the difficulty with a june day is that you can never get near enough to it. this month comes within few houses, and if you want it you must go out to it. when you are within doors, knowing that out-of-doors it is june, the urge to be out there with it is resistless. but though you wade in green, steep in sun, breast wind, and glory in them all, still the day itself eludes you. it would seem, in june, that there should be a specific for the malady of being oneself, so that one might get to be a june day outright. however, if one were oneself more and more, might not one finally become a june day?...
or something of this sort. i am quoting, as nearly as may be, from the book of our youth, your youth and mine. always the book of youth will open at a page like this. and occasionally it is as if we turned back and read there and made a path right away through the page.
this morning a rose-breasted grosbeak wakened me, singing on a bough of box-elder so close to my window[pg 16] that the splash of rose on his throat almost startled me. it was as if i ought not to have been looking. and to turn away from out-of-doors was like leaving some one who was saying something. but as soon as i stepped into the day i perceived my old problem: the difficulty with a june day is that you can never get near enough.
i stood for a little at the front gate trying soberly to solve the matter—or i stood where the front gate should have been; for in our midland american villages we have few fences or hedges, and, alas, no stone walls. though undoubtedly this lack comes from an insufficient regard for privacy, yet this negative factor i am inclined to condone for the sake of the positive motive. and this i conceive to be that we are wistful of more ample occupation than is commonly contrived by our fifty-feet village lots, and so we royally add to our "yards" the sidewalk and the planting space and the road and as much of our neighbour's lawn as our imagination can annex. there seems to me to be in this a certain charming pathos; as it were, a survival in us of the time when we had only to name broad lands our own and to stay upon them in order to make them ours in very fact. and now it is as if this serene pushing back of imaginary borders were in reality an appending, a kind of spiritual taking up of a claim.
[pg 17]
how to get nearer to june? i admit that it is a question of the veriest idler. but what a delightful company of these questions one can assemble. as, how to find one's way to a place that is the way it seems away across a meadow. how to meet enough people who hear what one says in just the way that one means it. how to get back at will those fugitive moments when one almost knows ... what it is all about. and with this question the field of the idler becomes the field of the wise man; and, indeed, if one idles properly—or rather, if the proper person idles—the two fields are not always on opposite sides of the road. to idle is by no means merely to do nothing. it is an avocation, a calling away, nay, one should say, a piping away. to idle is to inhibit the body and to let the spirit keep on. not every one can idle. i know estimable people who frequently relax, like chickens in the sun; but i know only a few who use relaxation as a threshold and not as a goal, and who idle until the hour yields its full blessing.
i wondered if to idle at adventure might not be the way to june, so i went out on the six o'clock street in somewhat the spirit in which another might ride the greenwood. almost immediately i had an encounter, for i came on my neighbour in her garden. not my neighbour who lives on the other side of me, and who is a big and obvious deacon,[pg 18] with a family of a great many light gowns; but my neighbour. she was watering her garden. these water rules and regulations of the village are among its spells. to look at the members of the water commission one would never suspect them of romance. but if they have it not, why have they named from five until nine o'clock the only morning hours when one may use the city water for one's lawn and garden? i insist that it cannot be a mere regard for the municipal resources, and that the commissioners must see something of the romance of getting up before five o'clock to drench one's garden, and are providing for the special educational value of such a custom. or, if i do not believe this, i wish very much that i did, with the proper grounds.
to tell the truth, however, i do not credit even my neighbour with feeling the romance of the hour and of her occupation. she is a still woman of more than forty, who does not feel a difference between her flower and her vegetable gardens, but regards them both as a part of her life in the kind of car-window indifference and complacency of certain travellers. she raises foxgloves and parsley, and the sun shines over all. i must note a strange impression which my neighbour gives me: she has always for me an air of personal impermanence. i have the fancy, amounting to a sensation, that she is where she is for just a moment, and that she must[pg 19] rush back and be at it again. i do not know at what. but whether i see her in church or at a festival, i have always all i can do to resist saying to her, "how did you get away?" it was so that she was watering her flowers; as if she were intending at any moment to hurry off to get breakfast or put up the hammock or mend. and yet before she did so she told me, who was a willing listener, a motion or two of the spirit of the village.
there is, i observe, a nicety of etiquette here, about the not-quite-news, not-quite-gossip shared with strangers and semi-strangers. the rules seem to be:—
strangers shall be told only the pleasant occurrences and conditions.
half strangers may discuss the unpleasant matters which they themselves have somehow heard, but only pleasant matters may be added by accretion.
the rest of society may say whatever it "has a mind." but this mind, as i believe, is not harsh, since nobody ever gossips except to people who gossip back.
"mis' toplady told me last night that calliope marsh is coming home for the java entertainment, next week," my neighbour imparted first. and this was the best news that she could have given me.
it has been a great regret to me that this summer calliope is not in the village. she has gone to the[pg 20] city to nurse some distant kinswoman more lonely than she, and until ill-health came, long forgetful of calliope. but she is to come back now and again, to this and to that, for the village interests are all her own. i have never known any one in whom the tribal sense is so persistently alive as in calliope.
i asked my neighbour what this java entertainment would be, which was to give back calliope, and she looked her amazement that i did not know. it would be, it appeared, one of those great fairs which the missionary society is always projecting and carrying magnificently forward.
"it's awful feet-aching work," said my neighbour, reflectively; "but honestly, calliope seems to like it. i donno but i do, too. the sodality meant to have one when they set out to pave daphne street, but it turned out it wasn't needed. well, big affairs like that makes it seem as if we'd been born into the whole world and not just into friendship village."
my neighbour told me that a new public library had been opened in a corner of the post-office store, and that "a great crowd" was drawing books, though for this she herself cannot vouch, since the library is only open saturday evenings, and "saturday," she says with decision, "is a bad night." it is, in fact, i note, very difficult to find a free night in the village, save only tuesday. monday, because of its obvious duties and incident fatigue, is as [pg 21]impossible as sunday; wednesday is club day; thursday "is prayer-meeting"; friday is sacred to church suppers and entertainments and the ladies' aid society; and saturday is invariably denominated a bad night and omitted without question. we are remote from society, but tuesday is literally our only free evening.
"of course it won't be the same with you about books," my neighbour admits. "you can send your girl down to get a book for you. but i have to be home to get out the clean clothes. how's your girl going to like the country?" she asked.
i am to have here in the village, i find, many a rebuke for habits of mine which lag behind my theories. for though i try to solve my share of a tragic question by giving to my swedish maid, elfa, the self-respect and the privilege suited to a human being dependent on me, together with ways of comfort and some leisure, yet i find the homely customs of the place to have accomplished more than my careful system. and though, when i took her from town i scrupulously added to the earnings of my little maid, i confess that it had not occurred to me to wonder whether or not she would like friendship village. we seem so weary-far from the conditions which we so facilely conceive. especially, i seem far. i am afraid that i engaged elfa in the first place with less attention to her economic fitness than[pg 22] that she is so trim and still and wistful, with such a peculiarly winning upward look; and that her name is elfa. i told my neighbour that i did not know yet, whether elfa would like it here or not; and for refuge i found fault with the worms on the rose bushes. also i made a note in my head to ask elfa how she likes the country. but the spirit of a thing is flown when you make a note of it in your head. how does elfa like the town, for that matter? i never have asked her this, either.
"she'll be getting married on your hands, anyway," my neighbour observed; "the ladies here say that's one trouble with trying to keep a hired girl. they will get married. but i say, let 'em."
at least here is a matter in which my theory, like that of my neighbour's, outruns those of certain folk of both town and village. for i myself have heard women complain of their servants marrying and establishing families, and deplore this shortsightedness in not staying where there is "a good home, a nice room, plenty to eat, and all the flat pieces sent to the laundry."
"speaking of books," said my neighbour, "have you seen nicholas moor?"
"i see almost no new books," i told her guiltily.
"me either," she said; "i don't mean he's a book. he's a boy. nicholas moor—that does a little writin' himself? i guess you will see him. he'll[pg 23] be bringin' some of his writing up to show you. he took some to the new school principal, i heard, and to the invalid that was here from the city. he seems to be sort of lonesome, though he has got a good position. he's interested in celluloid and he rings the catholic bell. nicholas must be near thirty, but he hasn't even showed any signs."
"signs?" i hazarded.
"of being in love," she says simply. and i have pondered pleasantly on this significant ellipsis of hers which takes serenely for granted the basic business of the world. her elision reminds me of the delicate animism of the japanese which says, "when the rice pot speaks with a human voice, then the demon's name is kanjo." one can appraise a race or an individual by the class of things which speech takes for granted, love or a demon or whatever it be.
and apropos of "showing signs," do i remember liva vesey and timothy toplady, jr.? i am forced to confess that i remember neither. i recall, to be sure, that the topladys had a son, but i had thought of him as a kind of qualifying clause and it is difficult to conceive of him as the subject of a new sentence. when i hear of liva vesey i get her confused with a pink gingham apron and a pail of buttermilk which used sometimes to pass my house with liva combined. fancy that pink gingham and that pail becoming a person! and my [pg 24]neighbour tells me that the qualifying clause and the pink gingham are "keeping company," and perhaps are to determine the cut of indeterminate clauses and aprons, world without end.
"the young folks will couple off," says my neighbour; "and," she adds, in a manner of spontaneous impression, "i think it's nice. and it's nice for the whole family, too. i've seen families that wouldn't ever have looked at each other come to be real friends and able to see the angels in each other just by the young folks pairing off. this whole town's married crisscross and kittering, family into family. i like it. it kind o' binds the soil."
my neighbour told me of other matters current in the village, pleasant commonplaces having for her the living spirit which the commonplace holds in hostage. ("i'm breathing," little child soberly announced to me that first day of our acquaintance. and i wonder why i smiled?) my neighbour slowly crossed her garden and i followed on the walk—these informal colloquies of no mean length are perfectly usual in the village and they do not carry the necessity for an invitation within the house or the implication of a call. the relations of hostess and guest seem simply to be suspended, and we talk with the freedom of spirits met in air. is this not in its way prophetic of the time when we shall meet, burdened of no conventions or upholstery or[pg 25] perhaps even words, and there talk with the very freedom of villagers? meanwhile i am content with conventions, and passive amid upholstery. but i do catch myself looking forward.
suddenly my neighbour turned to me with such a startled, inquiring manner that i sent my attention out as at an alarm to see what she meant. and then i heard what i had not before noted: a thin, wavering line of singing, that had begun in the street beyond our houses, and now floated inconsequently to us, lifting, dipping, wandering. i could even hear the absurd words.
"my mary anna mary, what you mean i never know.
you don't make me merry, very, but you make me sorry, oh—"
the "oh" prolonged, undulatory, exploring the air.
to say something was like interrupting my neighbour's expression; so i waited, and,
"it's old cary," she explained briefly. "when he does that it's like something hurts you, ain't it?"
i thought that this would be no one of my acquaintance, and i said so, but tentatively, lest i should be forgetting some inherent figure of the village.
"he's come here in the year," she explained—and, save about the obvious import of old cary's maudlin song, she maintained that fine, tribal reticence of hers. "except for the drinking," she even said,[pg 26] "he seems to be a quiet, nice man. but it's a shame—for peter's sake. peter cary," she added, like a challenge, "is the brainiest young man in this town, say what you want."
on which she told me something of this young superintendent of the canning factory who has "tried it in nebraska," and could not bear to leave his father here, "this way," and has just returned. "he works hard, and plays the violin, and is making a man of himself generally," she told me; "don't miss him." and i have promised that i will try not to miss peter cary.
"they live out towards the cemetery way," she added, "him and his father, all alone. peter'll be along by here in a minute on his way to work—it's most quarter to. i set my husband down to his breakfast and got up his lunch before i come out—i don't have my breakfast till the men folks get out of the way."
i never cease to marvel at these splendid capabilities which prepare breakfasts, put up lunches, turn the attention to the garden, and all, so to speak, with the left hand; ready at any moment to enter upon the real business of life—to minister to the sick or bury the dead, or conduct a town meeting or a church supper or a birth. they have a kind of goddess-like competence, these women. at any of these offices they arrive, lacking the cloud, it is[pg 27] true, but magnificently equipped to settle the occasion. in crises of, say, deafness, they will clap a hot pancake on a friend's ear with an ?sculapian savoir faire, for their efficiencies combine those of lost generations with all that they hear of in this, in an open-minded eclecticism. with puritans and foresters and courtiers in our blood, who knows but that we have, too, the lingering ichor of gods and goddesses? oh—"don't you wish you had?" what a charming peculiarity it would be to be descended from a state of immortality as well as to be preparing for it, nay, even now to be entered upon it!
in a few moments after that piteous, fuddled song had died away on the other street, peter cary came by my neighbour's house. he was a splendid, muscular figure in a neutral, belted shirt and a hat battered quite to college exactions, though i am sure that peter did not know that. i could well believe that he was making a man of himself. i have temerity to say that this boy superintendent of a canning factory looked as, in another milieu, shelley might have looked, but so it was. it was not the first time that i have seen in such an one the look, the eyes with the vision and the shadow. i have seen it in the face of a man who stood on a step-ladder, papering a wall; i have seen it in a mason who looked up from the foundation that he [pg 28]mortared; i have seen it often and often in the faces of men who till the soil. i was not surprised to know that peter cary "took" on the violin. the violin is a way out (for that look in one's eyes), as, for nicholas moor, i have no doubt, is the ringing of the catholic bell. and i am not prepared to say that celluloid, and wall-paper, and mortar, and meadows, and canneries,—run under good conditions,—may not be a way out as well. at all events, the look was still in peter's face.
peter glanced briefly at my neighbour, running the risk of finding us both looking at him, realized the worst, blushed a man's brown blush, and nodded and smiled after he had looked away from us.
"you see this grass?" said my neighbour. "peter keeps it cut, my husband don't get home till so late. we're awful fond of peter."
there is no more tender eulogy. and i would rather have that said of me in the village than in any place i know. no grace of manner or dress or mind can deceive anybody. they are fond of you or they are not, and i would trust their reasons for either.
my neighbour's husband came out the front door at that moment, and he and peter, without greeting, went on together. her husband did not look toward us, because, in the village, it seems not to be a husband and wife ceremonial to say good-by in the morning. i often fall wondering how it is in[pg 29] other places. is it possible that men in general go away to work without the consciousness of family, of themselves as going forth on the common quest? is it possible that women see them go and are so unaware of the wonder of material life that they do not instance it in, at least, good-by? one would think that even the female bear in the back of the cave must growl out something simple when her lord leaves her in the hope of a good kill.
and when the two men had turned down the brick walk, the maple leaves making a come-and-go of shadows and sun-patterns on their backs, my neighbour looked at me with a smile—or, say, with two-thirds of a smile—as if her vote to smile were unanimous, but she were unwilling by it to impart too much.
"it's all miggy with peter," she said, as if she were mentioning a symptom.
"miggy?" i said with interest—and found myself nodding to this new relationship as to a new acquaintance. and i was once more struck with the precision with which certain simple people and nearly all great people discard the particularities and lay bare their truths. could any amount of elegant phrasing so reach the heart of the thing and show it beating as did, "it's all miggy with peter"?
"yes," my neighbour told me, "it's been her with him ever since he come here."
[pg 30]
assuredly i thought the better of miggy for this; and,
"is it all peter with miggy?" i inquired, with some eagerness.
land knows, my neighbour thought, and handed me the hose to hold while she turned off the water at the hydrant. i remember that a young robin tried to alight on the curving spray just as the water failed and drooped.
"i like to get a joke on a robin that way," said my neighbour, and laughed out, in a kind of pleasant fellowship with jokes in general and especially with robins. "it made miggy's little sister laugh so the other day when that happened," she added. then she glanced over at me with a look in her face that i have not seen there before.
"land," she said, "this is the time of day, after my husband goes off in the morning, when i wish i had a little young thing, runnin' round. now almost more than at night. well—i don't know; both times."
i nodded, without saying anything, my eyes on a golden robin prospecting vainly among the green mulberries. i wish that i were of those who know what to say when a door is opened like this to some shut place.
"well," said my neighbour, "now i'll bake up the rest of the batter. want a pink?"
[pg 31]
thus tacitly excused—how true her instinct was, courteously to put the three fringed pinks in my hand to palliate her leaving!—i have come back to my house and my own breakfast.
"elfa," said i, first thing, "do you think you are going to like the country?"
my little maid turned to me with her winning upward look.
"no'm," she shocked me by saying. and there was another door, opened into another shut place; and i did not know what to say to that either.
but i am near to my neighbour; and, in a manner to which elfa's trimness and wistfulness never have impressed me, near to elfa herself, and i am near, near to the village. as i left the outdoors just now, all the street was alive: with men and girls going to work, women opening windows, a wagon or two in from a caledonia farm, a general, universal, not to say cosmic air of activity and coffee. all the little houses, set close together up and down the street, were like a friendly porch party, on a long, narrow veranda, where folk sit knee to knee with an avenue between for the ice-cream to be handed. all the little lawns and gardens were disposed like soft green skirts, delicately embroidered, fragrant, flowing.... as i looked, it seemed to me that i could hear the faint hum of the village talk—in every house the intimate, revealing confidences of the family, quick[pg 32] with hope or anxiety or humour or passion, animated by its common need to live. and along the street flooded the sun, akin to the morning quickening in many a heart.
the day has become charged for me with something besides daylight, something which no less than daylight pervades, illumines, comes to meet me at a thousand points. i wonder if it can be that, unaware, i did get near to june?
