been next best to _goin'_. 'Seems sometimes as if I've 'most been
somewheres an' seen palms a-growin' an' a-wavin' an' a red sky back.
Don't it to you? I've dreamed o' them places all my life, an' I ain't
never had anything but Friendship Village, an' I don't know now that
Arabia an' Asia an' India is rilly fitted in, the way they look on the
map. An' so with some more. But if so be they are, then,' she says, 'we
owe it to the Foreign Missionary Circle that we've got that far towards
seein' 'em.'
"An' we all agreed, warm, excep' Mis' Sykes, who was the hostess an' too
busy to talk much; but we knew how she felt. An' we said some more about
how wonderful things are, there in Mis' Sykes's kitchen while we et.
"Well, when we got done decoratin' after supper, we all walked over to
the post-office store to the sale--the whole Circle of us. Because, of
course, if the letters was to be sold there wasn't any harm in seein'
who got 'em, an' in knowin' just how mean who was. Then, too, we was
interested in what was in the two trunks. We was quite early--early
enough to set along on the front rows of breakfast-food boxes that was
fixed ready. An' in the very frontmost one was Mis' Sykes an' Mis'
Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, an' me.
"But we see, first thing when we got into the store, that they was
strangers present. The three travellin' men that Mis' Sykes an' I had
noticed that afternoon was still in town, of course, an' there they was
to the sale, loungin' along on the counter each side o' the cheese. We
couldn't bear their bein' there. It was our sale, an' they wasn't rill
sure to understand. To us Mr. Pitlaw hed been Mr. Pitlaw. To them he was
just somebody that hed been somebody. I didn't like it, nor they didn't
none o' the Ladies' Missionary like it. We all looked at each other an'
nodded without it showin', like we do, an' we could see we all felt the
same.
"Silas was goin' to officiate himself--that man has got the idee it's
the whistle that runs the boat. They had persuaded him to open the
trunks an' sell the things off piecemeal, an' he see that was rilly the
only way to do it. So when the time come he broke open the two trunks
an' he wouldn't let anybody touch hasp or strap or hammer but himself.
It made me sort of sick to see even the trunk things of Mr. Pitlaw's
come out--a pepper an' salt suit, a pair of new suspenders, a collar
an' cuff case--the kind that you'd recognize was a Christmas present; a
nice brush an' comb he'd kept for best an' never used, a cake of
pretty-paper soap he'd never opened, a bunch o' keys, an' like that. You
know how it makes you feel to unpack even your own things that have been
put away a good while; it's like thinkin' over forgot thoughts. Well,
an' this was worse. Jem Pitlaw, that none of us had known well enough to
mention familiar things to, was dead--he was _dead_; an' here we were,
lookin' on an' seein' the things that was never out of his room before,
an' that he'd put in there, neat an' nice, five years back, to be took
out, he thought, in a few weeks. Quite a lot of us felt delicate, but
some got behind the delicate idee an' made it an excuse for not buyin'
much. They's all kinds to a sale--did you ever notice? Timothy Toplady,
for instance--I donno but he's all kinds in his single self. 'Seems he
couldn't bring himself to bid on a thing but Jem Pitlaw's keys.
"'Of course nobody knows what they'll fit,' says he, disparagin', 'so to
buy 'em don't seem like bein' too familiar with Mr. Pitlaw,' s'he, rill
pleased with himself.
"But Mis' Sykes whispers to me:--
"'Them keys'll go dirt cheap, an' Timothy knows it, an' a strange key
may come in handy any minute. Timothy's reasons never whip to a froth,'
s'she, cold.
"But I guess she was over-critical because of gettin' more fidgety, like
we all did, the nearer Silas got to the letters. He hed left the letters
till the last. An' what with folks peekin' in the box since he'd brought
it down, an' what with handlin' what was ready to spill out, most of 'em
by then was in plain sight. An' there I see more o' them same
ones--little thin writin', like a woman's. We 'most all noticed it. An'
I couldn't keep my eyes off of 'em. 'Seemed like she might be somebody
with soft ways that ought to be there, savin' the letters, wardin' off
the heartache for Mr. Pitlaw an' mebbe one for herself.
"An' right while I was lookin' Silas turned to the box and cleared his
throat, important as if he was the whistle for New York City, an' he
lifted up the bunch of the letters that had the little fine writin' on
top, just the way Mr. Pitlaw had tied 'em up with common string.
"'Oh!' says Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes, each side of me, the one 'oh!'
strong an' the other low, but both 'oh's' meanin' the same thing.
"'Now, what,' says Silas, brisk, 'am I bid for this package of nice
letters here? Good clear writin', all in strong condition, an' no holes
in, just as firm an' fresh,' s'he, 'as the day they was dropped into
the mail. What am I bid for 'em?' he asks, his eyebrows rill expectant.
"Not one of the travellin' men had bid a thing. They had sat still, just
merely loungin' each side the cheese, laughin' some, like men will,
among each other, but not carin' to take any part, an' we ladies felt
rill glad o' that. But all of a sudden, when Silas put up the bunch o'
letters, them three men woke up, an' we see like lightnin' that this was
what they hed been waitin' for.
"'Twenty-five cents!' bids one of 'em, decisive.
"There was a movement of horror spread around the Missionary Circle at
the words. Sometimes it's bad enough to hev one thing happen, but often
it's worse to hev another occur. Even Silas looked a little doubtful,
but to Silas the main chance is always the main thing, an' instantly he
see that these men, if they got in the spirit of it, would run them
letters up rill high just for the fun of it. An' Silas was like some
are: he felt that money is money.
"So what did he do but begin cryin' the goods up higher--holdin' the
letters in his hands, that little, thin writin' lookin' like it was
askin' somethin'.
"'Here we hev letters,' says Silas, 'letters from Away. Not just
business letters, to judge by the envelopes--an' I allow, gentlemen,'
says Silas, facetious, 'that, bein' postmaster of Friendship Village,
I'm as good a judge of letters as there is a-goin'. Here we hev some
intimate personal letters offered for sale legitimate by their heiress.
What am I bid?' asks he.
"'Thirty-five cents!'
"'Fifty cents!' says the other two travellin' gentlemen, quick an' in
turn.
"'Seventy-five cents!' cries out the first, gettin' in earnest--though
they was all laughin' at hevin' somethin' inspirin' to do.
"But Silas merely caught a-hold of the mood they was in, crafty, as if
he'd been gettin' the signers to his petition while they was feelin'
good.
"'One moment, gentlemen!' s'he. 'Do you know what you're biddin' on? I
ain't told you the half yet,' s'he. 'I ain't told you,' s'he, 'where
these letters come from.'
"With that he hitches his glasses an' looked at the postmarks. An' he
read 'em off. Oh, an' what do you guess them postmarks was? I'll never
forget the feelin' that come over me when I heard what he was sayin',
turnin' back in under the string to see. For the stamps on the letters
was foreign stamps. The postmarks was foreign postmarks. An' what Silas
read off was: Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Singapore--oh, I can't begin to
remember all the names nor to pronounce 'em, but I think they was all in
India, or leastwise in Asia. Think of it! in Asia, that none of the
Ladies' Foreign Missionary Circle hed been sure there was such a place.
"I know how we all looked around at each other sudden, with the same
little jump in the chest as when we remember we've got bread in the oven
past the three-quarters, or when we've left the preserves on the blaze
while we've done somethin' else an' think it's burnin', or when we've
cut out both sleeves for one arm an' ain't got any more cloth. I mean it
was that intimate, personal jump, like when awful, first-person things
have happened. An' I tell you what, when the Ladies' Missionary feels a
thing, they feel it strong an' they act it sudden. It's our way, as a
Circle. An' in that look that went round among us there was hid the nod
that knows what each other means.
"'One dollar!' shouts one o' the travellin' men.
"An' with that we all turned, like one solid human being, straight
towards Mis' Postmaster Sykes, that was our president an' a born leader
besides, an' the way we looked at her resembled a vote.
"Mis' Sykes stood up, grave an' scairt, though not to show. An' we was
sure she'd do the right thing, though we didn't know what the right
thing was; but we felt confidence, I know, in the very pattern on the
back of her shawl. An' she says, clear:--
"'I'd like to be understood to bid for the whole box o' Mr. Pitlaw's
letters, includin' the bunch that's up. An' I bid five dollars.'
"Of course we all knew in a minute what that meant: Mis' Sykes was
biddin' with the proceeds of the Ten Cent Tropical Fête that was to be.
But we see, too, that this was a missionary cause if there ever was one,
an' they wa'n't one of us that thought it irregular, or grudged it, or
looked behind.
"I don't know whether you know how much five dollars rilly is--like you
sense it when you've spoke it to a sale, or put it on a subscription
paper in Friendship. There wasn't a sound in that store, everybody was
so dumfounded. But none was so much as Silas Sykes. Silas was so
surprised that he forgot that he was in public.
"'My King!' says he, unexpected to himself. 'What you sayin', Huldy? You
ain't biddin' that out o' your allowance, be you?' says he. Silas likes
big words in the home.
"'No, sir,' says she, crisp, back, 'I ain't. I can't do miracles out of
nothin'. But I bid, an' you'll get your money, Silas. An' I may as well
take the letters now.'
"With that she rose up an' spread out her shawl almost broodin', an'
gathered that box o' Jem Pitlaw's into her two arms. An' with one motion
all the rest o' the Ladies' Missionary got up behind her an' stalked out
of the store, like a big bid is sole all there is to an auction. An'
they let us go. Why, there wasn't another thing for Silas Sykes to do
but let be as was. Them three men over by the cheese just laughed, an'
said out somethin' about no gentleman outbiddin' a lady, an' shut up,
beat, but pretendin' to give in, like some will.
"Just before we all got to the door we heard somebody's feet come down
off'n a cracker-barrel or somethin', an' Timothy Toplady's voice after
us, shrill-high an' nervous:--
"'Amanda,' s'he, 'you ain't calculatin' to help back up this
tomfoolishness, I hope?'
"An' Mis' Amanda says at him, over her shoulder:
"'If I was, that'd be between my hens an' me, Timothy Toplady,' says
she.
"An' the store door shut behind us--not mad, I remember, but gentle,
like 'Amen.'
"We took the letters straight to Mis' Sykes's an' through the house to
the kitchen, where there was a good hot fire in the range. It was bitter
cold outdoors, an' we set down around the stove just as we was, with the
letters on the floor in front o' the hearth. An' when Mis' Sykes hed got
the bracket lamp lit, she turned round, her bonnet all crooked but her
face triumphant, an' took off a griddle of the stove an' stirred up the
coals. An' we see what was in her mind.
"'We can take turns puttin' 'em in,' she says.
"But I guess it was in all our minds what Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss says, wistful:--
"'Don't you think,' she says, 'or _do_ you think, it'd be wrongin' Mr.
Pitlaw if we read over the postmarks out loud first?'
"We divided up the bunches an' we set down around an' untied the
strings, an', turn in an' turn out, we read the postmarks off. 'Most
every one of 'em was foreign--oh, I can't begin to tell you where. It
was all mixed up an' shinin' of names we'd never heard of before, an'
names we had heard in sermons an' in the Bible--Egypt an' Greece an'
Rome an' isles o' the sea. Mis' Toplady stopped right in the middle o'
hers.
"'Oh, I can't be sure I'm pronouncin' 'em right,' she says, huntin' for
her handkerchief, 'but I guess you ladies get the _feel_ o' the places,
don't you?'
"An' that was just it: we did. We got the feel of them far places that
night like we never could hev hed it any other way. An' when we got all
through, Mis' Toplady spoke up again--but this time it was like she flew
up a little way an' lit on somethin'.
"'It ain't likely,' she says, 'that we'll ever, any of us, hev a letter
of our own from places like these. We don't get many letters, an' what
we do get come from the same old towns, over an' over again, an' quite
near by. Do you know,' she says, 'I believe this Writin' here'--she held
out the tiny fine writing that was like a woman with soft ways--'would
understand if we each took one of her letters an' glued it together here
an' now an' carried it home an' pasted it in our Bibles. _She_ went
travellin' off to them places, an' she must have wanted to; an' she
would know what it is to want to go an' yet never get there.'
"I think Mis' Amanda was right--we all thought so. An' we done what she
mentioned, an' made our choice o' postmarks. I know Mis' Amanda took
Cairo.
"''Count of the name sort o' picturin' out a palm tree a-growin' an'
a-wavin' against a red sky,' she says, when she was pinnin' her shawl
clear up over her hat to go out in the cold. 'Think of it,' she says;
'she might 'a' passed a palm the day she wrote it. Ain't it like seein'
'em grow yourself?'
... "Mebbe it all wasn't quite regular," Calliope added, "though we made
over five dollars at the Ten Cent Fête. But the minister, when we told
him, he seemed to think it was all right, an' he kep' smilin', sweet an'
deep, like we'd done more'n we _had_ done. An' I think he knew what we
meant when we said we was all feelin' nearer, lion an' lamb, to them
strange missionary countries. Because--oh, well, sometimes, you know,"
Calliope said, "they's things that makes you feel nearer to faraway
places that couldn't hev any postmark at all."
XV
PETER
Last night in my room there was no sleeping, because the moon was there.
It is a south room, and when the moon shines on the maple floor with its
white cotton rugs and is reflected from the smooth white walls, to step
within is like entering an open flower. Who could sleep in an open
flower? I might sleep in a vast white petunia, because petunias do not
have as much to say to me as do some other flowers. But in the bell of a
lily, as in the bell of the sky or in my moonlit room, I should wish my
thought to stay awake and be somebody. Be Somebody. On these nights, it
is as if one had a friend in one's head conferring with one. And I think
of this comrade as Her, the Custodian of me, who lives deep within and
nearly comes outside to this white porch of the moon.
I like to light my candle and watch its warm rays mix with the
blue-white beams from without. There would have been a proper employment
for a wizard: to diffuse varying insubstantialities, such as these, and
to look within them, as within a pool--a pool free of its basin and
enjoying the air. Yes, they were an unimaginative race, wizards. When
will the era of white art come, with æsthetic witches and wizards who
know our modern magics of colour and form and perception as a mere basis
for their sorceries? Instead of pottering with thick, slab gruel and
mediæval newts' eyes, think what witches they will be! Sometimes I think
that they are already arriving. The New Lady told me the most delightful
thing about a Thought of hers that she saw ... but it was such an
elusive thing to tell and so much of it I had to guess, because words
have not yet caught up with fancies, that it is hard to write down.
Besides, perhaps you know. And if you did not know, you would skip this
part anyway. So I merely mention that _she_ mentioned the coming alive
of a thought of hers which helped her spirit to grow, quite without her
will. Very likely you understand other wizardries. An excellent place to
think them out must be the line where candle rays meet moonbeams, but
there is no such discoverable line, just as there is no discoverable
line between the seeing and the knowing, where the Custodian dwells....
By all of which I am merely showing you what the moon can do to one's
head and that it is no great wonder that one cannot sleep.
"Ain't the moon kind of like a big, shinin' brain," Calliope said once,
"an' moonlight nights it gets in your head and thinks for you."
So last night when I went in my room I did not try to sleep; nor did I
even light my candle. I went straight to a window and opened it--the one
without a screen. I would not live in a house that did not have certain
windows which one could open to let in the moon, or the night, or the
living out-of-doors, with no screens to thwart their impulse. Suppose
that sometime Diana--well, suppose what you will that is sensible, no
moon can shine through a screen. Really, it cannot do its best through
even an open window. And this was why I gave up trying to make it do so
and went downstairs again--which is the earthly and rational of floating
out into that utter beauty as I wanted to float.
Of going out into such a night I would like to write for a long time, as
I would like to keep on breathing lilies-of-the-valley and never have
done. I think, though, that "into" such a night is not the word; to go
out _upon_ the night is the essential experience. For, like a June day,
a moonlit night of itself will not let us inside. We must know some
other way of entrance. And I suspect that some of us never quite find
the way--I wonder if we are missed?
I stepped round the house to the open ocean of light that broke on soft
shores of leaf and line, solemnizing, magnifying. It was like a glimpse
into something which, afterward and afterward, is going to be. The
definiteness of its premonitory message was startling. As when on seeing
once that something had happened on my birthday, 1500, I felt as if I
had heard from a kind of twin-time, so now I understood that this night
was the birthday of far-off, immortal moments of my own, yet to be lived
... so friendly near we are to the immeasurable kindred.
And there, from the shadow of the flowering currant bush, which just now
is out of flower and fallen in meditative quiet--a man arose. My sharp
fear, as savage a thing as if the world were ten thousand years younger,
or as if I were a ptarmigan and he a cougar--was only momentary. For the
cougar began to apologize and I recognized him.
"Why," I said, "Peter."
"Yes'm," said he, "I couldn't help being here--for a little while."
"Neither could I, Peter," I told him.
These were remarkable admissions of ours, for a large part of evening in
the village is an uninhabitable part of day and, no matter in what
splendour of sky it comes, is a thing to be shut outside experience. If
we relate being wakened by something that goes bang, we begin it, "In
the middle of the night, about twelve o'clock;" and, "They have a light
in their house 'most every night till midnight," is a bit of sharp
criticism not lightly to be lived down. But now it was as if Peter were
a part of the time itself, and outlaw too, if the evening was outlaw.
"I'm glad I saw you," Peter said--as if we were here met by chance in
the usual manner. "I wanted to see you and tell you: I'm going away--to
be gone right along."
"Why," I said again, "Peter!"
"You'd go too," he said simply.
"I should want to go," I told him, "but I doubt if I would go. Where are
you going?"
"They want to put in a cannery at Marl. It'd be a branch. I'd run it
myself."
I did not miss the implication of the conditional mood. And _Marl_. What
wonderful names they give to some of the towns of this world. That word
makes a picture all of white cornices and white wings of buildings and
bright façades. I dare say from the railroad track the real town of Marl
shows an unpainted livery barn and a blue barber shop, but the name
sounds like the name of a chapter of travel, beginning: To-day we drove
to Marl to see the queen. Or the cataract. Or the porch of the morning.
"Why are you going, Peter?" I drove in the peg for him.
"I guess you know," he said. "It's all Miggy with me."
I knew that he wanted before all else to tell somebody, to talk to
somebody, to have somebody know.
"Tell me, Peter," I said.
And now Peter told me how things were with him. If I should repeat what
he said you would be scornful, for it was so little. It was broken and
commonplace and set with repetition. It was halting and unfinished, like
the unformed writing of a boy. But in his words I felt the movings of
life and destiny and death more than I feel them when I think about the
rushing of the stars. He loved her, and for him the world became a
transparent plane wherein his soul moved as simply as his body. Here was
not only a boy longing for a girl. Here was not only a man, instinct
with the eager hope of establishing a home. Here was something not
unlike this very moon-washed area won from the illimitable void, this
area where we stood and spoke together, this little spot which alone was
to us articulate with form and line and night sounds. So Peter,
stumbling over his confession of love for Miggy, was like the word
uttered by destiny to explicate its principle. It mattered not at all
what the night said or what Peter said. Both were celestial.
These moments when the soul presses close to its windows are to be
understood as many another hint at the cosmic--Dawn, May, the firmament,
radio-activity, theistic evolution, a thousand manifestations of the
supernal. In this cry of enduring spirit it was as if Peter had some
intimacy with all that has no boundaries. I hardly heard his stumbling
words. I listened to him down some long avenue of hearths whose
twinkling lights were like a corridor of stars.
And all this bright business was to be set at naught because Miggy would
have none of it.
"She seems to like me," Peter said miserably, "but I guess she'd like me
just as well if I wasn't me. And if I was right down somebody else, I
guess she'd like me a good deal better. She--don't like my hands--nor
the way my hair sticks up at the back. She thinks of all such things. I
wouldn't care if she said all her words crooked. I'd know what she
meant."
I knew the difference. To him she was Miggy. To her he was an
individual. He had never in her eyes graduated from being a person to
being himself.
"Calliope says," I told him, "that she likes almond extract better than
any other kind, but that she hardly ever gets a bottle of almond with
which she does not find fault. She says it's the same way with people
one loves."
Peter smiled--he is devoted to Calliope, who alone in the village has
been friendly with his father. _Friendly._ The rest of the village has
only been kind.
"Well," he tried to put it, "but Miggy never seems to be thinking of me
as _me_, only when she's finding fault with me. If she'd only think
about me, even a little, the way I think about her. If she'd only miss
me or want me or wonder how the house would seem if we were married. But
she don't care--she don't care."
"She says, you know," I ventured, "that she can't ask you to support
Little Child too."
"Can't she see," he cried, "that the little thing only makes me love her
more? Don't she know how I felt the other night--when she let me help
her that way? She must know. It's just an excuse--"
He broke off and his hands dropped.
"Then there's her other reason," he said, "I guess you know that. I
can't blame her for it. But even with that, it kind of seems as if,--if
she loved me--"
"Yes," I said, "Peter, it does seem so."
And yet in my heart I am certain that the reason is not at all that
Miggy cannot love him--I remember the woman-softening of her face that
forenoon when she found the spirit of the old romances in the village. I
am not even certain that the reason is that she does not love Peter
now--I remember how tender and feminine she was the other night with
Peter and Little Child. I think it is only that the cheap cynicism of
the village--which nobody means even when it is said!--has taught her
badly; and that Life has not yet touched her hand, has not commanded
"Look at me," has not bidden her follow with us all.
I looked into the bright bowl of the night which is alternately with one
and against one in one's mood of emprise; the bright bowl of the night
inverted as if some mighty genii were shaking the stars about like
tea-leaves to fortune the future. What a pastime _that_ for a wizard!
"Oh, Peter," I said, "_if_ one were a wizard!"
"I didn't understand," said Peter.
"How pleasant it would be to make folk love folk," I put it.
He understood that. "Wouldn't it, though?" he assented wistfully. So
does everybody understand. Wouldn't it, though! Oh, _don't you wish you
could_?