Friendship Village

They went down the path between blossoming bushes, in the late afternoon sun. And as Calliope followed, —

"That's so about the heart, ain't it?" she said brightly.

XVI

WHAT IS THAT IN THINE HAND?

"Busy, busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy. And busy …"

"There goes Ellen Ember, crazy again," we said, when we heard that cry of hers, not unmelodious nor loud, echoing along Friendship streets.

Then we usually ran to the windows and peered at her. Sometimes her long hair would be unbound on her shoulders, sometimes her little figure would be leaping lightly up as she caught at the lowest boughs of the curb elms, and sometimes her hand would be moving swiftly back and forth above her heart.

"If your heart is broken," she had explained to many, "you can lace it together with 'Busy, busy, busy …' Sing it and see! Or mebbe your heart is all of a piece?"

Once, when I had gone to Miss Liddy's house, I had found Ellen in a skirt fashioned of an old plaid shawl of her father's, her bare shoulders wound in the rosy "nubia" that had been her mother's, and she was dancing in the dining-room, with surprising grace, as Pierrette might have danced in Carnival, and singing, in a sweet, piping voice, an incongruous little song: —

O Day of wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you,
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue – blue!

"I made that up," she had explained, "or I guess mebbe I remembered it from deep in my skull. I like the feel of it in my mouth when I speak the words."

I used to think that Miss Liddy was really a less useful citizen than Ellen. For though Miss Liddy worked painstakingly at her dressmaking, and even dreamed over it little partial dreams, Ellen, mad or sane, made a garden, and threw little nosegays over our fences, and exercised a certain presence, latent in the rest of us, which made us momentarily gentle and in awe of our own sanity.

When, one spring morning, a week before the Friendship Carnival, she passed down Daphne Street with her plaintive, musical "Busy, busy, busy …" Doctor June and the young Reverend Arthur Bliss sat on Doctor June's screened-in porch discussing a deficit in the Good Shepherd's Orphans' Home fund for the fiscal year. Ever since the wreck of the Through, Friendship had contributed to the support of the Home, – having first understood then that the Home was its patient pensioner, – and now it was almost like a compliment that we had been appealed to for help.

Doctor June listened with serene patience to what his visitor would say.

"Tension," said the Reverend Arthur Bliss, squaring his splendid young shoulders, "tension. Warfare. We, as a church, are enormously equipped. We have – shall we say? – the helmets of our intelligence and the swords of our wills. Why, the joy of the fight ought to be to us like that of a strong man ready to do battle, oughtn't it – oughtn't it?"

Doctor June, his straight white hair outlining his plump pink face, nodded; but one would have said that it was rather less at the Reverend Arthur than at his Van Houtii spiræa, which nodded back at him.

"My young friend," said Doctor June, "will you forgive me for saying that it is fairly amazing to me how the church of God continues to use the terms of barbarism? We talk of the peace that passeth understanding, and yet we keep on employing metaphors of blood-red war. What does the modern church want of a helmet and a sword, if I may ask? Even rhetorically?"

"The Christian life is an eternal warfare against the forces of sin, is it not?" asked the Reverend Arthur Bliss in surprise.

"Let me suggest," said Doctor June, "that all good life is an eternal surrender to the forces of good. There's a difference."

The visitor from the city smiled very reverently.

"I see, sir," he said, "that you are one of those wonderful non-combatants. You are by nature sanctified – and that I can well believe."

"I am by nature a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly. "Often – often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath – note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it may pass him by."

"But surely, sir," said the young clergyman, "you agree with me that a man wins his way into the kingdom of light by both a staff and a sword?"

"You will perhaps forgive me for agreeing with nothing of the sort," said the doctor, mildly; "I hold that a man takes his way to the light by grasping whatever the Lord puts in his hand – a hammer, a rope, a pen – and grasping it hard."

"But the ungifted – what of the ungifted?" cried the Reverend Arthur Bliss.

"In this sense, there are none," said Doctor June, briefly.

"Busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy …" sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took some steps of her dance before the gate, he questioned his host with uplifted brows.

"A little mad," the doctor said, nodding, "like us all. She sings in the streets of a glad morning, and dances now and then. We take ours out in tangential opinions. It is nearly the same thing."

The young clergyman's face lighted responsively at this, and then he deferentially clinched his argument.

"There is a case in point," said he. "That poor creature there – what has the Lord put in her hand?"

Doctor June looked thoughtful.

"Nothing," he declared, "for any fight. But I'm not sure that she isn't made to be a leaven. The kingdom of God works like a leaven, you know, my dear young friend. Not like a dum-dum bullet."

"But – that poor creature. A leaven?" doubted the Reverend Arthur Bliss.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Doctor June, "I shouldn't wonder. I'm not so sure as I used to be that I can recognize leaven at first sight."

"Ah, that's it!" cried his guest. "But a soldier, now, is a soldier!"

Then they smiled their lack of acquiescence, and went back to the figures for the fiscal year.

An hour later Doctor June stood alone on his garden walk, aimlessly poking about among his slips. He had done what he always did, following close on the heels of his well-established resolution never to do it again. He had pledged himself to try to raise one hundred dollars in Friendship for a pet philanthropy.

"It's a kind of dissipation with me," he said, helplessly, and wandered down to his gate. "If I read an article about the Congo Free State or Women in India, it acts on me like brandy. I go off my head and give away my substance, and involve innocent people. But then, of course, this is different. It is always different."

Then he heard Ellen's little song again. "Busy, busy, busy …" she sang, and came round the corner from the town, catching at the lowest branches of the curb elms and laughing a little. At Doctor June's gate she halted and shook some lilacs at him.

"Here," she said, "put some on your coat for a patch on your heart so's the break won't show. Ain't the Lord made the sun shine down this morning? Did you know there's a Carnival comin' to town?"

"Like enough, Ellen," said Doctor June. "Like enough."

"Is one," she persisted. "They said about it in the Post-Office – I heard 'em. Dancin', an' parrots, an' jumpin' dogs."

He stood looking at her thoughtfully as she arranged her flowers, singing under breath.

"Ellen," he said, "will you tell Miss Liddy a few of us are going to meet here in my yard to-morrow afternoon, to talk over some money-raising? And ask her to come?"

"I will," Ellen sang it, "I will an' I will. Did you mean me to come, too?" she broke off wistfully.

"My stars, yes!" said Doctor June. "You're going to come early and help me, aren't you? I took that for granted."

"Here's your lilacs," said Ellen, tossing him a nosegay. "I'll tell Liddy while she's eatin'. Liddy don't like me to talk much when she's workin'. But when she eats I can talk, an' I'll tell her then."

She went on, singing, and Doctor June shook his head.