"I don't wonder at it," said I, warmly; "you promised to spend Christmas Eve with them and read aloud to them, didn't you, Calliope?"
"No!" Calliope cried; "I didn't do that. I should think they'd be sick to death o' bein' read aloud to. I should think they'd be sick to death bein' cheered up by their surroundin's. No – I invited the whole nine of 'em to come over an' spend Christmas Eve with me."
"Calliope!" I cried, "but how – "
"I know it," she exclaimed, "I know it. But they're all well an' hardy. The charity corridor ain't expected in the infirmary much. An' Jimmy Sturgis is goin' to bring 'em over free in the closed 'bus – I'll fill it with hot bricks an' hot flat-irons an' bed-quilts. An' my land! you'd ought to see 'em when I ask' 'em. I don't s'pose they'd had an invite out in years. The navy-blue lady looked like I'd nipped a mountain off'n her shoulders, too. An' now," said Calliope, "what on top o' this earth will I do with 'em when I get 'em here?"
What indeed? I left my task and sat by her on the rug before the fire, and we talked it over. But all the while we talked, I could see that she was keeping something back – some plan of which she was doubtful.
"I ain't no money to spend, you know," she said, "an' I won't let anybody else spend any for me, for this. Folks has plans enough o' their own without mine. But I kep' sayin' to myself, all the way home when my knees give down at the i-dee of what I was goin' to do: 'Calliope, the Lord says, "Give." An' He meant you to give, same's those that hev got. He didn't say, "Everybody give but Calliope, an' she ain't got much, so she'd ought to be let off." He said, "Give."' An' He didn't mention all nice things, same's I'd like to give, an' most everybody does give – " she nodded toward my bed, brave with its Christmas array. "He didn't mention givin' things at all. An' so," said Calliope, "I thought o' somethin' else."
She sat with brooding eyes on the fire, her hands clasped about her knees.
"The Lord Christ," said Calliope, "didn't hev nothin' of His own. An' yet He just give an' give an' give. An' somehow I got the i-dee," she finished, glancing up at me shyly, "that mebbe Christmas ain't really all in your stocking foot, after all. I ain't much to spend, and mebbe that sounds some like sour grapes. But it seems like a good many beautiful things is free to all, an' that they's ways to do. Well, I've thought of a way – "
"Calliope," I said, "tell me what you have really planned for the old-lady party. You have planned?"
"Well, yes," she said, "I hev. But mebbe you'll think it ain't anything. First I thought o' tea, an' thin bread-an'-butter sandwiches – it seems some like a party when you get your bread thin. An' I've got apples in the house we could roast, an' corn to pop over the kitchen fire. But then I come to a stop. For I ain't nothin' else, an' I've spent every cent I can spend a'ready. But yet I did want to show 'em somethin' lovely – an' differ'nt from what they see, so's it'd seem as if somebody cared, an' as if they'd been in Christmas, too. An' all of a sudden it come to me, why not invite in a few little children o' somebody's here in Friendship? So's them old grandma ladies – "
She shook her head and turned away.
"I expec'," she said, "you think I'm terrible foolish. But wouldn't that be givin', don't you think? Would that be anything?"
I have planned, as will fall to us all, many happy ways of keeping festival; but I think that never, even in days when I myself was happiest, have I so delighted in any event as in this of Calliope's proposing. And when at last she had gone, and the dusk had fallen and I lighted candles and went back to my pleasant task, some way the stitches of pink and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and the breath of the sachets were not greatly in my thoughts; and that which made me glad was a certain shining in the room, but this was not of candle-light, or firelight, or winter starlight.
With the days the plans for the Proudfit party – or rather the plans of the Proudfit guests – went merrily forward. It was, they said, like "in the Oldmoxon days," when the house in which I was now living had been the Friendship fairyland. Some take their parties solemnly, some joyously, some feverishly; but Friendship takes them vitally, as it takes a project or the breath of being. Like the rest of the world, the village sank Christmas in festivity. It could not see Christmas for the Christmas plans.
Speculation was the delight of meetings, and every one conspired in terms of toilettes.
"Likely," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, "Mis' Banker Mason'll wear her black-an'-white foulard. Them foulards are wonderful durable – you can't muss 'em. She got hers when Gramma Mason first hurt her back, so's if anything happened she'd be part mournin', an' if anything didn't, she'd have a nice dress to wear out places. Ain't it real convenient, – white standin' for both companies an' the tomb, so?"
And "Mis' Photographer Sturgis has the best of it, bein' an invalid, till a party comes up," said Libbie Liberty. "She gets plenty enough food sent in, an' flowers, an' such things, an' she's got nails hung full o' what I call sympathy clo'es, to wear durin' sympathy calls. But when it comes to a real what you might say dress-up dress, I guess she'll hev to be took worse with her side an' stay in the house."
Abigail Arnold contributed: —
"Seems Mis' Doctor Helman had a whole wine silk dress put away with her dyin' things. She always thought it sounded terrible fine to hear about the dead havin' dress-pattern after dress-pattern laid away that hadn't never been made up. So she'd got together the one, but now she an' Elzabella are goin' to work an' make it up. I guess Mis' Helman thinks her stomach is so much better 't mebbe she'll be spared till after the holidays when the sales begin."
Even Liddy Ember had promised to go and to take Ellen, and Ellen went up and down the winter streets singing sane little songs about the party, save on days when she "come herself again," and then she planned, as wildly as anybody, what she meant to wear. And Liddy, whose dream had always been to do "reg'lar city dress-makin', with helpers an' plates an' furnish the findin's at the shop," and whose lot instead had been to cut and fit "just the durable kind," was blithely at work night and day on Mis' Postmaster Sykes's tobacco-brown net. We understood that there were to be brown velvet butterflies stitched down the skirt, and if her Lady Washington geranium flowered in time, – Mis' Sykes was said to lay bread and milk nightly about the roots to encourage it, – she was to wear the blossom in her hair. ("She'll be gettin' herself talked about, wearin' a wreath o' flowers on her head, so," said some.) But then, Mis' Sykes was recognized to be "one that picks her own steps."
"Mis' Sykes always dresses for company accordin' to the way she gets her invite," Calliope observed. "A telephone invite, she goes in somethin' she'd wear home afternoons. Word o' mouth at the front door, she wears what she wears on Sundays. Written invites, she rags out in her rill best dress, for parties. But engraved," Calliope mounted to her climax, "a bran' new dress an' a wreath in her hair is the least she'll stop at."
But I think that, in the wish to do honour to so distinguished an occasion, the temper of Mis' Sykes, and perhaps of Ellen Ember too, was the secret temper of all the village.
IX
"NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH"
I daresay that excitement followed excitement when news of Calliope's party got abroad. But of this I knew little, for I spent those next days at the Proudfits' with Nita Ordway and little Viola, and though I thought often of Calliope, I chanced not to see her again until the holidays were almost upon us. In the late afternoon, two days before Christmas, I dropped in at her cottage to learn how pleasantly the plans for her party matured.
To my amazement I found her all dejection.
"Why, Calliope," I said, "can't the grandma ladies come, after all?"
Yes, they could come; they were coming.
"You are never sorry you asked them?" I pressed her.
No. Oh, no; she was glad she had asked them.
"Something is wrong, though," I said sadly – thinking what a blessed thing it is to be so joyous a spirit that one's dejections are bound to be taken seriously.
"Well," said Calliope, then, "it's the children. No it ain't, it's Friendship. The town's about as broad as a broom straw an' most as deep. Anything differ'nt scares 'em like something wore out'd ought to. Friendship's got an i-dee that Christmas begins in a stocking an' ends off in a candle. It thinks the rest o' the days are reg'lar, self-respecting days, but it looks on Christmas like an extry thing, thrown in to please 'em. It acts as if the rest o' the year was plain cake an' the holidays was the frostin' to be et, an' everybody grab the best themselves, give or take."
"Calliope!" I cried – for this was as if the moon had objected to the heavens.
"Oh, I know I'd ought not to," she said sadly; "but don't folks act as if time was give to 'em to run around wild with, as best suits 'em? Three hundred an' 'leven days a year to use for themselves, an' Sundays an' Christmas an' Thanksgivin' to give away looks to me a rill fair division. But, no. Some folks act like Sundays an' holidays was not only the frostin', but the nuts an' candy an' ice-cream o' things —their ice-cream, to eat an' pass to their own, an' scrape the freezer."
And then came the heart of the matter.
"'T seems," said Calliope, "there's that children's Christmas tree at the new minister's on Christmas Eve. But that ain't till ha'-past seven, an' I done my best to hev some o' the children stop in here on their way, for my little party. An' with one set o' lungs their mas says no, they'd get mussed for the tree if they do. I offered to hev 'em bring their white dresses pinned in papers, an' we'd dress 'em here – I think the grandma ladies'd like that. But their mas says no, pinned in papers'd take the starch out an' their hair'd get all over their heads. An' some o' the mothers says indignant: 'Old ladies from the poorhouse end o' the home – well, I should think not! Children is very easy to take things. If you'd hed young o' your own, you'd think more, Calliope,' they says witherin'."
Her little wrinkled hands were trembling at the enormity.
"I donno," she added, "but I was foolish to try it. But I did want to get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for them old ladies to see. An', my mind, they ain't much so rilly lovely as little young children, together in a room."
"But, Calliope," I said in distress, "isn't there even one child you can get?"
"No, sir," she said. "Not a one. I been everywhere. You know they ain't any poor in Friendship. We're all comfortable enough off to be overparticular."
"But wouldn't you think," I said, "at Christmas time – "
"Yes, you would," Calliope said, "you would. You'd think Christmas'd make everything kind o' softened up an' differ'nt. Every time I look at the holly myself, I feel like I'd just shook hands with somebody cordial."
None the less – for Calliope had drunk deep of the wine of doing and she never gave up any project – at four o'clock on the day before Christmas I saw the closed 'bus driven by Jimmy Sturgis fare briskly past my house on its way to the "start of the Plank Road," to the Old Ladies' Home. Within, I knew, were quilts and hot stones of Calliope's providing; and Jimmy had hung the 'bus windows with cedar, and two little flags fluttered from the door. It all had a merry, holiday air as Jimmy shook the lines and drew on swiftly through the snow to those wistful nine guests, who at last were to be "in Christmas," too.
"If they can't do nothin' else," Calliope had said, "they can talk over old times, without hot milk interferin'. But I wish, an' I wish – seem's though there'd ought always to be a child around on Star o' Bethlehem night, don't it?"
I dined alone that Star of Bethlehem night, and to dine alone under Christmas candles is never a cheerful business. The Proudfit car was to come for me soon after eight, and at eight I stood waiting at the window of my little living room, saying to myself that if I were to drop from the air to a deserted country road, I should be certain that it was Christmas Eve. You can tell Christmas Eve anywhere, like a sugar-plum, with your eyes shut. It is not the lighted houses, or the close-curtained windows behind which Christmas trees are fruiting; nor yet, in Friendship, will it be the post-office store or the home bakery windows, gay with Christmas trappings. But there is in the world a subdued note of joyful preparation, as if some spirit whom one never may see face to face had on this night a gift of perceptible life. And in spite of my loneliness, my heart upleaped to the note of a distant sleigh-bell jingling an air of "Home, going Home, Christmas Eve and going Home."
Then, when the big Proudfit car came flashing to my door, I had a sweet surprise. For from it, through the snowy dark, came running a little fairy thing, and Viola Ordway danced to my door with her mother, muffled in furs.
"We've been close in the house all day," Mrs. Ordway cried, "and now we've run away to get you. Come!"
As for me, I took Viola in my arms and lifted her to my hall table and caught off her cloak and hood. I can never resist doing this to a child. I love to see the little warm, plump body in its fine white linen emerge rose-wise, from the calyx cloak; and I love that shy first gesture, whatever it may be, of a child so emerging. The turning about, the freeing of soft hair from the neck, the smoothing down of the frock, the half-abashed upward look. Viola did more. She laid one hand on my cheek and held it so, looking at me quite gravely, as if that were some secret sign of brotherhood in the unknown, which she remembered and I, alas! had forgotten. But I perfectly remembered how to kiss her. If only, I thought, all the empty arms could know a Viola. If only all the empty arms, up and down the world, could know a Viola even just at Christmas time. If only —
Over the top of Viola's head I looked across at Nita Ordway, and a sudden joyous purpose lighted all the air about me – as a joyous purpose will. Oh, if only – And then I heard myself pouring out a marvellous jumble of sound and senselessness.
"Nita!" I cried, "you are not a Friendship Village mother! You are not afraid. Viola is not going to the new minister's Christmas tree. Oh, don't you see? It's still early – surely we have time! The grandma ladies must see Viola!"
I remember how Nita Ordway laughed, and her answer made me love her the more – as is the way of some answers.
"I don't catch it – I don't," she said, "but it sounds delicious. All courage, and old ladies, and ample time for everything! If I said, 'Of course,' would that do?"
Already I was tying Viola's hood, and next to taking off a child's hood I love putting one on – surely every one will have noticed how their mouths bud up for kissing. While we sped along the Plank Road toward Calliope's cottage, I poured out the story of who were at her house that night, and why, and all that had befallen. In a moment the great car, devouring its own path of light, set us down at Calliope's gate, and Calliope herself, trim in her gray henrietta, her wrinkled face flushed and shining, came at our summons. And I pushed Viola in before us – little fairy thing in a fluff of white wraps and white furs.
"Look, Calliope!" I cried.
Calliope looked down at her, and I think she can hardly have seen Mrs. Ordway and me at all. She smote her hands softly together.
"Oh," she said, "if it isn't! Oh – a child for Star o' Bethlehem night, after all!"
She dropped to her knees before Viola, touching the little girl's hand almost shyly. There was in Calliope's face when she looked at any child a kind of nakedness of the woman's soul; and she, who was so deft, was curiously awkward in such a presence.
"They're out there in the dinin' room," she whispered, "settin' round the cook stove. I saw they felt some better out there. Le's us leave her go out alone by herself, just the way she is."
And that was what we did. We said something to Viola softly about "the poor grandma ladies, with no little girl to love," and then Calliope opened the door and let her through.
We peeped for a moment at the lamp-lit crack. The dining room was warm and bright, its table covered with red cotton and set with tea-cups, shelves of plants blooming across the windows, cedar green on the walls. The odour of pop-corn was in the air, and above an open griddle hole apples bobbed on strings tied to the stove-pipe wing. And there about the cooking range, with its cheery opened hearth, Calliope's Christmas guests were gathered.
They were exquisitely neat and trim, in black and brown cloth dresses, with a brooch, or a white apron, or a geranium from a window plant worn for festival. I recognized Grandma Holly, with her soft white hair, and I thought I could tell which were Mis' Ailing and Mis' Burney and Mis' Norris. And the faces of them all, the gentle, the grief-marked, even the querulous, were grown kindly with the knowledge that somebody had cared about their Christmas.
The child went toward them as simply as if they had been friends. They looked at her with some murmuring of surprise, and at one another questioningly. Viola went straight to the knee of Grandma Holly, who was nearest.
"'At lady tied my hood too tight," she referred unflatteringly to me, "p'eas do it off."
Grandma Holly looked down over her spectacles, and up at the other grandma ladies, and back to Viola. The others gathered nearer, hitching forward rocking-chairs, rising to peer over shoulders – breathlessly, with a manner of fearing to touch her. But because of the little uplifted face, waiting, Grandma Holly must needs untie the white hood and reveal all the shining of the child's hair.
"Nen do my toat off," Viola gravely directed.
At that Grandma Holly crooned some single indistinguishable syllable in her throat, and then off came the cloak. The little warm, plump body in its fine linen emerged, rose-wise, and Viola smoothed down her frock, and freed her hair from her neck, and glanced up shyly. By the stir and flutter among them I understood that they were feeling just as I feel when a little hood and cloak come off.
Viola stood still for a minute.
"I like be made some 'tention to," she suggested gently.
Ah – and they understood. How they understood! Grandma Holly swept the little girl in her arms, and I know how the others closed about them with smiles and vague unimportant words. Viola sat quietly and happily, like a little come-a-purpose spirit to let them pretend. And it was with them all as if something long pent up went free.
Calliope left the door and turned toward us.
"Seems like my throat couldn't stand it," she said, … and it seemed to me, as we three sat together in the dim little parlor, that Nita Ordway must cherish Viola for us all – for the grandma ladies and Calliope and me.
Half an hour later we three went out to the dining room. Viola ran to her mother when she entered. Nita took her in her arms and sat beside the stove, her cloak slipping from her shoulders, the soft peach tints of her gown shot through with shining lines and the light caught in her collar of gems. "I did want to get a-hold o' somethin' beautiful for them old ladies to see," Calliope had said.
"Oh," said Grandma Holly, and she laid her brown hand on Viola's hand, "ain't she dear an' little an' young?"
"I wish't she'd talk some," begged old Mis' Norris.
"Ain't she good, though, the little thing?" Mis' Ailing said. "Look at how still she sets. Not wigglin' 'round same as some. It was just that way with Sam when he was small – he'd set by the hour an' leave me hold him – "
A little bent creature, whose name I never learned, sat patting Viola's skirt.
"Seems like I'd gone back years," we heard her say.
Grandma Holly held up one half-closed hand.
"Like that," she told them, "my Amy's feet was so little I could hold 'em like that, an' I see hers is the same way. She's wonderful like Amy was, her age."
I cannot recall half the sweet, trivial things that they said. But I remember how they told us stories of their own babies, and we laughed with them over treasured sayings of long-ago lips, or grieved with them over silences, or rejoiced at glad things that had been. Regardless of the Proudfit party, we let them talk as they would, and remember. Then of her own accord Nita Ordway hummed some haunting air, and sang one of the songs that we all loved – the grandma ladies and Calliope and I. It was a sleepy song, whose words I have forgotten, but it was in a kind of universal tongue which I think that no one can possibly mistake. And out of the lullaby came all the little spirits, freed in babyhood or "man-grown," and stood at the knees of the grandma ladies, so that I was afraid that they could not bear it.
When the song was done, Viola suddenly sat up very straight.
"I got a litty box," she announced, "an' I had a parasol. An' once a boy div me a new nail. An' once I didn' feel berry well, but now I am. An' once – "
Their laughter was like a caress. Before it was done, we heard a stamping without, and there was Jimmy Sturgis, with a spray of holly in his old felt hat and the closed 'bus at the door.
We helped Calliope to get their wraps and to fill the 'bus with hot stones from the oven and with many quilts, and we made ready a basket of pop-corn and apples and of the cedar hung around the little room. They stood about us to say good-by, or to tell us some last bit of the news of their long-past youth – dear, wrinkled faces framed in broad lines of bonnet or hood, and smiling, every one.
"This gray shawl I got on me is the very one I used to wrap Amy in to carry her through the cold hall," said Grandma Holly. "My land-a-livin'! seems's if I'd been with her to-night, over again!"
Their way of thanks lay among stumbling words and vague repetitions, but there was a kind of glory in their grateful faces, and one always remembers that.
"Merry Prismas, gramma ladies!" Viola cried shrilly at the 'bus door, and within they laughed like mothers as they answered. And Jimmy Sturgis cracked his whip, and the sleigh-bells jingled.
Nita Ordway and Viola and I stood for a moment with Calliope at her gate.
"Come!" we begged her, "now go with us. We are all late together. There is no reason why you should not go with us to the Christmas party."
But Calliope shook her head.
"I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said, "but oh, I couldn't. I've hed too rilly a Christmas to come down to a party anywheres."
When Nita and Viola and I reached Proudfit House, the guests were all assembled, but we knew that Mrs. Proudfit and Miss Clementina would be the first to forgive us when they understood.
The big colonial home was bright with scarlet-shaded candles and holly-hung walls; there was mistletoe on the sconces, and in the great hall there were tuneful strings. On the landing of the stairs stood Mrs. Proudfit and Miss Clementina, charmingly pretty in their delicate frocks, and wholly gay and gracious. ("They seem lively like in pictures where folks don't make a loud sound a-talkin'," said Friendship. "I s'pose it's somethin' you learn in the City.") And Friendship wore its loyalty like a mantle. Twelve years had passed, and yet one and another said under breath and sighed, "If only Miss Linda could 'a' been here, too."
All Friendship Village was there, save Abel Halsey, who was at the Good Shepherd's Home Christmas tree in the City, and, perhaps one would say, Delia More, who had begged to be allowed to help in the kitchen "an' be there that way." Even Peleg Bemus was in his place in the orchestra, sitting with closed eyes, playing his flute, and keeping audible time with his wooden leg, – quite as he did when he played his flute at night, on Friendship streets. And there was Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in the tobacco-brown net, with butterflies stitched down the skirt and the Lady Washington geranium in her hair – and forever near her went little Miss Liddy Ember with an almost passionate creative pride in the gown of her hand, so that she would murmur her patron an occasional warning: "Mis' Sykes, throw back your shoulders, you hev to, to bring out the real set o' the basque;" or, "Don't forget you want to give a little hitch to the back when you stand up, Mis' Sykes." And to one and another Liddy said proudly, "I declare if I didn't get that skirt with the butterflies just like a magazine cover." And there, too, was Ellen Ember, wearing a white book muslin and a rosy "nubia" that had been her mother's; and Ellen's face was uplifted, and of pale distinction under the bronze glory of her hair, but all that evening she smiled and sang and wondered, in utter absence of the spirit. ("Oh," poor Miss Liddy said, "I do so want Ellen to come herself before supper. She won't remember a thing she eats, an' she don't have much that's tasty an' good. It'll be just like she missed the whole thing, in spite of all the chore o' comin'.") And there were Mis' Doctor Helman in her new wine silk; Mis' Banker Mason in the black-and-white foulard designed to grace a festival or to respect a tomb; Mis' Sturgis, in a put-away dress that was a surprise to every one; Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Eppleby, and the "Other" Holcombs; Abigail Arnold, the Gekerjecks, Mis' Toplady and Timothy, even Mis' Mayor Uppers – no one was forgotten. And – save poor Ellen – every one was aglow with the sweet satisfaction of having sent abroad a brave array of pretty things, with stitches of rose and blue on flowered fabrics, with the flutter of ribbons, and the breath of sachets, and with many a gift of substance to those less generously endowed. To them all the delight of the season was in the gifts of their hands and in the night's merry-making, and in the joy of keeping holiday. Here, as Calliope had said, Christmas, begun in a stocking, was ending in a candle.
And yet it was Star of Bethlehem night, the night of Him who "didn't mention givin' things at all."