I used to think that Miss Liddy was really a less useful citizen than Ellen. For though Miss Liddy worked painstakingly at her dressmaking, and even dreamed over it little partial dreams, Ellen, mad or sane, made a garden, and threw little nosegays over our fences, and exercised a certain presence, latent in the rest of us, which made us momentarily gentle and in awe of our own sanity.
When, one spring morning, a week before the Friendship Carnival, she pa.s.sed down Daphne Street with her plaintive, musical "Busy, busy, busy ..." Doctor June and the young Reverend Arthur Bliss sat on Doctor June"s screened-in porch discussing a deficit in the Good Shepherd"s Orphans" Home fund for the fiscal year. Ever since the wreck of the Through, Friendship had contributed to the support of the Home,--having first understood then that the Home was its patient pensioner,--and now it was almost like a compliment that we had been appealed to for help.
Doctor June listened with serene patience to what his visitor would say.
"Tension," said the Reverend Arthur Bliss, squaring his splendid young shoulders, "tension. Warfare. We, as a church, are enormously equipped.
We have--shall we say?--the helmets of our intelligence and the swords of our wills. Why, the joy of the fight ought to be to us like that of a strong man ready to do battle, oughtn"t it--oughtn"t it?"
Doctor June, his straight white hair outlining his plump pink face, nodded; but one would have said that it was rather less at the Reverend Arthur than at his Van Houtii spiraea, which nodded back at him.
"My young friend," said Doctor June, "will you forgive me for saying that it is fairly amazing to me how the church of G.o.d continues to use the terms of barbarism? We talk of the peace that pa.s.seth understanding, and yet we keep on employing metaphors of blood-red war. What does the modern church want of a helmet and a sword, if I may ask? Even rhetorically?"
"The Christian life is an eternal warfare against the forces of sin, is it not?" asked the Reverend Arthur Bliss in surprise.
"Let me suggest," said Doctor June, "that all good life is an eternal surrender to the forces of good. There"s a difference."
The visitor from the city smiled very reverently.
"I see, sir," he said, "that you are one of those wonderful non-combatants. You are by nature sanctified--and that I can well believe."
"I am by nature a miserable old sinner," rejoined the doctor, warmly.
"Often--often I would enjoy a fine round Elizabethan oath--note how that single adjective condones my poor taste. But I hold that good is inflowing and that it possesses whom it may possess. If a man is too busy fighting, it may pa.s.s him by."
"But surely, sir," said the young clergyman, "you agree with me that a man wins his way into the kingdom of light by both a staff and a sword?"
"You will perhaps forgive me for agreeing with nothing of the sort,"
said the doctor, mildly; "I hold that a man takes his way to the light by grasping whatever the Lord puts in his hand--a hammer, a rope, a pen--and grasping it hard."
"But the ungifted--what of the ungifted?" cried the Reverend Arthur Bliss.
"In this sense, there are none," said Doctor June, briefly.
"Busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen"s thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft.
But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took some steps of her dance before the gate, he questioned his host with uplifted brows.
"A little mad," the doctor said, nodding, "like us all. She sings in the streets of a glad morning, and dances now and then. We take ours out in tangential opinions. It is nearly the same thing."
The young clergyman"s face lighted responsively at this, and then he deferentially clinched his argument.
"There is a case in point," said he. "That poor creature there--what has the Lord put in her hand?"
Doctor June looked thoughtful.
"Nothing," he declared, "for any fight. But I"m not sure that she isn"t made to be a leaven. The kingdom of G.o.d works like a leaven, you know, my dear young friend. Not like a dum-dum bullet."
"But--that poor creature. A leaven?" doubted the Reverend Arthur Bliss.
"I shouldn"t wonder," said Doctor June, "I shouldn"t wonder. I"m not so sure as I used to be that I can recognize leaven at first sight."
"Ah, that"s it!" cried his guest. "But a soldier, now, is a soldier!"
Then they smiled their lack of acquiescence, and went back to the figures for the fiscal year.
An hour later Doctor June stood alone on his garden walk, aimlessly poking about among his slips. He had done what he always did, following close on the heels of his well-established resolution never to do it again. He had pledged himself to try to raise one hundred dollars in Friendship for a pet philanthropy.
"It"s a kind of dissipation with me," he said, helplessly, and wandered down to his gate. "If I read an article about the Congo Free State or Women in India, it acts on me like brandy. I go off my head and give away my substance, and involve innocent people. But then, of course, this is different. It is always different."
Then he heard Ellen"s little song again. "Busy, busy, busy ..." she sang, and came round the corner from the town, catching at the lowest branches of the curb elms and laughing a little. At Doctor June"s gate she halted and shook some lilacs at him.
"Here," she said, "put some on your coat for a patch on your heart so"s the break won"t show. Ain"t the Lord made the sun shine down this morning? Did you know there"s a Carnival comin" to town?"
"Like enough, Ellen," said Doctor June. "Like enough."
"_Is_ one," she persisted. "They said about it in the Post-Office--I heard "em. Dancin", an" parrots, an" jumpin" dogs."
He stood looking at her thoughtfully as she arranged her flowers, singing under breath.
"Ellen," he said, "will you tell Miss Liddy a few of us are going to meet here in my yard to-morrow afternoon, to talk over some money-raising? And ask her to come?"
"I will," Ellen sang it, "I will an" I will. Did you mean me to come, too?" she broke off wistfully.
"My stars, yes!" said Doctor June. "You"re going to come early and help me, aren"t you? I took that for granted."
"Here"s your lilacs," said Ellen, tossing him a nosegay. "I"ll tell Liddy while she"s eatin". Liddy don"t like me to talk much when she"s workin". But when she eats I can talk, an" I"ll tell her then."
She went on, singing, and Doctor June shook his head.
"I don"t know but Mr. Bliss is right," he said, "though I hope I can keep my doubts to myself and not brag about "em, just to be the style.
But it does look as if poor Ellen Ember came into the world empty-handed. As if the Lord didn"t give her much of anything to work _with_."
Summons to a meeting to talk over money-raising is, in Friendship, like the call to festivity in a different life. The cause never greatly matters. Interests appear eclectically to range from ice to coral. For let the news get about that there is to be a bazaar for China, a home bakery sale for the missionary station at Trebizond, or a j.a.panese tea for the Friendship cemetery fund, and we all sew or bake or lend dishes or sell tickets with the same infinity of zeal. The enterprise in hand absorbs our sense of the ultimate object; as when, after three days of hand-to-hand battle to wrest money for the freedmen from the patrons of a Kirmess at the old roller-skating rink, dear Mis" Amanda, secretary and door-tender, handed over our $64.85 with the wondering question:--
"What do they mean by Freegman, anyway? What country is it they live in?"
It was no marvel that Doctor June"s garden was filled, that yellow afternoon, with many eager for action. Some of us knew that there was an Orphans" Home fund deficit; but more of us knew only that we were to "talk over some money-raising." I remember how, from the garden seat against the spiraea, the doctor faced us, all scattered about the antlered walk and its triangle of green, erect on golden oak and bright velvet chairs from within doors. And when he had told us of the shortage to which we were party, instantly the talk emptied into channels of possible pop-corn social, chicken-pie supper, rummage sale, art and loan exhibit, Old Settlers" Entertainment, and so on. After which Doctor June rose, and stood touching thoughtfully at the leaves which grew nearest, while he essayed to turn our minds from chicken-pot-pie-part-veal, and bib-ap.r.o.ns, to the eternal verities.
"My friends," he said, "isn"t there a better way? Let us, this time, give of our hearts" love to the little children of G.o.d, instead of buying pies and freezing ice cream in His name."
There was, of course, an instant"s hush in the garden. We were not used to paradoxes, and we felt as concave images must feel when they first look upon the world. It was as amazing as if we had been told that G.o.d grieves with us instead of afflicting us, as we held.
"None of us has much money to give," Doctor June went on; "let us take the way that lies nearest our hand, and make a little money. G.o.d never permitted any normal human creature to come into His world unprovided with some means of making it better. Only, let us get outside our bazaar and chicken-pie faculties. Now what can we each do?"
We sat still for a little, tentatively murmuring; and then Mis"
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss stood up by the sweet-alyssum urn.
"Speakin" of what we can do," she said, "doin" ain"t easy. Not when you"re well along in years. Your ways seem to stiffen up some. When I was a girl, I could "a" been quite an elocutionist if I could "a" had lessons. I had a reg"lar born sense o" givin" gestures. But I never took. An" now I declare I don"t know of anything I could do. It"s the same way, I guess, with quite a number of us."
Mis" Postmaster Sykes was in the arm-chair, and she sat still, queenly.