ain’t they? Wars and martyrdom and burnings and--crucifixion. All done
in the immortal name of what’s what. Well, me, I don’t care a cake o’
washing soap what’s what. What’s what ain’t nothing but a foot-bridge
anyhow, on over to what’s-going-to-be. And if you tell me that
civilization and time can keep going much longer putting a premium on a
man’s wrong and putting a penalty on the woman--then I tell you to your
face that I’ve got inside information that you ain’t got. Because in the
end--in the end, _life ain’t that sort_.”
“Good for you, Calliope!” says a voice in the door. And when I’d wheeled
round, there stood Eppleby Holcomb, come in to see how we were getting
along with the cloth for his booth. “Good for you,” he says, grave.
We all felt stark dumb with embarrassment--I guess they hadn’t one of us
ever said that much in company with a man present in our lives. In
company, with man or men present, we’d talked like life was made up of
the pattern of things, and like speaking of warp and woof wasn’t
delicate. And we never so much as let on they _was_ any knots--unless it
was property knots or like that. But now I had to say something, being I
had said something. And besides, I wanted to.
“Do you believe that too, Eppleby?” I ask’ him breathless. “Do any men
believe that?”
“Some men do, thank God,” Eppleby says. And his wife, Mame, smiled over
to him; and Mis’ Timothy Toplady, she booms out: “Yes, _let’s_ thank
God!” And I see that anyhow we four felt one. And “Is this stuff for my
blazing booth here?” Eppleby sings out, to relieve the strain. And we
all talked at once.
* * * * *
From that day on it seemed as if the whole town took sides about
Lisbeth.
Half of ’em talked like Mis’ Sykes, often and abundant. And one-quarter
didn’t say much of anything till they were pressed to. And the remaining
one-quarter didn’t say anything for fear of offending the other
three-fourths, here and there. But some went to see Lisbeth, and sent
her in a little something. She didn’t go much of anywheres--she was shy
of accepting pity where it would embarrass the givers. But oh my, how
she did need friends!
Mame Holcomb was the only one that Lisbeth went to her house by invite.
Mame let it be known that she had invited her, and full half of them
she’d asked sent in their regrets in consequence. And of them that did
go--well, honest, of all the delicate tasks the Lord has intrusted to
His blundering children, I think the delicatest is talking to one of us
that’s somehow stepped off the track in public.
I heard Mis’ Morgan Graves trying to talk to Lisbeth about like this:
“My _dear_ child. _How_ do you get on?”
“Very nice, thank you, Mis’ Graves,” says Lisbeth.
“Is there _any_thing I can do to help you?” the lady pursues, earnest.
“No, Mis’ Graves, nothing--thank you,” says Lisbeth, looking down.
“You know I’d be so willing, so _very_ willing, to do all I could at any
time. You feel that about me, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” says Lisbeth, beginning to turn fire red.
“Promise,” says Mis’ Graves, “to let me know if you ever need a
friend----”
And I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. “That’s you, Mis’ Graves,” I
broke in hearty. “And it’s what I’ve been wanting to say to you for ever
so long. You’re a good soul. Whenever you need a friend, just come to
me. Will you?”
She looked kind of dazed, and three-fourths indignant. “Why ...” she
begun.
And I says: “And you’d let me come to you if I need a friend, wouldn’t
you? I thought so. Well, now, here’s three of us good friends, and
showing it only when it’s needed. Let’s us three go and set down
together for refreshments, sha’n’t we?”
Lisbeth looked up at me like a dog that I’d patted. I donno but Mis’
Graves thought I was impertinent. I donno but I was. But I like to
be--like that. Oh, anything but the “protected” women that go cooing and
humming and pooring around a girl like Lisbeth, and doing it in the name
of friendliness. Friendliness isn’t that. And if you don’t know what it
is different from that, then go out into the crowd of the world,
stripped and hungry and dumb and by yourself, and wait till it comes to
you. It’ll come! God sees to that. And it’s worth everything. For if you
die without finding it out, you die without knowing life.
After that day, none of us invited Lisbeth in company. We see it was
kinder not to.
But the little boy--the little boy. There wasn’t any way of protecting
him. And it never entered Lisbeth’s head at first that she was going to
be struck at through him. She sent him to Sunday-school, and everything
was all right there, except Mis’ Graves taking her little boy out of the
class he was in, and Lisbeth didn’t know that. Then she sent him to day
school, in the baby room. And Mis’ Sykes’s little grandchild went
there--Artie Barling; and I guess he must have heard his mother and
Mis’ Sykes talking--anyway at recess he shouts out when they was
playing:
“Everybody that was born in the house be on my side!”
They all went rushing over to his side, Christopher too.
“Naw!” Artie says to him. “_Not_ youse. Youse was borned _outside_. My
gramma says so.”
So Chris went home, crying, with that. And then Lisbeth begun to
understand. I went in to see her one afternoon, and found her working
out in the little patch of her mother’s garden. When she see me she set
down by the hollyhocks she was transplanting and looked up at me, just
numb.
“Miss Marsh,” she says, “it’s God punishing me, I s’pose, but----”
“No, Lisbeth,” I says. “No. The real punishment ain’t this. This is just
folks punishing you. Don’t never mistake the one for the other, will
you?”
* * * * *
Acceptances to the Home-coming kept flowing in like mad--all the folks
we’d most wanted to come was a-coming, them and their families. I begun
to get warm all through me, and to go round singing, and to wake up
feeling something grand was going to happen and, when I was busy, to
know there was something nice, just over the edge of my job, sitting
there rosy, waiting to be thought about. It worked on us all that way.
It was a good deal like being in love. I donno but it was being in love.
In love with folks.
The afternoon before the Home-coming was to begin, there was to be a
rehearsal of the Children’s Drill, that Mis’ Sykes had charge of for the
opening night. We were all on the Market Square, working like beavers
and like trojums, or whatever them other busy animals are, getting the
booths set up. All the new things that the town had got and done in the
last fifty years was represented, each in a booth, all round the
Square.... And in the middle of the Square stood the great big
Cedar-of-Lebanon tree that we’d used last Christmas for the first annual
Friendship Village outdoors Christmas tree. I wondered how anybody could
ever have said that it was in the way! It stood there, all still, and
looking like it knew us far, far better than we knew it--the way a tree
does. With the wind blowing through it gentle, it made a wonderful nice
center-piece, I thought.
We’d just got to tacking on to Eppleby Holcomb’s red Department Emporium
booth when we heard a shout, and there, racing along the street, come
the forty-fifty children that was going to be in the Children’s Drill.
They all come pounding and scampering over to where we were, each with a
little paper stick in their hand for the wand part, and they swarmed up
to Mis’ Sykes that was showing ’em how, and they shouted:
“Mis’ Sykes! Mis’ Sykes! Can’t we rehearse now?”--for “rehearse” seems
to be a word that children just loves by natural instinct same as “cave”
and “den” and “secret stairway.”
I looked down in the faces all pink and eager and happy--I knew most of
’em by name. I’d be ashamed to live in a town where I didn’t know anyway
fifty-sixty children by name, keeping up as fast as necessary. And with
’em I see was Lisbeth’s little boy, waving a stick of kindling for his
wand, happy as a clam, but not a mum clam at all.
“Hello, Chris!” I says. “I didn’t know you could drill.”
But he stopped jumping and laughing. “I can’t,” he says, “I was just
pe-tend. I can pe-tend, can’t I?” he says, looking up alarmed.
“Hush, Calliope!” says Mis’ Sykes, back of me. “No need making it any
harder for him than ’tis.”
“What do you mean by that?” I ask’ her sharp.
“Why,” says she, “I couldn’t have him in the drill. How could I? The
children’s mothers is coming down here to trim ’em. Lots of ’em--Mis’
Grace and Mis’ Morgan Graves and some more, said flat out they wouldn’t
let their children be in it if they had to trim ’em along with her.”
“My land,” I says, “my land!”
I couldn’t say anything more. And Mis’ Sykes called the children, and
they all went shouting round her over to the middle of the green. All
but Chris.
I picked him up and set him on the counter of the booth, and I stood
side of him. But he didn’t pay much attention to me. He was looking off
after the children, forming in two lines that broke into four, and
wheeled and turned, and waved their wands. He watched ’em, and he never
says a word.
“Come and help me tack tacks, Chris,” I says, when I couldn’t stand it
any longer.
And then he says: “When they do it, it’s going to be a band playing,
won’t there?”
“Yes,” I says, “but we’ll all be hearing the music. Come and----”
“When they do it,” he says, still looking off at the children, “they’ll
all have white on ’em, won’t they?”
“Yes,” I says, “white on ’em.” And couldn’t say no more.
Then he turns and looks me right in the face: “I got my new white suit
home,” he says, whispering.
“Yes, lambin’, yes,” I says, and had to pretend I didn’t understand. And
when I looked back at him, he was setting there, still and watching; but
two big tears was going down his cheeks.
All of a sudden something in me, something big and quiet, turned round
to me and said something. I heard it--oh, I tell you, I heard it. And it
wasn’t the first time. And all over me went racing the knowledge that
there was something to do for what was the matter. And while I stood
there, feeling the glory of knowing that I’d got to find a way to do,
somehow--like you do sometimes--to make things better, I looked down the
long green stretch of the Square and in the middle of the Square I saw
something. Something that was like an answer. And I put my arms round
Chris and hugged him. For I’d got a plan that was like a present.
But he didn’t feel like that--not then. He kind of wriggled away. “It
ain’t lovin’ time,” he says. “No.”
“No,” I says, looking down that sunny Market Square toward what I’d
seen. “No, it ain’t loving time--not yet. But I tell you, I tell you
it’s going to be it! Mebbe I can make ’em see--mebbe I know a way to
make ’em see. Come along with me,” I says, “Lisbeth’s little boy--and
help!”
* * * * *
Toward sundown of that first great day of the Friendship Village
Home-coming we was the happiest, wore-outest set of folks I about ever
see. Not everybody we’d expected and hoped for had come--even Abner
Dawes, he hadn’t showed up. But then he was such a big man that I
donno’s any of us thought he’d come, any of the time. Only we did enjoy
having it in the _Daily_ every few nights that he’d be there. The editor
of the Friendship _Evening Daily_ got six distinct locals out of it for
“Supper Table Jottings”--six nights hand-running. Thus:
1. Abner Dawes is expected to arrive from the east for the
Home-coming.
2. Abner Dawes will arrive from the east the last of the week. The
occasion is the Home-coming.
3. Word has been received that Abner Dawes will reach here Thursday
evening to attend the Home-coming.
4. Abner Dawes will reach here to-morrow night.
5. Abner Dawes will reach here this evening on the Six fifty-nine,
for a brief sojourn.
6. Abner Dawes arrived last evening and is quartered at the Opera
House hotel.
Some we hadn’t thought of turned up last minute, and had to tell folks
who they were and then--my, what a welcome! Every few minutes, all day
long, we’d hear a little shouting, and see a little crowd, and we’d all
rush over, and there’d be somebody just got there, and everybody’d be
calling ’em old names, and shaking hands with the children and kissing
the grand-children. It was a real day. It’d be a day I’d like to talk
about even if nothing else had happened but the day being just the day.
Mis’ Sykes and I were in Eppleby’s booth, and in back of it the children
was all trimmed and ready to begin their march, when I heard an unusual
disturbance just outside. I looked, and I saw Lisbeth, that Eppleby had
asked to come and help tend his booth that night, and she was just
getting there, with Chris trotting alongside of her. But they weren’t
making the disturbance. Most of that was Eppleby, shaking both the hands
of a big, smooth-boned, brown-skinned man that was shouting at his
lungs’ top:
“_Eppleby Bebbleby_
_Wooden-leg,_
_Lost his knife_
_Playing mumblety-peg._”
with all the gusto of a psalm. And Eppleby was shouting back at him
something about
“_Abner Dawes he comes to late_
_The wood was split and things was great._”
And it was Abner actually come and getting himself welcomed by Eppleby
just like one of us. And Abner begun remembering us all and calling us
by name.
Abner was one of them men that makes you know what men were meant to be
like. His face was ruddy and wrinkled--but oh, it was deep and bright,
and his eyes looked out like his soul was saying to your soul: “See me.
I’m you. Oh, come on, let’s find out about living. How does anybody ever
talk about anything else?” That was Abner. You couldn’t be with him
without looking closer at the nature of being alive. And you saw that
life is a different thing--a different thing from what most of us think.
And some day we’ll find out what.
And me, seeing him, and the folks all gathered round the Square, waiting
for the after-supper part of the entertainment, and knowing what I’d
planned should happen right afterward, I had only one thought:
“Abner,” I says, just the same as if he hadn’t been a great man, “the
children--they’re going to march. They’re in back of the booth, all
ready. You must lead ’em! He must lead ’em, Mis’ Sykes, mustn’t he--and
sing with ’em? Every child here knows your songs. Oh, _would_ you come
and march with ’em?”
I love to remember how deep and bright his face got. “Would I march?” he
says. “With _children_? When is it?--now?”
I put out my hand to thank him, and he took hold of it. And all of a
sudden, right down there close by our two hands I see somebody. And it
was Lisbeth’s little boy, that had come running to us and was tugging at
my skirt.
“Look,” Chris says, clear. “I got on this white one. Couldn’t--couldn’t
I march too?”
He was looking up, same as a rose, his big eyes shining hopeful. My, my,
but he was dear. And Abner Dawes looked down at him. He’d never seen him
before--nor knew about his being Lisbeth’s.
“March!” Abner cries. “Of course you can march! Come along with me.”
And he swung little Christopher up on to his back. And he run out into
the midst of the other children, where Mis’ Sykes was marshaling ’em
before the booth.
“God bless him,” says Eppleby, behind me.
But then Mis’ Sykes looked up, and saw him. And she never hesitated a
minute, not even a minute to wonder why. She just set her lips together
in that thin line I knew, and she run right up to Abner.
“Oh, Mr. Dawes,” she says, “you mustn’t. The mothers won’t like it. He’s
Lisbeth Note’s child. He’s----”
Abner Dawes looked down at her, round Chris’s white legs. All the
brightness was gone out of Abner’s face now--but not the deepness nor
the kindness. That stayed. “Do you mean,” he said grave, “that this
child is evil?”
“No--no,” says Mis’ Sykes, stumbling some. “But I thought you’d ought to
know--folks feeling as they do here----”
Abner turned and looked down the green, where the folks was gathered and
the last sun was slanting. It was gold, and it was still, all except the
folks chatting in groups. And up the street the half-past seven bell was
ringing, like somebody saying something nice.
“Oh, God,” says Abner Dawes, kind of reverent and kind of like a sigh.
“Here too. Here too.”
I’ll never forget his face when he turned to Mis’ Sykes. It wasn’t hard
or cross or accusing--I guess he knew she was just at her crooked way of
trying to be decent! But he made her know firm that if he led the
children’s march, he’d lead it with Chris.--And it was so he done.
...Down the long green they come, side by side. And the other children
fell in behind, and they circled out into a great orbit, with the
Christmas tree in the middle of it. And folks begun to see who the man
was at the head, and the word run round, and they all broke out and
cheered and called out to him. Oh, it was a great minute. I like to
think about it.
And then the murmur begun running round that it was Chris that was with
him. And Mame Holcomb and Eppleby and Mis’ Toplady and me, watching from
the booth, we knew how everybody was looking at everybody else to see
what to think--like folks do. But they didn’t know--not yet.
Then something wonderful happened. Halfway round the Square, Abner
noticed that Chris didn’t have any wand, same as the other children had.
And so, when he was passing the big Cedar-of-Lebanon-looking Christmas
tree, what did he do but break off a little branch and put that in
Chris’s hand. And Chris come on a-waving it, a bough off that tree. I
sort of sung all over when I saw that.
The children ended up round a platform, and up there went the folks
that had been picked out to lead the singing. And as they went they
sung:
“Oh, how lovely is the evening, is the evening, is the evening!”
And in a minute, from first one place and then another the others took
it up, them that had sung it in singing school, years ago--
“When the bells are sweetly chiming, sweetly chiming, sweetly chiming”
and they sung it like a round, which it is, with a great fine booming
bass of
“Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong”
all through it. Do you know that round? If you don’t, get it; and get
some folks together somehow, and sing it. It lets you taste the evening.
But I can’t tell you the way it seemed to us there in Friendship
Village, met together after so many years, and singing together like we
was all one Folk. One Folk.
They sung other songs, while the dusk came on. Abner Dawes was sitting
on the platform, and he kept Chris on his knee--I loved him for that.
There wasn’t a set program. First one would start a song from
somewheres in the crowd, and then another.... And all the time I was
waiting for it to get dark enough to do what I had planned to be
done--and what I’d had men working at near all the night before to get
ready. And when the dark come thick enough, and just at the end, I
remember of their singing “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” I thought it was
time.
I gave the word to them that were waiting. And suddenly, right there in
the midst of the Square, the great green tree, that had been the
Friendship Village Christmas tree, glowed softly alight from top to
bottom, all in the green branches, just like it had glowed on Christmas
Eve. They’d done the work good, and as if they liked it--and the bulbs
were in so deep in the green that not a soul had noticed all day. And
there was the Christmas tree, come back.
“Oh....” they says, low, all over the Square. And nobody said anything
else. It was as if, awake and alive in that living tree, there was the
same spirit that had been there on Christmas Eve, the spirit that we’ve
got to keep alive year long, year round, year through.
I’d whispered something to Abner, and he come down from the platform and
went over close to the tree. And of a sudden he lifted Chris in his
arms, high up among the lit branches. And in everybody’s hush he says
clear:
“‘_And He took a little child and set him in their midst._’”
That was all he said. And Chris looked out and smiled happy, and waved
his branch off the Christmas tree. Over the whole Market Square there
lay a stillness that said things to itself and to us. It said that here
was the Family, come home, round the tree, big folks and little, wise
and foolish, and all feeling the Christmas spirit in our hearts just
like it _was_ our hearts. It said that the Family’s judging Lisbeth Note
one way or the other didn’t settle anything, nor neither did our
treating her little boy mean or good....
For all of a sudden we were all of us miles deeper into life than that.
And we saw how, beyond judgment and even beyond what’s what, is a spirit
that has got to come and clutch hold of life before such wrongs, and
more wrongs, and all the wrongs that ail us, can stop being. And that
spirit will be the spirit that was in our hearts right then. We all knew
it together--I think even Mis’ Sykes knew--and we stood there steeped in
the knowing. And it was one of the minutes when the thing we’ve made out
of living falls clean away, like a husk and a shell, and the Shining
Thing inside comes close and says: “This is the way I am if you’ll let
me be it.”
Away over on the edge of the Square somebody’s voice, a man’s voice--we
never knew who it was--begun singing “Home Again, From a Distant Shore.”
And everybody all over took it up soft. And standing there round the
Christmas tree in the middle of June, with that little child in our
midst, it was as true for us as ever it was on Christmas night, that
glory shone around. And we had come Home in more senses than we’d
thought, to a place, a Great Place, that was waiting for us.
Pretty soon I slipped away, inside Eppleby’s booth. And there, in all
that scarlet bunting, Lisbeth stood, looking and crying, all alone--but
crying for being glad.
“Lisbeth, Lisbeth!” I said, “right out there is the way life is--_when
we can get it uncovered_.”
She looked up at me; and I saw the thing in her face that was in the
faces of all those in the Square, like believing and like hoping, more
than any of us knows how--yet.
“Honest?” she said. “Honest and truly?”
“Honest and truly,” I told her.
And I believe that. And you believe it. If only we can get it said....