nothin' that you could lay much speech to. But oh, they was somethin'
in it that made you get down on your hands and knees in your own heart
and look around in it, and _look_. They was an old lady and a young
mother and a child and a man and a girl--well, that don't sound like
much special, does it? And that's just it: it wasn't much special, but
yet it was all of everything. It made 'em laugh, it made 'em cry, it
made _me_ laugh and cry till I was ashamed and glad and grateful. And
when the lights come up at the end, I felt like I was kind of the mother
to everything, an' I wanted to pick it up an' carry it off an' keep care
of it. And it come over me all of a sudden how the old lady and the
young mother an' man an' girl, man an' girl, _man an' girl_ was right
there in the theatre, near me, over an' over again; an' there I'd been
feelin' mad at 'em for seemin' far off. But they wasn't far off. They'd
been laughin' and cryin', too, an' they knew, just like I knew, what was
what in the world. My, my. If it'd been Friendship I'd have gone from
house to house all the way home, shakin' hands. An' as it was, I just
_had_ to speak to somebody. An' just then I see the flammed-out woman in
front of me, that her collar had come open a little wee bit up top--not
to notice even, but it give me an excuse. And I leaned right over to her
and I says with all the sympathy in me:--
"'Ma'am, your neck is peepin'."
"She looked around su'prised and then she smiled--smiled 'most into
laughin'. And she thanked me sweet as a friend an' nodded with it, an' I
thought: 'Why, my land, you may have a baby home.' I never had thought
of that. An' then I begun lookin' at folks an' lookin'. An' movin' up
the aisles, there wasn't just a theatre-lettin'-out. They was _folks_.
And all over each one was the good little things they'd begun
rememberin' now that the play was over, or the hurt things that had come
back onto 'em again.... An' out on the street it was the same. The folks
had all got alive and was waitin' for me to feel friendly to 'em.
_Friendly._ The young fellows in the cars was lovers, just like Peter.
An' everybody was just like me, or anyhow more alike than differ'nt; and
just like Friendship, only mebbe pronouncin' their words some differ'nt
an' knowin' more kinds of things to eat. It seems to me now I could go
anywhere an' find folks to be nice to. I don't love Friendship Village
any the less, but I love more things the same way. Everything, 'most.
An' I tell you I'm glad I didn't die before I found it out--that we're
all one batch. _Do_ you see what I mean--deep down inside what I say?"
Calliope cried. "Does it sound like anything to you?"
To whom should it sound like "anything" if not to us of Friendship
Village? We know.
"Honestly," said that great Mis' Amanda Toplady, trying to wipe her
eyes on her crochet work, "Whoever God is, I don't believe He wants to
keep it a secret. He's always 'most lettin' us know. I 'most knew Who He
is right then, while Calliope was talkin'."
"I 'most knew Who He is right then, while Calliope was talkin'." ... I
said the words over while the men crossed the lawn, all arriving
together in order to lighten the trial of guesthood: Dear Doctor June,
little Timothy Toplady, Eppleby Holcomb, Postmaster Sykes, Photographer
Jimmie Sturgis, Peter, and Timothy, Jr., and the others. Liva Vesey was
already in the kitchen with Miggy and Elfa, and I knew that, somewhere
invisible, Nicholas Moor was hovering, waiting to help dish the
ice-cream. When the little tables, each with its bright, strewn
nasturtiums, were set about the lawn, Miggy reluctantly appeared from
the kitchen. She was in the white frock which she herself had made, and
she was, as I have said, a new Miggy, not less merry or less elfin, but
infinitely more human. It was charming, I thought, to see how she and
Peter, far from tensely avoiding each other, went straight to each
other's side. With them at table were Liva and Timothy, Jr., now meeting
each other's eyes as simply as if eyes were for this purpose.
"I 'most knew Who He is right then, while Calliope was talkin'" ... I
thought again as we stood in our places and Doctor June lifted his hands
to the summer sky as if He were there, too.
"Father," he said, "bless these young people who are going to belong to
each other--Thou knowest their names and so do we. Bless our being
together now in their honour, and be Thou in our midst. And bless our
being together always. Amen."
And that was the announcement of Miggy's and Peter's betrothal, at their
Engagement Party.
Little Child, who was sitting beside Calliope, leaned toward her.
"How long will it take for God to know," she asked, "after Doctor June
sent it up?"
Calliope put her arm about her and told her.
"Then did He get here since Doctor June invited Him?" Little Child
asked.
"You think, 'way deep inside your head, an' see if He isn't here," I
heard Calliope say.
Little Child shut her eyes tightly, and though she did open them briefly
to see what was on the plate which they set before her, I think that she
found the truth.
"I 'most know," she said presently. "Pretty near I know He is. I guess
I'm too little to be sure nor certain. When I'm big will I know sure?"
"Yes," Calliope answered, "then you'll know sure."
"I 'most knew Who He is while Calliope was talkin'" ... I said over once
more. And suddenly in the words and in the homely talk and in the happy
comradeship I think that I slipped between the seeing and the knowing,
and for a moment stood very near to the Custodian--Himself. The
Custodian Who is in us all, Who speaks, now as you, now as I, most
clearly in our human fellowship, in our widest kinship, in the universal
_togetherness_. Truly, it is not as my neighbour once said, for I think
that God has many and many to "neighbour with," if only we would be
neighbours.
Presently, as if it knew that it belonged there, the sunset came, a
thing of wings and doors ajar. Then Miggy fastened the leaves in Little
Child's hair and led her down to dance on the broad, flat stone which is
an instrument of music. Above the friendly murmur of the shallows the
little elf child seemed beckoning to us others of the human voices on
the shore. And in that fair light it was as if the river were some clear
highway, leading from Friendship Village to Splendour Town, where
together we might all find our way.
End of Project Gutenberg's Friendship Village Love Stories, by Zona Gale