tables an' begun buyin' from them. They was lots o' things that most
anybody would 'a' been glad to hev that the owners had sent down sheer
through bein' sick o' seein' 'em around--like you will--an' couldn't be
thrown away 'count o' conscience, but could be give to a cause an'
conscience not notice. We had quite fun buyin', too--knowin' they was
each other's, an' no hard feelin'--only good spirits an' pleased with
each other's taste. Everybody knew who'd sent what, an' everybody hed
bought it for some not so high-minded use as it hed hed before, an' kep'
their dignity that way. Front-stair carpet was bought to go down on back
stairs, sittin' room lamp for chamber lamp, kitchen stove-pipe for wash
room stove-pipe, an' so on, an' the clothes to make rag rugs--so they
give out. The things kep' on an' on bein' snapped up hot-cake quick, an'
the crowd beginnin' to gather outside, waitin' to get in, made 'em sort
o' lose their heads an' begin buyin' sole because things was
cheap--bird-cages, a machine cover, odd table-leaves, an' like that. The
Society was rill large then, an' what happened might 'a' been expected.
When ten o'clock come an' it was time to open the door, the Rummage Sale
was over, an' the Auxiliary hed bought the whole thing themselves.
"We never thought folks might be anyways mad about it--but I tell you,
they was. They hed been seein' us through the glass, like they was caged
in front o' bargain day. An' when Mis' Toplady, fair beamin', unlocks
the door an' tells 'em the sale was through with an' a rill success,
they acted some het up. But Mis' Toplady, she bristles back at 'em. 'I'm
sure,' s'she, 'nobody wants you to die an' be buried in a nice, neat,
up-to-date, kep'-up cemet'ry if you don't _want_ to.' An' o' course she
hed 'em there.
"Well, it was that performance o' the Auxiliary's that rilly brought
Delia an' Abel together. It seemed to strike Abel awful funny, an'
Delia, lookin' at it with him, she see the funny too. They laughed a
good deal, an' they seemed to sort o' understand each other through
laughin', like you will. Delia bought the red waist, an' Abel walked
home with her--an' by that time Abel, with his half-scriptural,
half-boy, half-lover way that he couldn't help, was just on the craggy
edge o' fallin' in love with her. But I b'lieve it wa'n't love, just
ordinary. It was more like Abel, in his zeal for reddin' up the world,
see that he could do for Delia what nobody else could do--an' her for
him. An' that both of 'em workin' together could do more through knowin'
each other was near. That's the way,' Calliope said shyly, 'lovin'
always ought to be, my notion. An' when it ain't, things is likely to
get all wrong. Sometime--sometime,' she said, 'you'll hear about me--an'
how things with me went all wrong. An' I want you to remember, no matter
how much it don't seem my fault--that that's why they did go wrong--an'
no other. I was too crude selfish to sense what love is. I didn't
know--I didn't know. An' so with lots o' folks.
"I've often thought that Delia an' Abel meetin' at a Rummage Sale was
like all the rest of it. There was just a lot o' rubbish lumberin' up
the whole situation. Things wasn't happy for Delia to home--her mother,
Mis' Crapwell, had married again to a man that kep' throwin' out about
hevin' to be support to Delia; an' her stepsister, Jennie Crapwell, was
sickly an' self-seekin' an' engaged all to once. An' the young carpenter
that Jennie was goin' to marry, he was the black-eyed, hither-an'-yon
kind, an' crazier over Delia from the first than he ever was over
Jennie. Delia, she was shy about not havin' much education--Mis'
Proudfit hed wanted to send her off to school, an' Mis' Crapwell
wouldn't hear to it--an' Abel kep' talkin' that he was goin' to hev a
big church in the City some day, an' I guess that scairt Delia some, an'
Jennie kep' frettin' an' houndin' her, one way an' another, an'
a-callin' her 'parson's wife'--ain't it awful the _power_ them
pin-pricky things has if we let 'em? An' Delia wa'n't the kind to know
how to do right by her own willin'. An' so all to once we woke up one
mornin', an' she'd done what she'd done, an' no help for it.
"It was only a month after Delia an' Abel had met that Delia went away,
an' Abel hadn't been installed yet. An' when Delia done that, Abel just
settled into bein' somebody else. He seemed to want to go off in the
hills an' be by himself, an' most o' the time he done so. But there was
grace for him even in that: Abel see the hill folks, how they didn't hev
any churches nor not anything else much, an' he just set to work on 'em,
quiet an' still. He'd wanted to go away an' travel, but the chance never
come. An' it seemed, then on, he didn't want even to hear o' the City,
an' when his chances there come, he never took 'em. An' Abel's been
'round here with the hill folks the fourteen years since, an' never
pastor of any church--but he got the blessedness, after all, an' I
guess the chance to do better service than any other way. You can see
how he's broad an' gentle an' tender an' strong, but you don't know
what he does for folks--an' that's the best. An' yet--his soul must be
sort o' packed away too, to what it would 'a' been if things had 'a'
gone differ'nt ... packed away an' tryin' to say somethin'. An' now
Delia's come back I b'lieve Abel knows that, an' I b'lieve he sees the
soul in her needin' him too, just like it did all that time--waitin' to
be loosened, gentle, before it can speak; an' meanin' things it can't
say, like Peleg's flute. Oh, don't it seem like the dreams Abel said he
found up in the sky had _ought_ to be let come true?"
It did seem as if, for the two up there in the drawing-room, this dream
might, just possibly, come back.
"But then you never can tell for sure about the sky, can you?" said
Calliope, sighing.
* * * * *
Coffee was served in the library where Madame Proudfit and Miss
Clementina had been in consultation with their lawyer. We were all
rather silent as Madame Proudfit sat at the urn and the lawyer handed
our cups down some long avenue of his abstraction. And now everything
seemed to me a kind of setting for Delia and Abel, and Calliope kept
looking at them as if, before her eyes, things might come right. So, I
own, did I, though in the Proudfit library it was usually difficult to
fix my attention on what passed; for it was in that room that Linda
Proudfit's portrait hung, and the beautiful eyes seemed always trying to
tell one what the weary absence meant. But I thought again that this
daughter of the house had won a kind of presence there, because of
Madame Proudfit's tender mother-care of Delia More.
Yet it was to this care that Calliope and I owed a present defeat; for
when we were leave-taking,--
"We shall sail, then, the moment we can get passage," Madame Proudfit
observed to her lawyer, "providing that Clementina can arrange. Delia,"
she added, "Clementina and I find to-night that we must sail immediately
for Europe, for six months or so. And we want to carry you off with us."
Madame Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia were standing with us
outside the threshold, where the outdoors had met us like something that
had been waiting. There, with the light from the hall falling but dimly,
I saw in Abel's face only the glow of his simple joy that this good
thing had come to Delia--though, indeed, that very joy told much
besides. And it was in his face when he bade Delia good night and, since
he was expected somewhere among the hills for days to come, gave her
God-speed. But we four fell momentarily silent, as if we meant things
which we might not speak. It was almost a relief to hear tapping on the
sidewalk the wooden leg of Peleg Bemus, while a familiar, thin little
stream of melody from his flute made its way about.
"Doesn't it seem as if Peleg were trying to tell one something?" said
Madame Proudfit, lightly, as we went away.
And down on the gravel of the drive Calliope demanded passionately of
Abel and me:--
"Oh, don't some things make you want to pull the sky down an' _wrap up
in it_!"
But at this Abel laughed a little.
"It's easier to pull down just the dreams," he said.
XIII
TOP FLOOR BACK
One morning a few weeks after the Proudfits had left, I was sitting
beside Calliope's cooking range, watching her at her baking, when the
wooden leg of Peleg Bemus thumped across the threshold, and without
ceremony he came in from the shed and stood by the fire, warming his axe
handle. But Peleg's intrusions were never imputed to him. As I have
said, his gifts and experiences had given him a certain authority.
Perhaps, too, he reflected a kind of institutional dignity from his
sign, which read:--
P. Bemus: Retail Saw Miller
At the moment of his entrance Calliope was talking of Emerel Kitton, now
Mrs. Abe Daniel:
"There's them two," she said, "seems to hev married because they both
use a good deal o' salt--'t least they ain't much else they're alike in.
An' Emerel is just one-half workin' her head off for him. Little nervous
thing she is--when I heard she was down with nervous prostration two
years ago, I says, 'Land, land,' I says, 'but ain't she _always_ had
it?' They's a strain o' good blood in that girl,--Al Kitton was New
England,--but they don't none of it flow up through her head. She's
great on sacrificin', but she don't sacrifice judicious. If folks is
goin' to sacrifice, I think they'd ought to do it conscientious, the
kind in the Bible, same as Abraham an' like that."
Peleg Bemus rubbed one hand up and down his axe handle.
"I reckon you can't always tell, Miss Marsh," he said meditatively. "I
once knowed a man that done some sacrificin' that ain't called by that
name when it gets into the newspapers." He turned to me, with a manner
of pointing at me with his head, "You been in New York," he said; "ain't
you ever heard o' Mr. Loneway--Mr. John Loneway?"
I was sorry that I could not answer "yes." He was so expectant that I
had the sensation of having failed him.
"Him an' I lived in the same building in East Fourteenth Street there,"
he said. "That is to say, he lived top floor back and I was janitor.
That was a good many years ago, but whenever I get an introduction to
anybody that's been in New York, I allus take an interest. I'd like to
know whatever become of him."
He scrupulously waited for our question, and then sat down beside the
oven door and laid his axe across his knees.
"It was that hard winter," he told us, "about a dozen years ago. I'd hev
to figger out just what year, but most anybody on the East Side can tell
you. Coal was clear up an' soarin', an' vittles was too--everybody
howlin' hard times, an' the Winter just commenced. Make things worse,
some philanthropist had put up two model tenements in the block we was
in, an' property alongside had shot up in value accordin' an' lugged
rents with it. Everybody in my buildin' 'most was rowin' about it.
"But John Loneway, he wasn't rowin'. I met him on the stairs one mornin'
early an' I says, 'Beg pardon, sir,' I says, 'but you ain't meanin' to
make no change?' I ask him. He looks at me kind o' dazed--he was a
wonderful clean-muscled little chap, with a crisscross o' veins on each
temple an' big brown eyes back in his head. 'No,' he says. 'Change? I
can't move. My wife's sick,' he says. That was news to me. I'd met her a
couple o' times in the hall--pale little mite, hardly big as a baby, but
pleasant-spoken, an' with a way o' dressin' herself in shabby clo'es
that made the other women in the house look like bundles tied up
careless. But she didn't go out much--they had only been in the house a
couple o' weeks or so. 'Sick, is she?' I says. 'Too bad,' I says.
'Anything I can do?' I ask him. He stopped on the nex' step an' looked
back at me. 'Got a wife?' he says. 'No,' says I, 'I ain't, sir. But they
ain't never challenged my vote on 'count o' that, sir--no offence,' I
says to him respectful. 'All right,' he says, noddin' at me. 'I just
thought mebbe she'd look in now and then. I'm gone all day,' he added,
an' went off like he'd forgot me.
"I thought about the little thing all that mornin'--layin' all alone up
there in that room that wa'n't no bigger'n a coal-bin. It's bad enough
to be sick anywheres, but it's like havin' both legs in a trap to be
sick in New York. Towards noon I went into one o' the flats--first floor
front it was--with the kindlin' barrel, an' I give the woman to
understand they was somebody sick in the house. She was a great big
creatur' that I'd never see excep' in red calico, an' I always thought
she looked some like a tomato ketchup bottle, with her apron for the
label. She says, when I told her, 'You see if she wants anything,' she
says. 'I can't climb all them stairs,' she answers me.
"Well, that afternoon I went down an' hunted up a rusty sleigh-bell I'd
seen in the basement, an' I rubbed it up an' tied a string to it, an'
'long in the evenin' I went upstairs an' rapped at Mr. Loneway's door.
"'I called,' I says, 'to ask after your wife, if I might.'
"'If you might,' he says after me. 'I thank the Lord you're somebody
that will. Come in,' he told me.
"They had two rooms. In one he was cookin' somethin' on a smelly
oil-stove. In the other was his wife; but that room was all neat an'
nice--curtains looped back, carpet an' all that. She was half up on
pillows, an' she had a black waist on, an' her hair pushed straight
back, an' she was burnin' up with the fever.
"'Set down an' talk to her,' he says to me, 'while I get the dinner,
will you? I've got to go out for the milk.'
"I did set down, feelin' some like a sawhorse in church. If she hadn't
been so durn little, seems though I could 'a' talked with her, but I
ketched sight of her hand on the quilt, an'--law! it wa'n't no bigger'n
a butternut. She done the best thing she could do an' set me to work.
"'Mr. Bemus,' she says, first off--everybody else called me Peleg--'Mr.
Bemus,' she says, 'I wonder if you'd mind takin' an old
newspaper--there's one somewheres around--an' stuffin' in the cracks of
this window an' stop its rattlin'?'
"I laid my sleigh-bell down an' done as she says; an' while I fussed
with the window, that seems though all Printin' House Square couldn't
stuff up, she talked on, chipper as a squirrel, all about the buildin',
an' who lived where, an' how many kids they was, an' wouldn't it be nice
if they had an elevator like the model tenement we was payin' rent for,
an' so on. I'd never 'a' dreamt she was sick if I hadn't looked 'round a
time or two at her poor, burnin'-up face. Then bime-by he brought the
supper in, an' when he went to lift her up, she just naturally laid back
an' fainted. But she was all right again in a minute, brave as two, an'
she was like a child when she see what he'd brought her--a big platter
for a tray, with milk-toast an' an apple an' five cents' worth o' dates.
She done her best to eat, too, and praised him up, an' the poor soul
hung over her, watchin' every mouthful, feedin' her, coaxin' her,
lookin' like nothin' more'n a boy himself. When I couldn't stand it no
longer, I took an' jingled the sleigh-bell.
"'I'm a-goin',' I says, 'to hang this outside the door here, an' run
this nice long string through the transom. An' to-morrow,' I says, 'when
you want anything, just you pull the string a time or two, an' I'll be
somewheres around.'
"She clapped her hands, her eyes shinin'.
"'Oh, _goodey_!' she says. 'Now I won't be alone. Ain't it nice,' she
says, 'that there ain't no glass in the transom? If we lived in the
model tenement, we couldn't do that,' she says, laughin' some.
"An' that young fellow, he followed me to the door an' just naturally
shook hands with me, same's though I'd been his kind. Then he followed
me on out into the hall.
"'We had a little boy,' he says to me low, 'an' it died four months ago
yesterday, when it was six days old. She ain't ever been well since,' he
says, kind of as if he wanted to tell somebody. But I didn't know what
to say, an' so I found fault with the kerosene lamp in the hall, an'
went on down.
"Nex' day I knew the doctor come again. An' 'way 'long in the afternoon
I was a-tinkerin' with the stair rail when I heard the sleigh-bell ring.
I run up, an' she was settin' up, in the black waist--but I thought her
eyes was shiney with somethin' that wasn't the fever--sort of a scared
excitement.
"'Mr. Bemus,' she says, 'I want you to do somethin' for me,' she says,
'an' not tell anybody. Will you?'
"'Why, yes,' I says, 'I will, Mis' Loneway,' I says. 'What is it?' I
ask' her.
"'There's a baby somewheres downstairs,' she says. 'I hear it cryin'
sometimes. An' I want you to get it an' bring it up here.'
"That was a queer thing to ask, because kids isn't soothin' to the sick.
But I went off downstairs to the first floor front. The kid she meant
belonged to the Tomato Ketchup woman. I knew they had one because it
howled different times an', I judge, pounded its head on the floor some
when it was maddest. It was the only real little one in the
buildin'--the others was all the tonguey age. I told what I wanted.
"'For the land!' says Tomato Ketchup, 'I never see such nerve. Take my
baby into a sick room? Not if I know it. I s'pose you just come out o'
there? Well, don't you stay here, bringin' diseases. A hospital's the
true place fer the sick,' she says.
"I went back to Mis' Loneway, an' I guess I lied some. I said the kid
was sick--had the croup, I thought, an' she'd hev to wait. Her face
fell, but she said 'all right an' please not to say nothin',' an' then I
went out an' done my best to borrow a kid for her. I ask' all over the
neighbourhood, an' not a woman but looked on me for a cradle
snatcher--thought I wanted to abduct her child away from her. Bime-by I
even told one woman what I wanted it for.
"'My!' she says, 'if she ain't got one, she's got one less mouth to
feed. Tell her to thank her stars.'
"After that I used to look into Mis' Loneway's frequent. The women on
the same floor was quite decent to her, but they worked all day, an'
mostly didn't get home till after her husband did. I found out somethin'
about him, too. He was clerk in a big commission house 'way down-town,
an' his salary, as near as I could make out, was about what mine was,
an' they wa'n't no estimatin' that by the cord at all. But I never heard
a word out'n him about their not havin' much. He kep' on makin' milk
toast an' bringin' in one piece o' fruit at a time an' once in a while a
little meat. An' all the time anybody could see she wa'n't gettin' no
better. I knew she wa'n't gettin' enough to eat, an' I knew he knew it,
too. An' one night the doctor he outs with the truth.
"Mr. Loneway an' I was sittin' in the kitchen while the doctor was in
the other room with her. I went there evenin's all the time by then--the
young fellow seemed to like to hev me. We was keepin' warm over the
oil-stove because the real stove was in her room, an' the doctor come in
an' stood over him.
"'My lad,' he says gentle, 'there ain't half as much use o' my comin'
here as there is o' her gettin' strengthenin' food. She's got to hev
beef broth--cer'als--fresh this an' fresh that'--he went on to tell him,
'an' plenty of it,' he says. 'An' if we can make her strength hold out,
I think,' he wound up, 'that we can save her. But she's gettin' weaker
every day for lack o' food. Can you do anything more?' he ask' him.
"I expected to see young Mr. Loneway go all to pieces at this, because I
knew as it was he didn't ride in the street-car, he was pinchin' so to
pay the doctor. But he sorter set up sudden an' squared his shoulders,
an' he looked up an' says:--
"'Yes!' he says. 'I've been thinkin' that to-night,' he says. 'An' I've
hed a way to some good luck, you might call it--an' now I guess she can
hev everything she wants,' he told him; an' he laughed some when he said
it.
"That sort o' amazed me. I hadn't heard him sayin' anything about any
excruciatin' luck, an' his face hadn't been the face of a man on the
brink of a bonanza. I wondered why he hadn't told her about this luck o'
his, but I kep' quiet an' watched to see if he was bluffin'.
"I was cleanin' the walk off when he come home nex' night. Sure enough,
there was his arms laid full o' bundles. An' his face--it done me good
to see it.
"'Come on up an' help get dinner,' he yelled out, like a kid, an' I
thought I actually seen him smilin'.
"Soon's I could I went upstairs, an' they wa'n't nothin' that man hadn't
brought. They was everything the doctor had said, an' green things, an'
a whol' basket o' fruit an' two bottles o' port, an' more things
besides. They was lots o' fixin's, too, that there wa'n't a mite o'
nourishment in--for he wa'n't no more practical _nor_ medicinal'n a
wood-tick. But I knew how he felt.
"'Don't tell her,' he says. 'Don't tell her,' he says to me, hoppin'
'round the kitchen like a buzz-saw. 'I want to surprise her.'
"You can bet he did, too--if you'll overlook the liberty. When he was
all ready, he made me go in ahead.
"'_To-ot!_' says I, genial-like--they treated me jus' like one of 'em.
'_To-ot!_ Lookey-_at_!'
"He set the big white platter down on the bed, an' when she see all the
stuff,--white grapes, mind you, an' fresh tomatoes, an' a glass for the
wine,--she just grabs his hand an' holds it up to her throat, an'
says:--
"'Jack! Oh, Jack!' she says,--she called him that when she was
pleased,--'how did you? _How did you?_'
"'Never you mind,' he says, kissin' her an' lookin' as though he was
goin' to bu'st out himself, 'never you ask. It's time I had some luck,
ain't it? Like other men?'
"She was touchin' things here an' there, liftin' up the grapes an'
lookin' at 'em--poor little soul had lived on milk toast an' dates an' a
apple now an' then for two weeks to my knowledge. But when he said that,
she stopped an' looked at him, scared.
"'John!' she says, 'you ain't--'
"He laughed at that.
"'Gamblin'?' he says. 'No--never you fear.' I had thought o' that
myself, only I didn't quite see when he'd had the chance since night
before when the doctor told him. 'It's all owin' to the office,' he says
to her, 'an' now you eat--lemme see you eat, Linda,' he says, an' that
seemed to be food enough for him. He didn't half touch a thing. 'Eat all
you want,' he says, 'an', Peleg, poke up the fire. There's half a ton o'
coal comin' to-morrow. An' we're goin' to have this _every day_,' he
told her.
"Land o' love! how happy she was! She made me eat some grapes, an' she
sent a bunch to the woman on the same floor, because she'd brought her
an orange six weeks before; an' then she begs Mr. Loneway to get an
extry candle out of the top dresser draw'. An' when that was lit up she
whispers to him, and he goes out an' fetches from somewheres a guitar
with more'n half the strings left on; an' she set up an' picked away on
'em, an' we all three sung, though I can't carry a tune no more'n what I
can carry a white oak tree trunk.
"'Oh,' she says, 'I'm a-goin' to get well now. Oh,' she says, 'ain't it
heaven to be rich again?'
"No--you can say she'd ought to 'a' made him tell her where he got the
money. But she trusted him, an' she'd been a-livin' on milk toast an'
dates for so long that I can pretty well see how she took it all as
what's-his-name took the wild honey, without askin' the Lord whose make
it was. Besides, she was sick. An' milk toast an' dates'd reconcile me
to 'most any change for the better.
"It got so then that I went upstairs every noon an' fixed up her lunch
for her, an' one day she done what I'd been dreadin'. 'Mr. Bemus,' she
says, 'that baby must be over the croup now. Won't you--won't you take
it down this orange an' see if you can't bring it up here awhile?'
"I went down, but, law!--where was the use? The Ketchup woman grabs up
her kid an' fair threw the orange at me. 'You don't know what disease
you're bringin' in here,' she says--she had a voice like them gasoline
wood-cutters. I see she'd took to heart some o' the model-tenement
social-evenin' lectures on bugs an' worms in diseases. I carried the
orange out and give it to a kid in the ar'y, so's Mis' Loneway'd be
makin' somebody some pleasure, anyhow. An' then I went back upstairs an'
told her the kid was worse. Seems the croup had turned into cholery
infantum.
"'Why,' she says, 'I mus' send it down somethin' nice an' hot to-night,'
an' so she did, and I slips it back in the Loneway kitchen unbeknownst.
She wa'n't so very medicinal, either, bless her heart!
"'Tell me about that baby,' she says to me one noon. 'What's its name?
Does it like to hev its mother love it?' she ask me.
"I knew the truth to be that it didn't let anybody do anything day or
night within sight or sound of it, an' it looked to me like an imp o'
the dark. But I fixed up a tol'able description, an' left out the
freckles an' the temper, an' told her it was fat an' well an' a boy.
That seemed to satisfy her. Its name, though, sort o' stumped me. The
Tomato Ketchup called it mostly 'you-come-back-here-you-little-ape.' I
heard that every day. So I said, just to piece out my information, that
I thought its name might be April. That seemed to take her fancy, an'
after that she was always askin' me how little April was--but not when
Mr. Loneway was in hearin'. I see well enough she didn't want he should
know that she was grievin' none.