgotten. And--save poor Ellen--every one
was aglow with the sweet satisfaction of having sent abroad a brave
array of pretty things, with stitches of rose and blue on flowered
fabrics, with the flutter of ribbons, and the breath of sachets, and
with many a gift of substance to those less generously endowed. To them
all the delight of the season was in the gifts of their hands and in the
night's merry-making, and in the joy of keeping holiday. Here, as
Calliope had said, Christmas, begun in a stocking, was ending in a
candle.
And yet it was Star of Bethlehem night, the night of Him who "didn't
mention givin' _things_ at all."
X
LONESOME.--I
Calliope and I were talking over the Proudfit party, as I had grown to
like to talk over most things with her, when I said something of two of
the guests whom I did not remember before to have seen: a little man of
shy gravity and an extremely pretty girl who, if she looked at any one
but him, did so quite undetected.
"That's Eb Goodnight," Calliope replied, "him of the new-born spine.
Wasn't it like the Proudfits to ask them?"
And, at my question:
"Some folks," Calliope said, "has got spines and some folks hasn't. But
what I say is, nobody can tell which is which. Because now and then the
soft-spine' kind just hardens up all in a minute same as steel. So when
I meet a stranger that sort o' sops along through life, limp and floppy,
I never judge him. I just say, 'You look some like a loose shutter, but
mebbe you can fair bang the house down, if you rilly get to blowin'.' It
was that way with Eb Goodnight.
"I donno how it is other places. But I've noticed with us here in
Friendship--an' I've grown to the town from short dresses to
bein'-careful-what-I-eat--I've often noticed't when folks seems not to
have any backbone to speak of, or even when they go 'round sort o'
crazy--they's usually some other reason, like enough. Sensitive or sick
or lonesome, or like that. It was so with Eb--an' it was so with Elspie.
Elspie, though, was interestin' on account o' bein' not only a little
crazy, but rill pretty besides. But Eb, he was the kind that a
sign-board is more interestin' than. An' yet--"
With that she paused, looking down some way of her own thought. I knew
Calliope's "an' yet." It splendidly conceded the entire converse of her
argument.