us, you know," she explained anxiously, "I just want to warn you so's
you won't be hurt. I guess I notice such things more'n most. We won't
mean to offend you--but I thought you'd ought to know ahead. An' bein'
as it's part my tea, I thought it was kind o' my place to tell you."
She was touching the matter delicately, almost tenderly, and not more,
as I saw, with a wish to spare me than with a wish to apologize in
advance for the others, to explain away some real or fancied weakness.
"You know," she said, "we ain't never had anybody to, what you might
say, tell us what we can an' what we can't say. So we just naturally say
whatever comes into our heads. An' then when we get it said, we see
often that it ain't what we meant--an' that it's apt to hurt folks or
put us in a bad light, or somethin'. But some don't even see that--some
go right ahead sayin' the hurt things an' never know it _is_ a hurt. I
don't know if you've noticed what I mean," Calliope said, "but you will
to-night. An' I didn't want you should be hurt or should think hard of
them that says 'em."
But how, I wondered, as my guests assembled, could one "think hard" of
any one in Friendship, and especially of the little circle to which I
belonged: My dear Mis' Amanda Toplady, Mis' Photographer Sturgis, Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, who, since our Thanksgiving, seemed, as
Calliope put it, to have "got good with the universe again"; the Liberty
sisters, for that day once more persuaded from their seclusion, and Mis'
Postmaster Sykes, with, we sometimes said, "some right to hev her
peculiarities if ever anybody hed it." Of them all the Friendship phrase
of approval had frequently been spoken: That this one, or that, was "_at
heart_, one o' the most all-round capable women we've got."
I had hoped to have one more guest--Mrs. Merriman, wife of the late
chief of the Friendship fire department. But I had promptly received her
regrets, "owing to affliction in the family," though the fire chief had
died two years and more before.
"But it's her black," Calliope had explained to me sympathetically; "she
can't afford to throw away her best dress, made mournin' style, with
crape ornaments. As long as that lasts good, she'll hev to stay home
from places. I see she's just had new crape cuffs put on, an' that means
another six months at the least. An' she won't go to parties wearin'
widow weeds. Mis' Fire Chief Merriman is very delicate."
My guests, save Calliope, all arrived together and greeted me, I
observed, with a manner of marked surprise. Afterward, when I wondered,
Calliope explained simply that it was not usual for a hostess to meet
her guests at the door. "Of course, they're usually right in the midst
o' gettin' the supper when the company comes," she said.
My prettiest dishes and silver were to do honour to those whom I had
bidden; and boughs of my Flowering-currant filled my little hall and
curved above the line of sight at table, where the candle shades lent
deeper yellows. I delighted in the manner of formality with which they
took their places, as if some forgotten ceremonial of ancient courts
were still in their veins, when a banquet was not a thing to be entered
upon lightly.
Quite in ignorance of the Japanese custom of sipping tea while the first
course is arriving, it is our habit in Friendship to inaugurate "supper"
by seeing the tea poured. In deference to this ceremony a hush fell
immediately we were seated, and this was in courtesy to me, who must
inquire how each would take her tea. I think that this conversation
never greatly varied, as:--
"Mrs. Toplady?" I said at once, the rest being understood.
"Cream and sugar, _if_ you please," said that great Amanda heartily, "or
milk if it's milk. I take the tea for the trimmin's."
Then a little stir of laughter and a straying comment or two about, say,
the length of days at that time of year, and:--
"Mrs. Sykes?"
"Just milk, please. I always say I don't think tea would hurt _anybody_
if they'd leave the sugar alone. But then, I've got a very peculiar
stomach."
"Mrs. Holcomb?"
"I want mine plain tea, thank you. My husband takes milk and the boys
like sugar, but I like the taste of the tea."
At which, from Libbie Liberty: "Oh, Mis' Holcomb just says that to make
out she's strong-minded. Plain tea an' plain coffee's regular woman's
rights fare, Mis' Holcomb!" And then, after more laughter and Mis'
Holcomb's blushes, they awaited:--
"Mrs. Sturgis?"
"Not any at all, thank you. No, I like the tea, but the tea don't like
me. My mother was the same way. She never could drink it. No, not any
for me, though I must say I should dearly love a cup."
"Miss 'Viny?"
"Just a little tea and the rest hot water. Dear me, I shouldn't go to
sleep till _to-morrow_ night if I was to drink a cup as strong as that.
No--a little more water, please. I s'pose I can send it back for more if
it's still too strong?"
"Miss Libbie?"
"Laviny just wants the canister pointed in her direction, an' she thinks
she's had her tea. Lucy don't dare take any. Three lumps for me, please.
I like mine surup."
"Calliope?"
"Oh," said Calliope, "milk if there's any left in the pitcher. An' if
there ain't, send it down clear. I like it most any way. Ain't it queer
about the differ'nce in folks' tastes in their tea and coffee?"
That was the signal for the talk to begin with anecdotes of how various
relatives, quick and passed, had loved to take their tea. No one ever
broached a real topic until this introduction had had its way. To do so
would have been an indelicacy, like familiar speech among those in the
ceremony of a first meeting.
Thus I began to see that in spite of Calliope's distress at the ways of
us in Friendship, a matchless delicacy was among its people a dominant
note. Not the delicacy born of convention, not that sometimes bred in
the crudest by urban standards, but a finer courtesy that will spare the
conscious stab which convention allows. It was, if I may say so, a
_savoir faire_ of the heart instead of the head. But we had hardly
entered upon the hour before the ground for Calliope's warning was
demonstrated.
"There!" she herself bridged a pause with her ready little laugh, "I
knew somebody'd pass me somethin' while I was saltin' my potato. My
brother, older, always said that at home. 'I never salt my potato,' he
use' to say, 'without somebody passes me somethin'."
Next instant her eyes flew to my face in a kind of horror, for:--
"We've noticed that at our house, too," Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss
observed, vigorously using a salt-shaker, "but then I always believe,
myself, in havin' everything properly seasoned in the kitchen before it
comes on to the table."
"See!" Calliope signalled me fleetly.
But no one else, and certainly not Mis' Holcomb herself, perceived the
surface of things vexed by a ripple.
"Well, now," said that great Mis' Amanda Toplady heartily, "that _is_ so
about saltin' your potato. I know it now, but I never thought of it
right out before. Lots o' things are true that you don't think of right
out. Now I come to put my mind on it, I know at our house if I cut up a
big plate o' bread we don't eat up half of it; but just as sure as I
don't, I hev to get up from the table an' go get more bread."
"I know--we often speak of that!" and "So my husband says," chimed Mis'
Holcomb and Mis' Sturgis.
"Seems as if I'd noticed that, too," Calliope said brightly.
Whereupon: "My part," Miss Lucy Liberty contributed shyly, "I always
like to see a great big plate of good, big slices o' bread come on to
the table. Looks like the crock was full," she added, laughing heartily
to cover her really pretty shyness, "an' like you wouldn't run out."
Calliope's glance at me was still more distressed, for my table showed
no bread at all, and my maid was at that moment handing rolls the size
of a walnut. But for the others the moment passed undisturbed.
"I've never noticed in particular about the bread," observed Mis'
Sykes,--she had great magnetism, for when she spoke an instant hush
fell,--"but what _I_ have noticed"--Mis' Sykes was very original and
usually disregarded the experiences of others,--"is that if I don't make
a list of my washing when it goes, something is pretty sure to get lost.
But let me make a list, an' even the dust-cloths'll come back home."
Everybody had noticed that. Even Libbie Liberty assented, and exchanged
with her sister a smile of domestic memories.
"An' every single piece has got my initial in the corner, too," Mis'
Sykes added; "I wouldn't hev a piece o' linen in the house without my
initial on. It don't seem to me rill refined not to."
Calliope's look was almost one of anguish. My hemstitched damask napkins
bear no saving initial in a corner. But no one else would, I was
certain, connect that circumstance, even if it was observed, with what
Mis' Sykes had said.
"It's too bad Mis' Fire Chief Merriman wouldn't come to-day," Calliope
hastily turned the topic. "She can't seem to get used to things again,
since Sum died."
"She didn't do this way for her first husband that died in the city, I
heard," volunteered Mis' Sturgis. "Why, I heard she went out _there_,
right after the first year."
"That's easy explained," said Mis' Sykes, positively.
"Wasn't she fond of him?" asked Mis' Holcomb. "She seems real clingin',
like she would be fond o' most any one."
"Oh, yes, she was fond of him," declared Mis' Sykes. "Why, he was a
professional man, you know. But then he died ten years ago, durin' tight
skirts. Naturally, being a widow then wasn't what it is now. She
couldn't cut her skirt over to any advantage--a bell skirt is a bell
skirt. An' they went out the very next year. When she got new cloth for
the flare skirts, she got colours. But the Fire Chief died right at the
height o' the full skirts. She's kep' cuttin' over an' cuttin' over, an'
by the looks o' the Spring plates she can keep right on at it. She
really can't afford to go _out_ o' mournin'. I don't blame her a bit."
"She told me the other day," remarked Libbie Liberty, "that she was real
homesick for some company food. She said she'd been ask' in to eat with
this family an' that, most hospitable but very plain. An' seems though
she couldn't wait for a company lay-out."
"She won't go anywheres in her crape," Mis' Sykes turned to me,
supplementing Calliope's former information. "She's a very superior
woman,--she graduated in Oils in the city,--an' she's fitted for any
society, say where who _will_. We always say about her that nobody's so
delicate as Mis' Fire Chief Merriman."
"She don't take strangers in very ready, anyway," Mis' Holcomb explained
to me. "She belongs to what you might call the old school. She's very
sensitive to _every_thing."
The moment came when I had unintentionally produced a hush by serving a
salad unknown in Friendship. When almost at once I perceived what I had
done, I confess that I looked at Calliope in a kind of dread lest this
too were a _faux pas_, and I took refuge in some question about the
coming Carnival. But my attention was challenged by my maid, who was in
the doorway announcing a visitor.
"Company, ma'am," she said.
And when I had bidden her to ask that I be excused for a little:--
"Please, ma'am," she said, "she says she has to see you _now_."
And when I suggested the lady's card:--
"Oh, it's Mis' Fire Chief Merriman," the maid imparted easily.
"Mis' Fire Chief Merriman!" exclaimed every one at table. "Well
forevermore! Speakin' of angels! She must 'a' forgot the tea was bein'."
In my living-room, in her smartly freshened spring toilet of mourning,
Mis' Fire Chief Merriman rose to greet me. She was very tall and slight,
and her face was curiously like an oblong yellow brooch which fastened
her gown at the throat.
"My dear friend," she said, "I felt, after your kind invitation, that I
must pay my respects _during_ your tea. Afterwards wouldn't be the same.
It's a tea, and there couldn't be lanterns an' bunting or anything o'
the sort. So I felt I could come in."
"You are very good," I murmured, and in some perplexity, as she resumed
her seat, I sat down also. Mis' Merriman sought in the pocket of her
petticoat for a black-bordered handkerchief.
"When you're in mourning so," she observed, "folks forget you. They
don't really forget you, either. But they get used to missing you
places, an' they don't always remember to miss you. I did appreciate
your inviting me to-day so. Because I'm just as fond of meeting my
friends as I was before the chief died."
And when I had made an end of murmuring something:--
"Really," she went on placidly, "it ought to be the custom to go out in
society when you're in mourning if you never did any other time. You
need distraction then if you ever needed it in your life. An' the chief
would 'a' been the first to feel that too. He was very partial to going
out in company."
And when I had made an end of murmuring something else:--
"You were very thoughtful to give me an invitation for this afternoon,"
she said. "An' I felt that I must stop in an' tell you so, even if I
couldn't attend."
Serenely she spread her black crape fan and swayed it. In the
dining-room my guests proceeded with their lonely salad toward a
probable lonely dessert. At thought of that dessert and of that salad, a
suggestion, partly impulsive and partly flavoured with some faint
reminiscence, at once besieged me, and in it I divined a solution of the
moment.
"Mrs. Merriman," I said eagerly, "may I send you in a cup of strawberry
ice? I've some early strawberries from the city."
She turned on me her great dark eyes, with their flat curve of shadow
accenting her sadness.
"I'm sure you are very kind," she said simply. "An' I should be pleased,
I'm sure."
I rose, hesitating, longing to say what I had in mind.
"I'd really like your opinion," I said, "on rather a new salad I'm
trying. Now would you not--"
"A salad?" Mis' Merriman repeated. "The chief," she said reflectively,
"was very partial to all green salads. I don't think men usually care
for them the way he did."
"Dear Mrs. Merriman," said I at this, "a cup of bouillon and a bit of
chicken breast and a drop of creamed cauliflower--"
"Oh," she murmured, "really, I couldn't think--"
And when I had made my cordial insistence she looked up at me for a
moment solemnly, over her crape fan. I thought that her eyes with that
flat, underlying curve of shadow were as if tears were native to them.
Her grief and the usages of grief had made of her some one other than
her first self, some one circumscribed, wary of living.
"Oh," she said wistfully, "I ain't had anything like that since I went
into mourning. If you don't think it would be disrespectful to him--?"
"I am certain that it would not be so," I assured her, and construed her
doubting silence as capitulation.
So I filled a tray with all the dainties of our little feast, and my
maid carried it to her where she sat, and then to us at table served
dessert. And my strange party went forward with seven guests in my
dining-room and one mourner at supper in my living-room.
"How very, _very_ delicate!" said Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in an emphatic
whisper. "Mis' Fire Chief Merriman is a very superior woman, an' she
always does the delicate thing."
And now as I met Calliope's eyes I saw that the dear little woman was
looking at me with a manner of unmistakable pride. In spite of her
warning to me and what she thought had been its justification during the
supper, here was an occasion to reveal to me a delicacy unequalled.
Thereafter, in deference to my mourning guest in the next room, we all
dropped our voices and talked virtually in whispers. And when at last we
rose from the table, complete silence had come upon us.
Then, the tray not having yet been brought from that other room, I
confess to having found myself somewhat uncertain how to treat a
situation so out of my experience. But the kind heart of my dear Mis'
Amanda Toplady was the dictator.
"Now," she whispered, tip-toeing, "we must all go in an' speak to her.
Poor woman--she don't call anywheres, an' she stays in mournin' so long
folks have kind o' dropped off goin' to see her. Let's walk in an' be
rill nice to her."
Mis' Fire Chief Merriman sat as I had left her, and the tray was before
her on my writing-table. She looked up gravely and greeted them all, one
by one, without rising. We sat about her in a circle and spoke to her
gently on subjects decently allied to her grief: on the coming meeting
of the Cemetery Improvement Sodality; on the new styles in mourning; on
the deaths in Friendship during the winter; and on two cases of typhoid
fever recently developed in the town. (The Fire Chief had died of
"walking typo.") And Mis' Merriman, gravely partaking of strawberry ice
and cake and bonbons, listened and replied and, with the last morsel,
rose to take her leave.
It was then that my unlucky star shone effulgent. For, as she was
shaking hands all round:--
"Oh, Mrs. Merriman," I said, with the gentlest intent, "would you care
to come out to see my dining-room? My Flowering-currant was very early
this year--"
To my horrified amazement Mis' Fire Chief Merriman lifted her
black-bordered handkerchief to her face and broke into subdued sobbing.
Suddenly I understood that all the others were looking at me in a kind
of reproachful astonishment. My bewilderment, mounting for an instant,
was precipitately overthrown by the sobbing woman's words.
"Oh," Mis' Merriman said indistinctly, "I'm much obliged to you, I'm
sure. But how can you think I would? I haven't looked at lanterns an'
bunting an' such things since the Fire Chief died. I don't know how I'm
ever going to stand the Carnival!"
In deep distress I apologized, and found myself adrift upon a sea of
uncharted classifications. Here were niceties of distinction which
escaped my ruder vision, trained to the mere interchange of signals in
smooth sailing or straight tempest, on open water. But I knew with grief
that I had given her pain--that was clear enough; and in my confusion
and wish to make amends, I caught up from their jar on the hall table my
Flowering-currant boughs and thrust them in her hands.
"Ah," I begged breathlessly, "at all events, take these!"
On which she drew away from me and shook her head and fairly fled down
the path, her floating crape brushing the mother bushes of my offending
offering. And I was helplessly aware that sympathetic silence had fallen
on the others and that the sympathy was not for me.
"But what on earth was the matter?" I entreated my guests.
It was that great Mis' Amanda Toplady who slipped her arm about me and
explained.
"When we've got any dead belongin' to us," she said, "we always carry
all the flowers we get to the grave--an', of course, we don't feel we
_can_ carry them that's been used for a company. It's the same with Mis'
Fire Chief. An' she can't bear even to see flowers an' things that's
fixed for a company, either. Of course, that's her privilege."
Mis' Sykes took my hands.
"You come here so lately," she said, "you naturally wouldn't know what's
what in these things, here in Friendship. An' then, of course, Mis' Fire
Chief Merriman is very, _very_ delicate."
Calliope linked her arm in mine.
"Don't you mind," she whispered; "we're all liable to our mistakes."
* * * * *
Half an hour after tea my guests took leave.
"I enjoyed myself so much," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss; "you
look tired out. I hope it ain't been too much for you."
"Entertainin' is a real job," said Mis' Sturgis, "but you do it almost
as if you liked it. I enjoyed myself _so_ much."
"I'll give bail you're glad it's over," said Libbie Liberty,
sympathetically, "even if it did go off nice. I enjoyed myself ever so
much."
"_Ever_ so much," murmured Miss Lucy, laughing heartily.
"Good night. Everything was lovely. I enjoyed myself very much," Mis'
Postmaster Sykes told me. "And," she said, "you'll hear from me very,
_very_ soon in return for this."
"Now don't you overdo, reddin' up to-night," advised my dear Mis' Amanda
Toplady. "Just pick up the silver an' rense it off, an' let the dishes
set till mornin', _I_ say. I _did_ enjoy myself so much."
"Good-by," Calliope whispered in the hall. "Oh, it was beautiful. I
_never_ felt so special. Thank you--thank you. An'--you won't mind those
things we said at the supper table?"
"Oh, Calliope," I murmured miserably, "I've forgotten all about them."
I went out to the veranda with her. At the foot of the steps the others
had paused in consultation. Hesitating, they looked up at me, and Mis'
Sykes became their spokesman.
"If I was you," she said gently, "I wouldn't feel too cut up over that
slip o' yours to Mis' Merriman. She'd ought not to see blunders where
they wasn't any meant. It'd ought to be the heart that counts, _I_ say.
Good-by. We enjoyed ourselves very, _very_ much!"
They went down the path between blossoming bushes, in the late afternoon
sun. And as Calliope followed,--
"That's so about the heart, ain't it?" she said brightly.
XVI
WHAT IS THAT IN THINE HAND?
"Busy, busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy. And busy ..."
"There goes Ellen Ember, crazy again," we said, when we heard that cry
of hers, not unmelodious nor loud, echoing along Friendship streets.
Then we usually ran to the windows and peered at her. Sometimes her long
hair would be unbound on her shoulders, sometimes her little figure
would be leaping lightly up as she caught at the lowest boughs of the
curb elms, and sometimes her hand would be moving swiftly back and forth
above her heart.
"If your heart is broken," she had explained to many, "you can lace it
together with 'Busy, busy, busy ...' Sing it and see! Or mebbe your
heart is all of a piece?"
Once, when I had gone to Miss Liddy's house, I had found Ellen in a
skirt fashioned of an old plaid shawl of her father's, her bare
shoulders wound in the rosy "nubia" that had been her mother's, and she
was dancing in the dining-room, with surprising grace, as Pierrette
might have danced in Carnival, and singing, in a sweet, piping voice, an
incongruous little song:--
O Day of wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you,
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue--blue!
"I made that up," she had explained, "or I guess mebbe I remembered it
from deep in my skull. I like the feel of it in my mouth when I speak
the words."
I used to think that Miss Liddy was really a less useful citizen than
Ellen. For though Miss Liddy worked painstakingly at her dressmaking,
and even dreamed over it little partial dreams, Ellen, mad or sane, made
a garden, and threw little nosegays over our fences, and exercised a
certain presence, latent in the rest of us, which made us momentarily
gentle and in awe of our own sanity.
When, one spring morning, a week before the Friendship Carnival, she
passed down Daphne Street with her plaintive, musical "Busy, busy,
busy ..." Doctor June and the young Reverend Arthur Bliss sat on Doctor
June's screened-in porch discussing a deficit in the Good Shepherd's
Orphans' Home fund for the fiscal year. Ever since the wreck of the
Through, Friendship had contributed to the support of the Home,--having
first understood then that the Home was its patient pensioner,--and now
it was almost like a compliment that we had been appealed to for help.
Doctor June listened with serene patience to what his visitor would say.
"Tension," said the Reverend Arthur Bliss, squaring his splendid young
shoulders, "tension. Warfare. We, as a church, are enormously equipped.
We have--shall we say?--the helmets of our intelligence and the swords
of our wills. Why, the joy of the fight ought to be to us like that of a
strong man ready to do battle, oughtn't it--oughtn't it?"
Doctor June, his straight white hair outlining his plump pink face,
nodded; but one would have said that it was rather less at the Reverend
Arthur than at his Van Houtii spiraea, which nodded back at him.
"My young friend," said Doctor June, "will you forgive me for saying
that it is fairly amazing to me how the church of God continues to use
the terms of barbarism? We talk of the peace that passeth understanding,
and yet we keep on employing metaphors of blood-red war. What does the
modern church want of a helmet and a sword, if I may ask? Even
rhetorically?"
"The Christian life is an eternal warfare against the forces of sin, is
it not?" asked the Reverend Arthur Bliss in surprise.
"Let me suggest," said Doctor June, "that all good life is an eternal
surrender to the forces of good. There's a difference."
The visitor from the city smiled very reverently.