Zona Gale

“ It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help, his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could really hurry up—my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature—stars and streets and processes—could work it out without us. ”

“ Home is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off, it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd like to be. We are becoming nomadic again—only this time we own the world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'
"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in and stay in spoke from her to Alex. ”

“ And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I thought:—
"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, save one: And that's that we're all human beings. ”

“ Look at your fly-paper, hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know is against the law—going to start keeping the law quick as you get these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front, full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin' the Ten Commandments like an old sheep—and being a church elder, and you might better climb porches and bust open safes. ”

“ We all knew—every woman in Friendship Village knew—how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other, helpless, that we wisht something could be done, but that was as far as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. ”

“ In all the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. ”

“ Electric light, water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences," telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all winter—fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water. With all its improvements the whole idea of modern life somehow escapes it—music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of everyday living—what does it know of them? It thinks these things are luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's delicious!'
"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always was fascinating. ”

“ First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in him—faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely. It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or two—if he deserves it—that's the most Nature lets us in for. ”

“ Them two young things out there on my porch, and all the [Pg 235] young folks of Friendship Village, they was just living—trying to find a future and a life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just letting them live, haphazard. ”

“ Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was what in the world and in all outside [Pg 168] of it, we looked at each other, dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about some more of life. ”

“ Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy. ”

“ Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what we thought it was. Them times catch all of us—when we feel like we'd been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that pointed its finger at us. ”

“ And I wondered if she thought of the thing I thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there with Chris and him and me—he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't. Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath, [Pg 258] but that reaches down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to leave. ”

“ So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'
"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love with her—unless he is the special kind—he begins thinking how much sweeter and softer and womaner she is when she's just plain gentle. And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he remembers her being—that is, unless he's special, unless he's special. Like Alex got uneasy now. ”

“ When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about those lilacs and locusts blooming—I suppose they did, but nobody caught them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas' was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides. ”

“ Heard any sound out of his folks?'
"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons answered—and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is well—he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr. Insley has him out walking.'
"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again. ”

“ We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch—she done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and used, and we had a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could. ”

“ Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses—nice, plump horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the poles ”

“ A man can love a woman for a whole collection of little dear things—and he can lose her and grieve; he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he can lose her and grieve. ”

“ It's been so nice since we've been working for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual. There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan with our enemies. ”

“ Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing' ”

“ I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the way ain't so much to try to love each other,—which other folks' peculiarities is awful in the way of,—but for us all to pitch in and love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice—and before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how peculiar, or even more so. ”

“ She was one of them women that can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless it's when I first wake up in the [Pg 260] morning; then any talking always seems like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.
"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. ”

“ It may make things run smoother to do that way, but smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about. I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what Insley done—that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think he spoke out before he knew he was going to.
"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you know—but please don't ask me.'
"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her face. ”

“ I see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like it couldn't be got along without, a woman—some women—can be commended by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.
"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." ”

“ But if, on top of one of these, he loves her because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many women that she [Pg 203] was, first and most she was the woman that was capable of sharing with him all sides of living. ”

“ Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.
"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note to 'em.'
"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.
"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.
"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'
"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed my husband, I'll never forgive you.'
"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.
"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. ”

“ In grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your own.
"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley, can you make toast? ”

“ People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice—what do you want to cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr. Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl, [Pg 49] how Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a thing out. ”

“ An' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it, bein' the—tent's here,' she could not bring herself to use that other word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none of us.'
"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to do if the men decides to let you try this?'
"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for the men to let us do nothin'. ”

“ And I could see away off to the places that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are ”

“ And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of something.
"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front of the door and looked round him.
"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw such a hearty place.'
"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins on business. ”

“ Us ladies is more or less well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought to be clean.'
"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official, 'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us. ”

“ To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And, Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom the other day—you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies. ”