fascinations o' lawin' it over somethin'. An' we all got into the
delivery wagon, an' Eb, he come too, sittin' in back, listenin' an'
noddin', his feet hangin' over the box informal.
"I allus remember how the cemetery looked that mornin'. It was the tag
end o' June--an' in June cemeteries seems like somewheres else. The
Sodality hed been tryin' to get a new iron fence, but they hadn't made
out then, an' they ain't made out now--an' the old whitewashed fence an'
the field stone wall was fair pink with wild roses, an' the mulberry
tree was alive with birds, an' the grass layin' down with dew, an' the
white gravestones set around, placid an' quiet, like other kind o' folks
that we don't know about. Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she went right
through the wet grass, cross lots an' round graves, holdin' up her
mournin' an' showin' blue beneath--kind o' secular, like her thinkin'
about the all-silk ribbin at such a time. Sure enough, she knew her way
to the lot all right. An' there was the new grave, all sodered green,
an' not a sprig nor a stitch to honour it.
"'_Now!_' says Mis' Merriman, rill triumphant.
"'Land, land!' s'I, seein' how it rilly was.
"Timothy an' Silas, they both pitched in an' talked at once an' bent
down, technical, lookin' for tracks. But Eb, he just begun seemin'
peculiar--an' then he slipped off somewheres, though we never missed
him, till, in a minute, he come runnin' back.
"'Come here!' he says. 'Come on over here a little ways,' he told us,
an' not knowin' anything better to do we turned an' went after him,
wonderin' what on the earth was the matter with him an' ready to believe
'most anything.
"Eb led us past the vault where Obe Toplady, Timothy's father, lays in a
stone box you can see through the grating tiptoe; an' round by the
sample cement coffin that sets where the drives meet for advertisin'
purposes, an' you go by wonderin' whose it'll be, an' so on over toward
the Old Part o' the cemetery, down the slope of the hill where
everybody's forgot who's who or where they rest, an' no names, so. But
it's always blue with violets in May--like Somebody remembered, anyhow.
"When we got to the top o' the hill, we all looked down the slope,
shinin' with dew an' sunniness, an' little flowers runnin' in the grass,
thick as thick, till at the foot o' the hill they fair made a garden,--a
garden about the size of a grave, knee-deep with flowers. From where we
stood we could see 'em--hothouse roses an' straw flowers, an' set
pieces, an' a lot o' pillows, an' ribbins layin' out on the grass. An'
there, side of 'em, broodin' over 'em lovin', set Elspie, that I'd
thought was in my house asleep.
"Mis' Fire Chief, she wasn't one to hesitate. She was over the hill in a
minute, the blue edge o' petticoat bannerin' behind.
"'Up-_un_ my word,' s'she, like a cut, 'if this ain't a pretty note.
What under the sun are you doin' sittin' there, Elspie, with _my_
flowers?'
"Elspie looked up an' see her, an' see us streamin' toward her over the
hill.
"'They ain't your flowers, are they?' s'she, quiet. 'They're the dead's.
I was a-goin' to take 'em back in a minute or two, anyway, an' I'll take
'em back now.'
"She got up, simple an' natural, an' picked up the fruit piece an' one
o' the pillows, an' started up the hill.
"'Well, I nev-er,' says Mis' Merriman; 'the very bare brazenness. Ain't
you goin' to tell me _what_ you're doin' here with the flowers you say
is the dead's, an' I'm sure what was Sum's is mine an' the dead's the
same--'
"She begun to cry a little, an' with that Elspie looks up at her,
troubled.
"'I didn't mean to make you cry,' she says. 'I didn't mean you should
know anything about it. I come early to do it--I thought you wouldn't
know.'
"'Do _what_?' says Mis' Merriman, rill snappish.
"Elspie looks around at us then as if she first rilly took us in. An'
when she sees Eb an' me standin' together, she give us a little
smile--an' she sort o' answered to us two.
"'Why,' she says, 'I ain't got anybody, anywheres here, dead or alive,
that _belongs_. The dead is all other folks's dead, an' the livin' is
all other folks's folks. An' when I see all the graves down here that
they don't nobody know who's they are, I thought mebbe one of 'em
wouldn't care--if I kind of--adopted it.'
"At that she sort o' searched into Mis' Merriman's face, an' then
Elspie's head went down, like she hed to excuse herself.
"'I thought,' she said, 'they must be so dead--an' no names on 'em an'
all--an' their live folks all dead too by now--nobody'd care much. I
thought of it yesterday when we was walkin' down here,' she said, 'an' I
picked out the grave--it's the _littlest_ one here. An' then when we
come back past where the funeral was, an' I see them flowers--seemed
like I hed to see how 'twould be to put 'em on _my_ grave, that I'd took
over. So I come early an' done it. But I was goin' to lay 'em right back
where they belong--I truly was.'
"I guess none of us hed the least _i_-dea what to say. We just stood
there plain tuckered in the part of us that senses things. All, that is,
but one of us. An' that one was Eb Goodnight.
"I can see Eb now, how he just walked out o' the line of us standin'
there, starin', an' he goes right up to Elspie an' he looks her in the
face.
"'You're lonesome,' s'he, kind o' wonderin'. 'You're _lonesome_.
Like--other folks.'
"An' all to once Eb took a-hold o' her elbow--not loose an' temporary
like he shook hands, but firm an' four-cornered; an' when he spoke it
was like his voice hed been starched an' ironed.
"'Mis' Fire Chief,' s'he, lookin' round at her, 'I's to let you know
this week whether I'd take over the store. Well, yes,' he says, 'if
you'll give me the time on it we mentioned, I'll take it over. An' if
Elspie'll marry me an' let me belong to her, an' her to me.'
"'Marry you?' says Elspie, understandin' how he'd rilly spoke to her.
'_Me?_'
"Eb straightened himself up, an' his eyes was bright an' keen as the
edge o' somethin'.
"'Yes, you,' he says gentle. 'An' me.'
"An' then she looked at him like he was lookin' at her. An' it come to
me how it'd been with them two since the night they'd locked up my house
together. An' I felt all hushed up, like the weddin' was beginnin'.
"But Timothy an' Silas, they wa'n't feelin' so hushed.
'Look a-here!' says Timothy Toplady, all pent up. 'She ain't discharged
from the county house yet.'
"'I don't care a _dum_,' says Eb, an' I must say I respected him for the
'dum'--that once.
"'Look a-here,' says Silas, without a bit o' delicacy. 'She ain't
responsible. She ain't--'
"'She is too,' Eb cut him short. 'She's just as responsible as anybody
can be when they're lonesome enough to die. _I_ ought 'a' know that.
Shut up, Silas Sykes,' says Eb, all het up. 'You've just et a hot
breakfast your wife hed ready for you. You don't know what you're
talkin' about.'
"An' then Eb sort o' swep' us all up in the dust-pan.
"'No more words about it,' s'he, 'an' I don't care what any one o' you
says--Mis' Cally nor _none_ o' you. So you might just as well say less.
Tell 'em, Elspie!'
"She looked up at him, smilin' a little, an' he turned toward her, like
we wasn't there. An' I nudged Mis' Merriman an' made a move, an' she
turns right away, like she'd fair forgot the funeral flowers. An'
Timothy an' Silas actually followed us, but talkin' away a good
deal--like men will.
"None of us looked back from the top o' the hill, though I will own I
would 'a' loved to. An' about up there I heard Silas say:--
"'Oh, well. I _am_ gettin' kind o' old an' some stiff to take a new
business on myself.'
"An' Timothy, he adds absent: 'I don't s'pose, when you come right down
to it, as Alice County'll rilly care a whoop.'
"An' Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she wipes up her eyes, an', 'It does seem
like courtin' with Sum's flowers,' she says, sighin', 'but I'm rill glad
for Eb.'
"An' Eb not bein' there to agree with her, I says to myself, lookin' at
the mornin' sun on the cemetery an' thinkin' o' them two back there
among the baskets an' set pieces--I says, low to myself:--
"'Oh, glory, glory, glory.'
"For I tell you, when you see a livin' soul born in somebody's eyes, it
makes you feel pretty sure you can hev one o' your own, if you try."
XII
OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY
When the Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality had
its Evening Benefit at my house, Delia More came to help in the kitchen.
She steadfastly refused to be a guest. "I'd love bein' 'round there,"
she said, "over the stove, or that way. But I can't--_can't_ be
company--yet. When I think of it, it's like a high swing."
So she stayed in the kitchen, and it was characteristic of Friendship
that when its women learned that she was there, they all went--either
deliberately or for a drink of water--to speak with her. And they all
did learn that she was there. "Who you got in the kitchen?" was a part
of the small talk from guest to hostess. The men stayed "in the other
part of the house," Doctor June and Eppleby Holcomb sending by me some
cordial word to Delia. I think that they cannot do these things anywhere
else with such beautiful delicacy.
When my other guests had taken leave, Calliope stayed to help in the
search for Mis' Postmaster Sykes's pickle fork and two of Mis' Helman's
napkins (the latter marked with L because the store had been out of
_papier-mache_ H's, and it didn't matter what letter so long as you knew
it meant you) and all the other borrowed articles whose mislaying made
any Sodality gathering a kind of panic. Moreover, Calliope had been
helping and we, and Delia, had been far too busy to taste supper.
We would have said that the true life of the evening was done instead of
just beginning. But when we entered the kitchen, we found Delia More
serving the supper on an end of the baking table, while warming his
hands at the range stood Abel Halsey.
"I came in across the track, from the hills," Abel explained to me. "I
didn't know you had doings till I tied and blanketed--an' I came on in
anyhow, back way. I'm in luck too. I haven't had supper."
We four sat down in that homely cheer, and before us was the Sodality's
exquisite cookery. It was good to have Abel there. Since my coming to
Friendship I had seen him often, and my wonder at him had deepened. He
was alive to the finger-tips and by nature equipped to conquer through
sheer mentality, but he seemed deliberately to have fore-gone the prizes
for the tasks of the lower places. Not only so, but he who understood
all fine things seemed to regard his tastes as naivete, and to have won
away from them, as if he had set "above all wisdom and subtlety" the
unquenchable spirit which he knew. And withal he was so merry, so human,
so big, and so good-looking. "Handsome as Calvert Oldmoxon," the older
ones in Friendship were accustomed to say,--save Calliope, whom I had
never heard say that,--but I myself, if I had not had my simile already
selected, would have said "as Abel Halsey." If a god were human, I think
that Abel would have been very like a god. And to this opinion his
experiences were continually bearing witness.
That night, for example, he was in the merriest humour, and told us a
tale of how, that day, the sky had fallen. There had been down on the
Pump pasture, deep fog, white and thick and folded in, and above him
blue sky, when he had emerged on the Hill Road and driven on with his
eyes shut. ("When I need an adventure," he said, "I just trot old Major
Mary with my eyes shut. Courting death isn't half as costly as they
think it is.") And when he had opened his eyes, the sky was gone, and
everything was white and thick and folded in and fabulous. Obviously, as
he convinced us, the sky had fallen. But he had driven on through it and
in it, and had found it, as I recall his account, to be made of
inextinguishable dreams. These, Abel ran on, are on the other side of
the sky for anybody who claims them, and our sandwiches were, above all
sandwiches, delicious. He was so merry that Calliope and I, by a nod or
a smile of understanding, played our role of merely, so to say, proving
that the films were right--for you may have an inspired conversational
photographer, but unless you are properly prepared chemically he can get
no pictures. As Calliope had said of her evening with Eb and Elspie,
"the air in the room was easy to get through with what you had to
say--it was that kind of evening." Sometimes I wonder if an hour like
that is real time; or is it, instead, a kind of chronometrical fairy,
having no real existence on the dial, but only in essence.
As I think of it now the hour, if it was an hour, was simply a
background for Delia More. For it was not only Calliope and I who
responded to Abel's light-hearted talk, but, little by little, it was
Delia too. Perhaps it was that faint spark in her--fanned to life on the
night of her coming home, so that she "took stock"--which we now divined
faintly quickening to Abel's humour, his wisdom, even his fancies. Save
in her bitterness, on that first night, I had not heard her laugh; and
it was as if something were set free. I could not help looking at her,
but that did not matter, for she did not see me. She was listening to
Abel with an almost childish delight in her face; and in her eyes was
the look of one in a place before unvisited.
Some while after we had moved away from the table and sat together about
the cooking range, we heard the questioning horn of a motor. We knew
that it would belong to the Proudfits, since for us in Friendship there
exists no other motor, and moreover this one was standing at my gate.
Abel went out there and came back to tell us that the car had been in
town to fetch the Proudfits' lawyer, and that Madame Proudfit had kindly
sent it for Delia "and spoilt everything," he added frankly. As he said
that, Abel looked at her, and I saw that a dream may persist through
personality itself. As I have said, if a god were human, Abel would have
been like a god; and in nothing more so than in this understanding of
the immortalities.
Calliope stood up and caught, and held, my eyes in passing.
"Let's you and Abel and I take Delia home in the automobile," she said;
"there ain't anything so good for folks as fresh air."
I brought a warm wrap for Delia, a crimson cloak of mine which, so to
say, drew a line about her, defining her prettiness; and in the
starlight we set off along the snowless Plank Road, Delia and Abel and I
in the tonneau of the machine, and I silent. It had befallen strangely
that over this road Delia More and I should be faring in the Proudfits'
car, and beside her Abel Halsey as if, for such as he and she, a dream
may, just possibly, come back.
"See," she said to Abel, "the sky has gone back up again."
"Yes," Abel assented, "one of the things even the sky can't do is to
change the way things are."
"Oh, I know, I know ..." said Delia More.
"I want you to feel that," said Abel, gently. "Things are the way things
are, and no use trying to leave them out of it. Besides, you need them.
They're foundation. Then you build, and build better. That's all there
is to it, Delia."
She was silent, and Abel sat looking up at the stars.
"All there is to it except what I said about the other side of the sky,"
he said. "And then me. I'll help."
From my thought of these two I remember that I drifted on to some
consideration of myself, for their presence opened old paths where were
in durance things that did their best to escape, and were disquieting. I
thought also of Calliope, of whose story I had heard a little from one
and another. And it seemed to me that possibly Delia More's laughter and
her wistfulness summed us all up.
When we drew up at the entrance to Proudfit House we all alighted,
Calliope and Abel and I to walk home. But while we were saying good
night to Delia, the door opened and Clementina Proudfit stood against
the light. The car was to wait, she said, to take Mr. Baring, the
lawyer, to the midnight train. And then, as she saw her:--
"Calliope!" she cried, "I never wanted anybody so much. Come in and make
Mr. Baring a cup of your good coffee--you will, Calliope? Mother and I
will be with him for half an hour yet. Come, all of you, and help her."
We went in, lingering for a moment by the drawing-room fire while Miss
Clementina went below stairs; and I noted how, in that room colourful
and of fair proportion, Abel Halsey in his shabby clothes moved as
simply as if the splendour were not there. He stood looking down at
Delia, in her white dress, the crimson cloak catching the firelight;
while Calliope and I, before a length of Beauvais tapestry, talked with
spirit about both tapestry and coffee-making. ("My grandmother use' to
crochet faces an' figgers in her afaghans, too," Calliope commented,
"an' when I looked at 'em they use' to make me feel kind o' mad. But
with these, I don't care at all.") And when Miss Clementina returned,--
"Now," Calliope said to me, "you come with me an' help about the coffee,
will you? An' Delia, you an' Abel stay here. Nothin' will put me out o'
my head so quick--_nothin'_--as too many flyin' 'round the kitchen when
I'm tryin' to do work."
We went downstairs, and Miss Clementina rejoined her mother and the
lawyer in the library, and Delia and Abel were left alone together in
the firelight. If I had been a dream, and had been intending to come
back at all, I think that I must have come then.
"_Pray_, why don't you?" said Calliope to me almost savagely on the
kitchen stairs.
The coffee-making was a slow process and a silent one. Calliope and I
were both absorbed in what had so wonderfully come about: That Delia
More, who was dead, was alive again; or rather, that her spirit, patient
within her through all the years of its loneliness, was coming forth at
the sound of Abel's voice. We were alone in the kitchen, and when the
coffee was over the flame, we stood at the window looking out on the
black kitchen gardens. There lay the yellow reflection of the room, with
that unreality of all window-mirrored rooms, so that if one might walk
within them one would almost certainly wear one's self with a
difference.
"Ain't it like somethin' bright was in the inside o' the garden,"
Calliope put it, "just the way I told you Abel feels about everything?
That they's something inside, hid, kind of secret an' holy--like the
dreams he said was in the sky. I guess mebbe he's believed that about
Delia all these years. An' now he's bringin' it out. Oh," she said, "the
kitchen is where you can tell about things best. Seems to me _you'd_
ought to know somethin' about Delia an' Abel."
And I wanted to hear.
"Abel see Delia first," Calliope told me then, "to the Rummage Sale that
the Cemetery Auxiliary, that the Sodality use' to be, give. That is to
say, they didn't _give_ it, as it turned out--they just _had_ it, you
might say. Abel was twenty-five or so, an' he'd just come here fresh
ordained a minister. We found he wa'n't the kind to stop short on, Be
good yourself an' then a crown. No, but he just went after the folks
that was livin' along, moral an' step-pickin', an' he says to us, 'What
you sittin' down here for, enjoyin' yourselves bein' moral? Get out an'
help the rest o' the world,' he says. But everybody liked him in spite
o' that, an' he was goin' to be installed minister in our church.
"Then the Rummage Sale come on an' he met Delia. Delia was eighteen an'
just back from visitin' in the City, with her veil a new way, an' I
never see prettier. She was goin' to take charge o' the odd waists
table, an' Abel was runnin' 'round helpin'--Abel wa'n't the white-cuff
kind, like some, but he always pitched in an' stirred up whatever was
a-stewin'. He come bringin' in an armful o' old shoes somebody'd fetched
down, an' just as she was beginnin' on the odd waists, sortin' 'em over,
he met Delia. I remember she looks up at him from under that veil an'
from over a red basque she'd picked off the pile, an', 'Mr. Halsey,' she
says, 'I've a notion to buy this myself an' be savin'.' That took
Abel--Delia was so pretty an' fluffy that hearin' her talk savin' was
about like seein' a butterfly washin' out its own wings. 'Do,' says he,
'the red is beautiful on you,' s'e, shovin' the blame off on to the red.
An' when he got done with the shoes he come over to help on the waists
too--I was lookin' over the child sizes, next table, an' I see the whole
business.
"I will say their talk was wonderful pretty. It run on sort o' easy,
slippin' along over little laughs an' no hard work to keep it goin'.
Abel had a nice way o' cuttin' his words out sharp--like they was made
o' somethin' with sizin' on the back an' stayed where he put 'em. An'
his laugh would sort o' clamp down soft on a joke an' make it double
funny. An' Delia, she was right back at him, give for take, an' though
she was rill genial, she was shy. An' come to think of it, Abel was just
as full o' his fancyin's then as he is now.
"'Old clothes,' he says to her, 'always seems to me sort o' haunted.'
"'Haunted?' I know she asks him, wonderin'.
"'All steeped in what folks have been when they've wore 'em,' s'e, 'an'
givin' it out again.'
"'Oh ...' Delia says, 'I never thought o' that before.'
"An' she see what he meant, too. Delia wa'n't one to get up little wavy
notions like that, but she could see 'em when told. An' neither was she
one to do one way instead of another by just her own willin' it, but if
somebody pointed things out to her, then she'd see how, an' do the
right. An' I think Abel understood that about her--that her soul was
sort o' packed down in her an' would hev to be loosened gentle, before
it could speak. Like Peleg Bemus says about his flute," Calliope said,
smiling, "that they's something packed deep down in it that can't say
things it knows."
"'Clothes folks wear, rooms they live in, things they use--they all get
like the folks that use 'em,' Abel says, layin' black with black an'
white with white, on to the waist table. 'It makes us want to step
careful, don't it?' s'e. 'I think,' s'e, simple, '_your_ dresses--an'
ribbins--an' your veil--must go about doin' pleasant things without
you.'
"'Oh, no,' says Delia, demure, 'I ain't near good enough, Mr. Halsey;
you mustn't think that,' she says--an' right while he was lookin' gentle
an' clerical an' ready to help her, she dimples out all over her face.
'Besides,' she says, 'I ain't enough dresses to spare away from me for
that. I ain't but about two!' s'she. An' when a girl is all rose pink
and sky blue and dainty neat, a man loves to hear her brag how few
dresses she's got, an' Abel wa'n't the exception.
"'Same as a lily,' says he; 'they only have _one_ dress. Now, what else
shall I do?'
"Well, at sharp nine the Cemetery Auxiliary come to order, Mis' Sykes
presidin', like she always does when it's time for a hush. The doors was
to open to the general public at ten o'clock, an' the _i_-dee was to hev
the Auxiliary get the pick o' the goods first, payin' the reg'lar, set,
marked price. An' just as they was ready to begin pickin', up arrove the
Proudfit pony cart with a great big box o' stuff, sent to the sale.
Land, land, Mis' Sykes from the chair an' the others the same, they just
makes one swoop--an' begun selectin'; an' in less than a jiffy if they
hadn't selected up every one o' the Proudfit articles themselves. It was
natural enough. The things was worth havin'--pretty curtains, an'
trimmin's not much wore, an' some millinery an' dresses with the new
hardly off. An' the Auxiliary paid the price they would 'a' asked
anybody else. They was anxious, but they was square.