The Bixbys moved into Aunt Sadie’s rooms the next day. The little
apartment was already furnished, so there was not a great deal
of moving to do: merely the carrying in of a couple of trunks, a
phonograph, and a suit-case. The windows and doors were all open, and
Julie down in her little shop could hear much of what went on overhead.
She heard Elizabeth calling out sharp directions to Mr. Bixby as he
staggered up the stairway under one of the trunks. Then he was sent off
to buy a broom and some extra cooking-utensils. He came back presently,
laden with all sorts of angular bundles; but he had evidently forgotten
something, for his wife’s voice was raised in complaint. Julie could
not often hear the exact words, and she almost never heard his answers.
She gathered that often he did not reply at all, for every now and then
Elizabeth would burst out, “_Answer_ me!”
But at last they settled down and had dinner, after which Mr. Bixby
went off to the office of the _Hart’s Run News_; Elizabeth did some
ostentatious sweeping, and then the creaking tread of her footsteps
subsided.
“She’s taking a rest now,” Julie told herself. “She’ll get up after a
little bit, and then she’ll dress herself and come down here.”
It was curious how the whole morning, during all her accustomed duties
in the shop, Julie had been aware of all that took place upstairs. The
Bixbys’ activities ran in a disturbing undercurrent through all she
did. She was right in supposing that Elizabeth would come down to the
shop after she had had her nap. At about four o’clock Julie heard her
get up, and after moving about for some time, she started down her
outside stairs. Certain boards creaked in the floor above. And over her
head the heavy footsteps had gone back and forth, punctuated every now
and then by a cringing squeak.
“I _must_ get those boards fixed,” Julie told herself. “I’ll go crazy
if that keeps up. I don’t know why I never noticed them when the
Edwardses were up there.”
Realizing the impending encounter, Julie had made what defense she
could. She had carried out to her back rooms the two extra chairs she
usually kept in the shop, so that there was nowhere for a visitor to
sit down, and was herself safely tucked in behind her counter, sewing,
when Elizabeth entered.
For her first visit the newcomer had made an elaborate toilet,
consisting of a pink summer dress, white shoes, pink silk stockings, a
string of white beads around her neck, and her face frankly made-up.
She was rested and refreshed by her nap, and was handsome in a large
self-confident way.
She entered the shop with assurance, preceded by a wave of perfume.
“Well, Miss Rose, here’s your new neighbor,” she announced. “I’ve got
my rooms fixed at last, an’ it took some straightening, let me tell
you! I suppose Mis’ Johnson thought she had everything clean, but poor
old soul, I reckon she can’t see so very good. An’ now I’ve come to
visit with you a spell.
“Well,” she went on, sweeping her bold dark eyes condescendingly around
the shop, “you got a right nice place here. I wouldn’t have looked for
anything so nice in such a rotten little town.”
Julie had gotten up as though to serve her, and stood waiting behind
the counter, but Elizabeth waved a protesting hand. “Oh don’t mind me.
I’ll just look about and make myself at home, and if I find anything
I like I’ll let you know. That’s a right pretty hat--that red one.
What’s the price of it?--Oh well,” she continued, after Julie had told
her, “I’ll wait a while. You’ll have to put it down ’fore the season’s
over. People ain’t payin’ much for hats a war year like this. It ain’t
patriotic. Besides it ain’t a style that would suit everybody. But it
looks good on me, don’t it? Red’s one of my best colors.”
She put on the hat, and preened herself before Julie’s mirror. In her
pink dress, crowned by the red hat, she made a garish flash of color,
given back in duplicate from the mirror. Her overpowering personality
dominated the place. Julie had been working all day and was tired.
Glancing across, she saw her own sober little figure with its pale face
mirrored beside Elizabeth’s pink and red. For a moment she contemplated
the two figures side by side in sharp contrast, then she stooped to
her sewing once more. Elizabeth saw the reflections and laughed. “We
look kind of funny together, don’t we,” she said complacently. Then
she moved to get a better view of herself, and Julie’s reflection was
blotted out by her dominant pink.
“You ain’t got your mirror in a very good light,” she informed Julie.
“If I was you, I’d hang it over on that side; and I’d get a better
one. This don’t make people look their best, an’ what you want in a
shop like this is a glass that’ll just make people look better’n they
ever looked in their lives before, so they’ll think, ‘My, ain’t that
hat becomin’!’ An’ then they’ll buy the hat, an’ never know it was the
mirror all the time. That’s the way to sell hats, dearie! Oh, I could
show you a heap about running your shop.”
Julie said nothing, but went steadily on with her sewing, her needle
weaving deftly in and out of the soft blue material she was at work on;
but Elizabeth was too completely wrapped up in her own atmosphere to be
aware of the other’s unresponsiveness.
“I always did know about hats,” she went on. “It seems like it’s a kind
of a gift with me. I can always tell what kind of a hat a person ought
to wear. Now you--you ought to wear something kind of startling to
bring you into view. If you don’t have it, you’re the kind of mousey
little woman that slips by without any one’s payin’ any attention. I
looked at you on Sunday, and I says, ‘That little woman kind of needs
something to bring her out. Now what is it?’ I says, sort of turning
you over in my mind, like you taste cake-batter to see what it needs.
And all at once it came to me: ‘It’s a hat,’ I says, ‘a cerise turban:
_that_ would do the trick.’ If folks didn’t notice a thing else about
you, they’d see that turban. You ain’t got just the color I had in
mind,” she went on, surveying the hat counter, “but,” taking up a green
turban, “this is kind of the shape I mean. Now if you had a piece of
cerise silk you could fix this right over for yourself. Lemme see how
it looks on you.”
But Julie shrunk hastily away. “No, no thank you,” she said with that
quick breathlessness that was a nervous trick with her. “No, I never
wear cerise, and I don’t care for that shape on myself.”
“Oh, all right then,” Elizabeth retorted, laying down the hat in a
pique. “You can suit yourself. I was just trying to show you how you
could attract a little attention. But you’re just like my husband; he
sort of wants to slink through the world without anybody noticing him.
I tell him a person would think he was a submarine, he’s so anxious to
have that ‘low visibility’ the papers are always talking about these
days. I declare, I’d like to put a cerise turban on _him_--a red hat
like what the Popes wear in the Catholic Church. Maybe he couldn’t get
by without folks seein’ that! ‘Look a’ here, Tim,’ I’m always sayin’ to
him, ‘What’s the matter with you? It ain’t going to kill you if folks
sees you. Come out into the open,’ I says. ‘You can’t hide behind _my_
skirts all the time.’ But the more I talk at him, the more he goes in
the ground an’ pulls the hole in after him. I declare, I think it’ll be
a right good thing if the draft does take him.”
“The draft?” Julie looked up quickly.
“Mm--h’m,” Elizabeth nodded. “He’s liable to be called any time now.
He just took this little job here while he was waiting. That’s why I
didn’t bring any of my furniture with me. I got a nice house and a
lot of elegant furniture in Lynchburg where we was, an’ we’ll go back
there after the war. The paper he worked on there’s just suspended
for a while. The editor an’ owner’s both gone to the front. Well, you
don’t catch me stayin’ on here if Tim’s drafted. I’ll go on back to my
own home. I got plenty of friends there. But say--_he’ll_ make a great
soldier, won’t he? I always tell him Tim’s short for timid with him.
You can laugh if you want. I know just how funny he always strikes
folks.”
“I--I don’t want to laugh,” Julie protested. “I--oh, I think the war’s
awful!” she burst out. “I don’t want to laugh over any one’s going.”
“Oh, well,” Elizabeth said carelessly. “I wouldn’t be s’prised if the
war didn’t make a man out of him--the drill an’ all would be fine. But
I tell him he’d better mind out, or he’ll be the goat of the whole
camp.”
Finding no chair to sit in, Elizabeth had been drifting about the
shop, inspecting one showcase after another; now she came to rest at
the counter behind which Julie was seated, and leaning nonchalantly
against it, she did what was to Julie an amazing thing. She opened
a gilt vanity-bag which she had been swinging, and taking from it a
cigarette case, selected one and proceeded to light it with a knowing
air. Julie knew, of course, that women did smoke cigarettes somewhere,
but she had never seen them do it, much less light one in her discreet
little shop. She was used to seeing the mountain women out in the
country smoke pipes; indeed, her own grandmother on her father’s side
had smoked and chewed as well. “But that’s different,” she told herself
now. Her grandmother’s corncob pipe before a stone hearth seemed wholly
in keeping with the old woman’s kerchief-covered head, her spinning
wheel, her loom, and patchwork quilts. Not so Elizabeth’s insolent
cigarette. That appeared to Julie an affront to her mother’s spirit,
which always seemed to her still hovering dimly in the background of
the little shop. She and her mother, living their gentle reserved
lives there together, had made up the atmosphere, the soul, of the
little establishment, pouring into it all the timid modesty, gentle
propriety, and sincerity of their own hearts. They had neither of them
had a brave or robust attitude toward life, but they had nevertheless
woven a pattern that was adorned with a thousand tendernesses toward
one another, with exquisite bits of understanding consideration, with
gentle courtesies and kindnesses toward their neighbors, and with a
careful honesty in all their dealings. Timid as they were, they yet
had wrought an unseen mesh of life that had a delicate beauty all its
own. And now to Julie, all that past that her mother and she had woven
together was outraged by Elizabeth’s cigarette.
“I’ve got to stop her! She shan’t smoke here in my shop. What would
mother say?” she thought breathlessly to herself, trying to control
the tremor that ran through her hands, so that she might set even
stitches in her work. “I’ve _got_ to stop her! It’s my shop. She’s got
no business to smoke here. Why, I wouldn’t let my best friend smoke
here!” But though she protested these things to herself, Julie could
not whip her courage up to bringing them forth in spoken words, and
Elizabeth continued to puff out long blue columns of smoke, watching
them with satisfaction, while with an affected gesture, she flecked
her ashes here and there over the clean floor. She was in truth a
little disappointed that her cigarette had provoked no comment. She
had expected Julie at least to look startled, and was prepared to
defend herself with condescending patronage. Julie’s silence was
disconcerting, for Elizabeth possessed none of the spiritual antennæ
with which to sense another’s atmosphere if unexpressed by word or
gesture. She strolled back to the mirror, and under cover of patting
her hair into place peeped at Julie’s reflection to see if she was
being watched from behind her back. But Julie, whose weakness it was
to have antennæ far too sensitive to another’s atmosphere, knew what
Elizabeth expected, and kept her eyes resolutely upon the threading of
her needle. It was a little defiant clash between the two women, of
which Julie was fully aware, but which Elizabeth realized only from her
own standpoint.
At this moment Aunt Sadie Johnson bustled into the shop, and having
none of Julie’s delicate hesitancy, exploded the hidden situation with
a startled exclamation.
“Julie,” she began, “I just ran in to see if that white ruchin’ I
got you to order for me--Well, for the _mercy sake_!” she broke off,
suddenly catching sight of Elizabeth. “Well, my lands!” she continued,
staring frankly, and unafraid of drawing upon herself the full fire of
the cigarette.
It was some such violent attention as this that Elizabeth had hoped for.
“What’s the matter?” she inquired in her most superior manner. “Oh,”
feigning surprise, “my cigarette? Why surely, Mrs. Johnson, I’m not the
first woman you’ve seen smoke.”
“That you ain’t!” Aunt Sadie retorted promptly. “I’ve seen a plenty of
’em do it.”
Elizabeth was somewhat dashed, but she rallied as best she could.
“Well,” she said, “I’m glad Hart’s Run ain’t such a back number as not
to know that all the smart women smoke nowadays.”
“Smart?” Aunt Sadie cried, and went off into billows of large mirth.
“Well, you may call ’em smart, but I dunno’s they look so stylish to
me. There’s old Betty Willets from off Rocky Ridge. She drives her old
wagon an’ broken-down horse into town, to collect the swill from folks’
backyards to take up to her hog. She’s one of our smart smokers. An’
they all smoke up Spitzer’s Holler--an’ chew too--they’re ’bout the
lowest-down lot of folks we have ’round here. Oh, no, you ain’t the
first I’ve seen smoke, not by a long sight. But it does look like a
pity for a right young woman like you to be smoking and chewin’--it’ll
just ruin your teeth.”
“Chew?” cried Elizabeth wildly. “You don’t think I chew tobacco, do
you?”
“Oh, don’t tell me!” Aunt Sadie returned. “I never saw a woman yet who
smoked, that she didn’t chew on the sly an’ dip snuff, too. Oh, I’d be
the last person in the world to say there was any real harm in it,” she
went on tolerantly, “with so many of our old folks still doin’ it; it’s
only that I always did think chewin’ an’ spittin’--”
“I don’t chew!” Elizabeth cried furiously. “Of course I don’t! Who ever
heard of such a thing? Well, I’m going,” she announced, flouncing to
the door. “An’ I’ll say this, Miss Rose,” she added, “I don’t think
_you’re_ any too polite either to strangers. In all the time I’ve been
here, you’ve hardly said two words, and you haven’t so much as asked me
to take a chair.” Angry tears leaped in her eyes, and she flung herself
away out of the shop and up her own stairs.
“Well, the poor thing,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I made her mad all right! I
reckon it was a sin, but I just couldn’t stand her airing ’round here
with that cigarette, an’ showings off to us moss-backs. What’d you let
her smoke in here for, Julie? You know your mother wouldn’t have liked
it.”
“I didn’t know how to stop her,” Julie confessed helplessly.
“Well, I stopped her all right!” Aunt Sadie returned, shaken again by
large laughter. “But ain’t the world funny, Julie? Here we’ve all come
to look down on smokin’, and feel sort of ashamed of the old women that
still do it, when along comes all the young smart Alecks, an’ says it’s
the thing to do, an’ if you don’t do it, it just shows you’re right
from the backwoods. Now ain’t that funny? If you just live long enough
in the world, you’ll see everything turned upside down! But I feel kind
of sorry for poor Mis’ Bixby,” she added tolerantly.
“_Sorry_ for her?” Julie’s eyes opened in astonishment.
“Yes,” the other nodded her large gray head. “Don’t you think it’s kind
of pitiful to see a grown person putting so much confidence in fine
clothes, and thinking she’s so grand showing off with a cigarette?
When you’ve been up against real life like I have, that kind of cheap
person seems right pitiful.”
“She just stifles me,” Julie said. “She’s so--so big an’ satisfied with
herself.”
“Oh, I don’t know’s she’s so satisfied with herself. She wants you to
think she is, an’ that’s why she tries to show off so.”
“Well, all the same she does stifle me,” Julie repeated.
“I reckon she does,” Aunt Sadie conceded, surveying Julie’s shrinking
make-up with her shrewd and kindly eyes. “She stifles you, honey, an’
I b’lieve she’s just about choked that poor little husband of hers to
death.”
“I don’t see why in the world he ever married her,” Julie said.
“Who? That little Bixby? I’ll bet he never married _her_--she married
_him_.”
“I b’lieve that’s true!” Julie cried with conviction. “Yes, I
just b’lieve that’s so.” Aunt Sadie’s statement seemed to her an
illuminating discovery. Of course that was it. None of his real self
had gone into the union; that accounted for his detached air, which had
made her suppose at first that they were brother and sister.
“Of course it’s so,” Mrs. Johnson reaffirmed. “You’re so innocent,
Julie, you still think the man does all the courtin’; but I’ll bet poor
Bixby did mighty little. I wouldn’t wonder if she married him out of
spite. I’ll bet there was another she wanted an’ couldn’t get, so she
turned ’round an’ snapped up that little feller, just to show people
she could get a man if she wanted one.”
“Well, anyway he isn’t all there,” Julie said absently, still pursuing
her own line of thought.
Aunt Sadie was startled. “Why, what on earth do you mean? Why, Julie,
you don’t think he’s wanting, do you? He’s right nervous an’ scary
lookin’, I know, but I wouldn’t for a minute say he was feeble-minded.”
“No, no, of course I don’t mean that!” Julie protested.
“Well, I shouldn’t think you would. Why, he’s real smart in his trade.
I heard Mr. McLane bragging about him in the post office this morning.
He said they never did have such a good printer on the _News_ before.
Said he seemed to understand high-class printing better’n anybody he’d
ever known. No, whatever he is, he certainly ain’t feeble-minded.”
“Oh, no, of course not,” Julie reiterated. “Of course I didn’t mean
that. I just meant she didn’t get the whole of him. She doesn’t own all
of him.”
“Well, maybe so. I’m sure I hope so--the poor little feller,” Aunt
Sadie returned.