non-combatants. You are by nature sanctified--and that I can well
believe."
"I am by nature a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly.
"Often--often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath--note how that
single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is
inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too
busy fighting, it may pass him by."
"But surely, sir," said the young clergyman, "you agree with me that a
man wins his way into the kingdom of light by both a staff and a sword?"
"You will perhaps forgive me for agreeing with nothing of the sort,"
said the doctor, mildly; "I hold that a man takes his way to the light
by grasping whatever the Lord puts in his hand--a hammer, a rope, a
pen--and grasping it hard."
"But the ungifted--what of the ungifted?" cried the Reverend Arthur
Bliss.
"In this sense, there are none," said Doctor June, briefly.
"Busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly
from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her,
his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft.
But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure
with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took
some steps of her dance before the gate, he questioned his host with
uplifted brows.
"A little mad," the doctor said, nodding, "like us all. She sings in the
streets of a glad morning, and dances now and then. We take ours out in
tangential opinions. It is nearly the same thing."
The young clergyman's face lighted responsively at this, and then he
deferentially clinched his argument.
"There is a case in point," said he. "That poor creature there--what has
the Lord put in her hand?"
Doctor June looked thoughtful.
"Nothing," he declared, "for any fight. But I'm not sure that she isn't
made to be a leaven. The kingdom of God works like a leaven, you know,
my dear young friend. Not like a dum-dum bullet."
"But--that poor creature. A leaven?" doubted the Reverend Arthur Bliss.
"I shouldn't wonder," said Doctor June, "I shouldn't wonder. I'm not so
sure as I used to be that I can recognize leaven at first sight."
"Ah, that's it!" cried his guest. "But a soldier, now, is a soldier!"
Then they smiled their lack of acquiescence, and went back to the
figures for the fiscal year.
An hour later Doctor June stood alone on his garden walk, aimlessly
poking about among his slips. He had done what he always did, following
close on the heels of his well-established resolution never to do it
again. He had pledged himself to try to raise one hundred dollars in
Friendship for a pet philanthropy.
"It's a kind of dissipation with me," he said, helplessly, and wandered
down to his gate. "If I read an article about the Congo Free State or
Women in India, it acts on me like brandy. I go off my head and give
away my substance, and involve innocent people. But then, of course,
this is different. It is always different."
Then he heard Ellen's little song again. "Busy, busy, busy ..." she
sang, and came round the corner from the town, catching at the lowest
branches of the curb elms and laughing a little. At Doctor June's gate
she halted and shook some lilacs at him.
"Here," she said, "put some on your coat for a patch on your heart so's
the break won't show. Ain't the Lord made the sun shine down this
morning? Did you know there's a Carnival comin' to town?"
"Like enough, Ellen," said Doctor June. "Like enough."
"_Is_ one," she persisted. "They said about it in the Post-Office--I
heard 'em. Dancin', an' parrots, an' jumpin' dogs."
He stood looking at her thoughtfully as she arranged her flowers,
singing under breath.
"Ellen," he said, "will you tell Miss Liddy a few of us are going to
meet here in my yard to-morrow afternoon, to talk over some
money-raising? And ask her to come?"
"I will," Ellen sang it, "I will an' I will. Did you mean me to come,
too?" she broke off wistfully.
"My stars, yes!" said Doctor June. "You're going to come early and help
me, aren't you? I took that for granted."
"Here's your lilacs," said Ellen, tossing him a nosegay. "I'll tell
Liddy while she's eatin'. Liddy don't like me to talk much when she's
workin'. But when she eats I can talk, an' I'll tell her then."
She went on, singing, and Doctor June shook his head.
"I don't know but Mr. Bliss is right," he said, "though I hope I can
keep my doubts to myself and not brag about 'em, just to be the style.
But it does look as if poor Ellen Ember came into the world
empty-handed. As if the Lord didn't give her much of anything to work
_with_."
Summons to a meeting to talk over money-raising is, in Friendship, like
the call to festivity in a different life. The cause never greatly
matters. Interests appear eclectically to range from ice to coral. For
let the news get about that there is to be a bazaar for China, a home
bakery sale for the missionary station at Trebizond, or a Japanese tea
for the Friendship cemetery fund, and we all sew or bake or lend dishes
or sell tickets with the same infinity of zeal. The enterprise in hand
absorbs our sense of the ultimate object; as when, after three days of
hand-to-hand battle to wrest money for the freedmen from the patrons of
a Kirmess at the old roller-skating rink, dear Mis' Amanda, secretary
and door-tender, handed over our $64.85 with the wondering question:--
"What do they mean by Freegman, anyway? What country is it they live
in?"
It was no marvel that Doctor June's garden was filled, that yellow
afternoon, with many eager for action. Some of us knew that there was an
Orphans' Home fund deficit; but more of us knew only that we were to
"talk over some money-raising." I remember how, from the garden seat
against the spiraea, the doctor faced us, all scattered about the
antlered walk and its triangle of green, erect on golden oak and bright
velvet chairs from within doors. And when he had told us of the shortage
to which we were party, instantly the talk emptied into channels of
possible pop-corn social, chicken-pie supper, rummage sale, art and loan
exhibit, Old Settlers' Entertainment, and so on. After which Doctor June
rose, and stood touching thoughtfully at the leaves which grew nearest,
while he essayed to turn our minds from chicken-pot-pie-part-veal, and
bib-aprons, to the eternal verities.
"My friends," he said, "isn't there a better way? Let us, this time,
give of our hearts' love to the little children of God, instead of
buying pies and freezing ice cream in His name."
There was, of course, an instant's hush in the garden. We were not used
to paradoxes, and we felt as concave images must feel when they first
look upon the world. It was as amazing as if we had been told that God
grieves with us instead of afflicting us, as we held.
"None of us has much money to give," Doctor June went on; "let us take
the way that lies nearest our hand, and make a little money. God never
permitted any normal human creature to come into His world unprovided
with some means of making it better. Only, let us get outside our bazaar
and chicken-pie faculties. Now what can we each do?"
We sat still for a little, tentatively murmuring; and then Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss stood up by the sweet-alyssum urn.
"Speakin' of what we can do," she said, "doin' ain't easy. Not when
you're well along in years. Your ways seem to stiffen up some. When I
was a girl, I could 'a' been quite an elocutionist if I could 'a' had
lessons. I had a reg'lar born sense o' givin' gestures. But I never
took. An' now I declare I don't know of anything I could do. It's the
same way, I guess, with quite a number of us."
Mis' Postmaster Sykes was in the arm-chair, and she sat still, queenly.
"I could do some o' my embroidery," she observed, "but it's quite
expensive stuff, an' I don't know whether it would sell rill well here
in Friendship. I'd be 'most afraid to risk. An' I don't do enough
cookin', myself, to what-you-might-say know how, any more."
"Same with my sewing," observed Mis' Doctor Helman; "I put it all out
now. I don't know as I could sew up a seam. That's the trouble, hiring
everything done so."
Those who did not hire everything done preserved a respectful silence.
And Doctor June looked up in the elm trees.
"The Lord," he said, "spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. The Lord
said unto Moses, 'What is that in thine hand?' Moses had, you remember,
nothing but a rod in his hand. But it was enough to let the people know
that God had been with him--that the Lord had appeared unto him. Suppose
the glory of the Lord, here in the garden, should ask us now, as it does
ask, 'What is that in thine hand?' What have we got?"
There was silence again, and we looked at one another doubtfully.
"Land, Doctor!" said Libbie Liberty then, "I been tryin' for two years
to earn a new parlour carpet, an' I ain't had nothin' in my hand to earn
with. So I keep on sayin' I _like_ an old Brussels carpet--they're so
easy to sweep."
"My!" said Abigail Arnold, "I declare, I'd be real put to it to try to
make extry money. 'Bout the only thing the Lord seems to 'a' put in my
hand is time. I've got oodles o' that, layin' 'round loose."
Mis' Photographer Sturgis was in the big garden chair, wrapped in a
shawl, her feet on an inverted flower-pot.
"I'm tryin' to think," she said, looking sidewise at the ground. "I
donno's I know how I could earn a cent, convenient. It ain't real easy
for women to earn. I think mebbe the Lord meant the men to be the
Moseses."
Mis' Amanda Toplady's voice rolled out, deep and comfortable, like a
complaisant giant's.
"Well said!" she remarked. "I'm drove to death all day. If anybody's to
ask me what I got in my hand, I declare I guess I'd say, rill reverent:
Dear Lord, I've got my hands full, an' that's about all I have got."
So we went on, saying much or little as was our nature, but we were all
agreed that we were virtually helpless--for Calliope was out of town
that week, and not present to shame us.
"What's in my hands?" said grim Miss Liddy Ember, finally, in her thin
falsetto. "Well, I ain't got any rill, what-you-might-call hands. I just
got kind o' cat's paws for my three meals a day an' my rent."
Then, by her sister's side, Ellen Ember stood up. We had hardly noticed
her, sitting there quietly playing with some of the doctor's flowers.
But now we saw that she had hurriedly twisted her splendid hair about
her head, and by this we understood that she was herself again. We had
seen her come to herself like this on the street, and then she would go
hurrying home, the tears running down her face in shame for her unbound
hair and her singing and dancing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
were shining as she rose now, and she looked appealingly pretty, one
hand, palm outward, half hiding her trembling mouth. By her soft eyes,
too, we knew that she was herself again.
"You all know," she began, and dare not trust herself. "You all
know ..." she said once more, and we understood what she would say.
"What can I do?" she cried to us. "What is there I can do? I ain't got
anything but my craziness! Oh, it seems like I _ain't_ much, an' so
I'd ought to _do_ all the more."
To soothe her, we took our woman's way of all talking at once. And then
Doctor June called out cheerily that he felt the way Ellen did, that he
wasn't a real Moses, for what had he--Doctor June--in his hand, and
didn't we all know there was no money in pills? And then he told us how
the Reverend Arthur Bliss was to be in town again on Wednesday of the
next week, and would we not all think the matter over quietly, and meet
with them on that evening, for cakes and tea?
"As many of you as can," he said, "come with a plan to earn a dollar,
and tell how you mean to do it. Ellen, you and I'll preside at the
meeting, and hear what the rest say, and keep real still ourselves, like
proper officers."
But Ellen Ember would not be comforted. She stood with that one hand,
palm outward, pressed against her lips, looking at us with big, brimming
eyes.
"I ain't got nothin' but my craziness, you know," she said over. And
then, as she was going through the gateway, she turned to Doctor June.
"Why, Wednesday's the first night o' the Carnival!" she cried. "You set
the dollar meetin' on the first night o' the Carnival!"
"My stars!" cried Doctor June, gravely. "And I might have been selling
pills on the grounds!"
* * * * *
All Friendship Village loves a Carnival. Once the word meant to me a
Florentine _fiesta_ day, with a feast of colour, and of many little fine
things, "real, like laughter." Now when I say "carnival" I mean the
painted eruption by night from the market square of some town like
Friendship, when lines broaden and waver grotesquely, when the mirth is
in great silhouettes and Colour goes unmasked.
I always make my way to such a place, for it holds for me the wonder of
the untoward; as will a strolling Italian plodding past my house at
night with his big, silent bear; or the spectacle of the huge, faded red
ice-wagon, with powerful horses and rattling chains and tongs, and
giants in blue denim atop the crystal; or the strange, copper world that
dissolves in the fluid of certain sunsets. And that Wednesday night, a
week later, on my way to the "dollar meeting" at Doctor June's, I turned
toward the Friendship Carnival with some vestige of my youth clinging to
the hem of things.
I gave my attention to them all: The pop-corn wagon, an aristocratic
affair that looked like a hearse; the little painted canaries and
love-birds, so out of place and patient that I thought they must have
souls to form as well as we; the sad little live monkey, incessantly
dodging white balls thrown at him by certain immortals (who, when they
hit him, got pipes); and the giant who flung "Look! Look! Look! Look!"
through a megaphone, while a good little dog toiled up a ladder and then
stood at the ladder's top in a silence that was all nice reticence and
dignity. Also, the huge Saxon fellow who, at the portal of the Arabian
Court of Art and Regular Cafe Restaurant, sang a love-song through a
megaphone--"Tenderly, dearest, I breathe thy sweet name," he hallooed,
with his free hand beckoning the crowd to the Court of Art.
And then I saw the Lyric Dance Arcade and Indian Palace of Asiatic
Mystery. And I found myself close to the platform, listening to the cry
of a man in gilt knickerbockers.
"Ladies! Gentlemen! All!" he summoned. "Never in the history of
the show business has there been anything resemblin' this. Come
here--here--here--here! See Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the
East, who is about to begin one of her most sublimely sensational
dances. See her, see her, you may never again see her! Graceful,
glittering, genteel. Graceful, glittering, gen-te-e-e-l. I am telling
you about Zorah, queen of the West and princess of the East, in her
ancient Asiatic dance, the most up-to-date little act in the entire show
business to-day. Here she is, waiting for you--you--you. Everybody
that's got the dime!"
Until he ceased, I had hardly noticed Zorah herself, standing in the
canvas portico. The woman had, I then observed, a kind of appealing
prettiness and a genuineness of pose. She was looking out on the crowd
with the usual manner of simulated shyness, but to the shyness was given
conviction by an uplifted hand, palm outward, hiding her mouth. I noted
her small, stained face, her splendid unbound hair--and then a certain
resemblance caught at my heart. And I saw that she was wearing a skirt
made of a man's plaid shawl, and about her shoulders was a rosy,
old-fashioned nubia. Her face and throat were stained, and so were her
thin little arms--but I knew her.
The performance, as the man had said, was about to begin, and already he
was giving Zorah her signal to go within. Somehow I bought a ticket and
hurried into the tent. The seats were sparingly occupied, and I saw, as
I would have guessed, no one whom I knew in the eager, stamping little
audience. In their midst I lost the slim figure that had preceded me,
until she mounted the platform and swept before the footlights a stately
courtesy.
And there, in the smoky little tent, Ellen Ember began to dance, with
her quite surprising grace--as Pierrette might have danced in Carnival.
It was the charming, faery measure which she had danced for me in Miss
Liddy's dining-room; and as she had sung to me then, so now, in a sweet
piping voice, she sang her incongruous little song:--
O Day of wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you,
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue--blue!
The slumbrous noon your body is,
Your feet are the shadow's flight,
But the immortal soul of you
Is Night.
It seemed to me that I sat for hours in that hot little place, cut off
from the world, watching. Again and again, to the brass blare of some
hoiden tune, she set the words of the lyric that "she liked the feel
of," and she danced on and on. And when at last the music shattered off,
and she ceased, and ran behind a screening canvas, somehow I made my way
forward through the crowd that was clapping hands and calling her back,
and I gained the place where she stood.
When I asked her to come with me, she nodded and smiled, with unseeing
eyes, and assented quite simply, and then suddenly sat down before the
lifted tent flap.
"But I must wait for my money," she said. "That's what I came for--my
money. They thought I'd never earn my dollar, but I have."
At this I understood. And now I marvel how I talked at all to the man in
gilt knickerbockers who arrived and haggled over the whole matter.
Zorah, he explained, the sure-enough Zorah, had took down sick in the
last place they made, an' they'd had to leave her behind. An' when he
told about it down town that morning, this little piece here had up an'
offered. Somethin' had to be done--he left it to me if they didn't. He
felt his duty to the amusement park public, him. So he had closed with
her for a dollar for three fifteen-minute turns--he give two shillings a
turn, on the usual, but she'd hung out stout for the even money. An'
she'd danced her three, odd but satisfactory. You could hand 'em queer
things in the show business, if you only dressed the part. Yes, sure,
here was the dollar. Be on hand to-morrow night? No? Sufferin' snakes,
but was we goin' to leave him shipwrecked?
Finally I got her away, and skirted the market-place with her dancing at
my side, shaking her silver dollar in her shut palms and singing:--
"Busy, busy, busy all the day. An' then I earned my dollar, my
dollar--they never thought I'd earn my dollar ..."
I remember, as we struck into the unlighted block where Miss Liddy's
house stood, that I was struggling hard for my own serenity, so that for
a moment I did not observe that Ellen stopped beside me. But I knew that
she fell silent, and when I turned I saw her there on the dark walk
hurriedly twisting her splendid hair about her head. And by that and by
her silence I understood that she was suddenly herself, and of her own
mind, as we say.
On this, "Ellen!" said I quickly, "how fine of you to have earned your
Orphans' Home dollar so soon. But you have beaten us all!"
She had contrived to fasten her hair, and I saw her touching tentatively
the folds of her strange dress. And so I made her know what she had
done, as gently as I might, and with all praise I stilled her dismay and
shame. And last I led her, as I was determined that I would do, past
Miss Liddy's dark little house and on to the home of Doctor June.
I think that I would not have dared take Ellen, just as she was, in her
plaid skirt and her rosy nubia, into that black and brown
henrietta-cloth assembly, if I had remembered that there was to be a
stranger present. But this, in the events of the hour, I had quite
forgotten. I remembered as I entered the room and came face to face with
the Reverend Arthur Bliss, talking of the figures for the fiscal year.
"--and the deficit," he was saying, "ought to be made up by us who are
so well equipped to do it. With Paul, let us fight the good fight--of
every day. This is to-day's fight. Now let us talk over our various
weapons."
Doctor June looked thoughtfully at his young guest, and in the older
face was a brooding tenderness, like the tenderness of the father who
longs to hold the child in quiet, in his arms.
"Yes," said Doctor June, "'fighting' is one name for it. I am tempted to
say that 'drudgery' is another name. Errantry, ministry, service, or
whatever. It all comes to the same thing: 'What is that in thine hand?'
Well, now, who of us is first?"
"I think," said I then, "that Ellen Ember is first."
She would have shrunk back from the doorway to the passage, but I put my
arm about her, and then I told them. And when I had done, I remember how
she threw up that pathetic hand of hers, palm outward, and this time it
was over her eyes.
"I'm a disgrace to all of you!" she said, sobbing, "an' to the whole
Good Shepherd's Home. But I guess anyhow it's all the way I had. Seems
like I ain't got nothin' in the world but my craziness!"
There was silence for a moment, that rich silence which flowers in the
heart. And then great Mis' Amanda Toplady spoke out, in her deep voice
which now she some way contrived to keep firm.
"Well said!" she cried. "I come here to say I'd give a dollar outright
to get red o' the whole thing, rather'n to fuss. But now I ain't goin'
to stop at a dollar. Seems like a dollar for me wouldn't be _moral_. I'm
goin' to sell some strawberry plants--why, we got hundreds of 'em to
spare. I can do it by turnin' my hand over. An' I expec' the Lord meant
you should turn your hand over to find out what's in it, anyway."
I think that then we tried our woman's way of all talking at once, but I
remember how the shrill voice of Abigail Arnold, of the home bakery,
rose above the others:--
"Cream puffs!" she cried. "I got a rush demand for my cream puffs every
Sat'day, an' I ain't been makin' 'em sole-because I hate to run after
the milk an' set it. An' I was goin' to get out o' this by givin' fifty
cents out o' the bakery till. An' me with my hands full o' cream
puffs...."
"Hens--hens is what mine is," Libbie Liberty was saying. "My grief, I
got both hands full o' hens. I wouldn't sell 'em because I can't bear to
hev any of 'em killed--they're tame as a bag o' feathers, all of 'em. I
guess I ben settin' the hens o' my hand over against the heathen an' the
orphans. An' now I'm goin' to sell spring chickens...."
Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair was waving a corner of her shawl.
"C-canaries!" she cried. "I can rise canary-birds an' sell 'em a dollar
apiece in the city. I m-meant to slide out account o' my health, but it
was just because I hate to muss 'round b-boilin' eggs for the little
ones. I'll raise a couple or two--mebbe more."
"My good land!" came Miss Liddy Ember's piping falsetto; "to think o' my
sittin' up, hesitatin', when new dresses just falls off the ends o' my
fingers. An' me in my right mind, too."
Dear Doctor June stood up among us, his face shining.
"Bless us," he said. "Didn't I have some spiraea in my hand right while I
stood talking to you the other afternoon in my garden? And haven't I got
some tricolored Barbary varieties of chrysanthemums, and some hardy
roses and one thing and another to make men marvel? And can't I sell 'em
in the city at a pretty profit? What I've got in my hand is seeds and
slips--I see that plain enough. And my stars, out they go!"
Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Mayor Uppers, even Mis'
Postmaster Sykes--ah, they all knew what to do, knew it as if somebody
had been saying it over and over, and as if they now first listened.
But Ellen Ember sat crying, her face buried in her hands. And I think
that she cannot have understood, even when Doctor June touched her hair
and said something of the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump.
Last, the Reverend Arthur Bliss arose, and there was a sudden hush among
us, for it was as if a new spirit shone in his strong young face.
"Dear friends," he said, "dear friends ..." And then, "Lord God," he
prayed abruptly, "show me what is that in my hand--thy tool where I had
looked for my sword!"
XVII
PUT ON THY BEAUTIFUL GARMENTS
"I donno," Calliope said, as, on her return, we talked about Ellen
Ember, "I guess I kind o' believe in craziness."
Calliope's laugh often made me think of a bluebird's note, which is to
say, of the laughter of a child. Bluebirds are the little children among
birds, as robins are the men, house-wrens the women, scarlet tanagers
the unrealities and humming-birds the fairies.