leave word for Abel to follow me--and we were letting in the sun, making
ready the table, filling the vases with garden roses; and in the library
Calliope laid a fire "in case they get chilly, travellin' so," she said,
but I think rather it was in longing somehow to summon a secret agency
to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been
agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be
told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held
a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time
held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new
meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its
vines and its climbing rose and its canaries:--
"I marvel, I _marvel_ at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear
place and the dear people for me?"
I love to recall the bustle of that arriving and how, as the motor came
up the drive, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and Mis' Amanda ran down
on the gravel and waved their aprons; and how Mis' Postmaster Sykes and
Mis' Mayor Uppers and Mis' Photographer Sturgis, having heard the
machine pass their doors, had issued forth and followed it and arrived
at the Proudfits' with:
"I was right in the midst of a basque, cuttin' over an old lining, but I
told Liddy Ember: 'You rip on. I've _got_ to run over.' Excuse my looks.
Well said! Back!"
And, "Got here, did you? My, my, all tired out, I expect. Well, mebbe
you think we won't feel relieved to see the house open again an' folks
in it flyin' round. An' you look as natural as the first thunder-storm
in the spring o' the year!"
And, "Every day for two weeks," Mis' Sturgis said, "I've said to Jimmy:
'Proudfits back?' 'No, sir,' s'he, 'not back yet.' An' so it went. Could
you sleep any on the sleeper?"
Then Calliope and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb and the three newcomers
hurried all but abreast to the kitchen to "see what they could find";
and when Mis' Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia More had taken
their places at the burdened table, we all sat about the edge of the
room--no one would share in the feast, every one having to "get right
back"--and asked of the journey, and gave news of Friendship Village in
the long absence. I love to remember it all, but I think that I love
best to remember their delicate acceptance of what that day had brought
to me. Of this no one said a word, nor did they ask me anything, or seem
to observe, far less to wonder. But when they passed me, one and another
and another squeezed my hand or patted my arm or gave me their unwonted
"dear."
"What gentlefolk they are," my stranger said.
"Noon lunch" was finished, and I had seen Calliope go with Madame
Proudfit to the library and close the door, and we were all gathered in
the hall, where Miss Clementina had opened a trunk and was showing us
some pretty things, when some one else crossed the veranda and appeared
in the doorway. And there was Abel, come with my wild roses.
I do not think, however, that it can have occurred to Abel that I was in
the room. Nor that any of the others were there, intent on the pretty
things of Miss Clementina's trunk. But, his face shining, he went
straight to Delia More; and he laid my roses in her arms, looking at her
the while with a look which was like a passionate recognition of one not
met for many years.
I have said nothing of Delia More as she seemed to me that day of her
return, for indeed I do not well know how to tell of her. But as he
looked at her, it was all in Abel's eyes. I do not know whether it was
that her spirit having been long "packed down in her," as Calliope had
said, was at last loosed by the mysterious ministry of distance and the
touch of far places, or whether, over there nearer Tempe, she had held
converse with Daphne herself, who, for the sake of the Friendship bond
between them, had taken for her own all that was wild and strange in the
girl's nature. But this I know: that Delia More had come back among us a
new creature, simple, gentle, humble as before, and yet somehow
quickened, invested with the dignity of personality which, long ago, she
had lost. And now she stood looking at Abel as he was looking at her.
"Delia!" he said, and took her hand, and, "I brought you some wild roses
to tell you we're glad you're back," said he, disposing of my hedge
spoils as coolly as if I were not.
"That's nice of you, Abel," she replied simply, "but it's nicer to think
you came."
"Why," Abel said, "you couldn't have kept me away. You couldn't have
kept me away, Delia."
He could not have done looking at her. And even after we had closed in
before them and had gone on with our talk about the tray of the trunk, I
think that we were all conscious, as one is conscious of a light in the
room, that to Delia and Abel had come again the immemorial wonder.
When the library door opened and Madame Proudfit and Calliope came out,
a little hush fell upon us, even though none but I knew what that
interval held for Linda's mother. Her face was tranquil--indeed, I think
it was almost as if its ancient fear had forever left it and had given
place to the blessed relief of mere sorrow. She stood for a
moment--looking at them all, and looking, as if she were thankful for
their presence. Then she saw Abel and held out both hands.
"Abel!" she said, "Abel! I had your letter in Lucerne. I meant to talk
it over with you--but now I know, I know. You shall have your little
chapel in the hills. We will build it together--you and I--for Linda."
But then, because Abel turned joyously and naturally to Delia to share
with her the tidings, Madame Proudfit looked at Delia too, and saw her
eyes. And,
"You and Delia and I," she added gently.
On which, with the kindliest intent, the happiness of us all overflowed
in speech about the common-place, the trivial, the irrelevant, and we
all fell talking at once there in the hall, and told one another things
which we knew perfectly already, and we listened, nodding, and laughed a
great deal at nothing in the world--save that life is good.
* * * * *
We three walked home together in the afternoon sunshine--the man who,
through all this time in Friendship, had been dear, and Calliope and I.
I thought that Daphne Street had never looked so beautiful. The tulip
beds on the lawns had been re-filled for summer, a touch of bonfire
smoke hung in the air, Eppleby Holcomb was mending his picket gate, and
over many magic thresholds of the cool walks were lintels of the boughs.
Down town Abigail Arnold was laying cream puffs in the home bakery
window; at the Helmans' Mis' Doctor Helman, wound in a shawl and a
fascinator, was training her matrimony vine; the Liberty sisters had let
out their chickens and, posted in a great triangle, were keeping them
well within Liberty lawn confines; Doctor June was working in his garden
and he waved his hat at us like a boy. ("It's a year ago now they give
him his benefit," Calliope remembered; "ice-cream an' strawberries an'
cake. An' every soul that come in he treated, one after another. An'
when they got hold of him an' told him what that was doin' to the
benefit box, he wanted to know whose benefit it was, anyway. An' he kep'
on treatin' folks up to the last spoonful o' cream. He said he never had
such a good time since he was born. I donno but he showed us _how_ to
give a benefit, too.")
We were crossing the lawn to Oldmoxon House when I said to Calliope what
it had been decided that day that I should say:--
"Calliope," I asked, "could you be ready in a month or two to leave
Friendship for good, and come to us in town, and live with us for
always?"
She looked up at one and the other of us, with her little embarrassed
laugh.
"You're makin' fun o' me," she said.
But when we had explained that we were wholly serious, she stopped and
leaned against one of the great trees before the house; and it was at
Oldmoxon House rather than at us that she looked as she answered:--
"I couldn't," she said quickly, and with a manner of breathlessness, "I
couldn't. You know how I've wanted to leave Friendship, too, you know
that. An' I want to yet, as far as wantin' goes. But wantin' to mustn't
be enough to make you do things."
She stood, her head held up as if she were singing, as Liddy Ember had
said of her, her arms tightly folded, her cheeks flushing with her fear
that we would not understand.
"Oh," she said, "you know--you _know_ how I've always wanted nice
things. Wanted 'em so it hurt. Not just from likin' 'em, either, but
because some way I thought I could _be_ more, _do_ more, live up to my
biggest best if I could only get where things was kind of educated
an'--gentle. But every time I tried to go, somethin' come up--like it
will, to shove you hard down into the place you was. Then I thought--you
know 'bout that, I guess--I thought I was goin' to live here in Oldmoxon
House, an' hev a life like other women hev. An' when that wasn't to be,
I thought mebbe it was because God see I wasn't fit for it, an' I set to
work on myself to make me as good as I knew--an' I worked an' worked,
like life was nothin' but me, an' I was nothin' but a cake, to get a
good bake on an' die without bein' too much dough to me. An' then all to
once I see that couldn't be the only thing He meant. It didn't seem like
He could 'a' made me sole in order to save me from hell. An' I begun to
see He must 'a' made me to help in some great, big hid plan or other of
His. An' quick as I knew that an' begun wantin' to help, He begun
showin' me when to. That's how I mean what I said about the Bell. Times
like Elspie, or 'Leven, or like that, I can hear it just as plain as
plain--the Bell, callin' me to help Him."
She looked hard at us, and, "I donno if you know what I'm talkin'
about----" she doubted; but, at our answer,
"Well," she added, "they's somethin' else. It's somethin' almost like
what you've got--you two--an' like what Delia an' Abel have got. Lately,
I don't _need_ to hear the Bell any more. I know 'bout it without. It's
almost like I _am_ the Bell. Don't you see, it's come to be my power,
just like love will be your power, if you rilly understand. An'
here--here I know how. I've grown to Friendship, an' here I know what's
what. An' if I went away now, where things is gentle an' like in books,
I wouldn't know how to be any rill use. I can _be_ the Bell here--here I
can have my power. In town I expect I couldn't be anything but just cake
again--bakin' myself rill good, or even gettin' frosted; but mebbe not
helpin'. An' I couldn't risk that--I couldn't risk it. It looks to me
like helpin' is what I'm for."
I think, as she said, Calliope was become the Bell; and at that moment
she rang to us the call of sovereign clearness. This was the life that
she and Abel followed, and followed before all else, and there lay the
hiding of their power. "Just like love will be your power," she had
said.
When she had gone before us into the house--that was to have been her
house--we two stood looking along the sunny Plank Road toward Daphne
Street. And in the light lifting of the bonfire smoke it seemed to me
that there moved a spirit--not Daphne, but another; one who walks less
in beauty than in service; not our lady of the laurels, but our lady of
the thorns.
GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
DRAMATIZED NOVELS
A Few that are Making Theatrical History
MARY JANE'S PA. By Norman Way. Illustrated with scenes from the play.
Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find
himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he
wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most
humorous bits of recent fiction.
CHERUB DEVINE. By Sewell Ford.
"Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man is brought in
touch with the aristocracy. Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a
merciless analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more
than ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the
flock.
A WOMAN'S WAY. By Charles Somerville. Illustrated with scenes from the
play.
A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her
husband from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently
tragic situation into one of delicious comedy.
THE CLIMAX. By George C. Jenks.
With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little
village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Judo's to
train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets
love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she
works, how she studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.
A FOOL THERE WAS. By Porter Emerson Browne. Illustrated by Edmund
Magrath and W. W. Fawcett.
A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the
influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on,
how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make
a story of unflinching realism.
THE SQUAW MAN. By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin Milton Royle.
Illustrated with scenes from the play.
A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine
courageous hero and a beautiful English heroine.
THE GIRL IN WAITING. By Archibald Eyre. Illustrated with scenes from the
play.
A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a
venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities.
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. By Baroness Orczy. Illustrated with scenes from
the play.
A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in
dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring,
mysterious as the hero.
Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York