Part 13 (1/2)
Speculation was the delight of meetings, and every one conspired in terms of toilettes.
”Likely,” said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, ”Mis' Banker Mason'll wear her black-an'-white foulard. Them foulards are wonderful durable--you can't muss 'em. She got hers when Gramma Mason first hurt her back, so's if anything happened she'd be part mournin', an' if anything didn't, she'd have a nice dress to wear out places. Ain't it real convenient,--white standin' for both companies an' the tomb, so?”
And ”Mis' Photographer Sturgis has the best of it, bein' an invalid, till a party comes up,” said Libbie Liberty. ”She gets plenty enough food sent in, an' flowers, an' such things, an' she's got nails hung full o' what I call sympathy clo'es, to wear durin' sympathy calls. But when it comes to a real what you might say dress-up dress, I guess she'll hev to be took worse with her side an' stay in the house.”
Abigail Arnold contributed:--
”Seems Mis' Doctor Helman had a whole wine silk dress put away with her dyin' things. She always thought it sounded terrible fine to hear about the dead havin' dress-pattern after dress-pattern laid away that hadn't never been made up. So she'd got together the one, but now she an'
Elzabella are goin' to work an' make it up. I guess Mis' Helman thinks her stomach is so much better 't mebbe she'll be spared till after the holidays when the sales begin.”
Even Liddy Ember had promised to go and to take Ellen, and Ellen went up and down the winter streets singing sane little songs about the party, save on days when she ”come herself again,” and then she planned, as wildly as anybody, what she meant to wear. And Liddy, whose dream had always been to do ”reg'lar city dress-makin', with helpers an' plates an' furnish the findin's at the shop,” and whose lot instead had been to cut and fit ”just the durable kind,” was blithely at work night and day on Mis' Postmaster Sykes's tobacco-brown net. We understood that there were to be brown velvet b.u.t.terflies st.i.tched down the skirt, and if her Lady Was.h.i.+ngton geranium flowered in time,--Mis' Sykes was said to lay bread and milk nightly about the roots to encourage it,--she was to wear the blossom in her hair. (”She'll be gettin' herself talked about, wearin' a wreath o' flowers on her head, so,” said some.) But then, Mis'
Sykes was recognized to be ”one that picks her own steps.”
”Mis' Sykes always dresses for company accordin' to the way she gets her invite,” Calliope observed. ”A telephone invite, she goes in somethin'
she'd wear home afternoons. Word o' mouth at the front door, she wears what she wears on Sundays. Written invites, she rags out in her rill _best_ dress, for parties. But _engraved_,” Calliope mounted to her climax, ”a bran' new dress an' a wreath in her hair is the least she'll stop at.”
But I think that, in the wish to do honour to so distinguished an occasion, the temper of Mis' Sykes, and perhaps of Ellen Ember too, was the secret temper of all the village.
IX
”NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH”
I daresay that excitement followed excitement when news of Calliope's party got abroad. But of this I knew little, for I spent those next days at the Proudfits' with Nita Ordway and little Viola, and though I thought often of Calliope, I chanced not to see her again until the holidays were almost upon us. In the late afternoon, two days before Christmas, I dropped in at her cottage to learn how pleasantly the plans for her party matured.
To my amazement I found her all dejection.
”Why, Calliope,” I said, ”can't the grandma ladies come, after all?”
Yes, they could come; they were coming.
”You are never sorry you asked them?” I pressed her.
No. Oh, no; she was glad she had asked them.
”Something is wrong, though,” I said sadly--thinking what a blessed thing it is to be so joyous a spirit that one's dejections are bound to be taken seriously.
”Well,” said Calliope, then, ”it's the children. No it ain't, it's Friends.h.i.+p. The town's about as broad as a broom straw an' most as deep.
Anything differ'nt scares 'em like something wore out'd ought to.
Friends.h.i.+p's got an i-dee that Christmas begins in a stocking an' ends off in a candle. It thinks the rest o' the days are reg'lar, self-respecting days, but it looks on Christmas like an extry thing, thrown in to please 'em. It acts as if the rest o' the year was plain cake an' the holidays was the frostin' to be et, an' everybody grab the best themselves, give or take.”
”Calliope!” I cried--for this was as if the moon had objected to the heavens.
”Oh, I know I'd ought not to,” she said sadly; ”but don't folks act as if time was give to 'em to run around wild with, as best suits 'em?
Three hundred an' 'leven days a year to use for themselves, an' Sundays an' Christmas an' Thanksgivin' to give away looks to me a rill fair division. But, no. Some folks act like Sundays an' holidays was not only the frostin', but the nuts an' candy an' ice-cream o' things--_their_ ice-cream, to eat an' pa.s.s to their own, an' sc.r.a.pe the freezer.”
And then came the heart of the matter.
”'T seems,” said Calliope, ”there's that children's Christmas tree at the new minister's on Christmas Eve. But that ain't till ha'-past seven, an' I done my best to hev some o' the children stop in here on their way, for _my_ little party. An' with one set o' lungs their mas says no, they'd get mussed for the tree if they do. I offered to hev 'em bring their white dresses pinned in papers, an' we'd dress 'em here--I think the grandma ladies'd like that. But their mas says no, pinned in papers'd take the starch out an' their hair'd get all over their heads.