Neighborhood Stories

“I won’t say anything about the party bein’ for Maria, one way or the other,” she says; “I won’t make a spread about it, nor much of an event. I’ll just send out invites for a quiet time. Then when they come, you can stay in the room with Maria at first an’ get her introduced. An’ after that the party can go ahead on its own legs, just as well without me as with me. I could only fly in now an’ then anyhow, an’ talk to ’em snatchy, with my mind on the supper. Why ain’t it just as good to stay right out of it altogether?”

We see it reasonable. And a couple of days before Maria Carpenter was expected, Mis’ Fire Chief, she went to work, Harriet helping her, and she got her invitations out. They was on some black bordered paper and envelopes that Mis’ Fire Chief had had for a mourning Christmas present an’ had been saving. And they was worded real delicate, like Mis’ Fire Chief done everything:

Mrs. Merriman, At Home, Thursday afternoon, Four o’clock Sharp, Thimbles. Six o’clock Supper. Walk right in past the bell.

It made quite a little stir in Friendship Village, because Mis’ Merriman hadn’t been anywheres yet. But everybody took it all right. And anyway, everybody was too busy getting ready, to bother much over anything else. It’s quite a problem to know what to wear to a winter company in Friendship Village. Nobody entertains much of any in the winter – its a chore to get the parlor cleaned and het, and it’s cold for ’em to lay off their things, and you can’t think up much that’s tasty for refreshments, being it’s too cold to give ’em ice cream. Mis’ Fire Chief was giving the party on the afternoon of Miss Carpenter’s three o’clock arrival, in the frank an’ public hope that somebody would dance around during her stay and give her a return invite out to tea or somewheres.

The morning of the day that was the day, there come a rap to my door while I was stirring up my breakfast, and there was Harriet Wells, bare-headed and a shawl around her, and looking summer-sweet in her little pink muslin dressing sacque that matched her cheeks and showed off her blue eyes.

“Aunt Hettie wants to know,” she says, “whether you can’t come over now so’s to get an early start. She’s afraid the train’ll get in before we’re ready for it.”

“Land!” I says, “I know how she feels. The last company I give I got up and swep’ by lamplight and had my cake all in the oven by 6 A.M. Come in while I eat my breakfast and I’ll run right back with you and leave my dishes setting. How’s your aunt standing it?” I ask’ her.

“Oh, pretty well, thank you,” says Hettie, “but she’s awful nervous. She hasn’t et for two days – not since the invitations went out o’ the house – an’ last night she dreamt about the Chief. That always upsets her an’ makes her cross all next day.”

“If she wasn’t your aunt,” I says, “I’d say, ‘Deliver me from loving the dead so strong that I’m ugly to the living.’ But she is your aunt and a good woman – so I’m mum as you please.”

Hettie, she sighs some. “She is a good woman,” she says, wistful; “but, oh, Mis’ Marsh, they’s some good women that it’s terrible hard to live with,” she says – an’ then she choked up a little because she had said it. But I, and all Friendship Village, knew it for the truth. And we all wanted to be delivered from people that’s so crazy to be moral and proper themselves, in life or in mourning, that they walk over everybody else’s rights and stomp down everybody’s feelin’s. My eyes filled up when I looked at that poor, lonesome little thing, sacrificed like she was to Mis’ Fire Chief’s mourning spree.

“Hettie,” I says, “Amos More goes by here every morning about now on his way to his work. When he goes by this morning, want to know what I’m going to tell him?”

“Yes’m,” says Hettie, simple, blushing up like a pink lamp shade when you’ve lit the lamp.

“I’m a-goin’ to tell him,” says I, “that I’m going to ask Eppleby Holcomb to let him off for a couple of ours or so this morning, an’ a couple more this afternoon. I want he should come over to Mis’ Fire Chief’s an’ chop ice an help turn freezer.” (We was going to feed ’em ice cream even if it was winter.) “I’m getting too old for such fancy jobs myself, and you ain’t near strong enough, and Mis’ Chief, I know how she’ll be. She won’t reco’nize her own name by nine o’clock.”

While I was finding out what cocoanut and raisins and such they’d got in stock, along come Amos More, hands hanging loose like he’d lost his grip on something. I called to him, and pretended not to notice Harriet’s little look into the clock-door looking-glass, and when he come in I ’most forgot what I’d meant to say to him, it was so nice to see them two together. I never see two more in love with every look of each other’s.

“Why, Harriet!” says Amos, as if saying her name was his one way of breathing.

“Good mornin’, Amos,” Harriet says, rose-pink and looking at the back of her hand.

Amos just give me a little nice smile, and then he didn’t seem to know I was in the room. He went straight up to her and caught a-hold of the fringe of her shawl.

“Harriet,” he says, “how long have I got to go on livin’ on the sight of you through that dinin’-room window? Yes, livin’. It’s the only time I’m alive all day long – just when I see you there, signalin’ me – an’ when I know you ain’t forgot. But I can’t go on this way – I can’t, I can’t.”

“What can I do – what can I do, Amos?” she says, faint.

“Do? Chuck everything for me – if you love me enough,” says Amos, neat as a recipe.

“I owe Aunt Hettie too much,” says Hettie, firm; “I ain’t that kind – to turn on her ungrateful.”

“I know it. I love you for that too,” says Amos, “I love you on account of everything you do. And I tell you I can’t live like this much longer.”

“Well said!” I broke in, brisk; “I can help you over this day anyhow. You go on down-town, Amos, and get the stuff on this list I’ve made out, and then you come on up to Mis’ Fire Chief’s. We need a man and we need you. I’ll fix it with Eppleby.”

They wasn’t any need to explain to Mis’ Fire Chief. She was so excited she didn’t know whether she was a-foot or a-horseback. When Amos got back with the things I’d sent for she didn’t seem half to sense it was him I was sending out in the woodshed to chop ice. She didn’t hev her collar on nor her shoes buttoned, and she wasn’t no more use in that kitchen than a dictionary.

“Oh, Calliope,” she says, in a sort of wail, “I’m so nervous!”

“You go and set down, Mis’ Fire Chief,” says I, “and button up your shoes. I’ve got every move of the morning planned out,” says I, “so be you don’t interrupt me.”

Of course it was her party and all, but they’s some hostesses you hev to lay a firm holt of, if you’re the helper and expect the party to come off at all. And I never see any living hostess more upset than was Mis’ Fire Chief. She give all the symptoms – not of a company, but of coming down with something.

“Oh, Calliope,” says she, “everything’s against me. I donno,” she says, “but it’s a sign from the Chief in his grave that I’m actin’ against his wishes an’ opposite to what widows should. The wood is green – hear it siss an’ sizzle in that stove an’ hold back its heat from me. The cistern is dry – we’ve hed to pump water to the neighbors. Not a hen has cackled this livelong mornin’ in the coop. The milkman couldn’t only leave me three quarts instead of four, though ordered ahead. An’ I feel like death – I feel like death,” says she, “part on account of the Chief – ain’t it like he was speakin’ his disapprovin’ in all these little minor ways? – an’ part because I know I’m comin’ down with a hard cold an’ I’d ought to be in bed all lard an’ pepper this livin’ minute. Oh, dear me! An’ Maria all but upon me. I don’t know how I’ll ever get through this day.”

“Mis’ Fire Chief,” says I, “you go and lay down and try to get some rest.”

“No, Calliope,” says she, “the beds is all ready for the company to lay their hats off, an’ the lounge pillows has been beat light on the line.”

“Well,” says I, “go off an’ take a walk.”

“Not without I walk to the cemetery,” says she, “an’ that I couldn’t bear. Not to-day.”

“Well,” says I, “then you let me put a wet cloth over your head and eyes, and you set still and stop talkin’. You’ll be wore to a thread,” says I.

And that was what I done to her, expecting that if she didn’t keep still I’d bake the ice cream and freeze the cake and lose my own head entire.

Out in the shed I’d set Amos to cracking ice, and Harriet to cracking nuts, with a flatiron and a hammer. And pretty soon I stepped along to see how things was going. Land, land, it was a pretty sight! They was both working away, but Amos was looking down at her more’n to his work, and Harriet was looking up at him like he was all of it – and the whole air was pleasant with something sweeter than could be named. So I left them two alone, well knowing that I could manage a company sole by myself yet a while, no matter how much courting and mourning was going on all around me.

And everything went fine, in spite of Mis’ Fire Chief’s looking like death in the rocker, with a wet rag on her brow.

But she kept lifting up one corner and giving directions.

“No pink frostin’, Calliope, you know,” she says, “only white. An’ no colored flowers – only white ones. You’ll have to write the place cards – my hand shakes so I don’t dare trust myself. But I’ll cut up the ribbin for the sandwiches – I can do that much,” says she.

The place cards was mourning ones, with broad black edges, and the ribbin to tie up the sandwiches was black too. And the centerpiece was one Mis’ Fire Chief and Hettie hed been up early that morning making – it was a set piece from the Chief’s funeral, a big goblet, turned bottom side up, done in white geraniums with “He is Near” in purple everlastings. The table was going to look real tasty, Mis’ Fire Chief thought, all in black and white so – with little sprays of willow laid around on the cloth instead of ferns.

“I’ve done the best I could,” she said, solemn, “to make the occasion do honor to Maria an’ pay reverence to the Chief.”

I had just finally persuaded her to go up-stairs and look the chambers over and then try to take a little rest somewheres around, when Amos come to the shed door to tell me the freezer wouldn’t turn no more, and was it broke or was the cream froze. And Mis’ Fire Chief, seeing him coming in the shed way, seemed to sense for the first time that he was there.

“Amos More,” says she, “what you doin’ here?”

“I ask’ him,” says I, hasty; “I had to have his help about the ice.”

She covered her eyes with one hand. “Courtin’ an’ entertainin’ goin’ on in the Chief’s house,” she said, “an’ him only just gone from us!”

“Well,” s’I, “I’ve got to have some man’s help out here this afternoon – why not Amos’s?”

“Oh,” says Mis’ Merriman, “you’re all against me but the Chief, an’ him helpless.”

“The Chief,” says I, “was always careful of your health. You’ll make yourself sick taking on so, Mis’ Fire Chief,” I told her. “You go and put flowers in the chambers and leave the rest to me. Put your mind,” I told her, “on the surprise you’ve got for your guests that’s comin’ – Maria Carpenter here and all! Besides,” I couldn’t help sticking in, “I donno as Amos is cold poison.”

So we got her off up-stairs.

Maria Carpenter’s train was due at 3:03, so she was just a-going to have the right time to get ready when the afternoon would begin, because in Friendship Village “sharp four” means four o’clock. I had left the sandwiches to make last thing, and I come back from my dinner towards three and tiptoes through the house so’s not to disturb Mis’ Fire Chief if she was resting, and I went into the pantry and begun cutting and spreading bread. I hadn’t been there but a little while before the stair door into the kitchen opened and I heard Hettie come down, humming a little. But before I could sing out to her, the woodshed door opened too, and in come Amos that had been out putting more salt in the freezer.

“Hettie!” he says in a low voice, and I see she prob’ly hed on her white muslin and was looking like angels, and more. And – “I won’t,” says Amos, then – “I won’t – though I can hardly keep my hands off from you – dear.”