Afterward2 I knew that I had never seen a woman more keenly and constantly a participant in the lives of others. She was hardly individuated at all. She suffered and joyed with others, literally3, more than she did in her "own" affairs. I now feel certain that before we can reach the individualism which we crave—and have tried to claim too soon—we must first know such participation4 as hers in all conscious life—in all life, conscious or unconscious.
This is that early story, as I then wrote it down:
Calliope Marsh had been having a "small company." Though nominally5 she was hostess to twenty of us, invited there for six o'clock supper, yet we did not see Calliope until supper was done. Mis' Postmaster Sykes had opened the door for us, had told us to "walk up-stairs to the right an' lay aside your things," and had marshaled us to the dining-room and so to chairs outlining the room. And[Pg 155] there the daughters of most of the guests had served us while Calliope stayed in the kitchen, with Hannah Hager to help her, seasoning6 and stirring and "getting it onto the plates." Afterward, flushed and, I thought, lovably nervous, Calliope came in to receive our congratulations and presently to hear good-nights. But I, who should have hurried home to Madame Josephine, the modiste from town who that week called my soul her own, waited for a little to talk it over—partly, I confess, because a fine, driving rain had begun to fall.
We sat in the kitchen while Calliope ate her own belated supper on a corner of the kitchen table; and on another corner, thin, tired little Hannah Hager ate hers. And, as is our way in Friendship, Hannah talked it over, too—that little maid-of-all-work, who was nowhere attached in service, but lived in a corner of Grandma Hawley's cottage and went tirelessly about the village ministering to the needs of us all.
"Everything you hed was lovely, Miss Marsh," Hannah said with shining content and a tired sigh. "You didn't hev a single set-back, did you?"
"Well, I dunno," Calliope doubted; "it all tastes like so much chips to me, even now. I was kind o' nervous over my pressed ham, too. I noticed two o' the plates didn't eat all theirs, but the girls couldn't rec'lect whose they was. Did you notice?"
"No, sir, I didn't," Hannah confessed with a[Pg 156] shake of the head at herself. "I did notice," she amended7 brightly, "that Mis' Postmaster Sykes didn't make way with all her cream, but I guess ice-cream don't agree with her. She's got a kind o' peculiar8 stomach."
"Well-a, anybody hev on anything new?" Calliope asked with interest. "I couldn't tell a stitch anybody hed on. I don't seem to sense things when I hev company."
There was no need for me to give evidence.
"Oh!" Hannah said, as we say when we mean a thing very much, "didn't you see Lyddy Eider?"
"Seems to me I did take it in she hed on something pink," Calliope remembered.
Little Hannah stood up in her excitement.
"Pink, Miss Marsh!" she said. "I should say it was. Pink with cloth, w'ite. The w'ite," Hannah illustrated9 it, "went here an' so, in points. In between was lace an' little ribbon, pink too. An' all up so was buttons. An' it all rustled10 w'en she stirred 'round. An' it laid smooth down, like it was starched11 an' ironed, an' then all to once it'd slimpse into folds, soft as soft. An' every way she stood it looked nice—it didn't pucker12 nor skew nor hang wrong. It was dressmaker-made, ma'am," Hannah concluded impressively. "An' it looked like the pictures in libr'ry books. My! You'd ought 'a' seen Gramma Hawley. She fair et Lydia up with lookin' at her."
[Pg 157]
I, who was not yet acquainted with every one in Friendship, had already observed the two that day—brown, bent13 Grandma Hawley and the elaborately self-possessed Miss Eider, with a conspicuously14 high-pitched voice, who lived in the city and was occasionally a guest in the village. The girl, who I gathered had once lived in Friendship, was like a living proof that all village maids may become princesses; and the brooding tenderness of the old woman had impressed me as might a mourning dove mothering some sprightly15 tanager.
"Gramma Hawley brought her up from a little thing," Calliope explained to me now, "and a rich Mis' Eider, from the city, she adopted her, and Gramma let her go. I guess it near killed Gramma to do it—but she'd always been one to like nice things herself, and she couldn't get them, so she see what it'd mean to Lyddy. Lyddy's got pretty proud, she's hed so much to do with, but she comes back to see Gramma sometimes, I'll say that for her. Didn't anybody else hev on anything new?"
"No," Hannah knew positively16, "they all come out in the same old togs. When the finger-bowl started I run up in the hall an' peeked17 down the register, so's to see 'em pass out o' the room. Comp'ny clo'es don't change much here in Friendship. Mis' Postmaster Sykes says yest'day, when we was ironin': 'Folks,' she says, 'don't dress as much here in Friendship as I wish't we did. Land knows,'[Pg 158] Mis' Sykes says, 'I don't dress, neither. But I like to see it done.'"
Calliope, who is sixty and has a rosy18, wrinkled face, looked sidewise down the long vista19 of the cooking-stove coals.
"Like to see it done!" she repeated. "Why, I get so raving20 hungry to see some colored dress-goods on somebody seem's though I'd fly. Black and brown and gray—gray and brown and black hung on to every woman in Friendship. Every one of us has our clo'es picked out so everlastin' durable21."
Hannah sympathetically giggled22 with, "Don't they, though?"
"My grief!" Calliope exclaimed. "It reminds me, I got my mother's calicoes down to pass 'round and I never thought to take them in."
She went to her new golden oak kitchen cabinet—a birthday gift to Calliope from the Friendship church for her services at its organ—and brought us her mother's "calicoes"—a huge box of pieces left from every wool and lawn and "morning housework dress" worn by the Marshes23, quick and passed, and by their friends. Calliope knew them all; and I listened idly while the procession went by us in sad-colored fabrics—"black and brown and gray—gray and brown and black."
I think that my attention may have wandered a little, for I was recalled by some slight stir made by Hannah Hager. She had risen and was bending[Pg 159] toward Calliope, with such leaping wistfulness in her eyes that I followed her look. And I saw among the pieces, like a bright breast in sober plumage, a square of chambray in an exquisite24 color of rose.
"Oh—" said little Hannah softly, "hain't that just beauti-ful?"
"Like it, Hannah?" Calliope asked.
"My!" said the little maid fervently25.
"It was a dress Gramma Hawley made for Lyddy Eider when she was a little girl," Calliope explained. "I dunno but what it was the last one she made for her. Pretty, ain't it? Lyddy always seemed to hanker some after pink. Gramma mostly always got her pink." Calliope glanced at Hannah, over-shoulder. "Why don't you get a pink one for then?" she asked abruptly26; and, "When is it to be, Hannah?" she challenged her, teasingly, as we tease for only one cause.
On which I had pleasure in the sudden rose-pink of Hannah's face, and she sank back in her seat at the table corner in the particular, delicious anguish27 that comes but once.
"There, there," said Calliope soothingly28, "no need to turn any more colors, 's I know of. Land, if they ain't enough sandwiches left to fry for my dinner."
When, presently, Calliope and I were in the dining-room and I was watching her "redd up" the table while Hannah clattered29 dishes in the kitchen,[Pg 160] I asked her who Hannah's prince might be. Calliope told me with a manner of triumph. For was he not Henry Austin, that great, good-looking giant who helped in the post-office store, whose baritone voice was the making of the church choir30 and on whom many Friendship daughters would not have looked unkindly?
"I'm so glad for her," Calliope said. "She ain't hed many to love besides Gramma Hawley—and Gramma's so wrapped up in Lyddy Eider. And yet I feel bad for Hannah, too. All their lives folks here'll likely say: 'How'd he come to marry her?' It's hard to be that kind of woman. I wish't Hannah could hev a wedding that would show 'em she is somebody. I wish't she could hev a wedding dress that would show them how pretty she is—a dress all nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places and little unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of having if you weren't real up in dress," Calliope explained. "A dress like Lyddy Eider always has on."
"Calliope!" I said then, laughing. "I believe you would be a regular fashion plate, if you could afford it."
"I would," she gravely admitted, "I'm afraid I would. I love nice clothes and I just worship colors." She hesitated, looking at me with a manner of shyness. "Sit still a minute, will you?" she said, "I'd like to show you something."
[Pg 161]
She went upstairs and I listened to Hannah Hager, clattering31 kitchen things and singing:
"He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons,
To tie up my bonny brown ha—ir."
Pink chambray and the love of blue ribbons and Miss Lydia Eider in her dress that was "dressmaker-made." These I turned in my mind, and I found myself thinking of my visit to the town in the next week, for which Madame Josephine was preparing; and of how certain elegancies are there officially recognized instead of being merely divined by the wistful amateur in color and textile. How Calliope and Hannah would have delighted, I thought idly, in the town's way of pretty things to wear, such as Josephine could make; the way that Lydia Eider knew, in her frocks that were "dressmaker-made." Indeed, Calliope and Hannah and Lydia Eider had been physically32 cast in the same mold of prettiness and of proportion, but only Lydia had come into her own.
And then Calliope came down, and she was bringing a long, white box. She sat before me with the box on her knee and I saw that she was flushing like a girl.
"I expect," she said, "you'll think I'm real worldly-minded. I dunno. Mebbe I am. But when I get out in company and see everybody wearing the dark shades like they do here in Friendship[Pg 162] so's their dresses won't show dirt, I declare I want to stand up and tell 'em: 'Colors! Colors! What'd the Lord put colors in the world for? Burn up your black and brown and gray and get into somethin' happy-colored, and see the difference it'll make in the way you feel inside.' I get so," Calliope said solemnly, "that when I put on my best black taffeta with the white turnovers33, I declare I could slit34 it up the back seam. And I've felt that way a long time. And that's what made me—"
She fingered the white box and lifted the cover from a mass of tissue-paper.
"When Uncle Ezra Marsh died sixteen years ago last Summer," she said, "he left me a little bit of money—just a little dab35, but enough to mend the wood-shed roof or buy a new cook-stove or do any of the useful things that's always staring you in the face. And I turned my back flat on every one of them. And I put the money in my pocket and went into the city. And there," said Calliope breathlessly, "I bought this."
She unwrapped it from its tissues, and it was yards and yards of lustrous36, exquisite soft silk, colored rose-pink, and responding in folds almost tenderly to the hand that touched it.
"It's mine," Calliope said, "mine. My dress. And I haven't ever hed the sheer, moral courage to get it made up."
And that I could well understand. For though[Pg 163] Calliope's delicacy37 of figure and feature would have been well enough become by the soft pink, Friendship would have lifted its hands to see her so and she would instantly have been "talked about."
"Seems to me," Calliope said, smoothing the silk, "that if I could have on a dress like this I'd feel another kind of being—sort o' free and liberty-like. Of course," she added hurriedly, "I know well enough a pink dress ain't what-you-might-say important. But land, land, how I'd like one on me in company! Ain't it funny," she added, "in the city nobody'd think anything of my wearing it. In the city they sort of seem to know colors ain't wicked, so's they look nice. I use' to think," Calliope added, laughing a little, "I'd hev it made up and go to town and wear it on the street. All alone. Even if it was a black street. I guess you'll think I'm terrible foolish."
But with that the idea which had come to me vaguely38 and as an impossibility, took shape; and I poured it out to Calliope as a thing possible, desirable, inevitable39.
"Calliope!" I said. "Bring the silk to my house. Let Madame Josephine make it up. And next week come with me to the city—for the opera. We will have a box—and afterward supper—and you shall wear the pink gown—and a long, black silk coat of mine—"
[Pg 164]
"You're fooling—you're fooling!" Calliope cried, trembling.
But I made her know how in earnest I was; for, indeed, on the instant my mind was made up that the thing must be, that the lonely pink dress must see the light and with it Calliope's shy hopes, long cherished. And so, before I left her, it was arranged. She had agreed to come next morning to my house, if Madame Josephine were willing, bringing the rose-pink silk.
"Me!" she said at last. "Why, me! Why, it's enough to make all the me's I've been turn over in their graves. And I guess they hev turned and come trooping out, young again."
Then, as she stood up, letting the soft stuff unwind and fall in shining abandon, we heard a little noise—tapping, insistent40. It was very near to us—quite in the little passage; and as Calliope turned with the silk still in her arms the door swung back and there stood Grandma Hawley. She was leaning on her thick stick, and her gray lace cap was all awry41 and a mist of the fine, driving rain was on her gray hair.
"I got m' feet wet," she said querulously. "M' feet are wet. Lyddy's gone to Mis' Sykes's. I comeback to stay a spell till it dries off some—"
"Grandma!" Calliope cried, hurrying to her, "I didn't hear you come in. I never heard you.[Pg 165] Come out by the kitchen fire and set your feet in the oven."
Calliope had tossed the silk on the table and had run to the old woman with outstretched hand; but the outstretched hand Grandma Hawley did not see. She stood still, looking by Calliope with a manner rather than an expression of questioning.
"What is't?" she asked, nodding direction.
Calliope understood, and she slightly lifted her brows and her thin shoulders, and seemed to glance at me.
"It's some pink for a dress, gramma," she said.
Grandma Hawley came a little nearer, and stood, a neat, bent figure in rusty42 black, looking, down at the sumptuous43, shining lengths. Then she laid her brown, veined hand upon the silk—and I remember now her fingers, being pricked44 and roughened by her constant needle, caught and rubbed on the soft stuff.
"My soul," she said, "it's pink silk."
She lifted her face to Calliope, the perpetual trembling of her head making her voice come tremulously.
"That's what Abe Hawley was always talkin' when I married him," she said. "'A pink silk dress fer ye, Minnie. A fine pink silk to set ye off,' s' 'e over an' over. I thought I was a-goin' to hev it. I hed the style all picked out in my head.[Pg 166] I know I use' to lay awake nights an' cut it out. But, time the cookin' things was paid for, the first baby come—an' then the other three to do for. An' Abe he didn't say pink silk after the fourth. But I use' to cut it out in the night, fer all that. I dunno but I cut it out yet, when I can't get to sleep an' my head feels bad. My head ain't right. It bothers me some, hummin' and ringin'. Las' night m' head—"
"There, there, gramma," said Calliope, and took her arm. "You come along with me and set your feet in the oven."
I had her other arm, and we turned toward the kitchen. And we were hushed as if we had heard some futile45, unfulfilled wish of the dead still beating impotent wings.
In the kitchen doorway46 Hannah Hager was standing47. She must have seen that glowing, heaped-up silk on the table, but it did not even hold her glance. For she had heard what Grandma Hawley had been saying, and it had touched her, who was so jealously devoted48 to the old woman, perhaps even more than it had touched Calliope and me.
"Miss Marsh, now," Hannah tried to say, "shall I put the butter that's left in the cookin'-butter jar?" And then her little features were caught here and there in the puckers49 of a very child's weeping, and she stood before us as a child might stand, crying softly without covering her face. She held out a[Pg 167] hand to the old woman, and Calliope and I let her lead her to the stove. My heart went out to the little maid for her tears and to Calliope for the sympathy in her eyes.
Grandma Hawley was talking on.
"I must 'a' got a little cold," she said plaintively50. "It always settles in my head. My head's real bad. An' now I got m' feet wet—"
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1
marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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nominally
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| 在名义上，表面地； 应名儿 | |
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seasoning
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| n.调味；调味料；增添趣味之物 | |
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Amended
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| adj. 修正的 动词amend的过去式和过去分词 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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9
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pucker
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| v.撅起，使起皱；n.（衣服上的）皱纹，褶子 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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sprightly
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| adj.愉快的，活泼的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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peeked
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| v.很快地看( peek的过去式和过去分词 )；偷看；窥视；微露出 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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durable
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| adj.持久的，耐久的 | |
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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fervently
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| adv.热烈地，热情地，强烈地 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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33
turnovers
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| n.营业额( turnover的名词复数 )；失误（篮球术语）；职工流动率；（商店的）货物周转率 | |
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slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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dab
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| v.轻触，轻拍，轻涂；n.(颜料等的)轻涂 | |
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lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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40
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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awry
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| adj.扭曲的，错的 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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43
sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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44
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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45
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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46
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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47
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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49
puckers
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的第三人称单数 ) | |
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50
plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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