Part 5

"'What if it _is_ so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an under dog or two--"if he deserves it." What if that's all--they meant us to do?'

"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like describing a rose by the tape-measure.

"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'

"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading to private homes--_private_ homes. The village, that little cluster of lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it. It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help, his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could really hurry up--my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature--stars and streets and processes--_could_ work it out without us.

"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and touched it. It was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its inch and a quarter of tail.

"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I put the little thing over into his hands.

"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'

"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up. When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about those lilacs and locusts blooming--I suppose they did, but nobody caught them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas' was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides. I always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.

"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it--a slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be looked at.

"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.

"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here--he must of followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'

"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.

"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?' And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew off, sort of grudging--she never liked any of us to go there, except when some of them died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.

"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.

"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'

"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top covers.

"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an' forth waitin' on him.'

"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his voice--it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard his voice make a mistake.

"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'

"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without waiting.

"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked up at the mother.

"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like this where the leg was saved.'

"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'

"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza pounced on it.

"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd picked up--a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,' she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes _figgers_. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'

"The child looked over at us, defiant. He spoke for the first time, and I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.

"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what _she_ says.'

"'Show us,' commands Insley.

"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle from under his pillow, a face--a boy's face, that had in it something that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two times,' he says to us, shy.

"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.

"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle, and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable better than she did.

"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'

"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.

"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things for you to make the clay like. Do you want that?'

"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was regular _boy's_ eyes, lit up about something.

"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in and get some lilac roots from you some day?'

"Mis' Cadoza looked at him--and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she could do.

"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'

"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.

"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of automatic, and like it was natural to him. I didn't say anything. If I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he would; and he spoke up buoyant--kind of a reverent buoyant:--

"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'

"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down low. And I said something that I'd thought before:

"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'

"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.

"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I turned off from Daphne Street to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted to see her again.

"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher? Then you can see me home.'

"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.

"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my life,' she says, 'I _can't_ be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.

"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I hear that you like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've ever been able to make it last?'

"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night--and this one to-night is an exceptionally good one.'

"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's like they had an extra brain to 'em.

"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading. Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a big crock of hollyhocks--she could make the centre and life of a room a crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.

"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible relative.'

"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always, 'What are _we_ going to do.'

"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I weren't going to Europe this fall--but something may happen. Things do. Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'

"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.

"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back on your own feet. I--wanted to tell you.'

"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them back again.

"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'

"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in what he was saying.

"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night--the things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care--I was foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid wall? When I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously, have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'

"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her sympathy. He went right on:--

"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling you. You--understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a good man--as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness that walks the world--'

"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.

"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex Proudfit--I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'

V

"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for yourself.

"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land, land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think they was all trees and they'd come bringing extra sets of branches, regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the night before the Fourth--Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning, and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in full swing.

"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is--whether it's wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that _wasn't_ dead on the spring mornings you mean about--no, sir, I don't care what one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do it again and can't, 'count of death and distance and long-ago-ness, then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had got the matter with me awhile ago.

"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy and chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading citizen,--platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,--he called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.

"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with--the new niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see, and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died part.

"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions--such was the niece's name--come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she snapped her up from the supper table to bring her to the meeting and show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis' Sykes for showing her off, human.

"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas is.

"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein' patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll bring in the country trade--the Honourable Thaddeus Hyslop has been named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are now in order.'

"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first thing so.

"Several men hopped up--Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus and was all primed for a day full of both--'A glorious Fourth,' says he, 'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the men present said never varied:--

"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'

"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:--

"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'

"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that was real pleased with itself because of.

"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out, 'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not being.

"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the room like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the front page.

"'I wonder,' says she--and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'

"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant--and I see Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd heard Timothy making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.