Friendship Village

They needed no more. Timothy Toplady sprang at the toast, and already Abel Halsey and Doctor June were shaking Delia's hand; and Mis' Amanda, throwing her shawl back over her shoulders from its pin at her throat, enveloped Delia in her giant arms. And the others came pushing forward, on their faces the smiles which, however they had faltered in the passage seeking a precedent, I make bold to guess bodied forth the gentle, hesitant spirit which informed them.

As for me, I waited without, even after the others had entered. And as I lingered, the outer door was pushed open to admit some late comer who whisked down the passage and stood in the dining-room doorway. It was Calliope.

"Delia More!" she cried; "didn't I tell you how it'd be if you'd only let 'em know? An' Mis' Proudfit, you here? I been worried to death on account o' forgettin' to take home your cream lace waist I mended."

Madame Proudfit's voice lowered the high key of the others talking in chorus.

"We drove over to get it, Calliope," she said. "And here we found our Delia More."

At eleven o'clock that night, as I sat writing a letter in which the spirit of what had come to pass must have breathed – as a spirit will breathe – Calliope Marsh tapped at my door; and she had a little basket.

"Here," she said, "I brought you this. It's some o' everything we hed. An' – I'm obliged for my s'prise," she added, squeezing my hand in the darkness. "I surmised first thing, most, when Delia described you. No; land, no! – Delia don't suspicion you got it up. She don't think of it bein' anybody but just God – an' I donno's 'twas. An' that's what Abel thinks – wa'n't Abel splendid? You know 'bout Abel – an' Delia? You know he use' to – he wanted to – that is, he was in – oh, well, no. Of course you wouldn't know. Well, Delia don't suspicion you – but she said I should tell you something. 'You tell her,' she says to me, 'you tell her I say I guess I take stock now,' she says; 'tell her that: I guess I take stock now.'"

At this my heart leaped up so that I hardly know what I said in answer.

"Delia's out here now," Calliope called from the dark steps. "The Proudfits brought us. Delia's goin' home with 'em – to stay."

Thus I saw the eyes of the Proudfits' motor, with the threads of streaming light, about to go skimming from my gate. And in that kindly security was Delia More.

"Calliope," I cried after her because I could not help it, "tell Delia More I take stock, too!"

VII

THE BIG WIND

Of Abel Halsey, that young itinerant preacher, I learned more on a December day when Autumn seemed to have come back to find whether she had left anything. Calliope and I were resting from a racing walk up the hillside, where the squat brick Leading Church of Friendship overlooks the valley pastures and the village. Calliope walks like a girl, and with our haste and the keen air, her wrinkled cheeks were as rosy as youth.

"Don't it seem like some days don't belong to any month, but just whim along, doin' as they please?" Calliope said. "Months that might be snowin' an' blowin' the expression off our face hev days when they sort o' show summer hid inside, secret an' holy. That's the way with lots o' things, ain't it? That's the way," she added thoughtfully, "Abel feels about the Lord, I guess. Abel Halsey, – you know."

They had told me how Abel, long ordained a minister of God, had steadfastly refused to be installed a pastor of any church. He was a devout man, but the love of far places was upon him, and he lived what Friendship called "a-gypsyin'" off in the hills, now to visit a sick man, now to preach in a country schoolhouse, now to marry, or bury, or help with the threshing. These lonely rides among the hills and his custom of watching a train come in or rush by out of the distance were his ways of voyaging. Perhaps, too, his little skill at the organ gave him, now and then, an hour resembling a journey. But in his first youth he had meant to go away in earnest – far away, to the City or some other city. Also, though Calliope did not speak of it again, and I think that the others kept a loyal silence because of my strangerhood, I had known, since the home coming of Delia More, that Abel Halsey had once had another dream.

"You wasn't here when the new church was built," Calliope said, looking up at the building proudly. "That was the time I mean about Abel. You know, before it was built we'd hed church in the hall over the Gekerjeck's drug store; an' because it was his hall, Hiram Gekerjeck, he just about run the church, – picked out the wall paper, left the stair door open Sundays so's he could get the church heat, till the whole service smelt o' ether, an' finally hed church announcements printed as a gift, but with a line about a patent medicine o' his set fine along at the bottom. He said that was no differ'nt than advertisin' the printin'-offices that way, like they do. But it was that move made Abel Halsey – him an' Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb an' Postmaster Sykes, the three elders, set to to build a church. An' they done it too. An' to them four I declare it seemed like the buildin' was a body waitin' for its soul to be born. From the minute the sod was scraped off they watched every stick that went into it. An' by November it was all done an' plastered an' waitin' its pews – an' it was a-goin' to be dedicated with special doin's – music from off, an' strange ministers, an' Reverend Arthur Bliss from the City. I guess Abel an' the elders hed tacked printed invites to half the barns in the county.

"I rec'lect it was o' Wednesday, the one next before the dedication, an' windy-cold an' wintry. I'd been havin' a walk that day, an' 'long about five o'clock, right about where we are, I'd stood watchin' the sunset over the Pump pasture there, till I was chilled through. The smoke was rollin' out o' the church chimney because they was dryin' the plaster, an' I run in there to get my hands warm an' see how the plaster was doin'. An' inside was the three elders, walkin' 'round, layin' a finger on a sash or a post – the kind o' odd, knowledgeable way men has with new buildin's. The Ladies' Aid had got the floor broom-clean, an' the lamp-chandelier filled an' ready; an' the foreign pipe-organ that the Proudfits had sent from Europe was in an' in workin' order, little lookin'-glass over the keyboard an' all. It seemed rill home-like, with the two big stoves a-goin', an' the floor back of 'em piled up with the chunks Peleg Bemus had sawed for nothin'. Everything was all redded up, waitin' for the pews.

"Timothy Toplady was puttin' out his middle finger stiff here an' there on the plaster.

"'It's dry as a bone,' he says, 'but what I say is this, le's us leave a fire burn here all night, so's to be sure. I'd hate like death to hev the whole congregation catchin' cold an' takin' Hiram Gekerjeck's medicine.'

"I rec'lect Eppleby Holcomb looked up sort o' dreamy – Eppleby always goes round like he'd swallowed his last night's sleep.

"'The house o' God,' he says over; 'ain't that curious? Nothin' about it to indicate it's the house o' God but the shape – no more'n's if 'twas a buildin' where the Holy Spirit never come near. An' yet right here in this place we'll mebbe feel the big wind an' speak with Pentecostal tongues.'

"''T seems like,' says Postmaster Sykes, thoughtful, ''t seems like we'd ought to hev a little meetin' o' thanks here o' Sat'day night – little informal praise meetin' or somethin.'

"Timothy shakes his head decided.

"'Silas Sykes, what you talkin'?' he says. 'Why, the church ain't dedicated yet. A house o' God,' s'e, 'can't be used for no purpose whatsoever without it's been dedicated.'

"'So it can't – so it can't,' says the postmaster, apologetic, knowin' he was in politics an' that the brethren was watchin' him, cat to mouse, for slips.

"'I s'pose that's so,' says Eppleby, doubtful. But he's one o' them that sort o' ducks under situations to see if they're alike on both sides, an' if they ain't, he up an' questions 'em. Timothy, though, he was differ'nt. Timothy was always goin' on about constituted authority, an' to him the thing was the thing, even if it was another thing.

"'That's right,' he insists, his lips disappearin' with certainty. 'I s'pose we hadn't reely ought even to come in here an' stan' 'round, like we are.'

"He looks sidlin' over towards me, warmin' my hands rill secular by the church stove. An' I felt like I'd been spoke up for when somebody says from the door: —

"'You better just bar out the carpenters o' this world, friends, an' done with it!'

"It was Abel Halsey, standin' in the entry, lookin' as handsome as the law allows. An' I see he happened to be there because the Through was about due, – that's the one that don't stop here, – an' you can always get a good view of it from this slope. You know Abel never misses watchin' a fast train go 'long, if he can help himself.

"'What's the i-dea?' Abel says. 'How can you pray at all in closets an' places that ain't been dedicated? I shouldn't think they'd be holy enough, 's'e.'

"'That,' says the postmaster, sure o' support, 'ain't the question.'

"'I thought it couldn't be,' says Abel, amiable. 'Well, what is the question? Whether prayer is prayer, no matter where you're prayin'?'

"'Oh, no,' says Eppleby Holcomb, soothin', 'it ain't that.'

"'I thought it couldn't be that,' says Abel. 'Is it whether the Lord is in dedicated spots an' nowheres else?'

"'Abel Halsey,' Timothy tarts up, 'you needn't to be sacrilegious.'

"'But,' says Abel, 'the question is, whether you're sacrilegious to deny a prayer-meetin' or any other good use to the church or to any other place, dedicated or not. Well, Timothy, I think you are.'

"Timothy clears his throat an' dabs at the palm of his hand with his other front finger. But before he could lay down eternal law, we sort o' heard, almost before we knew we heard, folks hurryin' past out here on the frozen ground. An' they was shoutin', like questions, an' a-shoutin' further off. We looked out, an' I can remember how the whole slope up from the village there was black with folks.

"We run outside, an' I know I kep' close by Abel Halsey. An' I got hold o' what had happened when somebody yelled an answer to his askin'. You probably heard all about that part. It was the day the Through Express went off the track down there in the cut beyond the Pump pasture.

"We run with the rest of 'em, me keepin' close to Abel, I guess because he's got a way with him that makes you think he'd know what to do no matter what. But when he was two-thirds o' the way acrost the pasture, he stops short an' grabs at my sleeve.

"'Look here,' he says, 'you can't go down there. You mustn't do it. We donno what'll be. You stay here,' he says; 'you set there under the cottonwood.'

"You kind o' haf to mind Abel. It's sort o' grained in that man to hev folks disciple after him. I made him promise he'd motion from the fence if he see I could help any, an' then I se' down under that big tree down there. I was tremblin' some, I know. It always seems like wrecks are somethin' that happen in other states an' in the dark. But when one's on ground that you know like a book an' was brought up on, – when it's in the daylight, right by a pasture you've been acrost always an' where you've walked the ties, – well, I s'pose it's the same feelin' as when a man you know cuts up a state's prison caper; seem's like he can't of, because you knew him.

"Half the men o' Friendship run by me, seems though. The whole town'd been rousted up while we was in the church talkin' heresy. An' up on the high place on the road there I see Zittelhof's undertaking wagon, with the sunset showin' on its nickel rails. But not a woman run past me. Ain't it funny how it's men that go to danger of rail an' fire an' water – but when it's nothin' but birth an' dyin' natural, then it's for women to be there.

"When I'd got about ready to fly away, waitin' so, I see Abel at the fence. An' he didn't motion to me, but he swung over the top an' come acrost the stubble, an' I see he hed somethin' in his arms. I run to meet him, an' he run too, crooked, his feet turnin' over with him some in the hard ground. The sky made his face sort o' bright; an' I see he'd got a child in his arms.

"He didn't give her to me. He stood her down side o' me – a little thing of five years old, or six, with thick, straight hair an' big scairt eyes.

"'Is she hurt, Abel?' I says.

"'No, she ain't hurt none,' he answers me, 'an' they's about seventeen more of 'em, her age, an' they ain't hurt, either. Their coach was standin' up on its legs all right. But the man they was with, he's stone dead. Hit on the head, somehow. An',' Abel says, 'I'm goin' to throw 'em all over the fence to you.'

"The little girl jus' kep' still. An' when we took her by each hand, an' run back toward the fence with her, her feet hardly touchin' the ground, she kep' up without a word, like all to once she'd found out this is a world where the upside-down is consider'ble in use. An' I waited with her, over there this side the cut, hearin' 'em farther down rippin' off fence rails so's to let through what they hed to carry.

"Time after time Abel come scramblin' up the sand-bank, bringin' 'em two 't once – little girls they was, all about the age o' the first one, none of 'em with hats or cloaks on; an' I took 'em in my arms an' set 'em down, an' took 'em in my arms an' set 'em down, till I was fair movin' in a dream. They belonged, I see by their dress, to some kind of a home for the homeless, an' I judged the man was takin' 'em somewheres, him that Abel said'd been killed. Some'd reach out their arms to me over the fence – an' some was afraid an' hung back, but some'd just cling to me an' not want to be set down. I can remember them the best.