Friendship Village

"I marvel, I marvel at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear place and the dear people for me?"

I love to recall the bustle of that arriving and how, as the motor came up the drive, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and Mis' Amanda ran down on the gravel and waved their aprons; and how Mis' Postmaster Sykes and Mis' Mayor Uppers and Mis' Photographer Sturgis, having heard the machine pass their doors, had issued forth and followed it and arrived at the Proudfits' with:

"I was right in the midst of a basque, cuttin' over an old lining, but I told Liddy Ember: 'You rip on. I've got to run over.' Excuse my looks. Well said! Back!"

And, "Got here, did you? My, my, all tired out, I expect. Well, mebbe you think we won't feel relieved to see the house open again an' folks in it flyin' round. An' you look as natural as the first thunder-storm in the spring o' the year!"

And, "Every day for two weeks," Mis' Sturgis said, "I've said to Jimmy: 'Proudfits back?' 'No, sir,' s'he, 'not back yet.' An' so it went. Could you sleep any on the sleeper?"

Then Calliope and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb and the three newcomers hurried all but abreast to the kitchen to "see what they could find"; and when Mis' Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia More had taken their places at the burdened table, we all sat about the edge of the room – no one would share in the feast, every one having to "get right back" – and asked of the journey, and gave news of Friendship Village in the long absence. I love to remember it all, but I think that I love best to remember their delicate acceptance of what that day had brought to me. Of this no one said a word, nor did they ask me anything, or seem to observe, far less to wonder. But when they passed me, one and another and another squeezed my hand or patted my arm or gave me their unwonted "dear."

"What gentlefolk they are," my stranger said.

"Noon lunch" was finished, and I had seen Calliope go with Madame Proudfit to the library and close the door, and we were all gathered in the hall, where Miss Clementina had opened a trunk and was showing us some pretty things, when some one else crossed the veranda and appeared in the doorway. And there was Abel, come with my wild roses.

I do not think, however, that it can have occurred to Abel that I was in the room. Nor that any of the others were there, intent on the pretty things of Miss Clementina's trunk. But, his face shining, he went straight to Delia More; and he laid my roses in her arms, looking at her the while with a look which was like a passionate recognition of one not met for many years.

I have said nothing of Delia More as she seemed to me that day of her return, for indeed I do not well know how to tell of her. But as he looked at her, it was all in Abel's eyes. I do not know whether it was that her spirit having been long "packed down in her," as Calliope had said, was at last loosed by the mysterious ministry of distance and the touch of far places, or whether, over there nearer Tempe, she had held converse with Daphne herself, who, for the sake of the Friendship bond between them, had taken for her own all that was wild and strange in the girl's nature. But this I know: that Delia More had come back among us a new creature, simple, gentle, humble as before, and yet somehow quickened, invested with the dignity of personality which, long ago, she had lost. And now she stood looking at Abel as he was looking at her.

"Delia!" he said, and took her hand, and, "I brought you some wild roses to tell you we're glad you're back," said he, disposing of my hedge spoils as coolly as if I were not.

"That's nice of you, Abel," she replied simply, "but it's nicer to think you came."

"Why," Abel said, "you couldn't have kept me away. You couldn't have kept me away, Delia."

He could not have done looking at her. And even after we had closed in before them and had gone on with our talk about the tray of the trunk, I think that we were all conscious, as one is conscious of a light in the room, that to Delia and Abel had come again the immemorial wonder.

When the library door opened and Madame Proudfit and Calliope came out, a little hush fell upon us, even though none but I knew what that interval held for Linda's mother. Her face was tranquil – indeed, I think it was almost as if its ancient fear had forever left it and had given place to the blessed relief of mere sorrow. She stood for a moment – looking at them all, and looking, as if she were thankful for their presence. Then she saw Abel and held out both hands.

"Abel!" she said, "Abel! I had your letter in Lucerne. I meant to talk it over with you – but now I know, I know. You shall have your little chapel in the hills. We will build it together – you and I – for Linda."

But then, because Abel turned joyously and naturally to Delia to share with her the tidings, Madame Proudfit looked at Delia too, and saw her eyes. And,

"You and Delia and I," she added gently.

On which, with the kindliest intent, the happiness of us all overflowed in speech about the common-place, the trivial, the irrelevant, and we all fell talking at once there in the hall, and told one another things which we knew perfectly already, and we listened, nodding, and laughed a great deal at nothing in the world – save that life is good.

We three walked home together in the afternoon sunshine – the man who, through all this time in Friendship, had been dear, and Calliope and I. I thought that Daphne Street had never looked so beautiful. The tulip beds on the lawns had been re-filled for summer, a touch of bonfire smoke hung in the air, Eppleby Holcomb was mending his picket gate, and over many magic thresholds of the cool walks were lintels of the boughs. Down town Abigail Arnold was laying cream puffs in the home bakery window; at the Helmans' Mis' Doctor Helman, wound in a shawl and a fascinator, was training her matrimony vine; the Liberty sisters had let out their chickens and, posted in a great triangle, were keeping them well within Liberty lawn confines; Doctor June was working in his garden and he waved his hat at us like a boy. ("It's a year ago now they give him his benefit," Calliope remembered; "ice-cream an' strawberries an' cake. An' every soul that come in he treated, one after another. An' when they got hold of him an' told him what that was doin' to the benefit box, he wanted to know whose benefit it was, anyway. An' he kep' on treatin' folks up to the last spoonful o' cream. He said he never had such a good time since he was born. I donno but he showed us how to give a benefit, too.")

We were crossing the lawn to Oldmoxon House when I said to Calliope what it had been decided that day that I should say: —

"Calliope," I asked, "could you be ready in a month or two to leave Friendship for good, and come to us in town, and live with us for always?"

She looked up at one and the other of us, with her little embarrassed laugh.

"You're makin' fun o' me," she said.

But when we had explained that we were wholly serious, she stopped and leaned against one of the great trees before the house; and it was at Oldmoxon House rather than at us that she looked as she answered: —

"I couldn't," she said quickly, and with a manner of breathlessness, "I couldn't. You know how I've wanted to leave Friendship, too, you know that. An' I want to yet, as far as wantin' goes. But wantin' to mustn't be enough to make you do things."

She stood, her head held up as if she were singing, as Liddy Ember had said of her, her arms tightly folded, her cheeks flushing with her fear that we would not understand.

"Oh," she said, "you know – you know how I've always wanted nice things. Wanted 'em so it hurt. Not just from likin' 'em, either, but because some way I thought I could be more, do more, live up to my biggest best if I could only get where things was kind of educated an' – gentle. But every time I tried to go, somethin' come up – like it will, to shove you hard down into the place you was. Then I thought – you know 'bout that, I guess – I thought I was goin' to live here in Oldmoxon House, an' hev a life like other women hev. An' when that wasn't to be, I thought mebbe it was because God see I wasn't fit for it, an' I set to work on myself to make me as good as I knew – an' I worked an' worked, like life was nothin' but me, an' I was nothin' but a cake, to get a good bake on an' die without bein' too much dough to me. An' then all to once I see that couldn't be the only thing He meant. It didn't seem like He could 'a' made me sole in order to save me from hell. An' I begun to see He must 'a' made me to help in some great, big hid plan or other of His. An' quick as I knew that an' begun wantin' to help, He begun showin' me when to. That's how I mean what I said about the Bell. Times like Elspie, or 'Leven, or like that, I can hear it just as plain as plain – the Bell, callin' me to help Him."

She looked hard at us, and, "I donno if you know what I'm talkin' about – " she doubted; but, at our answer,

"Well," she added, "they's somethin' else. It's somethin' almost like what you've got – you two – an' like what Delia an' Abel have got. Lately, I don't need to hear the Bell any more. I know 'bout it without. It's almost like I am the Bell. Don't you see, it's come to be my power, just like love will be your power, if you rilly understand. An' here – here I know how. I've grown to Friendship, an' here I know what's what. An' if I went away now, where things is gentle an' like in books, I wouldn't know how to be any rill use. I can be the Bell here – here I can have my power. In town I expect I couldn't be anything but just cake again – bakin' myself rill good, or even gettin' frosted; but mebbe not helpin'. An' I couldn't risk that – I couldn't risk it. It looks to me like helpin' is what I'm for."

I think, as she said, Calliope was become the Bell; and at that moment she rang to us the call of sovereign clearness. This was the life that she and Abel followed, and followed before all else, and there lay the hiding of their power. "Just like love will be your power," she had said.

When she had gone before us into the house – that was to have been her house – we two stood looking along the sunny Plank Road toward Daphne Street. And in the light lifting of the bonfire smoke it seemed to me that there moved a spirit – not Daphne, but another; one who walks less in beauty than in service; not our lady of the laurels, but our lady of the thorns.