Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

“ I tried awfully hard to love Ezra. I did honestly, and I did get real fond of him, but you can’t exactly love anybody that won’t be lovable. You can feel sorry and kind and everything like that, but loving’s different. I guess God’s the only one that can go right ahead and love everybody no matter what they’re like. It doesn’t make any difference about sinners. I could love sinners just as quick as scat, if they were nice sinners that would love back; but I’m afraid God will have to do the loving with Ezra. ”

“ The comforting words rang pleasantly in his ears a half hour later when he plunged into the woods behind the shack and took the trail leading up the steep slope of Pine Knob hill.
The day had been hot for June and the dim cool greenness closed around him deliciously as he made his way through depths of hemlock shadow and gold-decked shallows of birch-filtered light. There was a faint stir of wind in the branches, a rustle of light foot and lighter wing in the hidden places of bough and undergrowth. ”

“ Benderby wouldn’t allow Pegeen to help with the dishes.
“Other nights, maybe, if you want to, but not to-night,” she insisted. So, as the afterglow faded and the stars came out to look at a blithe new moon Archibald and Peg sat once more on their familiar doorstep. For a time they were both silent, listening to the night noises, watching the play of moonlight and starlight across the meadow and the clutching shadows on the wood’s edge.
“I wonder if Ezra took his medicine after supper,” Pegeen said suddenly. “I’d most forgotten about him. Being terribly happy’s sort of selfish, isn’t it?” ”

“ And the more Archibald went the Valley ways, the more he realized that, in one form or another, neighboring was the great game.—There in the valley—out beyond—wherever men and women worked and hoped and loved and suffered, there was call for players stout of heart, strong of will, great of soul, wise of brain. ”

“ So the germs have downed Ezra at last! Nature does get back at a man in time. Lord, what a hole!”
He went briskly through the front room, growling anathemas at the foulness, and bent over the tossing, muttering man on the bed with as lively an interest as though the patient had not been the black sheep of the Valley.
A body was a body to Dr. Fullerton, and his business was saving bodies. The harder the battle, the greater his interest and enjoyment. ”

“ She must be rather a wonderful Smiling Lady. Where does she live?”
“Right down the other side of Pine Knob. You can go over or around, but it’s prettiest over. There’s a spring up on top with pine trees around it and a place where you can look way out ’n’ out ’n’ out. She goes up there sometimes to watch the sunset. My, but she does love things.”
“And people?” questioned Archibald, idly.
“Well, I should say! She’s the lovingest thing. Sometimes I think the Loving Lady’d be a better name than the Smiling Lady, but I guess it’s all the same thing. Loving makes smiling, don’t it?” ”

“ He hung the hammock in the living-room where it served in lieu of bed, knocked up some shelves for books, set an easel by the north window, built a fire on the hearth, pulled the willow chair up in front of it, lighted his pipe, and was at home—but not at peace. The place was haunted by ghosts he had brought with him. Beneath the night noises of wood and meadow he heard the muffled throb and roar of city streets. In every corner lurked a shadowy face—an alluring, heartbreaking face, with lying promises in its eyes and lying smiles on its lips. ”

“ I knew it would all the time ’n’ Miss Moran said:
“ ‘Peg, everybody knows how to smile at the world, but some people are dreadfully out of practice.’ She said when you found out there were other folks in the world beside yourself maybe you’d smile at them, and now you’re beginning to do it. When you get real well acquainted with everybody here in the Valley, I shouldn’t wonder if you’d simply grin. There’s Mrs. Ransom and Sally on their side stoop, watching for us!” ”

“ And then there was Meredith. Meredith and he were friends now.
The man who could not have his chocolate cake turned and went out through the kitchen door into the friendly, sheltering dark.
The house was ablaze with lights. Through the open windows came a stream of sound, laughter, chatter of voices, the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes, the music of the phonograph, the shuffle and tap of dancing feet. The Valley was neighboring happily, whole-heartedly, as it never had neighbored before ”

“ And when Ellen had moved a wicker table to a place before the fire, covered it with the whitest of cloths and set upon it a tray on which a teapot steamed merrily and a salad nestled temptingly among cresses and a covered muffin dish made promises and the plum jam glowed colorfully, the girl in the big wicker chair across the table from Archibald was all cheerfulness.
“Peggy gives you dinners perhaps?” she queried. “Women folk fall into picnicing ways when there are no men about the house to be considered, and I never let meals interfere with sunsets, so I have my tea whenever I come in. ”

“ And it’s so easy to think too much about your neighbors’ business when you haven’t anything else to entertain you, and to magnify little slights and offenses when you haven’t more important things to occupy your mind. And it’s hard to live up to standards when there’s no one to appreciate—and natural beauty doesn’t give you much joy, if you’ve always been doing hard, grinding work in the midst of it. Gracious! I only wonder that most of the country folk are such plumb dears as they are.”
“But they garden and neighbor,” prompted Archibald. ”

“ Nora Moran asked Archibald one afternoon, when he and she met in the Village store, while Peg waited outside on Zip.
“She was always lovely.”
The Smiling Lady laughed at his quick protest.
“Always,” she agreed, “but she’s getting lovelier by the minute. One of these days she will be wonderfully beautiful. There’s an exquisite delicacy about her.”
“But she’s perfectly strong and well.”
Archibald’s voice held a note of alarm.
“Absolutely. I didn’t mean that she looked frail—but she’ll never be the buxom, dashing kind. Her beauty won’t jump at you. It will haunt you. ”

“ I had some poppies once though, perfectly wonderful poppies. Miss Moran gave me the seeds. I hadn’t ever planted any flower seeds at all till one day I was down at her house and she was working in the flower garden and let me help. I sowed some seed of those great big blue larkspur—delphiniums she calls them, but I think larkspur’s nicest, don’t you?—and some poppies too. Poppies have got the cunningest baby seeds that you don’t dare cover up warm at all for fear you’ll choke them to death. ”