thing she couldn’t name. Then she kind of give it up, and went on tying
Stubby’s package. And just then she see what he’d wrote for a Christmas
card. It was on a piece of wrapping-paper, and it said:
TO MY MOTHER
I CANT COM
MERY CRISMAS
STUB
“_Merry Christmas!_” Mis’ Holcomb says over like she hadn’t any
strength. Then all of a sudden she stood up.
“Stubby,” she says, “you run out a minute, will you? You run over to the
grocery and wait for me there a minute--quick. I’ll see to your
package.”
He went when she said that.
And swift as a flash, before I could think at all what she meant, Mis’
Holcomb laid Stubby’s present down by her suit-case, and wheeled around
and whipped two packages out of her shopping-bag, and faced the line of
Friendship Village folks drawn up there to the window, taking their
turns.
“Everybody!” she says, loud enough so’s they all heard her, “I’ve got
more Christmas presents than I need. I’ll auction off some of ’em--all
hand-made--to anybody that’s short of presents. I’ll show ’em to you.
Come here and look at ’em, and make a bid.”
They looked at her for a minute, perfectly blank; and she was beginning
to undo one of ’em.... And then all of a sudden I see her plan, what it
was; and I walked right over beside of her.
“Don’t you leave her undo ’em!” I calls out. “It’s for Stubby Mosher,” I
says, “that can’t go, after all, to his mother in the Wooster Hospital,
that’s going to die--count of his brother not sending him the money. She
can’t get well--we know that since last week. They’s only forty-six
cents in Sodality treasury. Let’s us buy Mis’ Holcomb’s presents that
she’s made and is willing to auction off! Unsight-unseen let us buy ’em!
I bid fifty cents.”
The line had kind of wavered and broke, and was looking away from itself
towards us. The man at the window had stopped weighing and had his head
close up, looking out.
Everybody was hushed dumb for a minute. Then it kind of got to Mis’
Wiswell--that’s had so much trouble that things ’most always get to her
easy--and she says out:
“Oh, land! _Is it?_ Why, I bid seventy-five then.”
“Eighty!” says I, reckless, to egg her on.
Then Libby Liberty kind of come to, and bid ninety, though everybody
knew the most she has is egg-money--and finally it, whatever it was,
went to Mis’ Wiswell for a dollar.
“Is it a present would do for ladies?” she says, when she made her final
bid. “I donno, though, as that matters. One dollar!”
Well, then Mis’ Holcomb up with another present, and Mis’ Merriman
started that one, and though dazed a little yet--some folks daze so
terrible easy if you go off an inch from their stamping-ground!--the
rest of us, including Abigail Arnold that hadn’t ought to have bid at
all, got that one up to another dollar, and it went to Mis’ Merriman for
that. But the next package stuck at fifty cents--not from lack of
willingness, I know, but from sheer lack of ways--and it was just going
at that when I whispered to Mis’ Holcomb:
“What’s in this one?”
“Towel with crochet work set in each end and no initial,” she says.
“Really?” says a voice behind me.
And there was the young lady in blue, with the ermine and the roses. And
I see all of a sudden that she didn’t look to be laughing at us at all,
but her eyes were bright, and she was kind of flushed up, and it come to
me that she would have bidded before, only she was sort of watching
us--mebbe because she thought we were _quaint_. But I didn’t have time
to bother with that thought much, not then.
“I’ll give two dollars for that,” she says.
“Done!” says Mis’ Holcomb, real auctioneer-like, and with her cheeks
red, and her hat on one ear, and her hand going up and down. “Now this
one--who’ll bid on this one?” says she, putting up another. “How much
for this? How much----”
“How much is the fare to where he’s going?” says somebody else strange,
and there was the youngish fellow speaking, that was with her with the
roses.
“Seven-ten round trip to Wooster,” says Mis’ Holcomb, instant.
“Why, then, I bid three-ten for whatever you have there,” he says
laughing.
But Mis’ Holcomb, instead of flaming up because now the whole money for
Stubby’s fare was raised, just stood there looking at that youngish man,
mournful all over her face.
“It’s a hand-embroidered dressing-sack,” she says melancholy. “You don’t
never want that!”
“Yes--yes, I do,” he says, still laughing, “yes, I do. It’s a straight
bid.”
“Oh, my land!” says Mis’ Holcomb, her voice slipping, “then we’ve got
it. We’ve got it all right here!”
But while she was a-saying it, a big, deep voice boomed out all over her
and the rest that was exclaiming.
“Ticket to where?” says the private-Santa-Claus-looking man in the fur
coat.
“Wooster, this state,” says I, being Mis’ Holcomb was almost speechless.
“Well, now,” says the private Santa Claus, “don’t we go pretty close to
Wooster? Where’s that map we wore out? Well, I know we go pretty close
to Wooster. Why can’t we take your Master Stubby to Wooster in the car?
We’re going on to-night--if we ever get to that general-delivery
window,” he ends in a growl.
And _that_ was the time the line made way--the line that never moves for
no one. And the Santa Claus man went up and got his mail.
And while he was a-doing it, I run out after Stubby, setting on a barrel
in the grocery, happy with three cranberries they’d give him. And as I
come back in the door with him, I see Mis’ Holcomb just showing his rose
to the young lady with the ermine and the roses. And then I see for sure
by the young lady’s eyes that she wasn’t the way I’d thought she
was--laughing _at_ us. Why, her eyes were as soft and understanding as
if she didn’t have a cent to her name. And I donno but more so.
“Oh, father,” I heard her say, “I’m glad we came in for the mail
ourselves! _What_ if we hadn’t?”
And I concluded I didn’t mind that word _quaint_ half as much as I
thought I did.
Every last one of the line went out of the post-office to see Stubby
off, and the man at the window, he came too. They had a big warm coat
they put the little boy into, and we wrapped up his rose and put that
in the car, so’s it would get there sooner and save the postage, same
time, and they tucked him away as snug as a bug in a rug, his little
face just shining out for joy.
“Oh, and you can buy your presents back now,” says Libby Liberty to Mis’
Holcomb right in the middle of it.
“No, sir,” says Mis’ Holcomb, proud. “A bargain is a bargain, and I made
mine.” And then she thought of something. “Oh,” she says, leaning
forward to the window of the car, “don’t you want to sell your presents
back again?”
“No!” they all told her together. “We made a straight bid, you know.”
“_Then_,” says Mis’ Holcomb, “let’s us give Stubby the money to put in
his pocket and take the one-way fare to his mother!”
And that was what they done. And the big car rolled off down Daphne
Street, with Stubby in it going like a king.
And when we all got back in the post-office, what do you s’pose? There
was the crocheted towel and the hand-embroidered dressing-sack slipped
back all safe into Mis’ Holcomb’s shopping-bag!
But she wouldn’t take the other things back--she would not, no matter
what Mis’ Wiswell and Mis’ Merriman said.
“I can crochet a couple of things to-morrow like lightning,” says Mis’
Holcomb. “You don’t want me to be done out of my share in Stubby’s
Christmas, do you?” she asks ’em.
And we all stood there, talking and laughing and going over it and clean
forgetting all about the United States mails, till the man at the window
called out:
“‘Leven minutes and a quarter before the mail closes!”
We all started back to the window, but nobody could remember just
exactly where anybody was standing before, and they all wanted everybody
to go up first and step in ahead of them. And the line, instead of being
a line with some of ’em ahead of others and all trying to hurry, was
just a little group, with each giving everybody their turn, peaceful and
good-willing. And all of a sudden it was like Christmas had come, up
through all the work and the stitches, and was right there in the
Friendship Village post-office with us.
“Goodness!” says Mis’ Holcomb in my ear, “I was wore to the bone getting
ready my Christmas things. But now I’m real rested.”
“So am I,” I says.
And so was every one of us, I know, falling back into line there by the
window. All rested, and not feeling hurried nor nothing: only human.
THE HOME-COMING
“Eighteen booths,” says Mis’ Timothy Toplady, sighing satisfied. “That’s
enough to go round the whole Market Square, leaving breathin’ space
between.”
We sat looking at the diagram Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman had made on the
dining-room table, with bees-wax and stuff out of her work-basket, and
we all sighed satisfied--but tired too. Because, though it looked like
the Friendship Village Home-coming was going to be a success--and a
peaceful success--yet we see in the same flash that it was going to be
an awful back-aching, feet-burning business for us ladies. We were
having our fourth committee meeting to Mis’ Sykes’s, and we weren’t more
than begun on the thing; and the Home-coming was only six weeks away.
“Just thinking about all the tracking round it means,” says Mis’ Sykes,
“I can feel that sick feeling in the back of my throat _now_, that I
feel when I’m over-tired, or got delegates, or have company pounce down
on me.”
Mis’ Hubbelthwait looked at her sympathetic. “I know,” she says. “So
tired you can taste it. I donno,” she says, “whether home-comings are
worth it or not.”
Mis’ Sykes didn’t answer. She was up on her feet, peering out behind the
Nottinghams.
“My land o’ life,” she says, “that’s the stalkin’ image of ’Lisbeth
Note.”
“Lisbeth _Note_!” we all said. “Oh, it can’t be!”
It struck me, even then, how united folks are on a piece of gossip. For
the Home-coming some had thought have printed invitations and some had
thought send out newspapers, some had wanted free supper and some had
wanted pay, and so on, item by item of the afternoon. But the minute
Lisbeth Note was mentioned, we all burst into one common, spontaneous
fraternal horror: “_Oh, no._ It couldn’t be her.”
“It is!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “It is. She’s turning in there. I thought I
heard ’bus wheels in the night. It serves me right. I’d ought to got out
and looked.”
We were all crowded to the window by then, looking over toward old Mis’
Note’s, that lived opposite to Mis’ Sykes’s. So we all saw what we saw.
And it was that Mis’ Note’s front door opened and a little boy, ’bout
four years old, come shouting down the walk toward Lisbeth. And she
stooped over and kissed him. And they went in the house together and
shut the door.
Then us ladies turned and stared at each other. And Mis’ Sykes says,
swallowing unbeknownst in the middle of what she says: “The brazen
hussy. She’s brought it back here.”
I donno whether you’ve ever heard a group of immortal beings, women or
men, pounce on and mull over _that_ particular bone? If you live
somewheres in this world, I guess mebbe you hev--I guess mebbe you hev.
I’m never where it happens, that I don’t turn sick and faint all through
me. I don’t know how men handles the subject--here in Friendship Village
we don’t mention things that has a tang to ’em, in mixed company. Mebbe
men is delicate and gentle and chivalrous when they speak of such
things. Mebbe that’s one of the places they use the chivalry some feels
so afraid is going to die out. But I might as well own up to you that in
Friendship Village us women don’t act neither delicate nor decent in
such a case.
There was fourteen women in the room that day, every one of ’em except
Abigail Arnold and me living what you might call “protected” lives. I
mean by that that men had provided them their homes and was earning them
their livings, and clothing their children; and they were caring for
the man’s house and, in between, training up the children. Then we were
all of us further protected by the church, that we all belonged to and
helped earn money for. And also we were protected by the town, that we
were all respectable, bill-paying, property-owning, pew-renting citizens
of. That was us.
And over against us fourteen was Lisbeth--that her father had died when
she was a baby, and her mother had worked since she was born, with no
place to leave Lisbeth meantime. And Lisbeth herself had been a nice,
sweet-dispositioned, confiding little girl, doing odd jobs to our houses
and clerking in our stores in the Christmas rush. Till five years
ago--she’d gone away. And we all knew why. Her mother had cried her eyes
out in most every one of our kitchens, and we were all in full
possession of the facts--unless you count in the name of the little
child’s father. We didn’t know that. But then, we had so much to do
tearing Lisbeth to pieces we didn’t bother a great deal with that. And
there that day was the whole fourteen of us, pitching into Lisbeth Note
for what she’d done--just like she was fourteen of herself, our own
sizes and our own “protectedness,” and meeting us face to face.
“The _idear_!” says Mis’ Sykes, shaking her head, with her lips
disappearing within her face. “Why, she might have been clerking in the
post-office store now, a nice, steady, six-dollar-a-week position just
exactly like she was when it happened.”
“Would you think,” says Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman, “that living here in
Friendship Village with us, anybody _could_ go wrong?”
“Sepulchers in sheep’s clothing--that’s what some folks are,” says
little new Mis’ Graves, righteous.
And so on. And on. Hashing it all over again and eating it for cake. And
me, I wasn’t silent either. I joined in here and there with a little
something I’d heard. Till by the time the meeting adjourned, and we’d
all agreed to meet two days later and sew on the bunting for the booths,
I went home feeling so sick and hurt and sore and skinned that after
dark I up and walked straight down to Lisbeth’s house. Yes. After dark.
I was a poor, weak, wavering stick, and I knew it.
Lisbeth came to the door. “Hello, Lisbeth,” I says. “It’s Calliope
Marsh. Can I come in?”
“Mother ain’t here, Mis’ Marsh,” she says faint.
“Ain’t she, now?” I says. “I bet she is. I’m going inside to hunt for
her.”
And I walked right into the sitting-room and turned and looked at
Lisbeth. If she’d been defiant, or acted don’t-care, or tossed her head,
or stared at me--I donno’s I’d of had the strength to understand that
these might be her poor, pitiful weapons. But as it was, her eyes looked
straight into mine for a minute, and then brimmed up full of tears. So I
kissed her.
We sat there for an hour in the twilight--an hour I’ll never forget. And
then she took me up-stairs to show me the boy.
Think of the prettiest child you know. Think of the prettiest child you
ever did know. Now think of him laying asleep, all curls and his cheeks
flushed and his lips budded open a little bit. That was Chris. That was
Little Christopher--Lisbeth’s little boy.
“Miss Marsh,” Lisbeth says, “I’d rather die than not have him with me.
And mother ain’t strong, and she needs me. Do you think I done wrong to
come home?”
“Done wrong?” I says. “Done wrong to come home? Don’t them words kind of
fight each other in the sentence? Of course you didn’t do wrong. Why,”
says I, “Lisbeth, this is Friendship Village’s Home-coming year. It’s
Home-coming week next month, you know.”
She looked at me wistful there in the dark beside the child’s bed. “Oh,
not for me,” she says. “This house is my home--but this town ain’t any
more. It don’t want me.”
“It don’t want me,” I says over to myself, going home. And I looked
along at the nice, neat little houses, with the front doors standing
open to the spring night, and dishes clattering musical here and there
in kitchens, getting washed up, and lights up-stairs where children were
being put to bed. And I thought, “Never tell me that this little town
don’t want everybody that belongs to it to live in it. The town is true.
It’s folks that’s false.” I says that over: “The town is true. It’s
folks that’s false. How you going to make them know it?”
* * * * *
When it come my turn to have the Homecoming committee meet to my house,
things had begun to get exciting. Acceptances had commenced coming in.
I’d emptied out my photograph basket, and we had ’em all in it. It was
real fun and heart-warming to read ’em. Miss Sykes was presiding--that
woman’ll be one of them that comes back from the grave to do
table-rapping. She does so love to call anything to order.
“Judge Eustis Bangs is coming,” says Mis’ Sykes, impressive, looking
over the envelopes. “They say his wife don’t think anything in the world
of having company in to a meal every week or so.”
“‘Used-to’ Bangs coming!” cries Mis’ Holcomb-that-was-Mame Bliss. “He
set behind me in school. Land, I ain’t seen him since graduating
exercises when he dipped my braid in the inkwell.”
“And Sarah Arthur,” Mis’ Sykes went on. “She’s lady bookkeeper in a big
department store in the city, and in with all them four hundred.”
“I always wonder,” says Mis’ Holcomb, looking up and frowning
meditative, “four hundred _what_? Do they mean folks, or millionaires,
or what do they mean by that?”
“Oh, why millionaires, of course,” says Mis’ Sykes. “It don’t refer to
_folks_. Look-a-here,” she says next. “Admiral and Mrs. Homer is coming.
Why, you know he was only bare born here--he went away before he was
three months old. And she’s never been here. But they’re coming now.
Ladies! A admiral!”
Mis’ Toplady had been sitting still over in one corner, darning, with
her mind on it. But now she dropped her husband’s sock, and looked up.
“Admiral,” she says over. “That’s something to do with water fighting,
ain’t it? Well, I want to know what they call it that for? I thought we
didn’t consider it admiral any more to kill folks, by land or by sea?”
“Oh, but he’s an officer,” Mis’ Sykes says worshipful. “He’ll have
badges, and like enough pantalettes on his shoulders; and think how nice
he’ll look heading the parade!”
Mis’ Toplady kind of bit at her darning-needle, dreamy. “To my mind,”
she says, “the only human being that’s fit to head a parade is one
that’s just old enough to walk.”
Just then Mis’ Sykes done her most emphatic squeal and pucker, such as,
if she was foreign, she would reserve for royalty alone.
“My land,” she says, “Abner Dawes! He’s a-coming. He’s a-_coming_!”
There couldn’t have been a nicer compliment to any one, my way of
thinking, than the little round of smiles and murmurs that run about
among us when we heard this.
Abner Dawes had been, thirty years before, a nice, shy man round the
village, and we all liked him, because he had such a nice, kind way with
him and particularly because he had such a way with children. He used to
sing ’em little songs he made up. And some of the little songs got in
the paper and got copied in the city paper; and first thing we knew, a
big firm sent for Abner, and he’d been gone ever since. We heard of him,
now doing his children-songs on the stage, now in a big, beautiful book
of children’s songs, with pictures, that had been sent back to the
village. And we were prouder of him than ’most anybody we’d got. And
here he was coming to the Home-coming.
“We must give him the Principal Place, whatever that is,” says Mis’
Sykes, immediate. And we all agreed. Yes, Abner must have the Principal
Place.
We were sewing, that afternoon, on the bunting for Eppleby Holcomb’s
store’s booth. Blazing red, it was--ain’t it queer how men loves red?
Color of blood and color of fire; but I always think it means they’ll be
ready to love not blood of war but blood-brotherhood, and not the torch
to burn with, but the torch to light with--when the time comes. Yes, I
bet men’s liking red means something, and I like to think it means that.
And if it does, Eppleby’ll be first among men, for he didn’t want a
stitch of his booth that wasn’t flaming scarlet.
We had the diagram all made out on the table again, so’s to tell what
colors would come next to which. And all of a sudden Mis’ Sykes put her
finger in the middle of it.
“Do you know what?” she says. “If that tree wasn’t in the middle there,
we could have a great big evening bon-fire, with everybody around it.”
“So we could. Wouldn’t that be nice?” says everybody--only me. Because
the tree they meant was the Christmas tree, the big evergreen, the
living Christmas tree that had stood there in the square, all lit, that
last Christmas Eve, with all of us singing round it.
“I can’t ever think of that being in anybody’s way,” I says, and
everybody says, “Perhaps not,” and we went on tearing off the lengths of
blazing red calico. And me, I set there thinking about what they’d said.
I remember I was still thinking about it, and Mis’ Sykes and I were
standing up together measuring off the breadths, when the front door
opened. And there was standing Chris, Lisbeth’s little boy. Him and I’d
got to be awful good friends almost from the first. He come over to my
house quite a lot, and kneeled on a chair side of the table when I was
doing my baking, and he brought me in pans of chips. And no little
fellow whatever was ever sweeter.
“Hello, dear,” I says now. “Come in, won’t you?”
He stood quiet, eying us. And Mis’ Sykes down she drops the cloth and
made a dive for him.
“You darling!” says she--her emphasis coming out in bunches, the way
some women’s does when they talk to children. “You darling! _Whose_
little boy are you?”
He looked at her, shy and sweet. “I’m my mamma’s little boy,” he says,
ready. “But my papa, he didn’t come--not yet.”
I looked over to Mis’ Sykes, squatting with both arms around the baby.
“He’s Lisbeth’s little boy,” I says. “Ain’t he d-e-a-r?”--I spells it.
Mis’ Sykes-drew back, like the little fellow had hit at her. “Mercy!”
she says, only--and got up, and went on tearing cloth.
He felt it, like little children do feel ever so much more than we know
they feel. I see his little lip begin to curl. I went and whispered that
we’d go find an orange in the pantry, and I took him to get it; and then
he went off.
When I went back in the sitting-room they all kind of kept still, like
they’d been saying things they didn’t mean I should hear. Only that
little new Mis’ Morgan Graves, she sat with her back to the door and she
was speaking.
“...for one Sunday. But when I found it out, I took Bernie right out of
the class. Of course it don’t matter so much now, but when they get
older, you can’t be too careful.”
I went and stood back of her chair.
“Oh, yes, you can,” says I. (We try here in Friendship Village not to
contradict our guests too flat; but when it’s a committee meeting, of
course a hostess feels more free.) “You can be a whole lot too careful,”
I went on. “You can be so careful that you act like we wasn’t all seeds
in one great big patch of earth, same as we are.”
“Well, but, Calliope,” says Mis’ Sykes, “you can’t take that child in.
You ain’t any children, or you’d know how a mother feels. An
illegitimate child----”
Then I boiled over and sissed on the tip of the stove. “Stop that!” I
says. “Chris ain’t any more illegitimate than I am. True, he’s got a
illegitimate father bowing around somewheres in polite society. And
Lisbeth--well, she’s bore him and she’s raised him and she’s paid his
keep for four years, and I ain’t prepared to describe what kind of
mother she is by any one word in the dictionary. But the minute you tack
that one word on to Chris, well,” says I, “you got me to answer to.”
“But, Calliope!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “You can’t take _him_ in without
taking in the mother!”
“No,” says I, “and I’ve took her in already. Is my morals nicked any to
speak of? Mind you,” I says, “I ain’t arguin’ with you to take in
anybody up till they want to be took in and do right. I’ve got my own
ideas on that too, but I ain’t arguing it with you here. All I say now
is, Why _not_ take in Lisbeth?”
“Why not put a premium on evil-doing and have done with it?” says Mis’
Fire-Chief Merriman, majestic and deep-toned.
“Well,” I says, “we’ve done that to the father’s evil. Maybe you can
tell me why we fixed up his premium so neat?”
“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Sykes, “surely we needn’t argue it. Why, the whole
of civilization is on our side and responsible for our way of thinking.
You ain’t got no argument, Calliope,” she says. “Besides, it ain’t what
any of us thinks that proves it. It’s what’s what that counts.”