Pegeen carried a sore heart for many a day after Michael O’Neill’s
funeral.
“He wasn’t a very good father,” she said pitifully to Archibald, “and he
wasn’t very good to Mother, but ’twas the drink that did it; and I think
the drink’s just a sickness, don’t you? Mother had a picture of him, a
little picture that she wore in a locket. He was young in it; and he
looked so brave and glad and lovery. I like to think of him that
way—but I loved him, even after he was—sick. It’s a poor time to stop
loving folks when they’re bad, isn’t it? That’s when they need it the
very most, and Daddy loved back real hard when he was sober.”
In comforting her, Archibald dulled the edge of his own heartache; and
the two neighbored faithfully, even enthusiastically. Sometimes they
drove. More often they rode; and, though Pegeen was not quite her old
gay self, the visits were usually high-hearted adventures. Everything
one did with Peg was more or less of an adventure. There was something
about her that lent spice to the most prosaic of expeditions and
Archibald found himself looking at the Valley through her eyes and
loving it. He had laughed skeptically when the Smiling Lady had said
that there were no uninteresting people, that there were only people one
didn’t get at; but he began to believe that she had been right. There
were delightful folk in the Valley and there were queer folk; but,
delightful or queer, none of them bored him; and, when he remembered how
often and how intolerably he had been bored in the old days, he was
forced to believe that the difference was in him, not in the people
around him. After all, types were much the same. He could cap every
character in the Valley with a corresponding one in New York. Externals
were different; but the inner men and women were the same. So the change
must be in himself; but he doubted whether, thrown on his own resources,
he could walk the new road even now.
“It’s Pegeen,” he said to himself. “She’s a universal solvent. If I had
neighbored without her, I’d never have known these people as I know them
now. She coaxes the best of every one out into the open where I can see
it; and, after that the worst of him can’t fool me. Even the worst of
him doesn’t look bad to me when I see it through Peg’s eyes. Funny,
perhaps, or pitiful, or sad, but not bad. Yes; it’s Pegeen. She’s made
me free of _her_ Valley.”
All of which was modest and, in a degree, true; but, as a matter of
fact, the Valley, having first accepted him on Pegeen’s recommendation,
and looked him over with the tolerance she inspired, liked him for
himself and showed him its friendly side.
“Thee has a pleasant way with thee, Son,” Eldress Martha of the Shakers
said to him when he had sat on one of the straight-backed, rush-bottomed
chairs in her stiff, spotless sitting-room, for an hour one summer
afternoon, holding high converse with the little old lady whose spirit
was so much bigger and stronger than her body.
“I could wish thee were with us and at peace.”
“I’ve been thinking lately that perhaps I’m on the road to peace,
Eldress Martha,” he said gently.
She smiled. When she smiled, the great gray eyes that glowed so
wonderfully in her thin white face melted into sweetness and the hint of
fanaticism died out of her look.
“The roads are many, Son, but there are sign posts along all,” she said.
“It is easy to know whether one is traveling toward the right goal.”
“There are brand new kittens,” announced Pegeen skipping joyously into
the quiet shaded room and bringing a gust of the sunshiny outdoor world
with her, “and the jam is heavenly this year, Eldress Martha. I tried
three kinds, and I saw Sister Jane take honey out of the hives,—only I
didn’t see it as close as I wanted to.”
She dropped down on the floor at the Eldress’ feet and leaned her head
against the gray clad knee.
“I don’t see why bees should want to sting me.” Her voice held a note of
injury. “But they do.”
Eldress Martha laughed. Her laugh was even better than her smile, a
thing surpassingly girlish, and the tenderness in her face, as she laid
her hand lightly on the child’s head and smoothed the shining black
hair, gave Archibald a sudden twinge of heartache. It must be very
lonely sometimes, on the spiritual heights, and this dear woman had
walked there so long. He wondered whether she ever looked back to some
far-away time of youth and counted the cost of the peace she had now.
But Pegeen was contented to take Eldress Martha’s human side without
question. She had never been over-awed by Shaker asceticism. That was
perhaps the reason why the sisters adored her. They were such simple,
friendly folk in spite of their rules and visions.
“Brother Paul came to the garden,” Pegeen rubbed her cheek softly
against the caressing hand, as she spoke, “and he told me a spandy new
poem,—a lovely one. He’d met it coming down through the orchard and it
isn’t a speck religious,—just summery and sweet and all about
butterflies and birds and clouds.”
“And thee doesn’t call _that_ ‘religious’?” asked Eldress Martha.
Pegeen recognized the gentle reproof with a smile.
“Why of course it is, when you stop to think about it—praising God and
all his works and psalmy things like that,—but I meant it wasn’t
anything you’d sing in church.”
“Brother Paul meets many poems that are not for church Worship.” The
Eldress spoke quietly but a shadow of anxiety clouded the serenity of
her face.
“Sometimes I wonder if the beauty of this world is not too much in his
mind and heart,” she added. “Thee sees, child, it is good to love the
beautiful things God has made; but always one must look through them to
the Eternal Beauty.”
“Well, you don’t always have to say it,” Pegeen said comfortably. “I
believe that being chuckfull of love for anything is worshiping God,
even if you don’t think about Him at all when you’re doing it. I just
adore St. Francis. Miss Moran’s Ellen told me about him. She likes St.
Anthony best because he finds things for her when she’s lost them, but I
think St. Francis was a perfect old darling. He did love everything so
hard.”
“But he is a Popish Saint, child.” There was rebuke in the Eldress’
voice, but Pegeen looked up at her serenely.
“I’ll bet the birds and beasts didn’t care _what_ church he belonged
to,” she said, and Eldress Martha laughed once more.
“Thee has small respect for creeds, Peggy,” she said, “but thee has a
great heart.”
The sisters crowded doors and windows to wave good-by as Pegeen and
Archibald rode away down the street and the small girl turned to throw
kisses to them until a bend of the road hid the East Family buildings
from view. Then she settled back into her saddle to talk things over.
They always talked a neighboring visit over. That was one of the best
parts of it.
“Aren’t they the sweetest things?” she said beamingly. “I just wish I
could give every single one of them a nice little baby of her own.”
Archibald gasped.
“Wouldn’t it rather shake up the community?” he asked gravely.
Pegeen considered the proposition. “Well, I suppose it would a
little—not having marrying and giving in marriage in their religion you
know—like Heaven—but shaking up wouldn’t hurt them, and I think it’s
dreadful for so many perfectly darling women to miss having babies—and
it’s a shame for the babies too because somebody else that isn’t half as
nice will have to take them.
“I think it’s the lonesomest thing to go on cooking and sweeping and
dusting and making jam and nobody to do it for but each other and God.
Just think of the fun all those old ladies could have if the top floor
was plumb full of babies growing up into nice Shakers. I guess it’d have
to be grandbabies but then if they had grandbabies they’d have had
babies sometime so that would be all right.
“I told Sister Jane how I felt about it She’s the pretty one with pink
cheeks that tends the bees,—and she said they couldn’t very well have
babies of their own, but that she could find it in her heart to wish
they had a top floor of real cuddly orphan babies. She loves to cuddle
things. That’s one reason why we’re such great friends; and, do you
know, she’s got _twelve_ dresses all as good as can be. They all have to
be gray but there aren’t any two the same shade and she gets a little
change that way. I do love Sister Jane. She and I have splendid times
together and she sort of spills over to me, when she isn’t feeling so
awfully religious. When we went to see the kittens, after Brother Paul
said his poem to us, she told me the Eldress didn’t like his writing
poetry that wasn’t religious, and spending so much time out in the
fields and woods instead of working when he’s the strongest, youngest
man in the family. They were going to call him up about it; but Eldress
Martha said ‘no’ she’d attend to the matter, and that settled it. I tell
you when Eldress Martha says ‘no’ the Elders just pick up their coat
tails and go away on their tippy toes. But Sister Jane says she thinks
Eldress Martha’s worried about Brother Paul herself. She’s terribly fond
of him and he isn’t very frequent in prayer lately and he doesn’t
testify at all—but he certainly does write scrumptious poetry.”
“What was that you said about his meeting a poem in the orchard?”
Archibald asked.
“Oh, that’s the way the Shakers always talk about their poetry. Lots of
them write hymns. Eldress Martha writes lovely ones—and they always say
they met them. They think the Lord gives them the poetry ready made, you
know.”
“Direct inspiration: I see—Poor Brother Paul with his world beauty!”
Archibald looked as if he too were worried about the young poet. Little
by little he was learning that the Happy Valley teemed with drama. This
neighboring with Pegeen was interesting, extraordinarily interesting.
Day by day he grew more dependent upon this child’s companionship.
Whether he rode or tramped or loafed or gardened or neighbored, he
wanted her near. Even when, he painted, she usually sat beside him
dreaming or busy with some quiet work but always ready with smiles and
eager interest if he looked from his canvas to her face or spoke to her;
and it was not possible to feel that the world was an altogether
disappointing and lonely place when one had such a comrade. Wiggles,
too, did his dog best in the line of companion plays and a yellow dog’s
best of worship is a thing to warm the cockles of even the heaviest
heart. There was a curious likeness between the child’s deep blue Irish
eyes and the pup’s liquid brown eyes, during those long August days.
Passionate devotion welling up from child heart and dog heart made the
eyes kin.
The little garden in front of the shack was ablaze with August glory now
and Pegeen’s face, as she bent over the flowers or knelt beside the
borders making war on weeds, was a pleasant thing to see; but a sadness
came into it, whenever she looked at the clumps of perennials striving
lustily in preparation for another year. Archibald had said that he
would come back to watch them bloom; but he had said that before Richard
Meredith’s coming, and back in the darkest pigeonhole of Pegeen’s mind
was a suspicion that she and Wiggles and Spunky and Mrs. Benderby and
the horses and the neighbors and the garden all added together would
never be able to make him happy, with Nora Moran away. She would not
admit to herself in the daytime that the suspicion was there; but
sometimes when she happened to waken in the night, she would take it out
and cry over it a little, very quietly.
She and Archibald rode often to the Shaker village where Eldress Martha
was in her element with work and responsibility, pouring upon her
torrent-wise. Even on her busiest days she had time for Archibald. The
friendship between the two, whose lives had run in grooves so different,
was a real thing and the man went away from his hours with the
tender-hearted, steel-willed old woman with an uplift of spirit. After
all the needs of brave souls were much the same. Whether it was Eldress
Martha with her religious faith and her life of the spirit or Dr.
Fullerton with his agnosticism and bluff materialism, the test of the
soul was its sincerity and courage. The doctor had put it in a nutshell,
the night he had fought for Ezra Watt’s life and won. Playing the game
was the thing. To choose a game in which one believes there was good and
to play it for all there was in it—that was the life worth living. If
love and laughter walked with the player, so much the better. If
not,—still there was the game.
And the more Archibald went the Valley ways, the more he realized that,
in one form or another, neighboring was the great game.—There in the
valley—out beyond—wherever men and women worked and hoped and loved
and suffered, there was call for players stout of heart, strong of will,
great of soul, wise of brain. Once when a baby’s hand had curled round
his finger, he had said to himself that neighboring was not the last
word, that a man’s own meant more; but, during those Summer days when
Pegeen and he went up and down the Valley, knocking at the doors of
hearts and lives, he came to realize dimly that a man’s own reaches out
beyond the doors of his home and that if he follows it to the soul
heights and the love limits, he will find himself, walking there with
the brotherhood of Man.
Ginsy Shalloway, who, by virtue of “sewing around,” had gained a shrewd
knowledge of human nature and was prone to sharp criticism, voiced the
general verdict when she admitted that “the artist man’s friendliness
rang true.
“Seems as if he honestly liked folks and was real set on their liking
him,” she said, when the matter came up for discussion at the ladies’
aid society. “I don’t know as I ever saw a city fellow with as few
trimmings. He’s pleased as can be when he gets an invite to dinner and
he eats so hearty, you’d think he didn’t get the right kind of victuals
at home, if you didn’t know Peg. He was eating dinner up at Nelsons’ the
other day when that big storm came up so sudden; and, if he didn’t pull
off his coat and go out into the hay field with Martin and help to
hustle the hay in. Real good help he was too, Martin says—stronger than
you’d think and quick as a cat. And then the boys got to wrestling out
in the barn; and if he didn’t lay them all out on their backs, as easy
as rolling off a log. They were some surprised and ashamed; but he said
he’d taken lessons of a Japanee and that the Japs beat the world for
wrestling and that, if the boys would like to learn, he’d teach them all
the tricks he knew.
“So now he’s got a sort of class down in an empty loft at Jim Neal’s and
a lot of the boys go there twice a week. Mis’ Dawes says their Jim’s
plumb crazy about it.”
Jimmy wasn’t the only boy who was crazy about the class in the barn
loft. One by one they came trooping in, shyly and awkwardly at first;
but soon with glad confidence and unbounded enthusiasm. Lem Tollerton
dropped in one evening to learn the knock-out that had laid him low,
and, in his wake, the young men of the Valley found their way to the
loft. Archibald added gloves and foils to his equipment; and within a
few weeks, wrestling, boxing, fencing and jiu-jitsu were epidemic.
“It beats all,” Martin Nelson, the father of four husky lads, confided
to Mr. Colby. “My boys are poking and pounding each other all over the
place, the minute they ain’t at work; but I don’t know as I ever saw
them so good-natured. Seems as if they thought being knocked endways was
a treat and they’re always and everlastingly talking about playing fair
and not taking advantage and not losing temper and not poking here or
punching there. I don’t know but what teaching them to fight’s going to
take the fighting out of them. Anyway they ain’t hanging around the
stores every evening cooking up trouble. They do say Lem Tollerton and
his crowd are cutting out booze, because it gets at them and spoils
their fighting.”
Now and again, one of the older men, drawn by curiosity, came to the
class to look on. He seldom went away without having a bout with the
gloves or a wrestling lesson and he usually came again. The crowd soon
outgrew its quarters and Archibald went to Dr. Fullerton with a plan.
“The Valley needs a men’s and boys’ club,” he said. “Where can we have
it and how will we run it? You know this community better than I do.”
“I’m not so popular with it, when it’s healthy,” the doctor said dryly.
“You’re working as hard to make yourself solid as if you were running
for office. Pity not to stand for something, with the pull you’ve got.”
He dropped his banter and laid a friendly hand on the younger man’s
shoulder.
“It’s a bully work, man. You’re doing more to humanize the Valley than
the doves of peace could if they came in flocks. Nothing like beating an
idea of honest sport into a fellow’s head for making a decent citizen of
him. When he’s grasped the idea that there are some things no fellow can
do, he’s got something to work on. I’m inclined to think that boxing
will grip a boy’s soul when Sunday school fails. Now about this club,
How much money will it take?”
“Oh, I’ll put up the money.” Dr. Fullerton shook his head.
“No, you won’t. That would be a mistake. Buy or rent a place if you want
to fix it up; but organize a regular club and put some of your toughest
specimens in as officers. Responsibility’s most as good for a fellow as
boxing. Let the members pay the running expenses out of the dues.
They’ll think more of the club if they have to do some hustling to keep
it going. There’s that old house of Rankins’. It’s been empty ever since
the old man died. Nephew it was left to lives out in Seattle. It’s a
whaling big place, but you wouldn’t need to use it all and I’ve a notion
you could get it for a song.”
Archibald told Pegeen about the club that night. She was all interest
and encouragement; but there was a hint of mental reservation in her
approval, and the man noticed it.
“Well, Peg, out with it!” he commanded. “What’s wrong with the scheme?”
She blushed at discovery and hesitated, then spoke her thought frankly,
as she always did to him.
“There isn’t anything wrong with it. It’s splendid of you to do it and
folks will be perfectly crazy about it—only I was just thinkink how
it’s most always the men and the boys that get things done for them. I
s’pose it’s because they won’t be good all by themselves the way women
and girls will; but I don’t think that’s exactly fair, do you? It’s like
giving prizes to the worst spellers.”
Archibald looked at her with a puzzled frown between his eyes.
“Why, Peg,” he began; then stopped and thought the proposition over.
Suddenly, something that the Smiling Lady had once said to him came back
to him and his face cleared.
“Pegeen, I’m a fool—just a plain, block-headed fool. This Valley
doesn’t need a men’s and boys’ club. It needs a neighborhood house and
you are going to give it one. There can be a men’s club and a boys’ club
and a women’s club and a girls’ club, just for the fun of the thing; but
there’ll be a big get-together club that will take all the others in.
How’s that?”
Pegeen’s face was his answer. It was one rapture from brow to chin.
“It’ll be perfectly wonderful,” she said happily.
Then a shadow drifted across the rapture and she sighed.
“Well?” questioned the man.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.”
“Thinking what?” he insisted.
She looked very uncomfortable, wriggled uneasily in her chair.
“It’s Miss Moran,” she said, at last. “She was always crazy to have a
club, here in the Valley—a neighborhood house she called it just like
you did. She used to talk and talk and plan and plan; but she didn’t
have money enough. I was just thinking how lovely it would have been
if—”
She was on the borderland of unspoken things and afraid to go further;
but Archibald opened her way.
“See here, Peg,” he said abruptly. “You mustn’t make any mistake about
my feeling for Miss Moran. I’m head over heels in love with her. You’re
too clever not to know that and I don’t mind your knowing it; but,
because I can’t marry her, is no reason why you and I shouldn’t talk
about her exactly as we always did. If she’d like this club, there’s one
more big reason for putting it across, and the more she helps with it,
the better I’ll be satisfied; only you are giving the club house to the
Valley. Just remember that. Now we’ll go and talk the thing over with
Miss Moran.”
His frankness cleared the air for himself as well as for the child; and
when they found the Smiling Lady on her veranda and told her about the
plan, the vague chill that had seemed to envelop her melted quite away
before their enthusiasm.
“Splendid!” she cried eagerly. “Splendid! How you _have_ come on with
your neighboring, Mr. Archibald! I prophesied you’d make something of
him, Peggy.”
There was a ring of pride in the jesting voice, a glow of pride in the
smiling face. Richard Meredith, watching her from the hammock, noticed
both. She was glad for the Valley, but there was more gladness beyond
that; gladness and pride and—yes, there was tenderness too. It meant
much to her that her people were to have their neighborhood house; but
it meant even more to her that this one man was to give it to them, that
they had found their way to his heart, and that he was finding his way
to theirs. Meredith’s face gave no sign of anything save civil interest;
but he drew back a little further into the shadow of the vines that
clambered over the veranda trellis, and watched the girl and the man who
leaned toward each other in the white moonlight, talking eagerly and
with an intimate understanding that was new to him but prehistoric to
them.
They altogether forgot him, when they went into the lamp-lighted room to
figure on changes in the club house; but, as he sat there in the shadow,
feeling oddly old and tired, a little figure slipped out through the
French windows and tucked herself cozily into the hammock beside him.
“Which do you think would be nicer to have—a piano or a phonograph?”
Pegeen asked confidentially, gathering him, as a matter of course, into
intimacy of discussion and planning.
The man smiled in the dusk. She was so small and sweet and friendly
and—though that he could not know—so sure he needed seeing to.
“I’ll give you both, for your neighborhood house, Pegeen,” he said—but
added quickly, “if Mr. Archibald doesn’t object.”
“Why, he’d be _glad_,” she insisted stoutly, though back in her own mind
there was a doubt. “That’s perfectly sweet of you. Oh, dear, it does
seem as if God must have been working on that club for years and years.
Everything’s going so beautifully. Only Deacon Ransom’ll have a fit
about the billiard table. He won’t fit hard enough to keep him away
though, and Miss Moran says he’s just got to let Sally come. I wish
she’d get a beau down there and run off with him. Honestly I do. I’d
help—if he’s nice. Do you know, I think a piano and a phonograph’s an
awful lot for you to give. I wouldn’t want anything but the phonograph,
but you see the mothers are so proud if their daughters can play some
pieces and when there’s an entertainment, they always want the girls to
show off; so it seems as if we really did need a piano. I’m going to
tell everybody that you thought it up all by yourself, and Miss Moran
didn’t have a thing to do with it. I shouldn’t wonder if you’d think of
lots of things like that after a while. It isn’t a bit hard, after you
once get started—not if anybody’s nice inside, like you. I guess city
folks have to get new glasses to see country folks right, and some of
them don’t ever bother to do it; but the awfully nice ones, like you and
Miss Moran and Mr. Archibald, do. And then, after they put on the new
glasses, they see so many kind things to do that they work like the very
old Scratch to catch up with themselves.”
Meredith pulled the child’s head down against his shoulder and rumpled
the thick curls with a gentle hand.
“It’s late for me to be changing glasses or ways, Peg,” he said softly;
and his voice matched the gray of his hair. “Do you think I could ever
catch up with myself, if I didn’t have Miss Moran to help me?”
Peggy reached up and gave the hand on her hair a loving little pat.
“Why, it’d be as easy as can be for you,” she assured him. “If you ever
begin neighboring—in earnest, you know—I bet you’ll be perfectly
splendid at it. Of course it’d be lovely to have Miss Moran help—but
she wouldn’t need to. She started Mr. Archibald, but look at him now! I
get jealous of the neighbors sometimes just for a minute; and he’s done
most of it all by himself. Miss Moran hasn’t helped him atall, since you
came.”
“I’ve an idea she has kept right on helping him—in a way,” the man said
slowly,—“and then he’s had you to see to him, Pegeen.”