DREAM
When a house in the neighborhood has been vacant for two years, and all of a sudden the neighborhood sees furniture being moved into that house, excitement, as Silas Sykes says, reigns supreme and more than supreme.
And so it did in Friendship Village when the Oldmoxon House got a new tenant, unbeknownst. The excitement was specially strained because the reason Oldmoxon House had stood vacant so long was the rent. And whoever had agreed to the Twenty Dollars was going to be, we all felt, and as Mis' Sykes herself put it, "a distinct addition to Friendship Village society."
It was she gave me the news, being the Sykeses are the Oldmoxon House's nearest neighbors. I hurried right over to her house – it was summer-warm and you just ached for an excuse to be out in it, anyway. We drew some rockers onto her front porch where we could get a good view. The Oldmoxon double front doors stood open, and the things were being set inside.
"Serves me right not to know who it is," says Mis' Sykes. "I see men working there yesterday, and I never went over to inquire what they were doing."
"A body can't do everything that's expected of them," says I, soothing.
"Won't it be nice," says Mis' Sykes, dreamy, "to have that house open again, and folks going and coming, and maybe parties?" It was then the piano came out of the van, and she gave her ultimatum. "Whoever it is," she says, pointing eloquent, "will be a distinct addition to Friendship Village society."
There wasn't a soul in sight that seemed to be doing the directing, so pretty soon Mis' Sykes says, uneasy:
"I don't know – would it seem – how would it be – well, wouldn't it be taking a neighborly interest to step over and question the vans a little?"
And we both of us thought it would be in order, so we did step right over to inquire.
Being the vans had come out from the City, we didn't find out much except our new neighbor's name: Burton Fernandez.
"The Burton Fernandezes," says Mis' Sykes, as we picked our way back. "I guess when we write that name to our friends in our letters, they won't think we live in the woods any more. Calliope," she says, "it come to me this: Don't you think it would be real nice to get them up a reception-surprise, and all go there some night as soon as they get settled, and take our own refreshments, and get acquainted all at once, instead of using up time to call, individual?"
"Land, yes," I says, "I'd like to do that to every neighbor that comes into town. But you – " says I, hesitating, to her that was usually so exclusive she counted folks's grand-folks on her fingers before she would go to call on them, "what makes you – "
"Oh," says Mis' Sykes, "you can't tell me. Folks's individualities is expressed in folks's furniture. You can't tell me that, with those belongings, we can go wrong in our judgment."
"Well," I says, "I can't go wrong, because I can't think of anything that'd make me give them the cold shoulder. That's another comfort about being friends to everybody – you don't have to decide which ones you want to know."
"You're so queer, Calliope," says Mis' Sykes, tolerant. "You miss all the satisfaction of being exclusive. And you can't afford not to be."
"Mebbe not," says I, "mebbe not. But I'm willing to try it. Hang the expense!" says I.
Mis' Sykes didn't waste a day on her reception-surprise. I heard of it right off from Mis' Holcomb and Mis' Toplady and two-three more. They were all willing enough, not only because any excitement in the village is like a personal present to all of us, but because Mis' Sykes was interested. She's got a real gift for making folks think her way is the way. She's a real leader. Everybody wears a straw hat contented till, somewheres near November, Mis' Sykes flams out in felt, and then you begin right off to feel shabby in your straw, though new from the store that Spring.
"It does seem like rushing things a little, though," says Mis' Holcomb to me, very confidential, the next day.
"Not for me," I says. "I been vaccinated."
"What do you mean?" says she.
"Not even the small-pox can make me snub them," I explains.
"Yes, but Calliope," says Mis' Toplady in a whisper, "suppose it should turn out to be one of them awful places we read about. They have good furniture."
"Well," says I, "in that case, if thirty to forty of us went in with our baskets, real friendly, and done it often enough, I bet we'd either drive them out or turn them into better neighbors. Where's the harm?"
"Calliope," says Mame Holcomb, "don't you draw the line nowheres?"
"Yes," I says, mournful. "Them on Mars won't speak to me – yet. But short of Mars – no. I have no lines up."
We heard from the servant that came down on Tuesday and began cleaning and settling, that the family would arrive on Friday. We didn't get much out of him – a respectable-seeming colored man but reticent, very. The fact that the family servant was a man finished Mis' Sykes. She had had a strong leaning, but now she was bent, visible. And with an item that appeared Thursday night in the Friendship Village Evening Daily, she toppled complete.
"Professor and Mrs. Burton Fernandez," the Supper Table Jottings said, "are expected Friday to take possession of Oldmoxon House, 506 Daphne street. Professor Fernandez is to be engaged for some time in some academic and scholastic work in the City. Welcome, Neighbors."
"Let's have our reception-surprise for them Saturday night," says Mis' Sykes, as soon as she had read the item. "Then we can make them right at home, first thing, and they won't need to tramp into church, feeling strange, Next-day morning."
"Go on – do it," says I, affable.
Mis' Sykes ain't one to initiate civic, but she's the one to initiate festive, every time.
Mis' Holcomb and Mis' Toplady and me agreed to bake the cakes, and Mis' Sykes was to furnish the lemonade, being her husband keeps the Post-office store, and what she gets, she gets wholesale. And Mis' Sykes let it be known around that on Saturday night we were all to drop into her house, and go across the street together, with our baskets, to put in a couple of hours at our new neighbors', and make them feel at home. And everybody was looking forward to it.
I've got some hyacinth bulbs along by my side fence that get up and come out, late April and early May, and all but speak to you. And it happened when I woke up Friday morning they looked so lovely, I couldn't resist them. I had to take some of them up, and set them out in pots and carry them around to a few. About noon I was going along the street with one to take to an old colored washerwoman I know, that never does see much that's beautiful but the sky; but when I got in front of Oldmoxon House, a thought met me.
"To-day's the day they come," I said to myself. "Be kind of nice to have a sprig of something there to welcome them."
So my feet turned me right in, like your feet do sometimes, and I rang the front bell.
"Here," says I, to that colored servant that opened the door, "is a posy I thought your folks might like to see waiting for them."
He started to speak, but somebody else spoke first.
"How friendly!" said a nice-soft voice – I noticed the voice particular. "Let me thank her."
There came out from the shadow of the hall, a woman – the one with the lovely voice.
"I am Mrs. Fernandez – this is good of you," she said, and put out her hands for the plant.
I gave it to her, and I don't believe I looked surprised, any more than when I first saw the pictures of the Disciples, that the artist had painted their skin dark, like it must have been. Mrs. Fernandez was dark too. But her people had come, not from Asia, but from Africa.
Like a flash, I saw what this was going to mean in the village. And in the second that I stood there, without time to think it through, something told me to go in, and try to get some idea of what was going to be what.
"May I come inside now I'm here?" I says.
She took me into the room that was the most settled of any. The piano was there, and a good many books on their shelves. As I remember back now, I must just have stood and stared at them, for impressions were chasing each other across my head like waves on a heaving sea. No less than that, and mebbe more.
"I was trying to decide where to put the pictures," she said. "Then we shall have everything settled before my husband gets home to-morrow."
We talked about the pictures – they were photographs of Venice and of Spain. Then we talked about the garden, and whether it was too late for her to plant much, and I promised her some aster plants. Then I saw a photograph of a young girl – it was her daughter, in Chicago University, who would be coming home to spend the Summer. Her son had been studying to be a surgeon, she said.
"My husband," she told me, "has some work to do in the library in the City. We tried to live there – but we couldn't bear it."
"I'm glad you came here," I told her. "It's as nice a little place as any."
"I suppose so," she says only. "As nice as – any."
I don't think I stayed half an hour. But when I came out of there I walked away from Oldmoxon House not sensing much of anything except a kind of singing thanksgiving. I had never known anything of her people except the kind like our colored wash-woman. I knew about the negro colleges and all, but I guess I never thought about the folks that must be graduating from them. I'd always thought that there might be somebody like Mis' Fernandez, sometime, a long way off, when the Lord and us his helpers got around to it. And here already it was true of some of them. It was like seeing the future come true right in my face.
When I shut the gate of Oldmoxon House, I see Mis' Sykes peeking out her front door, and motioning to me. And at the sight of her, that I hadn't thought of since I went into that house, I had all I could do to keep from laughing and crying together, till the street rang with me. I crossed over and went in her gate; and her eye-brows were all cocked inquiring to take in the news.
"Go on," she says, "and tell me all there is to tell. Is it all so – the name – and her husband – and all?"
"Yes," I says, "it's all so."
"I knew it when I see her come," says Mis' Sykes. "Her hat and her veil and her simple, good-cut black clothes – you can't fool me on a lady."
"No," I says. "You can't fool me, either."
"Well now," says Mis' Sykes, "there's nothing to hinder our banging right ahead with our plan for to-morrow night, is there?"
"Nothing whatever," I says, "to hinder me."
Mis' Sykes jerked herself around and looked at me irritable.
"Why don't you volunteer?" says she. "I hate to dig the news out of anybody with the can-opener."
I'd have given a good deal to feel that I didn't have to tell her, but just let her go ahead with the reception surprise. I knew, though, that I ought to tell her, not only because I knew her through and through, but because I couldn't count on the village. We're real democratic in the things we know about, but let a new situation stick up its head and we bound to the other side, automatic.
"Mis' Sykes," I says, "everything that we'd thought of our new neighbor is true. Also, she's going to be a new experience for us in a way we hadn't thought of. She's dark-skinned."
"A brunette," says Mis' Sykes. "I see that through her veil – what of it?"
"Nothing – nothing at all," says I. "You noticed then, that she's colored?"
I want to laugh yet, every time I think how Mis' Postmaster Sykes looked at me.
"Colored!" she says. "You mean – you can't mean – "
"No," I says, "nothing dangerous. It's going to give us a chance to see that what we've always said could be true sometime, away far off, is true of some of them now."
Mis' Sykes sprang up and began walking the floor.
"A family like that in Oldmoxon House – and my nearest neighbors," says she, wild. "It's outrageious – outrageious."
I don't use my words very good, but I know better than to say "outrageious." I don't know but it was her pronouncing it that way, in such a cause, that made me so mad.
"Mis' Sykes," I says, "Mis' Fernandez has got a better education than either you or I. She's a graduate of a Southern college, and her two children have been to colleges that you and I have never seen the inside of and never will. And her husband is a college professor, up here to study for a degree that I don't even know what the letters stands for. In what," says I, "consists your and my superiority to that woman?"
"My gracious," says Mis' Sykes, "ain't you got no sense of fitness to you. Ain't she black?"
"Her skin ain't the same color as ours, you're saying," I says. "Don't it seem to you that that reason had ought to make a cat laugh?"
Mis' Sykes fair wheeled on me. "Calliope Marsh," says she, "the way you set your opinions against established notions is an insult to your kind."
"Established notions," I says over after her. "'Established notions.' That's just it. And who is it, of us two, that's being insulting to their kind now, Mis' Sykes?"
She was looking out the window, with her lips close-pressed and a thought between her narrowed eye-lids.
"I'll rejoin 'em – or whatever it is you call it," she says. "I'll rejoin 'em from living in that house next to me."
"Mis' Sykes!" says I. "But their piano and their book-cases and their name are just the same as yesterday. You know yourself how you said folks's furniture expressed them. And it does – so be they ain't using left-overs the way I am. I tell you, I've talked with her, and I know. Or rather I kept still while she told me things about Venice and Granada where she'd been and I hadn't. You've got all you thought you had in that house, and education besides. Are you the Christian woman, Mis' Sykes, to turn your nose up at them?"
"Don't throw my faith in my face," says she, irritable.
"Well," I says, "I won't twit on facts. But anybody'd think the Golden Rule's fitted neat onto some folks to deal with, and is left flap at loose ends for them that don't match our skins. Is that sense, or ain't it?"
"It ain't the skin," she says. "Don't keep harping on that. It's them. They're different by nature."
Then she says the great, grand motto of the little thin slice of the human race that's been changed into superiority.
"You can't change human nature!" says she, ticking it out like a clock.
"Can't you?" says I. "Can't you? I'm interested. If that was true, you and I would be swinging by our tails, this minute, sociable, from your clothes-line."
By this time she didn't hear anything anybody said back – she'd got to that point in the argument.
"If," she says, positive, "if the Lord had intended dark-skinned folks to be different from what they are, he'd have seen to it by now."
I shifted with her obliging.
"Then," says I, "take the Fernandez family, in the Oldmoxon House. They're different. They're more different than you and I are. What you going to do about it?"
Mis' Sykes stamped her foot. "How do you know," she says, "that the Lord intended them to be educated? Tell me that!"
I sat looking down at her three-ply Ingrain carpet for a minute or two. Then I got up, and asked her for her chocolate frosting receipt.
"I'm going to use that on my cake for to-morrow night," I says. "And do you want me to help with the rest of the telephoning?"
"What do you mean?" she says, frigid. "You don't think for a minute I'm going on with that, I hope?"
"On with it?" I says. "Didn't you tell me you had the arrangements about all made?"
She sunk back, loose in her chair. "I shall be the Laughing Stock, – the Laughing Stock," she says, looking wild and glazed.
"Yes," says I, deliberate, determined and serene, "they'll say you were going to dance around and cater to this family because they've moved into the Oldmoxon House. They'll say you wanted to make sure, right away, to get in with them. They'll repeat what you've been saying about the elegant furniture, in good taste. And about the academic and scholastic work being done. And about these folks being a distinct addition to Friendship Village society – "
"Don't, Calliope – oh, don't!" said Mis' Sykes, faint.
"Well, then," I says, getting up to leave, "go on ahead and act neighborly to them, the once, and decide later about keeping it up, as you would with anybody else."
It kind of swept over me – here we were, standing there, bickering and haggling, when out there on the planet that lay around Daphne Street were loose ends of creation to catch up and knit in.
"My gracious," I says, "I ain't saying they're all all right, am I? But I'm saying that as fast as those that try to grow, stick up their heads, it's the business of us that tootle for democracy, and for evolution, to help them on."
She looked at me, pitying.
"It's all so much bigger than that, Calliope," she says.
"True," says I, "for if some of them stick up their heads, it proves that more of them could – if we didn't stomp 'em down."
I got out in the air of the great, gold May day, that was like another way of life, leading up from our way. I took in a long breath of it – and that always helps me to see things big.
"One Spring," I says, "One world – one God – one life – one future. Wouldn't you think we could match ourselves up?"
But when I got in my little house, I looked around on the homely inside of it – that always helps me to think how much better things can be, when we really know how. And I says:
"Oh, God, we here in America got up a terrible question for you to help us settle, didn't we? Well, help us! And help us to see, whatever's the way to settle anything, that giving the cold shoulder and the uplifted nose to any of the creatures you've made ain't the way to settle nothing. Amen."
Next morning I was standing in my door-way, breathing in the fresh, gold air, when in at the gate came that colored man of Mis' Fernandez's, and he had a big bouquet of roses. Not roses like we in the village often see. They were green-house bred.
"Mis' Fernandez's son done come home las' night and brung 'em," says the man.
"Her son," I says, "from college?"
"No'm," says the man. "F'om the war."
"From the what?" I says.
"F'om the war," he says over. "F'om U'pe."
He must have thought I was crazy. For a minute I stared at him, then I says "Glory be!" and I began to laugh. Then I told him to tell Mis' Fernandez that I'd be over in half an hour to thank her myself for the flowers, and in half an hour I was going up to her front door. I had to make sure.
"Your son," I says, forgetting all about the roses, "he's in the American army?"
"He was," she said. "He fought in France for eighteen months. Now he has been discharged."
"Oh," I says to myself, "that arranges everything. It must."
"Perhaps you will let me tell you," she said. "He comes back to us wearing the cross of war."
"The cross of war!" I cried. "That they give when folks save folks in battle?" I said it just like saving folks is the principal business of it all.
"My son did save a wounded officer in No-man's land," she told me. "The officer – he was a white man."
"Oh," I says, and I couldn't say another word till I managed to ask her if her son had been in the draft.
"No," she said. "He volunteered April 7, 1917."
It wasn't until I got out in the street that I remembered I hadn't thanked her for the roses at all. But there wasn't time to think of that.
I headed straight for Mis' Silas Sykes. She looked awful bad, and I don't think probably she'd slept a wink all night. I ask' her casual how the reception was coming on, and she kind of began to cry.
"I don't know what you hector me for like this," she says. "Ain't it enough that I've got to call folks up to-day and tell them I've made a fool of myself?"
"Not yet," I says. "Not yet you ain't made one of yourself, Mis' Sykes. That's to come, if any. It is hard," I says, "to do the particular thing you'll have to do. There's them," I says crafty, "as'll gloat."
"I thought about them all night long," she says, her breath showing through her words.
"Then think no more, Mis' Sykes," I says, "because there's a reason over there in that house why we should go ahead with our plan – and it's a reason you can't get around."
She looked at me, like one looking with no hope. And then I told her.
I never saw a woman so checkered in her mind. Her head was all reversed, and where had been one notion, another bobbed up to take its place, and where the other one had been previous, a new one was dancing.
"But do they do that?" she ask'. "Do they give war-crosses to negroes?"
"Why not?" I says. "France don't care because the fore-fathers of these soldiers were made slaves by us. She don't lay it up against them. That don't touch their bravery. England never has minded dark skins – look at her East Indians and Egyptians that they say are everywhere in London. Nobody cares but us. Of course France gives negroes crosses of war when they're brave – why shouldn't she?"
"My gracious," Mis' Sykes says, "but what'll folks say here if we do go ahead and recognize them?"
"Recognize him!" I cried. "Mis' Sykes – are you going to let him offer up his life, and go over to Europe and have his bravery recognized there, and then come back here and get the cold shoulder from you – are you? Then shame on us all!" I says.
Then Mis' Sykes said the things folks always say: "But if we recognize them, what about marriage?"
"See here," says I, "there's thousands and thousands of tuberculosis cases in this country to-day. And more hundreds of thousands with other diseases. Do we set the whole lot of them apart, and refuse to be decent to them, or do business with them, because they ought not to marry our girls and boys? Don't you see how that argument is just an excuse?"
"All the same," said Mis' Sykes, "it might happen."
"Then make a law against inter-marriage," I says. "That's easy. Nothing comes handier than making a new law. But don't snub the whole race – especially those that have risked their lives for you, Mis' Sykes!"
She stared at me, her face looking all triangular.
"It's for you to show them what to do," I pressed her. "They'll do what you do."
Mis' Sykes kind of stopped winking and breathing.
"I could make them do it, I bet you," she says, proud.
"Of course you could," I egged her on. "You could just take for granted everybody meant to be decent, and carry it off, matter-of-fact."
She stood up and walked around the room, her curl-papers setting strange on her proud ways.
"Don't figger on it, Mis' Sykes," I says. "Just think how much easier it is to be leading folks into something they ain't used to than to have them all laughing at you behind your back for getting come up with."
It wasn't the highest motive – but then, I only used it for a finishing touch. And for a tassel I says, moving off rapid:
"Now I'm going home to stir up my cake for the party."
She didn't say anything, and I went off up the street.
I remember it was one of the times when it came to me, strong, that there's something big and near working away through us, to get us to grow in spite of us. In spite of us.
And when I had my chocolate cake baked, I lay down on the lounge in my dining-room, and planned out how nice it was going to be, that night…
There was a little shower, and then the sun came back again; so by the time we all began to move toward Mis' Sykes's, between seven and eight, everything was fresh and earth-smelling and wet-sweet green. And there was a lovely, flowing light, like in a dream.
Whenever I have a hard thing to do, be it housecleaning or be it quenching down my pride, I always think of the way I see Mis' Sykes do hers. Dressed in her best gray poplin with a white lace yoke, and hair crimped front and back, Mis' Sykes received us all, reserved and formal – not with her real society pucker, but with her most leader-like look.
Everybody was there – nobody was lacking. There must have been above fifty. I couldn't talk for trying to reckon how each of them would act, as soon as they knew.
"Blistering Benson," says Timothy Toplady, that his wife had got him into his frock-tail coat that he keeps to be pall-bearer in, " – kind of nice to welcome in another first family, ain't it?"
Mis' Sykes heard him. "Timothy Toplady, you ain't enough democracy to shake a stick at," she says, regal; and left him squenched, but with his lips moving.
"I'm just crazy to get upstairs in the Oldmoxon House," says Mis' Hubbelthwait. "How do you s'pose they've got it furnished?"
"They're thinking more about the furniture of their heads than of their upstairs chambers," snaps back Mis' Sykes. And I see anew that whatever Mis' Sykes goes into, she goes into up to her eyes, thorough and firm.
"Calliope," she says, "you might run over now and see how they're situated. And be there with them when we come."
I knew that Mis' Sykes couldn't quite bear to make her speech with me looking at her, so I waited out in the entry and heard her do it – I couldn't help that. And honest, I think my respect for her rose while she done so, almost as much as if she'd meant what she said. Mis' Sykes is awful convincing. She can make you wish you'd worn gloves or went without, according to the way she's done herself; and so it was that night, in the cause she'd taken up with, unbeknownst.
She rapped on the table with the blue-glass paper weight.
"Friends," she says, distinct and serene, and everybody's buzzing simmered down. "Before we go over, I must tell you a little about our new – neighbors. The name as you know is Fernandez – Burton Fernandez. The father is a college professor, now in the City doing academic and scholastic work to a degree, as they say. The daughter is in one of our great universities. The mother, a graduate of a Southern college, has traveled extensive in Venice and – and otherwise. I can't believe – " here her voice wobbled just for an instant, "I can't believe that there is one here who will not understand the significance of our party when I add that the family happens to be colored. I am sure that you will agree with me – with me– that these elegant educations merit our approbation."
She made a little pause to let it sink in. Then she topped it off. She told them about the returned soldier and the cross of war.
"If there is anybody," said she – and I knew how she was glancing round among them; "if there is anybody who can't appreciate that, we'll gladly excuse them from the room."
Yes, she done it magnificent. Mis' Sykes carried the day, high-handed. I couldn't but remember, as I slipped out, how in Winter she wears ear-muffs till we've all come to consider going without them is affected.
I ran across the street, still in that golden, pouring light. In the Oldmoxon House was a surprise. Sitting with Mrs. Fernandez before the little light May fire, was her husband, and a slim, tall girl in a smoky brown dress, that was their daughter, home from her school to see her brother. Then the soldier boy came in. Even yet I can't talk much about him: A slight, silent youth, that had left his senior year at college to volunteer in the army, and had come home now to take up his life as best he could; and on the breast of his uniform shone the little cross, won by saving his white captain, under fire.
I sat with them before their hearth, but I didn't half hear what they said. I was looking at the room, and at the four quiet folks that had done so much for themselves – more than any of us in the village, in proportion – and done it on paths none of us had ever had to walk. And the things I was thinking made such a noise I couldn't pay attention to just the talk. Over and over it kept going through my head: In fifty years. In fifty years!
At last came the stir and shuffle I'd been waiting for and the door-bell rang.
"Don't go," they said, when I sprang up; and they followed me into the hall. So there we were when the door opened, and everybody came crowding in.
Mis' Sykes was ahead, and it came to me, when I saw how deathly pale she was, that a prejudice is a living thing, after all – not a dead thing; and that to them that are in its grasp, your heart has got to go out just as much as to them that suffer from it.
I waved my hand to them all, promiscuous, crowding in with their baskets.
"Neighbors," I says, "here's our new neighbors. Name yourselves gradual."
They set their baskets in the hall, and came into the big room where the fire was. And I was kind of nervous, because our men are no good on earth at breaking the ice, except with a pick; and our women, when they get in a strange room, are awful apt to be so taken up looking round them that they forget to work up anything to say.
But I needn't have worried. No sooner had we sat down than somebody spoke out, deep and full. Standing in the midst of us was Burton Fernandez, and it was him. And his voice went as a voice goes when it's got more to carry than just words, or just thoughts.
"My friends," he said, "I cannot bear to have you put yourselves in a false position. When you came, perhaps you didn't know. I mean – did you think, perhaps, that we were of your race?"
It was Mis' Sykes who answered him, grand and positive, and as if she was already thinking up her answer when she was born.
"Certainly not," she says. "We were informed – all of us." Then I saw her get herself together for something tremenjus, that should leave no doubt in anybody's mind. "What of that?" says she.
He stood still for a minute. He had deep-set eyes and a tired face that didn't do anything to itself when he talked. But his voice – that did. And when he began to speak again, it seemed to me that the voice of his whole race was coming through him.
"My friends," he said, "how can we talk of other things when our minds are filled with just what this means to us?"
We all kept still. None of us would have known how to say it, even if we had known what to say.
He said: "I'm not speaking of the difficulties – they don't so much matter. Nothing matters – except that even when we have made the struggle, then we're despised no less. We don't often talk to you about it – it's the surprise of this – you must forgive me. But I want you to know that from the time I began my school life, there have been many who despised, and a few who helped, but never until to-night have there been any of your people with the look and word of neighbor – never once in our lives until to-night."