Part 11

"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.

"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and tapped me on the arm.

"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds--the School Board an' some o' the leadin' citizens has--to appoint a Women's Evenin' Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes should be it.'

"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin' of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'

"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got: 'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you women should do it.'

"'Notice _what_?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be up to an' ain't?'

"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the store and talk it over.

"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'

"'_Public_ decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.

"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from--my cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva, her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess! It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.

"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.

"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless and patient.

"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin' pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'

"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he says, simple,--'sick enough to bust the camera.'

"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough--what was there to _like_ about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business? Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,--what was there about any of it to _like_ doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.

"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge--' and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I could sense their lives like I could sense my own--level and even and _darn_. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back the feeling.

"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun outlining the situation that he meant about.

"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best--I mean it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's--you know we've all talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'

"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of offending some?'

"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's, Calliope? Women can do these things better than men. This is somethin' delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the mothers--it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.

"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt--because young folks had been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.

"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it--they've used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit peelin's--every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help us out.'

"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt kind of an interest--though of course the School Board seemed to own it special.

"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'

"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. _I_ think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas Sykes.

"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'

"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.

"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'

"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'

"'_What?_' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'

"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?' I says.

"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says Silas.

"'However that is, you _didn't_ set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'

"'Well,' says Silas, '_anyhow_, they've got to get off'n the streets. We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got to look out for public decency.'

"'_Public_ decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'

"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin' our best to start 'em right?'

"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'

"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the first time--ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em _to_?'

"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.

"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '_Ain't it?_' She set thinking for a minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do. But we'll do it, I guess.'

"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and look around and see what we see. We all knew--every woman in Friendship Village knew--how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other, helpless, that we _wisht_ something could be done, but that was as far as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive _at_.

"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.

"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin' to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young and some pretty and excited. Excited about life and new things and moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'

"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part of the house and went and set in the parlour.

"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the _parlour_, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to _do_ in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked kind of aimless to the window.

"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.

"I told her, real proud.

"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.

"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid, Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'

"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well--is they many young people?'

"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more--but just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought, 'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'

"'Oh, _let's_,' she says, like a little girl.

"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch--she done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and _used_, and we had a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.

"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when to do it. He see the funny in things--he see that the post-office looked like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too--he showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his pictures.

"But Minerva--I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny how just being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they cousin, more themselves than they was before!'

"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour, and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like I never felt in my parlour in my life--all kind of young and free and springy.

"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady. 'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'

"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've all three done that again and again. We know how it is down there evenings.'

"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway. I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around. To-night let's _look_.'

"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges. In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys--little young things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the sheer fun of _hanging around_ on a spring night.

"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '_what_ is their mothers thinkin' of?'

"But something else was coming home to me.

"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'

"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis' Toplady, she kind of chuckled. And the crowd jostled us--more young folks, talking and laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more till we got up in the next block.

"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about. Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple, sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.

"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'

"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew Abe Luck's answering--but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air, and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer _fun_, that Em'ly thought she was having and that she had the right to.

"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady, soothin'.

"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper, but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to her 'good taste' is both of them.

"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them--the _young_ humans that would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and when night come, and summer come, and the moon come--land, land! they _wanted_ something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.

"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every direction, each house with its parlour--four-piece plush set, mebbe, and ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even with somebody to set and talk to them--what was the parlour, compared to the _magic_ they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh with--no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no automobiles--no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us all together. No wonder they took it for their own.

"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us all. And yet it come from their same longing for fun, for joy--and where was they to get it?

"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if only we had some place to invite 'em to!'

"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.

"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe dancin'? Not come!'

"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go that far.'

"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of what is.'

"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.

"'Ain't we--_ain't we?_' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'

"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she says.

"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks--'

"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four sides of my head at once.

"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every night out of the year and _built_ for the young folks!'

"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never allow 'em to use the schoolhouse _that_ way. The Board wouldn't think of it!'

"'_Whose_ Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine and Friendship Village's? Come on--come on and put it to 'em,' I says, kind o' wild.

"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself. But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.

"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out right under their noses, an' not sense it?'

"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes not convinced but keeping still because us two talked it so hard.

"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried right up to them.

"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'

"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says, 'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like _shieldin'_ her from somethin' as I feel to-night.'

"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to get some law goin', that's all.'

"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'

"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets. Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em _to_?'

"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em off somewheres. _Where to?_ What say, Silas?'

"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'

"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief. 'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'

"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis' Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'

"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.