Friendship Village Part 23

looks at me over the top of its head as much as to say she understood an' thanked me.

"'Its ma is went off,' I told 'em apologetic, 'an' I thought maybe you'd look after it awhile,' I told 'em.

"Then I went out an' put oranges all around the boy brother on the hall floor, an' I hustled back downstairs.

"'Gentlemen,' says I, brisk, 'I've got two dollars too much,' says I--an' I reck'n the cracks in them walls must 'a' winked at the notion.

'What do you say to a game o' dice on the bread-plate?' I ask' 'em.

"Well, one way an' another I kep' them two there for two hours. An'

then, when the game was out, I knew I couldn't do nothin' else. So I stood up an' told 'em I'd go up an' let Mr. Loneway know they was there--along o' his wife bein' sick an' hadn't ought to be scared.

"I started up the stairs, feelin' like lead. Little more'n halfway up I heard a little noise. I looked up, an' I see the boy brother a-comin', leakin' orange-peel, with the kid slung over his shoulder, sleepin'. I looked on past him, an' the door o' Mr. Loneway's sittin' room was open, an' I see Mr. Loneway standin' in the middle o' the floor. I must 'a'

stopped still, because something stumbled up against me from the back, an' the two constables was there, comin' close behind me. I could hear one of 'em breathin'.

"Then I went on up, an' somehow I knew there wasn't nothin' more to wait for. When we got to the top I see inside the room, an' she was layin'

back on her pillow, all still an' quiet. An' the little new pink jacket never moved nor stirred, for there wa'n't no breath.

"Mr. Loneway, he come acrost the floor towards us.

"'Come in,' he says. 'Come right in,' he told us--an' I see him smilin'

some."

XIV

AN EPILOGUE

When Peleg had gone back to the woodshed, Calliope slipped away too. I sat beside the fire, listening to the fine, measured fall of Peleg's axe--so much more vital with the spirit of music than his flute; looking at Calliope's brown earthen baking dishes--so much purer in line than the village bric-a-brac; thinking of Peleg's story and of the life that beat within it as life does not beat in the unaided letter of the law.

But chiefly I thought of Linda Loneway. Linda Loneway. I made a picture of her name.

So, Calliope having come from above stairs where I had heard her moving about as if in some search, I think that I recognized, even before I lifted my eyes to it, the photograph which she gave me. It was as if the name had heard me, and had come.

"It's Linda," Calliope said. "It's Linda Proudfit. An' I'm certain, certain sure it's the Linda that Peleg knew."

"Surely not, Calliope," I said--obedient to some law.

Calliope nodded, with closed eyes, in simple certainty.

"I _know_ it was her that Peleg meant about," she said. "I thought of it first when he said about her looks--an' her husband a clerk--an' he said he called her Linda. An' then when he got to where she mentioned Aunt Nita--that's what her an' Clementina always calls Mis' Ordway, though she ain't by rights--oh, it is--it is...."

Calliope sat down on the floor before me, cheris.h.i.+ng the picture. And all natural doubts of the possibility, all apparent denial in the real name of Linda Proudfit's poor young husband were for us both presently overborne by something which seemed viewlessly witnessing to the truth.

"But little Linda," Calliope said, "to think o' her. To think o'

_her_--like Peleg said. Why, I hardly ever see her excep' in all silk, or imported kinds. None of us did. I hardly ever 'see her walk--it was horses and carriages and dance in a ballroom till I wonder she remembered how to walk at all. Everything with her was cut good, an'

kid, an' handwork, an' like that--the same way the Proudfits is now. But yet she wasn't a bit like Mis' Proudfit an' Clementina. They're both sweet an' rule-lovin' an' ladies born, but--" Calliope hesitated, "they's somethin' they _ain't_. An' Linda was."

Calliope looked about the room, seeking a way to tell me. And her eyes fell on the flame on her cooking-stove hearth.

"Linda had a little somethin' in her that lit her up," she said. "She didn't say much of anything that other folks don't say, but somehow she meant the words farther in. In where the light was, an' words mean differ'nt an' better. I use' to think I didn't believe that what she saw or heard or read was exactly like what her mother an' Clementina an'

most folks see an' hear an' read. Somehow, she got the inside out o'

things, an' drew it in like breathin', an' lit it up, an' lived it more.

I donno's you know what I'm talkin' about. But Mis' Proudfit an'

Clementina don't do that way. They're dear an' good an' generous, an'

lots gentler than they was before Linda left 'em--an' yet they just wear things' an' invite folks in an' see Europe an' keep up their French an'

serve G.o.d, an' never get any of it rill lit up. But Linda, she _knew_.

An' she use' to be lonesome. I know she did--I know she did.

"I use' to look at her an' wish an' wish I wa'n't who I am, so's I could a' let her know I knew too. I use' to go to mend her lace an' sell orris root to her--an' Madame Proudfit an' Clementina would be there, buyin'

an' livin' on the outside, judicious an' refined an' rill right about everything; but when Linda come in, she sort o' reached somewheres, deep, or up, or out, or like that, an' got somethin' that meant it all instead o' gnawin' its way through words. It was like other folks was the recipe an' Linda was the rill dish. They was the way to be, but she was the one that was.

"Well, then one year, when she come home from off to school, this young clerk followed her. I only see 'em together once--he only stayed a day an' had his terrible time with Jason Proudfit an' everybody knew it--but even with seein' 'em that once, I knew about him. I don't care who he was or what he was worth--he was lit up, too. I donno why he was a clerk nor anything of him--excep' that the lit kind ain't always the money-makers--but he could talk to her her way. An' when I see the four of 'em drive up in front of the post-office the day he come, Mis'

Proudfit an' Clementina talkin' all soft an' interested an' regular about the foreign postage stamps they was buyin', an' Linda an' him sittin' there with foreign lands fair livin' in their eyes--I knew how it would be. An' so it was. They went off, Linda with only the clothes she was wearin' an' none of her stone rings or like that with her. An'

see what it all done--see what it done. Jason Proudfit, he wouldn't forgive 'em nor wouldn't hear a word from 'em, though they say Mis'

Linda wrote, at first, an' more than once. An' then when he died two years or so afterwards, an' Mis' Proudfit tried everywhere--they wa'n't no trace. An' no wonder, with a differ'nt name so's n.o.body should find out how poor they was--an' death--an' like enough prison...."

Calliope stood up, and in the pause Peleg's axe went rhythmically on.

"I'm goin' to be sure," she said. "I hate to--but o' course I've got to be rill certain, in words."

She went out to the shed, taking with her the photograph, and closed the door. Peleg's axe ceased. And when she came back, she said nothing at all for a little, and the axe did not go on.

"We mustn't tell Mis' Proudfit--yet," she put it, presently, "not till we can think. I donno's we ever can tell her. The dyin'--an' the disgrace--an' the other name--an' the hurt about Linda's _needin'

things_ ... Peleg thinks not tell her, too."

"At least," I said, "we can wait, for a little. Until they come home."

I listened while, her task long disregarded, Calliope fitted together the dates and the meagre facts she knew, and made the sad tally complete. Then she laid the picture by and stood staring at the cooking-range flame.

"It ain't enough," she said, "bein'--lit up--ain't enough for folks, is it? Not without they're some made out o' iron, too, to hold it--like stoves. An' yet--"

She looked at me with one of her infrequent, pa.s.sionate doubtings in her eyes.

"--if Mis' Proudfit an' Clementina had just of been lit too," she said, "mebbe--"

She got no farther, though I think it was not the opening of the door by Peleg Bemus that interrupted her. Peleg did not come in. He said something of the snow on his shoes, and spoke through the door's opening.

"I'm a-goin to quit work for to-day, Mis' Marsh," he told her. "Seems like I'm too dead tired to chop."

XV

THE TEA PARTY