Part 13
I told Mis’ Puppy, private, what his father had said to me about his not hearing anything spoke cross; and she nodded, like it was something she’d got all thought out, with tags on.
“I was a-wondering the other day,” she says, dreamy, “what I’d of been like if nobody had ever yipped out at me. I s’pose none of us knows.”
“Likewise,” says I, “what we’d be like if we’d never yipped out to no one else.”
“That’s so,” she says, “ain’t it? The two fits together like a covered bake-dish.”
“Ain’t you ’fraid he’ll shoot the oven door down if you don’t let him out pitty quick?” says Donnie, trying to see how near he could get his ear to the crack to hear that “Hurrah.”
Four days the little boy done that, stayed with me as contented as a kitten while his father went agenting; and then the fifth day he had to take him with him, because there come on what I’d been getting the cakes for--the quarterly meeting of the Go-lightly club.
The Go-lightly club is sixteen Red Barns ladies--and me--that’s all passed the sixty-year-old mark, and has had to begin to go lightly. We picked the name as being so literal, grievous-true as to our powers and, same time, airy and happy sounding, just like we hope we’ll be clear up to the last of the last of us. We had a funny motto and, those days, it use’ to be a secret. We’d lit on it when we was first deciding to have the club.
“What do we _want_ a club for anyhow?” old Mis’ Lockmeyer had said, that don’t really enjoy anything that she ain’t kicked out at first.
“Why,” says little Mis’ Pettibone, kind of gentle and final, “just to kind of make life nice.”
“Well,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, “we got to go awful light on it, our age.”
And we put both them principles into our constitution:
“Name: The name of this club shall be the Go-lightly club, account of the character of its members.
“Object: The object of this club shall be to make life nice.
“No officers. No dues. No real regular meetings.
“Picnic supper when any.”
And Mis’ Wilme had insisted on adding:
“Every-day clothes or not so much so.”
Our next meeting was going to be at Mis’ Elkhorn’s that lives out of town about two miles along the old Tote road, and we was looking forward to it considerable. We’d put it off several times; one week the ice-cream sociable was going to be, and one week the circus was to the next town, and so on--we never like to interfere with any other social going-ons.
None of us having a horse, we hired the rig--that’s the three-seat canopy-top from the livery--and was all drove out together by Jem Meddledipper. And it was real nice and festive, with our lunch baskets all piled up in the back and, as Mis’ Wilme put it: “Nothing to do till time to set the pan-cakes.” And when we got outside the City limits--we’re just a village, but we’ve got ’em marked “City Limits,” because that always seems the name of ’em--Mis’ Pettibone, that’s a regular one for entering into things--you know some just is and some just ain’t and the two never change places on no occasion whatever--she kind of pitched in and sung in her nice little voice that she calls her sopralto, because it ain’t placed much of any place. She happened on a church piece--I donno if you know it?--the one that’s got a chorus that goes first
“Loving-kindness”
all wavy, like a little stream trickling along; and then another part chimes in,
“Loving-kindness”
all wavy, like another little stream trickling along, and then everybody clamps down on
“Loving-kindness--oh, how great!”
like the whole nice sweep of the river? Well, that was the one she sung. And being it’s a terrible catchy tune, and most of us was brought up on it and has been haunted by it for days together from bed to bed, we all more or less joined in with what little vocal pans we had, and we sung it off and on all the way out.
We was singing it, I recollect, when we come in sight of the Toll Gate House. The Toll Gate House has been there for years, ever since the Tote road got made into a real road, and then it got paid for, and the toll part stopped; and now the City rents the house--there’s a place we always say “City” again--to most anybody, usually somebody poor, with a few chickens and takes in washings and ain’t much of any other claim to being thought of, as claims seem to go.
“Who lives in the Toll Gate House now, I wonder?” says Mis’ Pettibone, breaking off her song.
“Land, nobody,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer; “it’s all fell in on itself--my land,” she says, “the door’s open. Let’s stop and report ’em, so be it’s been tramps.”
So we made Jem Meddledipper stop, and somebody was just going to get out when a woman come to the door.
She was a little woman, with kind of a pindling expression, looking as if she’d started in good and strong, but life had kind of shaved her down till there wasn’t as much left of her, strictly speaking, as’d make a regular person. A person, but not one that looks well and happy the way “person” means to you, when you say the word. She had on a what-had-been navy-blue what-had-been alpaca, but both them attributes had got wore down past the nap. A little girl was standing close beside her--a nice little thing, with her hair sticking up on top like a candle-flame, and tied with a string.
“My land,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer right out, “are you livin’ _here_?” Mis’ Lockmeyer is like that--she always wears her face inside-out with all the expression showing.
But the woman wasn’t hurt. She smiled a little, and when she smiled I thought she looked real sweet.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. It--it don’t look real like it, does it?”
“Well,” puts in Mis’ Pettibone, “gettin’ settled so----”
“Oh,” says the woman, “I been here a month.”
And Mis’ Lockmeyer, wishing to make amends and pull her foot out, planted the other right along side of it instead.
“Do you sell anything? Or sew anything? Or wash and iron anything?” she asks.
And the woman says: “I sew and wash and iron anything I can do home, with my little girl. But I ain’t a thing in the world to sell.”
“Of course you ain’t,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer soothing, and hoping to make it better still.
“Well,” says Mis’ Puppy hearty, “I tell you what. We’ll be out to see you in a little bit, if you want us to.”
My land, the woman’s face--I donno whether you’ve ever seen anybody’s face lit up from the inside with the light fair showing through all the pores like little windows? Hers done it. She didn’t say nothing--she just done that. And we drove on.
“Land,” says Mis’ Pettibone, thoughtful, “how like each other folks are, no matter how not-like they seem to the folks you think they ain’t one bit like.”
“Ain’t they--ain’t they?” says I, hearty. And I guess we all felt the same.
Nobody was absent to the club that afternoon, but Mis’ Elkhorn’s sitting-room was big enough so’s we could get in. None of us could bear a parlor club meeting. Our ideas always set in our heads to a parlor-meeting, called to order by rapping on something. But here at Mis’ Elkhorn’s we were out in the sitting-room, with the red table-spread on and the plants growing and the spice-cake smelling through the kitchen door. And you’d think things would of gone as smooth as glass.
Instead of which, I donno what on earth ailed us. But when we got to sitting down, sewing, it was like some kind of little fine dislocation had took place in the air.
Mis’ Puppy had brought a centre-piece to work on, big as a rug, all drawn work and hemstitching and embroidery. And somehow Mis’ Pettibone, that only embroiders useful, couldn’t stand it.
“My, Mis’ Puppy,” she says, “I shouldn’t think you could get a bit of house-work done, making that so lavish.”
Mis’ Puppy shut her lips so tight it jerked her head.
“I don’t scrub out continual, same as some,” she says.
“If you mean me,” says Mis’ Pettibone, tart, “I guess I can do house-work as easy as the most.”
“I heard there’s those that can--where it don’t show,” says Mis’ Puppy, some goaded beyond what she meant.
“Mean to say?” snaps Mis’ Pettibone.
“Oh, nothin’,” says Mis’ Puppy, “only to them that their backs the coat fits.”
“I never was called shiftless since I was born a wife and a house-keeper,” says Mis’ Pettibone, bordering on tearful.
“Oh, _was_ you born a house-keeper, Mis’ Pettibone?” says Mis’ Puppy, sweet.
Then Mis’ Pettibone went in and set on the foot of the bed where we’d laid our things, and cried; and one or two of us went in and sort o’ poored her.
And, land, when we’d got her to come out, the first thing we heard was Mis’ Lockmeyer pitching into Mis’ Wilme.
“Anybody that can say I don’t make ice-cream as cheap as the best ain’t any of an ice-cream judge,” she was saying hot, “be they you or be they better.”
“I wasn’t saying a word about _cheap_,” says Mis’ Wilme, “I was talking about _good_.”
“Well,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, “I thought I made it good.”
“Not with the little dab of cream you was just mentioning, you can’t,” says Mis’ Wilme, firm. “It ain’t reasonable _nor_ chemical.”
“Don’t you think your long words is goin’ to impress me,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, more and more het up.
“Well, ladies,” says Mis’ Elkhorn, humorous, “nobody can make it any colder’n anybody else, anyhow.”
Somebody pitched in then, hasty and peaceful, and went to talking about Cemetery; and it looked like we was launched on a real quiet subject.
“I guess we’ve all got more friends up there then we’ve got in town,” says I. “When we go up there to walk on Sundays, I declare if I had to bow to all the graves I recognize I’d be kep’ busy.”
“I know,” says Mis’ Wilme, “when my niece was here from the City she said she had eighty on her calling list. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’ve got that many if I count the graves I know.’”
“Most of my acquaintances,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, sighing, “is in their coffins. I says to my husband when I looked over the _Daily_ the other night: That most of the Local Items and Supper Table Jottings for me now would have to be dated Cemetery Lot.”
“I know, ladies,” says Mis’ Puppy, dreamy, “but ain’t it real aristocratic to live in a place so long that you know all the graves. We ain’t got much else to be aristocratic about. But that’s real like them county families you read about,” she says.
And up flared Mis’ Pettibone. “I donno’s there’s any need to make it so pointed to us that ain’t lived here so very long,” she said, “and that ain’t any friends at all in your Cemetery.”
“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Puppy, indulgent, “of course there’s them distinctions in any town.”
I was just feeling thankful from my bones out that they hadn’t met to my house, with Donnie staying home, when Mis’ Elkhorn come in from the kitchen to tell us supper was ready. And when she opened the door the smell of hot waffles come a dilly-nipping in, and it made me feel so kind of cozy and busy and alive and glad that I burst right out:
“Shucks, ladies!” I says. “So be we peck around for ’em I bet we could find things to fuss over right till the hearse backs up to the door.”
They all laughed a little then, but that was part from feeling embarrassed at going out to supper, like you always are. And when we did get out there, everybody scrabbled around to get away from whoever had just been her enemy. We didn’t say much while we et--like you don’t in company; and I set there thinking:
“The Go-lightly club. The Go-lightly club. To make life nice.” And I thought how we’d sung that song of ours all the way out. And I made up my mind that, after supper, when they was feeling limber from food, I’d try to say something about it.
But I didn’t. I just got started on it--introduced by telling ’em some nice little things about Donnie’s sayings and doings to my house, when Mis’ Lockmeyer broke in, sympathetic.
“Ain’t he a great care?” says she.
“Yes,” says I, “he is. And so is everything on top of this earth that’s worth having. Life thrown in.”
And then I see they was all rustling to go home--giving reasons of clothes to sprinkle or bread to set or grandchild to put to bed or plants to cover up. So I kep’ still, and mogged along home with ’em. But I did say to Mis’ Pettibone on the back seat:
“We better quit off club. If we can’t meet folks without laying awake nights over the things that’s been said to us, we better never meet. ‘To make life nice,’” says I. “Ain’t club a travnasty, or whatever that word is?”
“I know it,” she says awful sober, and I see she was grieving some too. And we was all pretty still, going home. So still that we could all hear Jem Meddledipper, that had caught the run o’ that tune from us in the afternoon and was driving us home by it, and the wheels went round to it--
“Lovin’-kindness ... lovin’-kindness ... lovin’-kindness, oh, how great,”
--and it was sung considerable better than any of us had sung it.
But anyway, the result of leaving early was that we got to the Toll Gate House before dark, and I’ll never forget the thing we saw. Standing in the door of the little house was the woman we’d spoke with in the afternoon, and she was wearing the same ex-blue alpaca. But now she’d been and got out from somewheres and put on a white straw hat, with little pink roses all around it. And like lightning I sensed that she’d watched for us to come back and had gone and got the hat out and put it on, so’s to let us know she had that one decent thing to wear.
“Jem,” I says, “stop.”
I donno rightly why, but I clambered down out of the rig, and I says to the woman: “Let me come in a minute--can I? I want to talk to you about--about some sewing,” says I, that’s sewed every rag I’ve had on my back most ever since I was clothed in any. But all of a sudden, her getting out that hat made me feel I just had to get up close to her, like you will.
But when I stepped inside, I forgot all about the sewing.
“My land, my dear,” I says, or it might have been, “My dear, my land,” I was that taken-back and upset, “you’d ought to have this ceiling mended.”
For the plaster had fell off full half of it and the roof leaked; and there wasn’t very much of any furniture, to clap the climax.
“The City won’t do anything,” says she. “They’re going to tear it down. And the rent ain’t much--so I want to stay.”
“Well,” says I, “I’m going to bring you out some napkins to hem next week--can I?”--me having bought new before then so’s to have some work for Missionary Society, so why not now? And her face lit up that same way from inside.
When I’d got back in the rig, and we’d drove a little way by, I spoke to the rest about her going and putting on the hat. Some of ’em had sensed it, and some of ’em hadn’t--like some will and some won’t sense every created thing. And when we all did get a-hold of it--well, I can’t hardly tell you what it done. But there was something there in the rig with us that hadn’t been there before, and that come with a rush now, and that done a thing to us all alike. I can’t rightly say what it was, or what it done; but I guess Mis’ Puppy come as near it as anybody:
“Oh, ladies,” she says, kind of hushed, “don’t that seem like--well, don’t it make you feel--well, I donno, but ain’t it just....”
She kind of petered off, and it was Mis’ Pettibone, her enemy, that answered.
“Don’t it, Mis’ Puppy?” she says, “_Don’t_ it?” And we all felt the same way. Or similar. And we never said a word, but we told each other good night, I noticed, about three times apiece, all around. And out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, I says:
“Ladies! I invite the Go-lightly club to meet with me to-morrow afternoon. Don’t bring anything but sandwiches and your plates and spoons. I’ll open the sauce and make the tea and whip up some drop sponge cakes. And meantime, let’s us get together everything we can for her.”
And though hardly anybody in the village ever goes to anything two days in succession, they all said they’d come.
By the time they got there next day we had carpet to sew out of some of our attics, and some new sheets to make, and some white muslin curtains out of Mis’ Puppy’s back room. And I explained to them that we couldn’t rightly put it to vote whether we should furnish up the Toll Gate House, because we didn’t have any president to put the motion, so the only way was to go ahead anyhow and do it; which we done; and which, if not parli-mental, was more than any mental, because it was out of our hearts.
Right while we was in the midst of things, in come my roomer, Mr. Dombledon. He’d come in the back door, as usual, and plumped into the sitting-room before he saw we were there. He’d had Donnie with him that day, because I had to be out most of the forenoon, and I called to them to stop, because I wanted the ladies should see the little fellow.
Donnie shook hands with us, all around, like a little general, and then: “What’s these?” says he, with his hands on the curtains in my lap. “A nighty for me?”
“No, lambin’,” says I. “It’s curtains for a lady.”
“Are you that lady?” he says.
“No, lambin’,” says I. “A lady that ain’t got any curtains.”
But this he seemed to think was awful funny, and he laughed out--a little boy’s laugh, and kep’ it up.
“Ladies always has curtains,” says he, superior.
“I donno,” says I. “I saw one yesterday that didn’t even have a carpet.”
“Where?” asks Mr. Dombledon.
It kind of surprised me to hear him speak up--of course I’d introduced him all around, same as you do roomers and even agents in a little town, where you behave in general more as if folks were folks than you do in the City where they ain’t so much folks as lawyers, ladies, milkmen, ministers, and so on. But yet I hadn’t really expected Mr. Dombledon to volunteer.
“Down on the Tote road,” I says, “the old Toll Gate House. You ain’t familiar with it, I guess.”
“Is this _hers_ curtains?” asks Donnie. “And can I have some pink peaches sauce like in the kitchen?”
“They’s _hers_ curtains,” says I, “and if you’d just as soon make it plums, you shall have all of them in the kitchen that’s good for you.” And off he went outdoors making up a song about pink plums.
All of a sudden his father spoke up again.
“Do--do you need any more help?” he says.
“Sure we do,” says I.
“Well,” he says, gentling with the words careful, “I’m kind of sure-moved with a needle.”
“Then,” says I, “mebbe you’ll needle this carpet seam that’s pulling my fingers off in pairs. We’d be grateful,” says I, ready.
So down he sat and begun to sew, and I never see handier. He whipped up the seam as nice and flat as a roller machine. And things was going along as fine as salt and as smooth as soap when Mis’ Puppy picked up from the pile of things a red cotton table-cover.
“Well,” she says, “I donno where we solicited this from, but whoever give it shows their bringing up. Holes. And not only holes, but ink. And not only so, but look there where their lamp set. Would you think anybody of a donatin’ mind would donate such a thing as this?”
And Mis’ Pettibone spoke up sour and acid and bitter in one:
“I give that table-spread, Mis’ Puppy,” says she. “And it come off our dining-room table. We don’t throw things away to our house before the new is wore off. Anything more to say?”
“A grea’ deal,” says Mis’ Puppy, unflabbergasted, “but I’m too much of a lady to say it.”
“A lady ...” says Mis’ Pettibone, and done a little mock-at-her laugh.
Quick as a flash, and before anybody could say a word more, up hopped Mr. Dombledon and got out of the room. I followed him out on the side porch, thinking he was took sick; and there he stood, staring off acrost my wood lot.
“What is it, Mr. Dombledon?” I says.
“Don’t you mind me,” he says, “I got hit in a sore spot. I--guess I’ll be stayin’ out here a little while.”
Pretty soon he went out and sat on the wood pile, and I took some supper out to him on a pie-tin, and I told him then that we wanted to have Donnie to the table with us.
He looked up at me kind of suffering.
“I wouldn’t want to refuse you anything,” he says, “but--will they say any more things like that?”
Right with the sweep of my wondering at him, that I’d never heard a man speak like him before, come a sweep of shame and of grieving and of being kind of mad, too.
“No, sir,” says I. “We won’t have any more of that. What’s the good o’ being hostess if you can’t turn your guests out of the house?”
I went back into the house, and marched into the sitting-room. I donno what I was going to say, but I never had to say it. For there was Mis’ Puppy, wiping her eyes on the red table-cover she’d scorned, and she was sitting on the arm of Mis’ Pettibone’s chair.
“Them things hadn’t ought to be said, ladies,” says she, as well as she could. “I can’t take back what I said about the table-cover, being it’s what I think. But I wish I’d kep’ my mouth shut, and I don’t care who knows it.”
I thought then, and I still think, it was one of the honestest and sweepingest apologies I ever heard.
And all at once everybody kind of got up and folded their work, and patted somebody on the elbow; and I see we was feeling a good deal the way we had in the rig the night before; and it come to me, kind of big and dim, that with the job we was doing, we couldn’t possibly nip out at one another, like we would in just regular society. And all I done was to sing out, “Your supper’s ready and the toast’s on the table.” And we all went out, lion and lamb, and helped to set Donnie up on my ironing-stool for a high chair. And it made an awful pleasant few minutes.
We met three afternoons all together to sew for the Toll Gate House. And when we begun to plan to take the things to her, and get the roof mended, we realized we didn’t know her name.
“Ain’t that kind of nice?” says Mis’ Pettibone, dreamy. “And here we’re just as interested in her as if her father’d been our butcher, or something that’d make a real tie.”
“How shall we give these things to her?” says Mis’ Puppy. “Don’t let’s us let it be nasty, same as charity is.”
And it was Mis’ Lockmeyer, her of all the folks under the canopy, that set forward on the edge of her chair and thought of the thing to do. “Ladies,” she says, “there’s one more pair of curtains to hem. Why don’t we get her to one of our houses to hem ’em, and make her spend the day? And get her roof fixed and her ceiling mended and this truck in, and let it all be there when she gets home?”
“That’s what we _will_ do,” says we, with one set of common eyebrows expressing our intention.
We decided that I’d be the one to ask her down, being I was the one that first went in her house, and similar. She said she’d come ready enough, and bring the little girl; and it made it real convenient, because Mr. Dombledon had gone off on one of his two-days tramps and taken Donnie with him. And the living minute I’d started her in sewing on the things we’d saved for her to sew, and set the little girl to playing with some of the things I’d fixed up for Donnie, I was out of the house and making for the Toll Gate.
Land, land, the things we’d found we could spare and that we’d piled in that house--stuff that we hadn’t known we had and that we couldn’t miss if we’d tried, but had hung on to sole and only because we were deformed into economizing that way. Honestly, I believe more folks economizes by keeping old truck around than is extravagant by throwing new stuff away. I don’t stand up for either, but I well know which has the most germs in. What we’d sent we’d cleaned thorough. And it was clean as wax there--but the roof was being mended and the ceiling was being fixed and carpets were going down. And when we got done with it, I tell you that little house looked as cozy as a Pullman car--and I don’t know anything whatever that looks cozier after you’ve set up in the day coach all night. And lions and lambs laying down together on swords and plow-shares were nothing to the way we worked together all day long. We had to jump to keep out of the way of being “been-nice” to so’s to get a chance to be nice ourselves. I liked to be there. I like to think about it since.