Neighborhood Stories

Mis’ Holcomb looked at me for just one minute. Then her thoughts took shape in her head, and out.

“How much money has Sodality got in the treasury?” she says to me.

“Forty-six cents,” says I, that’s treasurer and drove to death for a fund for us.

“How much is the fare to Wooster?”

“Three fifty-five each way,” says Stubby, ready, but hopeless.

“My land!” says Mis’ Holcomb, “they ain’t a woman in Sodality that can afford the seven dollars – nor a man in the town’ll see it like we do. And no time to raise nothing. And that poor woman off there…”

She stared out over the crowd, kind of wild.

The line was edging along up to the window, and still talking about it.

“…Elsie and Mame that I haven’t sent a thing to,” Mis’ Merriman was saying. “I just must get out and find something to-morrow, if it does get there late. But I’m sure I donno what…”

“…disappointed me last minute on two Irish crochet collars,” Mis’ Wiswell was holding forth, in her voice that talks like her vocal cords had gone flat, same as car-wheels.

“I’ve got company coming to-morrow, and I just simply will have to let both presents go, if I stay awake all night about it, as stay awake I s’pose I shall.”

Mis’ Holcomb looked over at me steady for a minute, like she’d see a thing she couldn’t name. Then she kind of give it up, and went on tying Stubby’s package. And just then she see what he’d wrote for a Christmas card. It was on a piece of wrapping-paper, and it said:

TO MY MOTHER

I CANT COM

MERY CRISMAS

STUB

“Merry Christmas!” Mis’ Holcomb says over like she hadn’t any strength. Then all of a sudden she stood up.

“Stubby,” she says, “you run out a minute, will you? You run over to the grocery and wait for me there a minute – quick. I’ll see to your package.”

He went when she said that.

And swift as a flash, before I could think at all what she meant, Mis’ Holcomb laid Stubby’s present down by her suit-case, and wheeled around and whipped two packages out of her shopping-bag, and faced the line of Friendship Village folks drawn up there to the window, taking their turns.

“Everybody!” she says, loud enough so’s they all heard her, “I’ve got more Christmas presents than I need. I’ll auction off some of ’em – all hand-made – to anybody that’s short of presents. I’ll show ’em to you. Come here and look at ’em, and make a bid.”

They looked at her for a minute, perfectly blank; and she was beginning to undo one of ’em… And then all of a sudden I see her plan, what it was; and I walked right over beside of her.

“Don’t you leave her undo ’em!” I calls out. “It’s for Stubby Mosher,” I says, “that can’t go, after all, to his mother in the Wooster Hospital, that’s going to die – count of his brother not sending him the money. She can’t get well – we know that since last week. They’s only forty-six cents in Sodality treasury. Let’s us buy Mis’ Holcomb’s presents that she’s made and is willing to auction off! Unsight-unseen let us buy ’em! I bid fifty cents.”

The line had kind of wavered and broke, and was looking away from itself towards us. The man at the window had stopped weighing and had his head close up, looking out.

Everybody was hushed dumb for a minute. Then it kind of got to Mis’ Wiswell – that’s had so much trouble that things ’most always get to her easy – and she says out:

“Oh, land! Is it? Why, I bid seventy-five then.”

“Eighty!” says I, reckless, to egg her on.

Then Libby Liberty kind of come to, and bid ninety, though everybody knew the most she has is egg-money – and finally it, whatever it was, went to Mis’ Wiswell for a dollar.

“Is it a present would do for ladies?” she says, when she made her final bid. “I donno, though, as that matters. One dollar!”

Well, then Mis’ Holcomb up with another present, and Mis’ Merriman started that one, and though dazed a little yet – some folks daze so terrible easy if you go off an inch from their stamping-ground! – the rest of us, including Abigail Arnold that hadn’t ought to have bid at all, got that one up to another dollar, and it went to Mis’ Merriman for that. But the next package stuck at fifty cents – not from lack of willingness, I know, but from sheer lack of ways – and it was just going at that when I whispered to Mis’ Holcomb:

“What’s in this one?”

“Towel with crochet work set in each end and no initial,” she says.

“Really?” says a voice behind me.

And there was the young lady in blue, with the ermine and the roses. And I see all of a sudden that she didn’t look to be laughing at us at all, but her eyes were bright, and she was kind of flushed up, and it come to me that she would have bidded before, only she was sort of watching us – mebbe because she thought we were quaint. But I didn’t have time to bother with that thought much, not then.

“I’ll give two dollars for that,” she says.

“Done!” says Mis’ Holcomb, real auctioneer-like, and with her cheeks red, and her hat on one ear, and her hand going up and down. “Now this one – who’ll bid on this one?” says she, putting up another. “How much for this? How much – ”

“How much is the fare to where he’s going?” says somebody else strange, and there was the youngish fellow speaking, that was with her with the roses.

“Seven-ten round trip to Wooster,” says Mis’ Holcomb, instant.

“Why, then, I bid three-ten for whatever you have there,” he says laughing.

But Mis’ Holcomb, instead of flaming up because now the whole money for Stubby’s fare was raised, just stood there looking at that youngish man, mournful all over her face.

“It’s a hand-embroidered dressing-sack,” she says melancholy. “You don’t never want that!”

“Yes – yes, I do,” he says, still laughing, “yes, I do. It’s a straight bid.”

“Oh, my land!” says Mis’ Holcomb, her voice slipping, “then we’ve got it. We’ve got it all right here!”

But while she was a-saying it, a big, deep voice boomed out all over her and the rest that was exclaiming.

“Ticket to where?” says the private-Santa-Claus-looking man in the fur coat.

“Wooster, this state,” says I, being Mis’ Holcomb was almost speechless.

“Well, now,” says the private Santa Claus, “don’t we go pretty close to Wooster? Where’s that map we wore out? Well, I know we go pretty close to Wooster. Why can’t we take your Master Stubby to Wooster in the car? We’re going on to-night – if we ever get to that general-delivery window,” he ends in a growl.

And that was the time the line made way – the line that never moves for no one. And the Santa Claus man went up and got his mail.

And while he was a-doing it, I run out after Stubby, setting on a barrel in the grocery, happy with three cranberries they’d give him. And as I come back in the door with him, I see Mis’ Holcomb just showing his rose to the young lady with the ermine and the roses. And then I see for sure by the young lady’s eyes that she wasn’t the way I’d thought she was – laughing at us. Why, her eyes were as soft and understanding as if she didn’t have a cent to her name. And I donno but more so.

“Oh, father,” I heard her say, “I’m glad we came in for the mail ourselves! What if we hadn’t?”

And I concluded I didn’t mind that word quaint half as much as I thought I did.

Every last one of the line went out of the post-office to see Stubby off, and the man at the window, he came too. They had a big warm coat they put the little boy into, and we wrapped up his rose and put that in the car, so’s it would get there sooner and save the postage, same time, and they tucked him away as snug as a bug in a rug, his little face just shining out for joy.

“Oh, and you can buy your presents back now,” says Libby Liberty to Mis’ Holcomb right in the middle of it.

“No, sir,” says Mis’ Holcomb, proud. “A bargain is a bargain, and I made mine.” And then she thought of something. “Oh,” she says, leaning forward to the window of the car, “don’t you want to sell your presents back again?”

“No!” they all told her together. “We made a straight bid, you know.”

“Then,” says Mis’ Holcomb, “let’s us give Stubby the money to put in his pocket and take the one-way fare to his mother!”

And that was what they done. And the big car rolled off down Daphne Street, with Stubby in it going like a king.

And when we all got back in the post-office, what do you s’pose? There was the crocheted towel and the hand-embroidered dressing-sack slipped back all safe into Mis’ Holcomb’s shopping-bag!

But she wouldn’t take the other things back – she would not, no matter what Mis’ Wiswell and Mis’ Merriman said.

“I can crochet a couple of things to-morrow like lightning,” says Mis’ Holcomb. “You don’t want me to be done out of my share in Stubby’s Christmas, do you?” she asks ’em.

And we all stood there, talking and laughing and going over it and clean forgetting all about the United States mails, till the man at the window called out:

“ ‘Leven minutes and a quarter before the mail closes!”

We all started back to the window, but nobody could remember just exactly where anybody was standing before, and they all wanted everybody to go up first and step in ahead of them. And the line, instead of being a line with some of ’em ahead of others and all trying to hurry, was just a little group, with each giving everybody their turn, peaceful and good-willing. And all of a sudden it was like Christmas had come, up through all the work and the stitches, and was right there in the Friendship Village post-office with us.

“Goodness!” says Mis’ Holcomb in my ear, “I was wore to the bone getting ready my Christmas things. But now I’m real rested.”

“So am I,” I says.

And so was every one of us, I know, falling back into line there by the window. All rested, and not feeling hurried nor nothing: only human.

THE HOME-COMING

“Eighteen booths,” says Mis’ Timothy Toplady, sighing satisfied. “That’s enough to go round the whole Market Square, leaving breathin’ space between.”

We sat looking at the diagram Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman had made on the dining-room table, with bees-wax and stuff out of her work-basket, and we all sighed satisfied – but tired too. Because, though it looked like the Friendship Village Home-coming was going to be a success – and a peaceful success – yet we see in the same flash that it was going to be an awful back-aching, feet-burning business for us ladies. We were having our fourth committee meeting to Mis’ Sykes’s, and we weren’t more than begun on the thing; and the Home-coming was only six weeks away.

“Just thinking about all the tracking round it means,” says Mis’ Sykes, “I can feel that sick feeling in the back of my throat now, that I feel when I’m over-tired, or got delegates, or have company pounce down on me.”

Mis’ Hubbelthwait looked at her sympathetic. “I know,” she says. “So tired you can taste it. I donno,” she says, “whether home-comings are worth it or not.”

Mis’ Sykes didn’t answer. She was up on her feet, peering out behind the Nottinghams.

“My land o’ life,” she says, “that’s the stalkin’ image of ’Lisbeth Note.”

“Lisbeth Note!” we all said. “Oh, it can’t be!”

It struck me, even then, how united folks are on a piece of gossip. For the Home-coming some had thought have printed invitations and some had thought send out newspapers, some had wanted free supper and some had wanted pay, and so on, item by item of the afternoon. But the minute Lisbeth Note was mentioned, we all burst into one common, spontaneous fraternal horror: “Oh, no. It couldn’t be her.”

“It is!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “It is. She’s turning in there. I thought I heard ’bus wheels in the night. It serves me right. I’d ought to got out and looked.”

We were all crowded to the window by then, looking over toward old Mis’ Note’s, that lived opposite to Mis’ Sykes’s. So we all saw what we saw. And it was that Mis’ Note’s front door opened and a little boy, ’bout four years old, come shouting down the walk toward Lisbeth. And she stooped over and kissed him. And they went in the house together and shut the door.

Then us ladies turned and stared at each other. And Mis’ Sykes says, swallowing unbeknownst in the middle of what she says: “The brazen hussy. She’s brought it back here.”

I donno whether you’ve ever heard a group of immortal beings, women or men, pounce on and mull over that particular bone? If you live somewheres in this world, I guess mebbe you hev – I guess mebbe you hev. I’m never where it happens, that I don’t turn sick and faint all through me. I don’t know how men handles the subject – here in Friendship Village we don’t mention things that has a tang to ’em, in mixed company. Mebbe men is delicate and gentle and chivalrous when they speak of such things. Mebbe that’s one of the places they use the chivalry some feels so afraid is going to die out. But I might as well own up to you that in Friendship Village us women don’t act neither delicate nor decent in such a case.

There was fourteen women in the room that day, every one of ’em except Abigail Arnold and me living what you might call “protected” lives. I mean by that that men had provided them their homes and was earning them their livings, and clothing their children; and they were caring for the man’s house and, in between, training up the children. Then we were all of us further protected by the church, that we all belonged to and helped earn money for. And also we were protected by the town, that we were all respectable, bill-paying, property-owning, pew-renting citizens of. That was us.

And over against us fourteen was Lisbeth – that her father had died when she was a baby, and her mother had worked since she was born, with no place to leave Lisbeth meantime. And Lisbeth herself had been a nice, sweet-dispositioned, confiding little girl, doing odd jobs to our houses and clerking in our stores in the Christmas rush. Till five years ago – she’d gone away. And we all knew why. Her mother had cried her eyes out in most every one of our kitchens, and we were all in full possession of the facts – unless you count in the name of the little child’s father. We didn’t know that. But then, we had so much to do tearing Lisbeth to pieces we didn’t bother a great deal with that. And there that day was the whole fourteen of us, pitching into Lisbeth Note for what she’d done – just like she was fourteen of herself, our own sizes and our own “protectedness,” and meeting us face to face.

“The idear!” says Mis’ Sykes, shaking her head, with her lips disappearing within her face. “Why, she might have been clerking in the post-office store now, a nice, steady, six-dollar-a-week position just exactly like she was when it happened.”

“Would you think,” says Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman, “that living here in Friendship Village with us, anybody could go wrong?”

“Sepulchers in sheep’s clothing – that’s what some folks are,” says little new Mis’ Graves, righteous.

And so on. And on. Hashing it all over again and eating it for cake. And me, I wasn’t silent either. I joined in here and there with a little something I’d heard. Till by the time the meeting adjourned, and we’d all agreed to meet two days later and sew on the bunting for the booths, I went home feeling so sick and hurt and sore and skinned that after dark I up and walked straight down to Lisbeth’s house. Yes. After dark. I was a poor, weak, wavering stick, and I knew it.

Lisbeth came to the door. “Hello, Lisbeth,” I says. “It’s Calliope Marsh. Can I come in?”

“Mother ain’t here, Mis’ Marsh,” she says faint.

“Ain’t she, now?” I says. “I bet she is. I’m going inside to hunt for her.”

And I walked right into the sitting-room and turned and looked at Lisbeth. If she’d been defiant, or acted don’t-care, or tossed her head, or stared at me – I donno’s I’d of had the strength to understand that these might be her poor, pitiful weapons. But as it was, her eyes looked straight into mine for a minute, and then brimmed up full of tears. So I kissed her.

We sat there for an hour in the twilight – an hour I’ll never forget. And then she took me up-stairs to show me the boy.

Think of the prettiest child you know. Think of the prettiest child you ever did know. Now think of him laying asleep, all curls and his cheeks flushed and his lips budded open a little bit. That was Chris. That was Little Christopher – Lisbeth’s little boy.

“Miss Marsh,” Lisbeth says, “I’d rather die than not have him with me. And mother ain’t strong, and she needs me. Do you think I done wrong to come home?”

“Done wrong?” I says. “Done wrong to come home? Don’t them words kind of fight each other in the sentence? Of course you didn’t do wrong. Why,” says I, “Lisbeth, this is Friendship Village’s Home-coming year. It’s Home-coming week next month, you know.”

She looked at me wistful there in the dark beside the child’s bed. “Oh, not for me,” she says. “This house is my home – but this town ain’t any more. It don’t want me.”

“It don’t want me,” I says over to myself, going home. And I looked along at the nice, neat little houses, with the front doors standing open to the spring night, and dishes clattering musical here and there in kitchens, getting washed up, and lights up-stairs where children were being put to bed. And I thought, “Never tell me that this little town don’t want everybody that belongs to it to live in it. The town is true. It’s folks that’s false.” I says that over: “The town is true. It’s folks that’s false. How you going to make them know it?”

When it come my turn to have the Homecoming committee meet to my house, things had begun to get exciting. Acceptances had commenced coming in. I’d emptied out my photograph basket, and we had ’em all in it. It was real fun and heart-warming to read ’em. Miss Sykes was presiding – that woman’ll be one of them that comes back from the grave to do table-rapping. She does so love to call anything to order.

“Judge Eustis Bangs is coming,” says Mis’ Sykes, impressive, looking over the envelopes. “They say his wife don’t think anything in the world of having company in to a meal every week or so.”

“ ‘Used-to’ Bangs coming!” cries Mis’ Holcomb-that-was-Mame Bliss. “He set behind me in school. Land, I ain’t seen him since graduating exercises when he dipped my braid in the inkwell.”

“And Sarah Arthur,” Mis’ Sykes went on. “She’s lady bookkeeper in a big department store in the city, and in with all them four hundred.”

“I always wonder,” says Mis’ Holcomb, looking up and frowning meditative, “four hundred what? Do they mean folks, or millionaires, or what do they mean by that?”

“Oh, why millionaires, of course,” says Mis’ Sykes. “It don’t refer to folks. Look-a-here,” she says next. “Admiral and Mrs. Homer is coming. Why, you know he was only bare born here – he went away before he was three months old. And she’s never been here. But they’re coming now. Ladies! A admiral!”

Mis’ Toplady had been sitting still over in one corner, darning, with her mind on it. But now she dropped her husband’s sock, and looked up. “Admiral,” she says over. “That’s something to do with water fighting, ain’t it? Well, I want to know what they call it that for? I thought we didn’t consider it admiral any more to kill folks, by land or by sea?”

“Oh, but he’s an officer,” Mis’ Sykes says worshipful. “He’ll have badges, and like enough pantalettes on his shoulders; and think how nice he’ll look heading the parade!”

Mis’ Toplady kind of bit at her darning-needle, dreamy. “To my mind,” she says, “the only human being that’s fit to head a parade is one that’s just old enough to walk.”

Just then Mis’ Sykes done her most emphatic squeal and pucker, such as, if she was foreign, she would reserve for royalty alone.

“My land,” she says, “Abner Dawes! He’s a-coming. He’s a-coming!”

There couldn’t have been a nicer compliment to any one, my way of thinking, than the little round of smiles and murmurs that run about among us when we heard this.

Abner Dawes had been, thirty years before, a nice, shy man round the village, and we all liked him, because he had such a nice, kind way with him and particularly because he had such a way with children. He used to sing ’em little songs he made up. And some of the little songs got in the paper and got copied in the city paper; and first thing we knew, a big firm sent for Abner, and he’d been gone ever since. We heard of him, now doing his children-songs on the stage, now in a big, beautiful book of children’s songs, with pictures, that had been sent back to the village. And we were prouder of him than ’most anybody we’d got. And here he was coming to the Home-coming.

“We must give him the Principal Place, whatever that is,” says Mis’ Sykes, immediate. And we all agreed. Yes, Abner must have the Principal Place.

We were sewing, that afternoon, on the bunting for Eppleby Holcomb’s store’s booth. Blazing red, it was – ain’t it queer how men loves red? Color of blood and color of fire; but I always think it means they’ll be ready to love not blood of war but blood-brotherhood, and not the torch to burn with, but the torch to light with – when the time comes. Yes, I bet men’s liking red means something, and I like to think it means that. And if it does, Eppleby’ll be first among men, for he didn’t want a stitch of his booth that wasn’t flaming scarlet.

We had the diagram all made out on the table again, so’s to tell what colors would come next to which. And all of a sudden Mis’ Sykes put her finger in the middle of it.

“Do you know what?” she says. “If that tree wasn’t in the middle there, we could have a great big evening bon-fire, with everybody around it.”

“So we could. Wouldn’t that be nice?” says everybody – only me. Because the tree they meant was the Christmas tree, the big evergreen, the living Christmas tree that had stood there in the square, all lit, that last Christmas Eve, with all of us singing round it.

“I can’t ever think of that being in anybody’s way,” I says, and everybody says, “Perhaps not,” and we went on tearing off the lengths of blazing red calico. And me, I set there thinking about what they’d said.

I remember I was still thinking about it, and Mis’ Sykes and I were standing up together measuring off the breadths, when the front door opened. And there was standing Chris, Lisbeth’s little boy. Him and I’d got to be awful good friends almost from the first. He come over to my house quite a lot, and kneeled on a chair side of the table when I was doing my baking, and he brought me in pans of chips. And no little fellow whatever was ever sweeter.

“Hello, dear,” I says now. “Come in, won’t you?”

He stood quiet, eying us. And Mis’ Sykes down she drops the cloth and made a dive for him.

“You darling!” says she – her emphasis coming out in bunches, the way some women’s does when they talk to children. “You darling! Whose little boy are you?”

He looked at her, shy and sweet. “I’m my mamma’s little boy,” he says, ready. “But my papa, he didn’t come – not yet.”

I looked over to Mis’ Sykes, squatting with both arms around the baby. “He’s Lisbeth’s little boy,” I says. “Ain’t he d-e-a-r?” – I spells it.

Mis’ Sykes-drew back, like the little fellow had hit at her. “Mercy!” she says, only – and got up, and went on tearing cloth.

He felt it, like little children do feel ever so much more than we know they feel. I see his little lip begin to curl. I went and whispered that we’d go find an orange in the pantry, and I took him to get it; and then he went off.

When I went back in the sitting-room they all kind of kept still, like they’d been saying things they didn’t mean I should hear. Only that little new Mis’ Morgan Graves, she sat with her back to the door and she was speaking.

“…for one Sunday. But when I found it out, I took Bernie right out of the class. Of course it don’t matter so much now, but when they get older, you can’t be too careful.”

I went and stood back of her chair.

“Oh, yes, you can,” says I. (We try here in Friendship Village not to contradict our guests too flat; but when it’s a committee meeting, of course a hostess feels more free.) “You can be a whole lot too careful,” I went on. “You can be so careful that you act like we wasn’t all seeds in one great big patch of earth, same as we are.”

“Well, but, Calliope,” says Mis’ Sykes, “you can’t take that child in. You ain’t any children, or you’d know how a mother feels. An illegitimate child – ”