Friendship Village

"'Well,' says I, sort o' sceptical, 'mebbe that's because you always plant 'em,' I says. 'I think it means that, too,' I told her. An' I knew well enough Calliope was one to plant her cedars herself. Cedars o' comfort, you know.

"I've seen a good many kinds o' mother-love – you do when you go round to houses like I do. But I never see anything like Calliope. Seems though she breathed that child for air. She always was one to pretend to herself, an' I knew well enough she'd figured it out as if this was their child that might 'a' been, long ago. She sort o' played mother – like you will; an' she lived her play. He was a real sweet little fellow, too. He was one o' them big-eyed kind that don't laugh easy, an' he was well-spoken, an' wonderful self-settled for a child o' seven. He was always findin' time for you when you thought he was doin' somethin' else – slidin' up to you an' puttin' up his hand in yours when you thought he was playin' or asleep. An' that was what he done that night when we set on the porch – comes slippin' out of his little bed an' sets down between us on the top step, in his little night-things.

"'Calvert, honey,' Calliope says, 'you must run back an' play dreams. Mother wants you to.'

"She'd taught him to call her mother – she'd had him about six months then – an' some thought that was queer to do, seein' Calliope was her age an' all. But I thought it was wonderful right.

"'I did play,' he says to her – he had a nice little way o' pressin' down hard with his voice on one word an' lettin' the next run off his tongue – 'I did play dreams,' I rec'lect he says; 'I dreamed 'bout robbers. Ain't robbers distinct?' he says.

"I didn't know what he meant till Calliope laughs an' says, 'Oh, distinctly extinct!' I remembered it by the way the words kind o' crackled.

"By then he was lookin' up to the stars – his little mind always lit here an' there, like a grasshopper.

"'How can heaven begin,' he says, 'till everybody gets there?'

"Yes, he was a dear little chap. I like to think about him. An' I know when he says that, Calliope just put her arms around him, an' her head down, an' set sort o' rockin' back an' forth. An' she says: —

"'Oh, but I think it begins when we don't know.'

"After a while she took him back to bed, little round face lookin' over her shoulder an' big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' little sort o' crooked frown, for all the world like the other Calvert Oldmoxon. Just as she come out an' set down again, we heard the click o' the gate acrost at the corner house where the New People lived, an' it was the New Husband got home. We see his wife's white dress get up to meet him, an' they went in the house together, an' we see 'em standin' by the lamp, lookin' at things. Seems though the whole night was sort o' – gentle.

"All of a sudden Calliope unties her apron.

"'Let's dress up,' she says.

"'Dress up!' I says, laughin' some. 'Why, it must be goin' on half-past eight,' I told her.

"'I don't care if it is,' she says; 'I'm goin' to dress up. It seems as though I must.'

"She went inside, an' I followed her. Calliope an' I hadn't no men folks to dress for, but, bein' dressmakers an' lace folks, we had good things to wear. She put on the best thin dress she had – a gray book-muslin; an' I took down a black lawn o' mine. It was such a beautiful night that I 'most knew what she meant. Sometimes you can't do much but fit yourself in the scenery. But I always thought Calliope fit in no matter what she had on. She was so little an' rosy, an' she always kep' her head up like she was singin'.

"'Now what?' I says. For when you dress up, you can't set home. An' then she says slow – an' you could 'a' knocked me over while I listened: —

"'I've been thinkin',' she says, 'that we ought to go up to Oldmoxon house an see that sick person.'

"'Calliope!' I says, 'for the land. You don't want to be refused in!'

"'I don't know as I do an' I don't know but I do,' she answers me. 'I feel like I wanted to be doin' somethin'.'

"With that she out in the kitchen an' begins to fill a basket. Calliope's music didn't prevent her cookin' good, as it does some. She put in I don't know what all good, an' she had me pick some hollyhocks to take along. An' before I knew it, I was out on Daphne Street in the moonlight headin' for Oldmoxon house here that no foot in Friendship had stepped or set inside of in 'most six months.

"'They won't let us in,' I says, pos'tive.

"'Well,' Calliope says, 'seems though I'd like to walk up there a night like this, anyway.'

"An' I wasn't the one to stop her, bein' I sort o' guessed that what started her off was the New People. Those two livin' so near by – lookin' forward to what they was lookin' forward to – so soon after the boy had come to Calliope, an' all, had took hold of her terrible. She'd spent hours handmakin' the little baby-bonnet she was goin' to give 'em. An' then mebbe it was the night some, too, that made her want to come up around this house – because you could 'most 'a' cut the moonlight with a knife.

"They wa'n't any light in the big hall here when we rung the bell, but they lit up an' let us in. Yes, they actually let us in. Mis' Morgan come to the door herself.

"'Come right in,' she says, cordial. 'Come right upstairs.'

"Calliope says somethin' about our bein' glad they could see us.

"'Oh,' says Mis' Morgan, 'I had orders quite a while ago to let in whoever asked. An' you're the first,' she says. 'You're the first.'

"An' then it come to us that this Mis' Morgan we'd all been tryin' to call on was only what you might name the housekeeper. An' so it turned out she was.

"The whole upper hall was dark, like puttin' a black skirt on over your head. But the room we went in was cheerful, with a fire burnin' up. Only it was awful littered up – old newspapers layin' round, used glasses settin' here an' there, water-pitcher empty, an' the lamp-chimney was smoked up, even. The woman said somethin' about us an' went out an' left us with somebody settin' in a big chair by the fire, sick an' wrapped up. An' when we looked over there, Calliope an' I stopped still. It was a man.

"If it'd been me, I'd 'a' turned round an' got out. But Calliope was as brave as two, an' she spoke up.

"'This must be the invalid,' she says, cheerful. 'We hope we see you at the best.'

"The man stirs some an' looks over at us kind o' eager – he was oldish, an' the firelight bein' in his eyes, he couldn't see us.

"'It isn't anybody to see me, is it?' he asks.

"At that Calliope steps forward – I remember how she looked in her pretty gray dress with some light thing over her head, an' her starched white skirts was rustlin' along under, soundin' so genteel she seemed to me like strangers do. When he see her, the man made to get up, but he was too weak for it.

"'Why, yes,' she answers him, 'if you're well enough to see anybody.'

"An' at that the man put his hands on his knees an' leaned sort o' hunchin' forward.

"'Calliope!' he says.

"It was him, sure enough – Calvert Oldmoxon. Same big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' kind o' crooked frown. His hair was gray, an' so was his pointed beard, an' he was crool thin. But I'd 'a' known him anywheres.

"Calliope, she just stood still. But when he reached out his hand, his lips parted some like a child's an' his eyes lookin' up at her, she went an' stood near him, by the table, an' she set her basket there an' leaned down on the handle, like her strength was gone.

"'I never knew it was you here,' she says. 'Nobody knows,' she told him.

"'No,' he says, 'I've done my best they shouldn't know. Up till I got sick. Since then – I – wanted folks,' he says.

"I kep' back by the door, an' I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was older than Calliope, but he had a young air. Like you don't have when you stay in Friendship. An' he seemed to know how to be easy, sick as he was. An' that ain't like Friendship, either. He an' Calliope had growed opposite ways, seems though.

"'I'll go now,' says Calliope, not lookin' at him. 'I brought up some things I baked. I didn't know but they'd taste good to whoever was sick here.'

"With that he covers one hand over his eyes.

"'No,' he says, 'no, no, Calliope – don't go yet. It's you I come here to Friendship to see,' he told her.

"'What could you have to say to me?' asks Calliope – dry as a bone in her voice, but I see her eyes wasn't so dry. Leastwise, it may not have been her eyes, but it was her look.

"Then he straightens up some. He was still good-lookin'. When you was with him it use' to be that you sort o' wanted to stay – an' it seemed the same way now. He was that kind.

"'Don't you think,' he says to her – an' it was like he was humble, but it was like he was proud, too – 'don't you think,' he says, 'that I ever dreamed you could forgive me. I knew better than that,' he told her. 'It's what you must think o' me that's kep' me from sayin' to you what I come here to say. But I'll tell you now,' he says, 'I'm sick an' alone an' done for. An' what I come to see you about – is the boy.'

"'The boy,' Calliope says over, not understandin'; 'the boy.'