Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

Exit Charity-3

The next night us ladies got down to the hall early to do the finishing touches. And on Daphne Street, on my way down, I met Bess Bones again, kind of creeping along. She’d stopped to pat the nose of a horse standing patient, hitched outside the barber-shop saloon—- I’ve seen Bess go down Daphne Street on market-days patting the nose of every horse one after another.

“Hello, Mis’ Marsh,” Bess says. “Are you comin’ down with another meeting?”

“Yes, sir, Bess,” I says, “I am.” And then a thought struck me. “Bess,” I says—able now to hold up my head like my skull intended, because I felt I could ask her—“you come on up, too—you’re invited to-night. Everybody is.”

Her face lit up, like putting the curtain up.

“Honest, can I?” she says. “I’d love to go to a meeting again—I’ve looked in the window at ’em a dozen times. I’ll get my bread and be right up.”

I tell you, Post-Office Hall looked nice. We’d got in a few rugs and plants, and the refreshment table stood acrost one corner, with a screen around the gas-plate, and the cups all piled shiny and the sandwiches covered with white fringed napkins. And about seven o’clock in come three pieces of the Friendship Village Stonehenge Band we’d got to give their services, and they begun tuning up, festive. And us ladies stood around with our hands under our white aprons; and you’d have thought it was some nice, human doings instead of just duty.

Before much of anybody else had got there, in come them we’d invited first: Absalom Ricker and Gertie, her looking real nice with a new-ironed bow to her neck, and him brushed up in Timothy’s old coat and his hair trained to a high peak. And the Bettses—Joe with his beard expected to cover up where there wasn’t a necktie and her pretending the hall was chilly so’s to keep her cloak on over whatever wasn’t underneath. And the Haskitts, him snapping and snarling at her, and her trying to hush him up by agreeing with him promiscuous. And Mis’ Henning that her husband didn’t show up. We heard afterwards he was down in the barber-shop saloon, dressed up to come but backed out after. And most everybody else come—not only the original ’leven, but some of the telephone folks, and some that the refreshment-bait always catches.

Silas come in late—he’d had to wait and distribute the mail—and when he see the Rickers and the rest of them, he come tearing over to us women in the refreshment corner.

“My dum!” he says, “look at them folks setting down there—Rickerses and Henningses and Bettses and them—how we goin’ to manage with them here? The idear of their coming to the meeting!”

“Ain’t it some their meeting, Silas?” I says. “The whole society was formed on their account. Seems to me they’ve got a right—just like in real United States Congress doings.”

“But, my dum, woman,” says Silas, “how we going to take up their cases and talk ’em over with them setting there, taking it all in? Ain’t you got no delicacy to you?” he ends up, ready to burst.

And of course, when you come to think of it, Congress always does do its real business in committees, private and delicate.

Mis’ Toplady was ready for Silas.

“You’re right about it,” she says. “We can’t do that, can we? Suppose we don’t do so very much business to-night? Let’s set some other talk goin’. We thought mebbe—do you s’pose your niece would sing for us, Silas?”

“Mebbe,” says Silas, some mollified, through being proud to sinning of his visiting niece; “but I don’t like this here—” he was going on.

“Ask her,” says Mis’ Toplady. “She’ll do it for you, Silas.”

And Silas done so, ignorant as the dead that he’d been right down managed. Then he went up stage and rapped to begin.

Well, of course I had to read the minutes, being secretary so, and I was ready, having set up half the night before to make them out. And of course, the job was some delicate; but I’d fixed them up what I thought was real nice and impersonal. Like this:

“A meeting of citizens of Friendship Village was held, ——, in Post-Office Hall, for the purpose of organizing a society to do nice things for folks. (Then I give the names of the officers.) Several plans was thought over for making presents to others and for distributing the same. Several families was thought of for membership. It was voted to have two kinds of members, honorary and active. The active pay all the dues and provide the presents, but everybody contributes what they can and will, whether work or similar. A number of ways was thought of for going to work. Things that had ought to be done was talked over. It was decided to hold monthly meetings. Meeting adjourned.”

That seemed to me to cover everything real neat, nobody ever paying much attention to the minutes anyway. I suppose that’s why they give ’em such a small, stingy name. And when Silas got to reports of committees, Mis’ Toplady was no less ready for him. She hopped right up to say that the work that had been put in her hands was all finished, the same as was ordered, and no more to be said about it. And when it come to Unfinished Business, there was me on my feet again to say that the work that had been put in my hands wasn’t finished and there’d be more to be said about it later.

Then Silas asked for New Business, and there was a pause. And all of a sudden Absalom Ricker got on to his feet with his arm still in its sling.

“Mr. President,” he says, so nice and dignified. And when Silas had done his nod, Absalom went on in his soft, unstarched voice: “It’s a real nice idear,” he says, “to get up this here club. I for one feel real glad it’s going. You ain’t got up any line around it. Nobody has to be any one thing in order to get in on it. I’ve thought for a long time there’d ought to be some place where folks could go that didn’t believe alike, nor vote alike, nor get paid alike. I’m glad I come out—I guess we all are. Now the purpose of this here club, as I understand it, is to do nice things for folks. Well, I’ve got a nice thing to propose for us to do. I’ll pitch in and help, and I guess some of the rest of us will. Soon as it comes warm weather, we could get a-hold of that elegant galvanized iron swill-wagon that ain’t in use and drive it around the town to do what it’s for. Us that don’t havework so awful steady could do it, nice as a mice. I dunno whether that comes inside what the club was intended for, but it would be doing a kind of a nice thing for folks, my way of thinking.”

Up hopped Eppleby Holcomb—Eppleby being one of those prophet men that can see faint signs sticking up their heads where there ain’t much of anything showing.

“That’s the ticket, Mr. President,” says he. “Us that don’t have horses or chickens can sense that all right. If Absalom moves it, I second it.”

“Will you help drive it around, Betts?” says Absalom. “Hank Haskitt? Ben Dole? We’re all of us home a good deal of the time—we could keep it goin’, amongst us. All right,” says he, when the men had nodded matter-of-course nods, “sure I make it a motion.”

Silas put the motion, looking some dazed. And when it carried, hearty, us ladies sitting over by the refreshment table, and that had bought the wagon, we all burst out and spatted our hands. We couldn’t help it. And everybody kind of turned around and passed some remark—and it made a real nice minute.

Then Silas spoke up from the chair kind of sour—being in the Council so, that wouldn’t run the wagon.

“The thing’s in the city tool-house now,” says he, “and it’s a good deal in the way where it is. It had ought to be put somewheres.”

Up pipes Ben Dole, kind of important and eager, and forgot to address the chair till he was half through, and then done so and ducked and flushed and went on anyhow. And the purport of his remarks was, that he could set that tank in the barn of his lot, that he didn’t have no horse for and no use of, and keep it there till spring. And I seconded what he meant, and it got itself carried, and Ben set down like he’d done a thing, same as he had done.

Then, when Silas said what was the next pleasure of the meeting, Mis’ Toplady mentioned that they needed carpet rags to make up some rugs for two-three places, and who could give some and help sew them? Mis’ Sykes said she could, and Mame and Abigail and me and some more offered up, and Mis’ Toplady wrote our names down, and, “How about you, Gertie?” says she to Gertie Ricker.

Gertie looked scairt for a minute, and then my heart jumped pleasant in its socket, for I see Absalom nudge her. Yes, sir, he nudged her to say she would, and all of a sudden I knew that he wanted his wife to be taking some part like the rest was; and she says, faint, “I guess so.”And when Mis’ Sykes asked round, Mis’ Haskitt and Mis’ Henning said they didn’t have much of any rags, but they could come and help sew the rags of them that did have.

“So do,” says Mis’ Toplady, hearty, “and we’ll meet to my house next Tuesday at two o’clock, sha’n’t we? And have a cup o’ tea.”

“What else is the pleasure of the meeting?” says Silas, balancing on his toes as chairman-like as he knew how.

Then on the second row from the back, who should we see getting up but Bess Bones. I hadn’t seen her come in and I’d forgot all about her. Her hat was on one side, and the plume that was broke in the middle was hanging idle, not doing any decorating; and I could see the other ladies thinking with one brain that ten to one she’d been drinking, and would break out singing in our very midst. But she hadn’t nor she didn’t. Only what she said went over the room shrill, as her singing voice was.

“For the land’s sakes,” says Bess, “if you’re goin’ to hold protracted meetin’s in this hall, why don’t you clean up the floor? I never see such a hole. I motion I come in an’ scrub it up. I ain’t no thousand dollars to subscribe, but a cake o’ soap’ll keep you from stickin’ to the boards.”

“Second the motion!” says I, all over me.

And even Silas broke down and smiled like he don’t think no president had ought to do. And everybody else kind of laughed and looked at each other and felt the kind of a feeling that don’t run around among folks any too often. And when Silas put the motion, kind of grudging, we all voted for it abundant. And Bess set there showing pleased, like an empty room that has had a piece of furniture got for it.

I dunno what it was that minute done to us all. I’ve often wondered since, what it was. But somehow everybody kind of felt that they all knew something each other knew, only they couldn’t rightly name it. Ab and Joe Betts, Mame Holcomb and Eppleby, Gertie and Mis’ Toplady and me—we all felt it. Everybody did, unless it was Silas and Mis’ Sykes. Silas didn’t sense nothing much but that he hoped the meeting was going to run smooth, and Mis’ Sykes—well, right in the middle of that glowing minute I see her catch sight of Mame Holcomb’s new red waist and she set there thinking of nothing but waist either with eyes or with mind.

But the rest of us was sharing a big minute. And I liked us all to be feeling that way—I ain’t never liked anything better, without it’s the Christmas feeling or the Thanksgiving feeling. And this feeling was sort of like all two. And I betted if only we could make it last—Absalom wouldn’t be getting done out of his arm’s money-value by Silas, nor the Bettses out of their decent roof by Timothy, nor they wouldn’t be no club formed to dole out charity stuff, but we would all know a better way. And things would be different. Different.

I leaned clear past three chairs and nudged Mis’ Toplady. She looked round, and I see she was just wiping her eyes on her apron-string—Mis’ Toplady never can find her handkerchief when she most wants to cry. And I never said a word—I didn’t need to—but we nodded and we both knew what we both knew: that there was a bigger thing in the room that minute than ever Silas knew or guessed when he planned out his plan. And it was what Mis’ Toplady had meant when she told him there was something “greater than these”—as most folks mean ’em.

I didn’t lose the feeling through the piece by the band that come next, nor through the selection by Silas’s niece. The music really made the feeling more so—the music, and our all setting there hearing it together, and everybody in the room being givers, and nobody givees. But when the music stopped, and while I was still feeling all glorified up, what did Mis’ Sykes do but break in, something like throwing a stone through a window.

“I should think we might as well get the club name settled to-night,” she says with her little formal pucker. “Ain’t the Charity Club that we spoke of real nice and dignified for our title?”

It was Mis’ Toplady that exploded. It just bare happened it wasn’t me, but it turned out to be her.

“Land, land,” she says, “no! Not one person in fifteen hundred knows what charity means anyhow, and everybody’d get the wrong idee. Let’s call it just its plain natural name: The Friendship Village Club. Or, The Whole World Club. Or I dunno but The Universe Club!”

I knew I wouldn’t have the sense to keep still right through things. I never do have.

“No, sir!” I says out, “oh, no sir! Universe Club ain’t big enough. For if they is any other universe anywhere maybe that might feel left out.”

Long before we had settled on any one name, I remember Mis’ Toplady come out from behind the refreshments screen and says: “Mr. President, the coffee and sandwiches has come to a boil. Can’t you peter off the meeting and adjourn it for one week?”

Which wasn’t just exactly how she meant to say it. But it seemed to come in so pat that everybody rustled, spontaneous, in spite of themselves. And us ladies begun passing the plates.

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