"She begun to cry a little, an' with that Elspie looks up at her, troubled.
"'I didn't mean to make you cry,' she says. 'I didn't mean you should know anything about it. I come early to do it – I thought you wouldn't know.'
"'Do what?' says Mis' Merriman, rill snappish.
"Elspie looks around at us then as if she first rilly took us in. An' when she sees Eb an' me standin' together, she give us a little smile – an' she sort o' answered to us two.
"'Why,' she says, 'I ain't got anybody, anywheres here, dead or alive, that belongs. The dead is all other folks's dead, an' the livin' is all other folks's folks. An' when I see all the graves down here that they don't nobody know who's they are, I thought mebbe one of 'em wouldn't care – if I kind of – adopted it.'
"At that she sort o' searched into Mis' Merriman's face, an' then Elspie's head went down, like she hed to excuse herself.
"'I thought,' she said, 'they must be so dead – an' no names on 'em an' all – an' their live folks all dead too by now – nobody'd care much. I thought of it yesterday when we was walkin' down here,' she said, 'an' I picked out the grave – it's the littlest one here. An' then when we come back past where the funeral was, an' I see them flowers – seemed like I hed to see how 'twould be to put 'em on my grave, that I'd took over. So I come early an' done it. But I was goin' to lay 'em right back where they belong – I truly was.'
"I guess none of us hed the least i-dea what to say. We just stood there plain tuckered in the part of us that senses things. All, that is, but one of us. An' that one was Eb Goodnight.
"I can see Eb now, how he just walked out o' the line of us standin' there, starin', an' he goes right up to Elspie an' he looks her in the face.
"'You're lonesome,' s'he, kind o' wonderin'. 'You're lonesome. Like – other folks.'
"An' all to once Eb took a-hold o' her elbow – not loose an' temporary like he shook hands, but firm an' four-cornered; an' when he spoke it was like his voice hed been starched an' ironed.
"'Mis' Fire Chief,' s'he, lookin' round at her, 'I's to let you know this week whether I'd take over the store. Well, yes,' he says, 'if you'll give me the time on it we mentioned, I'll take it over. An' if Elspie'll marry me an' let me belong to her, an' her to me.'
"'Marry you?' says Elspie, understandin' how he'd rilly spoke to her. 'Me?'
"Eb straightened himself up, an' his eyes was bright an' keen as the edge o' somethin'.
"'Yes, you,' he says gentle. 'An' me.'
"An' then she looked at him like he was lookin' at her. An' it come to me how it'd been with them two since the night they'd locked up my house together. An' I felt all hushed up, like the weddin' was beginnin'.
"But Timothy an' Silas, they wa'n't feelin' so hushed.
'Look a-here!' says Timothy Toplady, all pent up. 'She ain't discharged from the county house yet.'
"'I don't care a dum,' says Eb, an' I must say I respected him for the 'dum' – that once.
"'Look a-here,' says Silas, without a bit o' delicacy. 'She ain't responsible. She ain't – '
"'She is too,' Eb cut him short. 'She's just as responsible as anybody can be when they're lonesome enough to die. I ought 'a' know that. Shut up, Silas Sykes,' says Eb, all het up. 'You've just et a hot breakfast your wife hed ready for you. You don't know what you're talkin' about.'
"An' then Eb sort o' swep' us all up in the dust-pan.
"'No more words about it,' s'he, 'an' I don't care what any one o' you says – Mis' Cally nor none o' you. So you might just as well say less. Tell 'em, Elspie!'
"She looked up at him, smilin' a little, an' he turned toward her, like we wasn't there. An' I nudged Mis' Merriman an' made a move, an' she turns right away, like she'd fair forgot the funeral flowers. An' Timothy an' Silas actually followed us, but talkin' away a good deal – like men will.
"None of us looked back from the top o' the hill, though I will own I would 'a' loved to. An' about up there I heard Silas say: —
"'Oh, well. I am gettin' kind o' old an' some stiff to take a new business on myself.'
"An' Timothy, he adds absent: 'I don't s'pose, when you come right down to it, as Alice County'll rilly care a whoop.'
"An' Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she wipes up her eyes, an', 'It does seem like courtin' with Sum's flowers,' she says, sighin', 'but I'm rill glad for Eb.'
"An' Eb not bein' there to agree with her, I says to myself, lookin' at the mornin' sun on the cemetery an' thinkin' o' them two back there among the baskets an' set pieces – I says, low to myself: —
"'Oh, glory, glory, glory.'
"For I tell you, when you see a livin' soul born in somebody's eyes, it makes you feel pretty sure you can hev one o' your own, if you try."
XII
OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY
When the Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality had its Evening Benefit at my house, Delia More came to help in the kitchen. She steadfastly refused to be a guest. "I'd love bein' 'round there," she said, "over the stove, or that way. But I can't —can't be company – yet. When I think of it, it's like a high swing."
So she stayed in the kitchen, and it was characteristic of Friendship that when its women learned that she was there, they all went – either deliberately or for a drink of water – to speak with her. And they all did learn that she was there. "Who you got in the kitchen?" was a part of the small talk from guest to hostess. The men stayed "in the other part of the house," Doctor June and Eppleby Holcomb sending by me some cordial word to Delia. I think that they cannot do these things anywhere else with such beautiful delicacy.
When my other guests had taken leave, Calliope stayed to help in the search for Mis' Postmaster Sykes's pickle fork and two of Mis' Helman's napkins (the latter marked with L because the store had been out of papier-maché H's, and it didn't matter what letter so long as you knew it meant you) and all the other borrowed articles whose mislaying made any Sodality gathering a kind of panic. Moreover, Calliope had been helping and we, and Delia, had been far too busy to taste supper.
We would have said that the true life of the evening was done instead of just beginning. But when we entered the kitchen, we found Delia More serving the supper on an end of the baking table, while warming his hands at the range stood Abel Halsey.
"I came in across the track, from the hills," Abel explained to me. "I didn't know you had doings till I tied and blanketed – an' I came on in anyhow, back way. I'm in luck too. I haven't had supper."
We four sat down in that homely cheer, and before us was the Sodality's exquisite cookery. It was good to have Abel there. Since my coming to Friendship I had seen him often, and my wonder at him had deepened. He was alive to the finger-tips and by nature equipped to conquer through sheer mentality, but he seemed deliberately to have fore-gone the prizes for the tasks of the lower places. Not only so, but he who understood all fine things seemed to regard his tastes as naïveté, and to have won away from them, as if he had set "above all wisdom and subtlety" the unquenchable spirit which he knew. And withal he was so merry, so human, so big, and so good-looking. "Handsome as Calvert Oldmoxon," the older ones in Friendship were accustomed to say, – save Calliope, whom I had never heard say that, – but I myself, if I had not had my simile already selected, would have said "as Abel Halsey." If a god were human, I think that Abel would have been very like a god. And to this opinion his experiences were continually bearing witness.
That night, for example, he was in the merriest humour, and told us a tale of how, that day, the sky had fallen. There had been down on the Pump pasture, deep fog, white and thick and folded in, and above him blue sky, when he had emerged on the Hill Road and driven on with his eyes shut. ("When I need an adventure," he said, "I just trot old Major Mary with my eyes shut. Courting death isn't half as costly as they think it is.") And when he had opened his eyes, the sky was gone, and everything was white and thick and folded in and fabulous. Obviously, as he convinced us, the sky had fallen. But he had driven on through it and in it, and had found it, as I recall his account, to be made of inextinguishable dreams. These, Abel ran on, are on the other side of the sky for anybody who claims them, and our sandwiches were, above all sandwiches, delicious. He was so merry that Calliope and I, by a nod or a smile of understanding, played our rôle of merely, so to say, proving that the films were right – for you may have an inspired conversational photographer, but unless you are properly prepared chemically he can get no pictures. As Calliope had said of her evening with Eb and Elspie, "the air in the room was easy to get through with what you had to say – it was that kind of evening." Sometimes I wonder if an hour like that is real time; or is it, instead, a kind of chronometrical fairy, having no real existence on the dial, but only in essence.
As I think of it now the hour, if it was an hour, was simply a background for Delia More. For it was not only Calliope and I who responded to Abel's light-hearted talk, but, little by little, it was Delia too. Perhaps it was that faint spark in her – fanned to life on the night of her coming home, so that she "took stock" – which we now divined faintly quickening to Abel's humour, his wisdom, even his fancies. Save in her bitterness, on that first night, I had not heard her laugh; and it was as if something were set free. I could not help looking at her, but that did not matter, for she did not see me. She was listening to Abel with an almost childish delight in her face; and in her eyes was the look of one in a place before unvisited.
Some while after we had moved away from the table and sat together about the cooking range, we heard the questioning horn of a motor. We knew that it would belong to the Proudfits, since for us in Friendship there exists no other motor, and moreover this one was standing at my gate. Abel went out there and came back to tell us that the car had been in town to fetch the Proudfits' lawyer, and that Madame Proudfit had kindly sent it for Delia "and spoilt everything," he added frankly. As he said that, Abel looked at her, and I saw that a dream may persist through personality itself. As I have said, if a god were human, Abel would have been like a god; and in nothing more so than in this understanding of the immortalities.
Calliope stood up and caught, and held, my eyes in passing.
"Let's you and Abel and I take Delia home in the automobile," she said; "there ain't anything so good for folks as fresh air."
I brought a warm wrap for Delia, a crimson cloak of mine which, so to say, drew a line about her, defining her prettiness; and in the starlight we set off along the snowless Plank Road, Delia and Abel and I in the tonneau of the machine, and I silent. It had befallen strangely that over this road Delia More and I should be faring in the Proudfits' car, and beside her Abel Halsey as if, for such as he and she, a dream may, just possibly, come back.
"See," she said to Abel, "the sky has gone back up again."
"Yes," Abel assented, "one of the things even the sky can't do is to change the way things are."
"Oh, I know, I know …" said Delia More.
"I want you to feel that," said Abel, gently. "Things are the way things are, and no use trying to leave them out of it. Besides, you need them. They're foundation. Then you build, and build better. That's all there is to it, Delia."
She was silent, and Abel sat looking up at the stars.
"All there is to it except what I said about the other side of the sky," he said. "And then me. I'll help."
From my thought of these two I remember that I drifted on to some consideration of myself, for their presence opened old paths where were in durance things that did their best to escape, and were disquieting. I thought also of Calliope, of whose story I had heard a little from one and another. And it seemed to me that possibly Delia More's laughter and her wistfulness summed us all up.
When we drew up at the entrance to Proudfit House we all alighted, Calliope and Abel and I to walk home. But while we were saying good night to Delia, the door opened and Clementina Proudfit stood against the light. The car was to wait, she said, to take Mr. Baring, the lawyer, to the midnight train. And then, as she saw her: —
"Calliope!" she cried, "I never wanted anybody so much. Come in and make Mr. Baring a cup of your good coffee – you will, Calliope? Mother and I will be with him for half an hour yet. Come, all of you, and help her."
We went in, lingering for a moment by the drawing-room fire while Miss Clementina went below stairs; and I noted how, in that room colourful and of fair proportion, Abel Halsey in his shabby clothes moved as simply as if the splendour were not there. He stood looking down at Delia, in her white dress, the crimson cloak catching the firelight; while Calliope and I, before a length of Beauvais tapestry, talked with spirit about both tapestry and coffee-making. ("My grandmother use' to crochet faces an' figgers in her afaghans, too," Calliope commented, "an' when I looked at 'em they use' to make me feel kind o' mad. But with these, I don't care at all.") And when Miss Clementina returned, —
"Now," Calliope said to me, "you come with me an' help about the coffee, will you? An' Delia, you an' Abel stay here. Nothin' will put me out o' my head so quick —nothin'– as too many flyin' 'round the kitchen when I'm tryin' to do work."
We went downstairs, and Miss Clementina rejoined her mother and the lawyer in the library, and Delia and Abel were left alone together in the firelight. If I had been a dream, and had been intending to come back at all, I think that I must have come then.
"Pray, why don't you?" said Calliope to me almost savagely on the kitchen stairs.
The coffee-making was a slow process and a silent one. Calliope and I were both absorbed in what had so wonderfully come about: That Delia More, who was dead, was alive again; or rather, that her spirit, patient within her through all the years of its loneliness, was coming forth at the sound of Abel's voice. We were alone in the kitchen, and when the coffee was over the flame, we stood at the window looking out on the black kitchen gardens. There lay the yellow reflection of the room, with that unreality of all window-mirrored rooms, so that if one might walk within them one would almost certainly wear one's self with a difference.
"Ain't it like somethin' bright was in the inside o' the garden," Calliope put it, "just the way I told you Abel feels about everything? That they's something inside, hid, kind of secret an' holy – like the dreams he said was in the sky. I guess mebbe he's believed that about Delia all these years. An' now he's bringin' it out. Oh," she said, "the kitchen is where you can tell about things best. Seems to me you'd ought to know somethin' about Delia an' Abel."
And I wanted to hear.
"Abel see Delia first," Calliope told me then, "to the Rummage Sale that the Cemetery Auxiliary, that the Sodality use' to be, give. That is to say, they didn't give it, as it turned out – they just had it, you might say. Abel was twenty-five or so, an' he'd just come here fresh ordained a minister. We found he wa'n't the kind to stop short on, Be good yourself an' then a crown. No, but he just went after the folks that was livin' along, moral an' step-pickin', an' he says to us, 'What you sittin' down here for, enjoyin' yourselves bein' moral? Get out an' help the rest o' the world,' he says. But everybody liked him in spite o' that, an' he was goin' to be installed minister in our church.
"Then the Rummage Sale come on an' he met Delia. Delia was eighteen an' just back from visitin' in the City, with her veil a new way, an' I never see prettier. She was goin' to take charge o' the odd waists table, an' Abel was runnin' 'round helpin' – Abel wa'n't the white-cuff kind, like some, but he always pitched in an' stirred up whatever was a-stewin'. He come bringin' in an armful o' old shoes somebody'd fetched down, an' just as she was beginnin' on the odd waists, sortin' 'em over, he met Delia. I remember she looks up at him from under that veil an' from over a red basque she'd picked off the pile, an', 'Mr. Halsey,' she says, 'I've a notion to buy this myself an' be savin'.' That took Abel – Delia was so pretty an' fluffy that hearin' her talk savin' was about like seein' a butterfly washin' out its own wings. 'Do,' says he, 'the red is beautiful on you,' s'e, shovin' the blame off on to the red. An' when he got done with the shoes he come over to help on the waists too – I was lookin' over the child sizes, next table, an' I see the whole business.
"I will say their talk was wonderful pretty. It run on sort o' easy, slippin' along over little laughs an' no hard work to keep it goin'. Abel had a nice way o' cuttin' his words out sharp – like they was made o' somethin' with sizin' on the back an' stayed where he put 'em. An' his laugh would sort o' clamp down soft on a joke an' make it double funny. An' Delia, she was right back at him, give for take, an' though she was rill genial, she was shy. An' come to think of it, Abel was just as full o' his fancyin's then as he is now.
"'Old clothes,' he says to her, 'always seems to me sort o' haunted.'
"'Haunted?' I know she asks him, wonderin'.
"'All steeped in what folks have been when they've wore 'em,' s'e, 'an' givin' it out again.'
"'Oh …' Delia says, 'I never thought o' that before.'
"An' she see what he meant, too. Delia wa'n't one to get up little wavy notions like that, but she could see 'em when told. An' neither was she one to do one way instead of another by just her own willin' it, but if somebody pointed things out to her, then she'd see how, an' do the right. An' I think Abel understood that about her – that her soul was sort o' packed down in her an' would hev to be loosened gentle, before it could speak. Like Peleg Bemus says about his flute," Calliope said, smiling, "that they's something packed deep down in it that can't say things it knows."
"'Clothes folks wear, rooms they live in, things they use – they all get like the folks that use 'em,' Abel says, layin' black with black an' white with white, on to the waist table. 'It makes us want to step careful, don't it?' s'e. 'I think,' s'e, simple, 'your dresses – an' ribbins – an' your veil – must go about doin' pleasant things without you.'
"'Oh, no,' says Delia, demure, 'I ain't near good enough, Mr. Halsey; you mustn't think that,' she says – an' right while he was lookin' gentle an' clerical an' ready to help her, she dimples out all over her face. 'Besides,' she says, 'I ain't enough dresses to spare away from me for that. I ain't but about two!' s'she. An' when a girl is all rose pink and sky blue and dainty neat, a man loves to hear her brag how few dresses she's got, an' Abel wa'n't the exception.
"'Same as a lily,' says he; 'they only have one dress. Now, what else shall I do?'
"Well, at sharp nine the Cemetery Auxiliary come to order, Mis' Sykes presidin', like she always does when it's time for a hush. The doors was to open to the general public at ten o'clock, an' the i-dee was to hev the Auxiliary get the pick o' the goods first, payin' the reg'lar, set, marked price. An' just as they was ready to begin pickin', up arrove the Proudfit pony cart with a great big box o' stuff, sent to the sale. Land, land, Mis' Sykes from the chair an' the others the same, they just makes one swoop – an' begun selectin'; an' in less than a jiffy if they hadn't selected up every one o' the Proudfit articles themselves. It was natural enough. The things was worth havin' – pretty curtains, an' trimmin's not much wore, an' some millinery an' dresses with the new hardly off. An' the Auxiliary paid the price they would 'a' asked anybody else. They was anxious, but they was square.
"That just seemed to get their hand in. Next, they fell to on the other tables an' begun buyin' from them. They was lots o' things that most anybody would 'a' been glad to hev that the owners had sent down sheer through bein' sick o' seein' 'em around – like you will – an' couldn't be thrown away 'count o' conscience, but could be give to a cause an' conscience not notice. We had quite fun buyin', too – knowin' they was each other's, an' no hard feelin' – only good spirits an' pleased with each other's taste. Everybody knew who'd sent what, an' everybody hed bought it for some not so high-minded use as it hed hed before, an' kep' their dignity that way. Front-stair carpet was bought to go down on back stairs, sittin' room lamp for chamber lamp, kitchen stove-pipe for wash room stove-pipe, an' so on, an' the clothes to make rag rugs – so they give out. The things kep' on an' on bein' snapped up hot-cake quick, an' the crowd beginnin' to gather outside, waitin' to get in, made 'em sort o' lose their heads an' begin buyin' sole because things was cheap – bird-cages, a machine cover, odd table-leaves, an' like that. The Society was rill large then, an' what happened might 'a' been expected. When ten o'clock come an' it was time to open the door, the Rummage Sale was over, an' the Auxiliary hed bought the whole thing themselves.
"We never thought folks might be anyways mad about it – but I tell you, they was. They hed been seein' us through the glass, like they was caged in front o' bargain day. An' when Mis' Toplady, fair beamin', unlocks the door an' tells 'em the sale was through with an' a rill success, they acted some het up. But Mis' Toplady, she bristles back at 'em. 'I'm sure,' s'she, 'nobody wants you to die an' be buried in a nice, neat, up-to-date, kep'-up cemet'ry if you don't want to.' An' o' course she hed 'em there.
"Well, it was that performance o' the Auxiliary's that rilly brought Delia an' Abel together. It seemed to strike Abel awful funny, an' Delia, lookin' at it with him, she see the funny too. They laughed a good deal, an' they seemed to sort o' understand each other through laughin', like you will. Delia bought the red waist, an' Abel walked home with her – an' by that time Abel, with his half-scriptural, half-boy, half-lover way that he couldn't help, was just on the craggy edge o' fallin' in love with her. But I b'lieve it wa'n't love, just ordinary. It was more like Abel, in his zeal for reddin' up the world, see that he could do for Delia what nobody else could do – an' her for him. An' that both of 'em workin' together could do more through knowin' each other was near. That's the way,' Calliope said shyly, 'lovin' always ought to be, my notion. An' when it ain't, things is likely to get all wrong. Sometime – sometime,' she said, 'you'll hear about me – an' how things with me went all wrong. An' I want you to remember, no matter how much it don't seem my fault – that that's why they did go wrong – an' no other. I was too crude selfish to sense what love is. I didn't know – I didn't know. An' so with lots o' folks.
"I've often thought that Delia an' Abel meetin' at a Rummage Sale was like all the rest of it. There was just a lot o' rubbish lumberin' up the whole situation. Things wasn't happy for Delia to home – her mother, Mis' Crapwell, had married again to a man that kep' throwin' out about hevin' to be support to Delia; an' her stepsister, Jennie Crapwell, was sickly an' self-seekin' an' engaged all to once. An' the young carpenter that Jennie was goin' to marry, he was the black-eyed, hither-an'-yon kind, an' crazier over Delia from the first than he ever was over Jennie. Delia, she was shy about not havin' much education – Mis' Proudfit hed wanted to send her off to school, an' Mis' Crapwell wouldn't hear to it – an' Abel kep' talkin' that he was goin' to hev a big church in the City some day, an' I guess that scairt Delia some, an' Jennie kep' frettin' an' houndin' her, one way an' another, an' a-callin' her 'parson's wife' – ain't it awful the power them pin-pricky things has if we let 'em? An' Delia wa'n't the kind to know how to do right by her own willin'. An' so all to once we woke up one mornin', an' she'd done what she'd done, an' no help for it.
"It was only a month after Delia an' Abel had met that Delia went away, an' Abel hadn't been installed yet. An' when Delia done that, Abel just settled into bein' somebody else. He seemed to want to go off in the hills an' be by himself, an' most o' the time he done so. But there was grace for him even in that: Abel see the hill folks, how they didn't hev any churches nor not anything else much, an' he just set to work on 'em, quiet an' still. He'd wanted to go away an' travel, but the chance never come. An' it seemed, then on, he didn't want even to hear o' the City, an' when his chances there come, he never took 'em. An' Abel's been 'round here with the hill folks the fourteen years since, an' never pastor of any church – but he got the blessedness, after all, an' I guess the chance to do better service than any other way. You can see how he's broad an' gentle an' tender an' strong, but you don't know what he does for folks – an' that's the best. An' yet – his soul must be sort o' packed away too, to what it would 'a' been if things had 'a' gone differ'nt … packed away an' tryin' to say somethin'. An' now Delia's come back I b'lieve Abel knows that, an' I b'lieve he sees the soul in her needin' him too, just like it did all that time – waitin' to be loosened, gentle, before it can speak; an' meanin' things it can't say, like Peleg's flute. Oh, don't it seem like the dreams Abel said he found up in the sky had ought to be let come true?"
It did seem as if, for the two up there in the drawing-room, this dream might, just possibly, come back.
"But then you never can tell for sure about the sky, can you?" said Calliope, sighing.
Coffee was served in the library where Madame Proudfit and Miss Clementina had been in consultation with their lawyer. We were all rather silent as Madame Proudfit sat at the urn and the lawyer handed our cups down some long avenue of his abstraction. And now everything seemed to me a kind of setting for Delia and Abel, and Calliope kept looking at them as if, before her eyes, things might come right. So, I own, did I, though in the Proudfit library it was usually difficult to fix my attention on what passed; for it was in that room that Linda Proudfit's portrait hung, and the beautiful eyes seemed always trying to tell one what the weary absence meant. But I thought again that this daughter of the house had won a kind of presence there, because of Madame Proudfit's tender mother-care of Delia More.
Yet it was to this care that Calliope and I owed a present defeat; for when we were leave-taking, —
"We shall sail, then, the moment we can get passage," Madame Proudfit observed to her lawyer, "providing that Clementina can arrange. Delia," she added, "Clementina and I find to-night that we must sail immediately for Europe, for six months or so. And we want to carry you off with us."
Madame Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia were standing with us outside the threshold, where the outdoors had met us like something that had been waiting. There, with the light from the hall falling but dimly, I saw in Abel's face only the glow of his simple joy that this good thing had come to Delia – though, indeed, that very joy told much besides. And it was in his face when he bade Delia good night and, since he was expected somewhere among the hills for days to come, gave her God-speed. But we four fell momentarily silent, as if we meant things which we might not speak. It was almost a relief to hear tapping on the sidewalk the wooden leg of Peleg Bemus, while a familiar, thin little stream of melody from his flute made its way about.
"Doesn't it seem as if Peleg were trying to tell one something?" said Madame Proudfit, lightly, as we went away.
And down on the gravel of the drive Calliope demanded passionately of Abel and me: —
"Oh, don't some things make you want to pull the sky down an' wrap up in it!"
But at this Abel laughed a little.
"It's easier to pull down just the dreams," he said.