Peace in Friendship Village

"Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am," she said, "you know – don't you know, ma'am? – how I was so glad about the dress you give me't I was as weak as a cat all over me. All las' night in the evenin' I was like a trance an' couldn't get my supper down, an' all. An' Gramma, she was over to Mis' Sykes's to supper an' hadn't seen it. An' Gramma an' I sleep together, an' I went an' spread the dress on the bed, an' I set side of it till Henry come. An' I l-left it there to hev him go in an' l-look at it. An' we was in the kitchen a minute or two first. An' nex' we knew, Gramma, she stood in the inside door. An' I thought she was out of her head she was so wild-like an' laughin' an' cryin'. An' she set down on a chair, an' s' she: 'He's done it. He's done it. He's kep' his word. Look – look on my bed,' s' she, 'an' see if I ain't seen it right. Abe Hawley,' s' she, 'he's sent me my pink silk dress he wanted to, out o' the grave!'"

Hannah's thin, rough little hands were clinched on her knee and her eyes searched Calliope's face.

"Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am," she said, "she was like one possessed, beggin' me to look at it an' tell her if it wasn't so. She thought mebbe it might be her head. So I went an' told her the dress was hers," the little maid sobbed. "I was scairt she'd make herself sick takin' on so. An' afterwards I couldn't a-bear to tell her any different. Ma'am, if you could 'a' seen her! She took her rocker an' set by the bed all hours, kind o' gentlin' the silk with her hands. An' she wouldn't go to bed an' disturb it off, an' I slep' on the dinin'-room lounge with the shawl over me. An' this m-mornin' she went on just the same. An' after dinner Lyddy sent a man from town with a rug for me, an' I set on the back stoop so's not to see him, I was cryin' so. An' when I come in Gramma hed shut the bedroom door an' gone. I couldn't trust me even to l-look in the bedroom for fear I'd put it on. An' I couldn't take it away from her – I couldn't. Not with all she's done for me, an' the five dollars an' all. Oh, Miss Marsh, ma'am – " Hannah ended helplessly.

It seemed to me that I had never known Calliope until that moment.

"Gracious," she said to Hannah calmly, "crying that way for a little pink silk dress, and Henry waiting for you downstairs! Wipe up your eyes this instant minute, Hannah, and get to 'I will'!"

I think that this attitude of Calliope's must have tranquillized the wildest. In spite of the reality of the tragedy, it was no time at all until, having put the pink rose in Hannah's hair, anyway, Calliope and I led the little bride downstairs. For was there not a reality of happiness down there?

"After all, Henry was marrying you and not the dress, you know," Calliope reminded her on the landing.

"That's what he keeps a-sayin'," consented Hannah with a wan little smile, "but oh, ma'am – " she added, for Hannah was all feminine.

And when the "I will" had been said, I loved the little creature for taking Grandma Hawley in her arms.

"Did they tell you what I done?" the old woman questioned anxiously when Hannah kissed her. "I was savin' it to tell you, an' it went out o' my head. An' I dunno – did you know what I done?" she persisted.

But the others crowded forward with congratulation and, as was their fashion, with teasing; and presently I think that even the rosy gown was forgotten in Hannah's delight over her unexpected gifts. The graniteware, the sweeper, the rug with the running dog – after all, was ever any one so blessed?

And as I watched them – Hannah and her great, good-looking adoring giant – I who, like Calliope, love a surprise, caught a certain plan by its shining wings and held it close. They say that when one does this such wings bear one away – and so it proved.

I found my chance and whispered my plan to Hannah, half for the pastime of seeing the quickening color in her cheek and the light in her eyes. Then I told the giant, chiefly for the sake of noting how some mischievous god smote him with a plague of blushes. And they both consented – and that is the way when one clings to the wings of a plan.

So it came about that in the happy bustle of the parting, as Hannah in her "regular brown Sunday suit" went away on Henry's arm, they two and I exchanged glances of pleasant significance. Then, when every one had gone, I turned to Calliope with authority.

"Put on," I bade her, "your black grosgrain silk with the white turnovers – and mind you don't slit it up the back seam!"

"I'm a-goin' to do my dishes up," said Calliope. "Can't you set a spell and talk it over?"

"Hurry," I commanded, "or we shall miss the six-ten express!"

"What do you mean?" she asked in alarm.

"Leave everything," said I. "There's a box waiting for us at the opera to-night. And supper afterward."

"You ain't – " she said tremulously.

"I am," I assured her firmly, "and so are you. And Hannah and Henry are going with us. Hurry!"

IV

"He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons"

is, in effect, the spirit of the "Ah, je ris de me voir si belle" of "Marguerite" when she opens the casket of jewels. As we sat, the four of us, in the dimness of the opera box – Calliope in her black silk with the white turnovers, Hannah in her "regular brown Sunday suit," and Henry and I, it seemed to me that Marguerite's song was really concerning the delight of rose-pink silk. And I found myself grieving anew for the innocent hopes that had been dissolved, immaterial as Abe Hawley's message from the grave.

Then the curtain fell on the third act and the soft thunder of applause spent itself and the lights leaped up. And immediately I was aware of a conspicuously high-pitched voice at the door of the box, a voice which carried with it some consciousness of elaborate self-possession.

"Really!" said the voice. "Of all people! My dear Hannah – and Calliope Marsh! You butterflies – "

I looked up, and at first all that I saw was a gown which "laid smooth down – and then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft – and didn't pucker nor skew nor hang wrong"; a gown that was "dressmaker made"; a gown, in short, such as Lydia Eider "always hed on." And there beside us stood Lydia Eider herself, wearing some exquisite, priceless thing of pink chiffon and old lace, with a floating, glittering scarf on her arms.

I remember that she seemed some splendid, tropic bird alight among our nun-like raiment. A man or two, idling attendance, were rapidly and perfunctorily presented to us – one, who was Lydia's adopted brother, showing an amused cordiality to Henry. And I saw how the glasses were instantly turned from pit and boxes toward her – this girl who, with Calliope and Hannah, had been cast in one mold of prettiness and proportion and who alone of the three, as I thought, had come into her own.

And Lydia said:

"Will you tell me how on earth Grandma Hawley came to send me a pink silk dress to-day? You didn't know! But she did – on my honor. It came this afternoon by the man I sent out to you, Hannah. And so decently made – how can it have happened? Made for me too – positively I can wear it – though nearly everything I have is pink. But how did Grandma come to do it? And where did she get it? And why – "

She talked on for a little, elaborating, wondering. But I fancy that she must have thought us uncommonly stupid, for none of us had the faintest suggestion to offer. We listened, and murmured a bit about the health of Grandma Hawley, and Henry said some hesitating thanks, in which Hannah barely joined, for the wedding gift of the rug, but none of us gave evidence. And at last, with some gracious word, Lydia Eider left the box, trailing her pink chiffon skirts and saying the slight good-by which utterly forgets one.

But when she had gone, Calliope laughed, softly and ambiguously and wholly contagiously, so that Hannah, whose face had begun to pucker like a child's, unwillingly joined her. And then, partly because of Henry's reassuring, "Now then, now then, Hannah," and partly at the touch of his big hand and in the particular, delicious embarrassment which comes but once, Hannah tremulously spoke her conclusion:

"I don't care," she said, "I don't care! I'm glad– for Gramma."

Calliope sat smiling, looking, in her delicate color and frailty and the black and white of her dress, like some one on a fan, exquisitely and appropriately painted.

"I was thinking," she said brightly to Hannah, "going without a thing is some like a jumping tooth. It hurts you before-hand, but when it's gone for good all the hurt sort of eases down and peters out and can't do you any more harm."

But I think they both knew that this was not all. For some way, outside the errantry of prettiness and proportion, Calliope and Hannah too had come into their own.

I looked at Calliope, her face faintly flushed by the unwonted hour; at Hannah, rosy little bride; and at her adoring giant over whom some god had cast the usual spell of wedding blushes.

Verily, I thought, would not one say there is rose pink enough in the world for us all?

As the curtain rose again Calliope leaned toward me. "I don't believe any dress," she said, "pink silk or any other kind, ever dressed up so many folks's souls!"

PEACE 8

When they went to South America for six months, the Henslows, that live across the street from me, wanted to rent their cottage. And of course, being a neighbor, I wanted them to get the fifteen dollars a month. But – being the cottage was my neighbor – I couldn't help, deep down in my inner head, feeling kind of selfish pleased that it stood vacant a while. It's a chore to have a new neighbor in the summer. They always want to borrow your rubber fruit-rings, and they forget to return some; and they come in and sit in the mornings when you want to get your work out of the way before the hot part of a hot day crashes down on you. I can neighbor agreeable when the snow flies, but summers I want my porch and my rocker and my wrapper and my palm-leaf fan, and nobody to call on. And – I don't want to sound less neighborly than I mean to sound – I don't want any real danger of being what you might say called-on – not till the cool of the day.

Then, on a glorious summer morning, right out of a clear blue sky, what did I see but two trunks plopped down on the Henslows' porch! I knew they were never back so soon. I knew the two trunks meant renters, and nothing but renters.

"I'll bet ten hundred thousand dollars one of them plays the flute and practices evenings," I says.

I didn't catch sight of them till the next morning, and then I saw him head for the early train into the city, and her stand at the gate and watch him. And, my land, she was in a white dress and she didn't look twenty years old.

So I went right straight over.

"My dear," I says, "I dunno what your name is, but I'm your neighbor, and I dunno what more we need than that."

She put out her hand – just exactly as if she was glad. She had a wonderful sweet, loving smile – and she smiled with that.

So I says: "I thought moving in here with trunks, so, you might want something. And if I can let you have anything – jars or jelly-glasses or rubber rings or whatever, why, just you – "

"Thank you, Miss Marsh," she says. "I know you're Miss Marsh – Mrs. Henslow told me about you."

"The same," says I, neat.

"I'm Mrs. Harry Beecher," she says. "I – we were just married last week," she says, neat as a biography.

"So you was!" I says. "Well, now, you just let me be to you what your folks would want me to be, won't you?" says I. "Feel," I says, "just like you could run in over to my house any time, morning, noon or night. Call on me for anything. Come on over and sit with me if you feel lonesome – or if you don't. My side porch is real nice and cool and shady all the afternoon – "

And so on. And wasn't that nice to happen to me, right in the middle of the dead of summer, with nothing going on?

If you have lived in the immediate neighborhood of a bride and groom, you know what I am going to tell about.

But if you haven't, try to rent your next house – if you rent – or try to buy your next home – if you buy – somewhere in the more-or-less neighborhood of a bride and groom. Because it's an education. It's an education in living. No – I don't believe I mean that the way you think I mean it at all. I mean it another way.

To be sure, there were the mornings, when I saw them come out from breakfast and steal a minute or two hanging round the veranda before he had to start off. That was as nice as a picture, and nicer. I got so I timed my breakfast so's I could be watering my flower-beds when this happened, and not miss it. He usually pulled the vines over better, or weeded a little near the step, or tinkered with the hinge of the screen, or fussed with the bricks where the roots had pushed them up. And she sat on the steps and talked with him, and laughed now and then with her little pretty laugh. (Not many women can laugh as pretty as she did – and we all ought to be able to do it. Sometimes I wish somebody would start a school to teach pretty laughing, and somebody else would make us all go to it.) And I knew how they were pretending that this was really their own home, and playing proprietor and householder, just like everybody else. And of course that was pleasurable to me to see – but that wasn't what I meant.

Nor I didn't mean times when she'd be out in the garden during the day, and the telephone bell would ring, and she would throw things and head for the house, running, because she thought it might be him calling her up from the city. Most usually it was. I always knew it had been him when she came back singing.

And then there were the late afternoons, say, almost an hour before the first train that he could possibly come on and that now and then he caught. Always before it was time for that she would open her front door that she'd had closed all day to keep her house cool, and she'd bring her book or her sewing out on the porch, and never pay a bit of attention to either, because she sat looking up the street. There was only a little bit of shade on her porch that time in the afternoon, and I used to want to ask her to come over on my cool, shady side porch, but I had the sense not to. I sort of understood how she liked to sit out there where she was, on their own porch, waiting for him. Then he'd come, and she'd sit out in the garden and read to him while he dug in the beds, or she'd sew on the porch while he cut the grass – well, now, it don't sound like much as I tell it, does it? – and yet it used to look wonderful sweet to me, looking across the street.

But as I said, it wasn't any of these times, nor yet the long summer evenings when I could just see the glimmer of her white dress on the porch or in the garden, or their shadows on the curtain, rainy evenings; no, it wasn't these times that made me wish for everybody in the world that they lived next door to a bride and groom. But the thing I mean came to me all of a sudden, when they hadn't been my neighbors for a week. And it came to me like this:

One night I'd had them over for supper. It had been a hot day, and ordinarily I'm opposed to company on a hot day; but some way having them was different. And then I didn't imagine she was so very used to cooking, and I got to thinking maybe a meal away from home would be a rest.

And after supper we'd been walking around my yard, looking at my late cosmos and wondering whether it would get around to bloom before the frost. And they had been telling me how they meant to plant their garden when they got one of their own. I liked to keep them talking about it, because his face lit up so young and boyish, and hers got all soft and bright; and they looked at each other like they could see that garden planted and up and growing and pretty near paid for. So I kept egging them on, asking this and that, just to hear them plan.

"One whole side of the wall," said he, "we'll have lilacs and forsythia."

She looked at him. "I thought we said hollyhocks there," she said.

"Well, don't you remember," he said, "we changed that when you said you'd planned, ever since you were a little girl to have lilacs and forsythia on the edge of your garden?"

"Well – so I did," she remembered. "But I thought you said you liked hollyhocks best?"

"Maybe I did," says he. "I forget. I don't know but I did for a while. But I think of it this way now."

She laughed. "Why," she said, "I was getting to prefer hollyhocks."

I noticed that particular. Then we came round the corner of the house. And the street looked so peaceful and lovely that I knew just how he felt when he said:

"Let's us three go and take a drive in the country. Can't we? We could get a carriage somewhere, couldn't we?"

And she says like a little girl, "Oh, yes, let's. But don't you s'pose we could rent a car here from somebody?"

I liked to look at his look when he looked at her. He done it now.

"A car?" he said. "But you're nervous when I drive. Wouldn't you rather have a horse?"

"Well, but you'd rather have a car," she said. "And I'd like to know you were liking that best! And, truly, I don't think I'd care much – now."

Then I took a hand. "You look here," I says. "I'd really ought to step down to Mis' Merriman's to a committee meeting. I've been trying to make myself believe I didn't need to go, but I know I ought to. And you two take your drive."

They fussed a little, but that was the way we arranged it. I went off to my meeting before I saw which they did get to go in. But that didn't make any difference. All the way to the meeting I kept thinking about lilacs and hollyhocks and horses and cars. And I saw what had happened to those two: they loved each other so much that they'd kind of lost track of the little things that they thought had mattered so much, and neither could very well remember which they had really had a leaning towards of all the things.

"It's a kind of each-otherness!" I says to myself. "It's a new thing. That ain't giving-upness. Giving-upness is when you still want what you give up. This is something else. It's each-otherness. And you can't get it till you care."

But then I thought of something else. It wasn't only them – it was me! It was like I had caught something from them. For of course I'd rather have gone driving with those two than to have gone to any committee meeting, necessary or not. But I knew now that I'd been feeling inside me that of course they didn't want an old thing like me along, and that of course they'd rather have their drive alone, horse or automobile. And so I'd kind of backed out according. Being with them had made me feel a sort of each-otherness too. It was wonderful. I thought about it a good deal.

And when I came home and see that they'd got back first, and were sitting on the porch with no lights in the house yet, except the one burning dim in the hall, I sat upstairs by my window quite a while. And I says to myself:

"If only there was a bride and groom in every single house all up and down the streets of the village – "

And I could almost think how it would be with everybody being decent to each other and to the rest, just sheer because they were all happy.

Picture how I felt, then, when not six weeks later, on a morning all yellow and blue and green, and tied onto itself with flowers, little Mrs. Bride came standing at my side door, knocking on the screen, and her face all tear-stained.

"Gracious, now," I says, "did breakfast burn?"

She came in. She always wore white dresses and little doll caps in the morning, and she sit down at the end of my dining-room table, looking like a rosebud in trouble.

"Oh, Miss Marsh," she says, "it isn't any laughing matter. Something's happened between us. We've spoke cross to each other."

"Well, well," I says, "what was that for?"

I s'posed maybe he'd criticized the popovers, or something equally universal had occurred.

"That was it," she says. "We've spoke cross to each other, Miss Marsh."

And then it came to me that it didn't seem to be bothering her at all what it was about. The only thing that stuck out for her was that they'd spoke cross to each other.

"So!" I says. "And you've got to wait all day long before you can patch it up. Why don't you call him up?" I ask her. "It's only twenty cents for the three minutes – and you can get it all in that."

She shook her head. "That's the worst of it," she says. "I can't do it. Neither can he. I'm not that sort – to be able to give in after I've been mad and spoke harsh. I'm – I'm afraid neither of us will, even when he gets home."

Then I sat up straight. This, I see, was serious – most as serious as she thought.

"What's the reason?" says I.

"I dunno," she says. "We're like that – both of us. We're awful proud – no matter how much we want to give in, we can't."

I sat looking at her.

"Call him up," I says.

She shook her head again and made her pretty mouth all tight.

"I couldn't," she says. "I couldn't."

She seemed to like to sit and talk it over, kind of luxurious. She told me how it began – some twopenny thing about screens in the parlor window. She told me how one thing led to another. I let her talk and I sat there thinking. Pretty soon she went home and she never sung once all day. It didn't seem as if anybody's screens were worth that.

I'm not one that's ashamed of looking at anything I'm interested in. When it came time for the folks from the afternoon local, I sat down in my parlor behind the Nottinghams. I saw she never came out to the gate. And when he came home I could see her white dress out in the back garden where she was pretending to work.

He sat down on the front porch and smoked, and seemed to read the paper. She came in the house after a while, and finally she appeared in the front door for three-fourths of a second.

"Your supper's ready for you," I heard her say. And then I knew, certain sure, how they were both sitting there at their table not speaking a word.

I ate my own supper, and I felt like a funeral was going on. It kills something in me to have young folks, or any folks, act like that. And when I went back in the parlor I saw him on the front porch again, smoking, and her on the side porch playing with the kitten.

"It's the first death," I says. "It's their first kind of death. And I can't stand it a minute longer."

So when I saw him start out pretty soon to go downtown alone – I went to my front gate and I called to him to come over. He came – a fine, close-knit chap he was, with the young not rubbed out of his face yet, and his eyes window-clear.

"The catch on my closet-door don't act right," I says. "I wonder if you'll fix it for me?"

He went up and done it, and I ran for the tools for him and tried to get my courage up. When he got through and came down I was sitting on my hall-tree.

"Mr. Groom," I says – that was my name for him – "I hope you won't think I'm interfering too much, but I want to speak to you serious about your wife."

"Yes," he says, short.

I went on, never noticing: "I dunno whether you've took it in, but there seems to be something wrong with her."

"Wrong with her?" he says.

"Yes, sir," I says. "And I dunno but awfully wrong. I've been noticing lately." (I didn't say how lately.)

"What do you mean?" says he, and sat down on the bottom step.

"Don't you see," I says, "that she don't look well? She don't act no more like herself than I do. She hasn't," says I, truthful, "half the spirit to her to-day that she had when you first came here to the village."

"Why – no," he says, "I hadn't noticed – "

"You wouldn't," says I. "You wouldn't be likely to. But it seems to me that you ought to be warned – and be on your guard."

"Warned!" he says, and I saw him get pale – I tell you I saw him get pale.

"I'm not easy alarmed," I told him. "And when I see anything serious, it ain't in my power to stand aside and not say anything."

"Serious," he says over. "Serious? But, Miss Marsh, can you give me any idea – "

"I've give you a hint," says I, "that it's something you'd ought to be mighty careful about. I dunno's I can do much more; I dunno's I ought to do that. But if anything should happen – "