Part 12

"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady, frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the same.'

"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.

"'What you goin' to _do_?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee for this thing, same as the curfew is.'

"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got--that's what we've got. Them poor young things wants a good time--same as you and all of us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for 'em?'

"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to _get_ a place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'

"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things doin'.'

"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'--why, woman alive, who's goin' to donate the light an' the coal? _You?_'

"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was _for_ the good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.

"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their _good_. It ain't for their foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'

"'Is arithmetic good an' morals _not_, Silas Sykes?' I says.

"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope', s'he,--'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they would a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops an' hearin' dance tunes?'

"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the United States _go_. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme the cough drops.'

"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.

"Timothy groans. '_Dancin!_' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'

"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself. 'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in for _somethin'_.'

"'_I_ ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '_I_ believe the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'

"'Oh, _rot_!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does--it wasn't a real elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in enforcin' the law as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round accordin' to your cloth--an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'

"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'

"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street, wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for yourself to use it.

"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard somebody laugh--a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of singing. I was right onto them before they see me.

"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it ain't.'

"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the evergreens, was Minerva Beach, my own cousin, and the little, tired photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to sense where the minute really belonged--that's always a good thing to do, ain't it?--and then I says, cool as you please:

"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'

"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals than ordinary, too.

"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.

"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced towns! He never puts in a Silas Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.

"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along. He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night--you an' Mis' Toplady.'

"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.

"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual, and went off down the path.

"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand. And then, 'Eppleby,' I sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel just like I was going to _crow_!'

"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I left my breakfast dishes standing--a thing I do for the very few--and I went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left _her_ dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew we could depend on--Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she wasn't in her mourning grief--we told 'em the whole thing. And we one and all got together and we see that here was something that could be done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big enough and unafraid.

"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes--all but Abagail, that had pitched in to making the cakes--and we told her what we'd done, so she shouldn't have any of the blame.

"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because calm is grand lady.

"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women run things.'

"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an' women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four families.'

"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.

"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'

"We went off and left her--it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations. And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.

"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come downstairs in a little white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.

"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.

"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this town!'

"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was awful lonesome here, but I guess--'

"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.

"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.

"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and forth careless, and--'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you ever travelled anywheres?'

"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when--'

"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one place, unless,' she added, 'it's _awful_ nice.'

"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the door. I see it like I never see it before--_They was living_. Them two young things out there on my porch, and all the young folks of Friendship Village, they was just living--trying to find a future and a life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of Friendship Village.

"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.

"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up. Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick building looked _conscious_, and like it had just opened its eyes and turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates for the candy making, and Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the cakes.

"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls, shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody--they come from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.

"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time they had that first night.

"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time, and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly houses or doing I donno what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good time and having it--_and having it_.

"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.

"'_Dancin'!_' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'

"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'

"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but _my_ marrow might get use' to it.'

"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle, and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh. Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.

"And so he done. Almost before I knew it they stepped out onto us, setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from being brave, but from intending to jump _first_.

"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it works.'

"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you? Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you? Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light for this night's performance?'

"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.

"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'

"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things to row, Timothy.'

"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'

"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window, whirled around.

"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But what you going to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'

"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:--

"'The town's nothin' but _roots_, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin' up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great, expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year, an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built it _for_ chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops there! Open the buildin' in the name of public decency, but in the name of public decency, don't shut it up!'

"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up, quiet, on the bottom step.

"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin' school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'

"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing, the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking on.

"'_Dancin'!_' says Timothy, shuddering--but looking, too.

"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'

"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says. 'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'

"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'

"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'

"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a march on by the women!'

"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't anything more to worry over. But me--I waited out there in the entry till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.

X

"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green, but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and like both belonged to the household.

"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to do--it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to go, but Robin says to me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're doing--if you don't mind.'

"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day, she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it without seeming to.'

"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off, seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.

"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with magnificent macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'

"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly--this green room.'

"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the room--the house?'

"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'

"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really wanted has failed us.'

"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.

"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of mediæval renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do you think you would like to live? Not to settle down, you know, but for the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'

"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.

"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained. 'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off, it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd like to be. We are becoming nomadic again--only this time we own the world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'

"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in and stay in spoke from her to Alex.

"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.

"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.

"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I know where things are going to come up.'

"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.

"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do you?'

"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'

"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them bloom. No?'

"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both laughed.

"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We want what the whole world can give.'

"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.

"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.

"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in this life: that's you and I. The world has got to teach us a number of things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old world.'