Neighborhood Stories

Never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget the looks of that back upstairs place he called home, nor the smell of it – the smell of it. The waxy woman that was his mother, in a red waist, and with a big weight of hair, had forgot how to look surprised – that struck me as so awful – she’d forgot how to look surprised, just the same as a grand lady that’s learned not to; and there was the stumpy man that grunted for short instead of bothering with words; and the two little girls that might of been anybody’s – if they’d been clean – one of ’em with regular portrait hair. I stayed a minute, and give ’em the cost of about one griddle of my cook-stove, and then I went to the station to meet Aunt Ellis. And I poured it all out to her, as soon as she’d give me her cheek to kiss.

“So you haven’t had any tea!” she said, getting in the automobile. “I’m sorry you’ve been so annoyed the first thing.”

“Annoyed!” I says over. “Annoyed! Well, yes,” I says, “poor people is real annoying. I wonder we have ’em.”

I was dying to ask her about the parade, but I didn’t like to; till after we’d had dinner in front of snow and silver and sparkles and so on, and had gone in her parlor-with-another-name, and set down in the midst of flowers and shades and lace, and rugs the color of different kinds of preserves, and wood-work like the skin of a cooked prune. Then I says:

“You know I’m just dying to hear about the parade.”

She lifted her hand and shut her eyes, brief.

“Calliope,” she says, “I don’t know what has come over women. They seem to want to attract attention to themselves. They seem to want to be conspicuous and talked about. They seem to want – ”

“They want lots o’ things,” says I, dry, “but it ain’t any of them, Aunt Ellis. What time does the parade start?”

“You’re bound to see it?” she says. “When I think of my dear Miss Markham – they used to say her school taught not manners, but manner – and what she would say to the womanhood of to-day… We’ll drive down if you say so, Calliope – but I don’t know whether I can bear it long.”

“Manner,” I says over. “Manner. That’s just what we’re trying to learn now, manner of being alive. We haven’t known very much about that, it seems.”

I kept thinking that over next day when we were drawn up beside the curb in the car, waiting for them to come. “We’re trying to learn manner at last – the manner of being alive.” There were lots of other cars, with women so pretty you felt like crying up into the sky to ask there if we knew for sure what all that perfection was for, or if there was something else to it we didn’t know – yet. And thousands of women on foot, and thousands of women in windows… I looked at them and wondered if they thought we were, and life was, as decent as we and it could be, and, if not, how they were preparing to help change it. I thought of the rest that were up town in colored nests, and them that were down town in factories, and them that were to home in the villages, and them that were out all along the miles and miles to the other ocean, just the same way. And here was going to come this little line of women walking along the street, a little line of women that thought they see new life for us all, and see it more abundant.

“Manner,” I says, “we’re just beginning to learn manner.”

Then, way down the avenue, they began to come. By ones and by fours and by eights, with colors and with music and with that that was greater than all of them – the tramp and tramp of feet; feet that weren’t dancing to balls, nor racking up and down in shops buying pretty things to make ’em power, nor just paddling around a kitchen the same as mine had always done – but feet that were marching, in a big, peaceful army, towards the place where the big, new tasks of to-morrow are going to be, that won’t interfere with the best tasks of yesterday no more than the earth’s orbit interferes with its whirling round and round.

“That’s it,” I says, “that’s it! We’ve been whirling round and round, manufacturing the days and the nights, and we never knew we had an orbit too.”

So they come, till they begun to pass where we were – some heads up, some eyes down, women, women, marching to a tune that was being beat out by thousands of hearts all over the world. I’d never seen women like this before. I saw them like I’d never seen them – I felt I was one of ’em like I’d never known that either. And I saw what they saw and I felt what they felt more than I ever knew I done.

Then I heard Aunt Ellis making a little noise in her breath.

“The bad taste of it – the bad taste of it, Calliope!” she said. “When I was a girl we used to use the word ladylike – we used to strive to deserve it. It’s a beautiful word. But these – ”

“We’ve been ladylike,” says I, sad, “for five or ten thousand years, and where has it got us to?”

“Oh, but, Calliope, they like it – they like the publicity and the notoriety and the – ”

I kept still, but I hurt all over me. I can stand anything only hearing that they like it – the way Aunt Ellis meant. I thought to myself that I bet the folks that used to watch martyrs were heard to say that martyrs prob’ly thought flames was becoming or they wouldn’t be burnt. But when I looked at Aunt Ellis sitting in her car with her hand over her eyes, it come over me all at once the tragedy of it – of all them that watch us cast their old ideals in new forms – their old ideals.

All of a sudden I stood up in the car. The parade had got blocked for a minute, and right in front of the curb where we stood I saw a woman I knew; a little waxy-looking thing, that couldn’t look surprised or exalted or afraid or anything else, and I knew her in a minute – even to the red calico waist and the big weight of hair, just as I had seen her by the toy table in her “home” the night before. And there she was, marching. And here was Aunt Ellis and me.

I leaned over and touched Aunt Ellis.

“You mustn’t mind,” I says; “I’m going too.”

She looked at me like I’d turned into somebody else.

“I’m going out there,” I says, “with them. I see it like they do – I feel it like they do. And them that sees it and feels it and don’t help it along is holding it back. I’ll find my way home…”

I ran to them. I stepped right out in the street among them and fell in step with them, and then I saw something. While I was making my way through the crowd to them the line had passed on, and them I was with was all in caps and gowns. I stopped still in the road.

“Great land!” I says to the woman nearest, “you’re college, ain’t you? And I never even got through high school.”

She smiled and put out her hand.

“Come on,” she says.

Whatever happens to me afterward, I’ve had that hour. No woman that has ever had it will ever forget it – the fear and the courage, the pride and the dread, the hurt and the power and the glory. I don’t know whether it’s the way – but what is the way? I only know that all down the street, between the rows of watching faces, I could think of that little waxy woman going along ahead, and of the kind of place that she called home, and of the kind of a life she and her children had. And I knew then and I know now that the poverty and the dirt and some of the death in the world is our job, it’s our job too. And if they won’t let us do it ladylike, we’ll do it just plain.

When I got home, Aunt Ellis was having tea. She smiled at me kind of sad, as a prodigal guest deserved.

“Aunt Ellis,” I says, “I’ve give ’em the rest of my cook-stove money, except my fare home.”

“My poor Calliope,” she says, “that’s just the trouble. You all go to such hysterical extremes.”

I’d heard that word several times on the street. I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Was that hysterics to-day?” I says. “I’ve often wondered what they’re like. I’ve never had the time to have them, myself. Well,” I says, tired but serene, “if that was hysterics, leave ’em make the most of it.”

I looked at her, meditative.

“Miss Markham and you and the women that marched to-day and me,” I says. “And a hundred years from now we’ll all be conservatives together. And there’ll be some big new day coming on that would startle me now, just the same as it would you. But the way I feel to-night, honest – I donno but I’m ready for that one too.”

MR. DOMBLEDON

He came to my house one afternoon when I was just starting off to get a-hold of two cakes for the next meeting of the Go-lightly club, and my mind was all trained to a peak, capped with the cakes.

Says he: “Have you got rooms to let?”

For a minute I didn’t answer him, I was so knee deep in looking at the little boy he had with him – the cutest, lovin’est little thing I’d ever seen. But though I love the human race and admire to see it took care of, I couldn’t sense my way clear to taking a boy into my house. Boys belongs to the human race, to be sure, just as whirling egg-beaters belongs to omelettes, but much as I set store by omelettes I couldn’t invite a whirling egg-beater into my home permanent.

Says I: “Not to boys.”

He laughed – kind of a pleasant laugh, fringed all round with little laughs.

“Oh,” he says, “we ain’t boys.”

“Well,” says I, “one of you is. And I don’t ever rent to ’em. They ain’t got enough silence to ’em,” I says, as delicate as I could.

Just then the little lad himself looked up innocent and took a hand without meaning to.

“Is your doggy home?” says he.

“Yes,” I says, “curled up on the back mat.” I felt kind of glad I didn’t have to tell him I didn’t have one.

“I’d like,” says he, grave, “to fluffle it till you’re through.”

“So do,” says I, hearty, and he trotted round the house like a little minister.