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A Long-Distance Call From JimAnd how it shook up Centerville
TO ELLA NORA ANDREWS, calm, unruffled, serenely humming a gay little tune,gathering her school things together—her "Teacher's Manual of PrimaryMethods," a box of water-colors, and a big bunch of scarlet-flamedsumac—came the sound of the telephone.
Ella Nora, in her crisp blue linen school suit, shifted her workingparaphernalia and took down the receiver. Fate is a veritable chameleon forchanging shape and color. This morning she had entered the fat, puffy person ofasthmatic Mrs. Thomas Tuttle, and was saying:
"That you, Ella? Have you heard the news? Jim Sheldon is coming here thelast of the week. He'll be here on Number Eight, Friday afternoon. And getready now for the climax—he's bringing his bride. Wha' say? Yes, hiswife. He telephoned Pa from Chicago—imagine anybody telephoning clearfrom Chicago, Ella! He's waited long enough to get married, I must say. He'sthirty-six, if he's a day. I know, because my Eddie's just two months older.Well, we must do something for them, and we'll have to get busy right away.Wha' say? All right; I'll ask Addie Smith and Minnie Adams and Mis'Meeker—she's forever thinking of things to eat—" And on and on wentthe rasping, wheezing voice of Fate, while, through the window, Ella watchedthe red and yellow and orange zinnias in the back yard fade and run togetherinto a smudge of prismatic coloring.
Ella hung up the receiver and leaned against the window. There was apounding in her throat, and she couldn't seem to concentrate her thoughts. Thezinnias had brightened somewhat, but were still dancing diabolically with thecosmos behind them. From the chaotic jumble of her mind the naked, leeringtruth picked itself out: It had happened at last—Jim was married. Bywhich statement one gathers, and rightfully, that Ella had in some indefinableway been prepared for the news she had just heard.
In truth, Ella had been preparing for it for years. She was thirty-one now,and from her twentieth year she had been working consistently on an elaboratedefense system that surrounded her heart.
Patiently she had dug the trench of an apparent and complete absorption inher school work. She had piled around it countless sand bags ofmere-friendliness toward Jim, put up an intricate entanglement of the barb wireof her sharp wit, and over it all painted the deceiving screen of her evidentjoy-in-her-freedom. But down under all this complicated protective system wasThe-Thing-in-Her-Heart, palpitating, vital, strong, held a prisoner for yearsby the stern edict of her mind, doing penance for having been unwise enough togo wandering out into No Man's Land of Dreams.
ELLA waited while the zinnias separated themselves from their background. Ithad happened. Of course! Hadn't she expected it? Predicted it? James WarrenSheldon, on the staff of an Eastern newspaper, war correspondent, nationallyknown this past year, was no more a part of land-locked Centerville now thanthe moon or the North Sea. It had been three years since he had last comebreezing into town—tall, lean, brown, virile. Not a day of that shortvacation had they missed being together—Ella caught her breath. So thiswas what Tennyson meant, was it, when he said a sorrow's crown of sorrow wasremembering happier days?
The first school-bell rang. When Duty takes Misery by the shoulder and saysgruffly, "Oh, cut it! Come on!" so much the better for Misery.
Ella went quickly down the narrow brick walk, leaf strewn now with the redand gold of the Mid-West maple trees, and turned toward the schoolhouse whereshe had taught for, it seemed to her now, a half-century. Down the street alittle girl disentangled her pipe-stem legs from the picket-fence and slipped amoist hand into Ella's.
"Miss-Andrews, where do all the grasshoppers go?"
"I don't know, dear."
Back in the past was Ella's mind, down Childhood Road. She was only eightwhen Jim Sheldon, a big thirteen-year-old boy, newly orphaned, had come to liveacross the alley with his aunt and uncle and their little baby, Grace. Foryears Jim had meant nothing to her but a dreadful scourge, to be borne with asmuch Christian fortitude as the boils of Job. One of his delicate marks ofattention had been a way of dropping unexpectedly out of trees with a weirdshriek just at dusk. Ella smiled involuntarily, and the little girl, seeing it,hugged her teacher's hand to her cheek:
"Miss-sAndrews, can you make white cookies out of brown dough?"
"No, dear."
Then there had followed Jim's high-school years, in which he had meantnothing to her, and she had been as unnoticed by Jim as the stilts orvelocipede he had discarded. He had gone away to college, and later she to ateachers' training-school, and one unforgettable summer they had accidentallydiscovered that they held more in common than with anyone else in dull oldCenterville. Then Mother died, and from teaching in Capitol City, where she wasmeeting new people and having new experiences, she had come back home to keephouse for Father, and to teach in the same old dingy building where she herselfhad studied.
"Miss-sAndrews, my birthday's next July, or April—I forget which."
"That's nice, dear."
BUT Jim, after a few months on the Centerville "Enterprise," had gone outinto the world, the journalistic world, and pushed rapidly ahead. Severalimportant commissions had been his. He had written her once from Cuba, and oncefrom Japan. A sudden bitterness seized her, that it could be so—Jim to gowhere he would and she to stay in stagnant old Centerville.
"Miss-sAndrews, do skunks live in this town?"
"Oh, no, dear!"
This last year the whole country had read Jim's war reports, and at rareintervals she had received a letter from him, interesting and friendly. In thelast one he had said he had something to tell her when he got back. Well, thiswas it! And she had wondered—had let herself think that it mightmean—A wave of fury, a sense of the loss of her self-respect, swept overher, that she should have allowed her heart to go philandering.
They were at the schoolhouse now. Ella took off her wide blue hat and hungit in the little closet. Then she went over to the corner blackboard and wrotethe memory verse for the day:
Goldenrod, what have I learned from you? To be cheerful and loving, gentleand true.
"Hypocrite!" she said savagely.
THE other four women were at Mrs. Tom Tuttle's when Ella arrived. The Tuttlehouse was very new and displayed a great deal of yellow pine with a varnishsmell. Some of the details of the new furnishings, including several luridfruit pieces in oil, jumped at Ella as she sat down in the shining depths of agolden-oak rocker. Among other bric-à-brac, a painted celluloid collarbox of Tom Tuttle's, that had evidently been thought too artistic to berelegated to a mere bedroom, held an advantageous place on the glossycolonnade. No better-hearted people than Centerville held were to be found inthe whole world admitted Ella to herself as she gazed, fascinated, at thereceptacle which had wandered out of Tom Tuttle's boudoir. But why did so manyof them have such atrocious taste?
There was immediate discussion as to what form of social event Jim'sentertainment should take. Mrs. Tom Tuttle wanted an evening party, with allthe men, women and children in town.
"I just feel like we couldn't do enough for Jim Sheldon and his bride," shewheezed, her chin trembling and her eyes filling with tears. Emotion of anydescription—joy, pathos, surprise, sorrow, it made nodifference—always set her tear ducts to working.
Mrs. Meeker wanted a real supper with long tables and everybody sitting downat once. To Mrs. Meeker, earth held no sorrow that food could not heal, andlife's sweetest moment was the one in which some neighbor said, "I just knowthis is Mis' Meeker's salad."
"It will be late afternoon when they get here," she argued, "and I'll betsupper would taste mighty good to 'em."
"Supper!" Minnie Adams was witheringly scornful. "Jim Sheldon eats dinner atnight now."
"Well, I don't care if he does! I can remember the time when he et a goodold-fashioned supper. And it's awful silly to call it dinner. 'Breakfast,dinner and supper, created He them.' I believe I could find them very words inthe Bible if I set out to hunt."
"What would we serve if we had—an evening meal?" Addie Smith askedhurriedly. Addie was little and pretty and, like many another ultra-pacifist,was mentally a nonentity, the echo of an echo. But she was the doctor's wifeand she had more cut glass and china than anyone else in town.
"Potatoes for one thing." Mrs. Meeker was on familiar ground. "I've got anew way; I learned it from Jennie Rhodes when she visited me, and I intended tospring it on the Kensington; but I'm like Mis' Tuttle, nothing's too good forJim Sheldon and his bride. First, you mash 'em—"
"Jim and his bride?" Ella inquired languidly.
"Oh, you go on, Ella!—and then you put 'em on the plate with anice-cream mold, and there they stand up just as cute, like little pyramids witha clove at the top."
"A clove! Why, a clove? Why not a clothespin, or a prune? Is there a cloveon the top of the pyramids?" Ella's apparently unquenchable spirits wererising.
Minnie Adams insisted on a reception in the town hall. Minnie was very talland seemed to get thinner toward the top. Even her neck was larger at the baseand very long, as though Nature in an absent-minded mood had forgotten what shewas doing and gone on making neck.
"BUT, Minnie," Ella interposed diplomatically, "a reception is so stiff. Atleast it would be stiff for informal Centerville people to give."
"Oh, I don't think so—and it would show her that we know how to dothings right. She's probably a New York girl—or she may be French, forall we know. Good land! I hope not. We'd have to motion out everything we hadto say. Anyway, a reception wouldn't be stiff when we got it to goinggood."
"How do you stop it when you do get it to going?" Mrs. Tuttle wanted toknow.
"Maybe it would be like Mrs. Whitman in her new electric car over atGreenwood," Ella suggested. "She couldn't stop it, you know. She went round andround the garage all afternoon calling out to the men every time she went by.And they couldn't make out what she said, and thought she was just showingoff."
Everyone laughed. Ella, apparently, was the gayest of all.
"It would be nice to have a picture of Jim up," Addie Smith suggestedtimidly. As it was Addie's first contribution to the general reserve fund ofideas it should have been met with more respect, but it only called forth fromElla: "Horrors! Addie! You'll be wanting to paste his war articles up on thewalls of the hall."
"Speaking of the hall," Mrs. Meeker put in, "I think a lot of Japaneseumbrellas and lanterns could be fixed to cover the walls, they're sodingy—"
"And, maybe, we could get Sam Fong to come up and stand under them foratmosphere." It was Ella again, making the others laugh. "Thank goodness, I'llalways be like that," she thought to herself, as though she had just made adiscovery. "Outside I'll always be gay and silly."
MINNIE ADAMS won. It was to be a reception. Tom Tuttle was to go to thetrain and get the guests in his car. Minnie had sniffed to herself over thisparticular detail, Tom's car being of that make which carries a very modestprice and a very immodest notoriety. But as Tom had been honored with thetelephone message from Jim, there was nothing to do but submit.
If Jim and his wife chose to change their clothes, Tom was to stop with themat his house, and then bring them on over to the hall. There were severalhundred other details connected with the soirée, definitely planned, sothat the whole thing would move, barrage-like, with the precision of clockwork.For genuine leadership, Marshal Foch had nothing on Mrs. Thomas Tuttle.
Ella found herself swept along on the tidal wave of preparations, hating it,heartsick, loathing the attempt of these kind, simple folk to make ofthemselves something they were not.
The receiving line was to have been composed of the five who had met at Mrs.Tuttle's, but Ella balked. If this horrible thing had to be, she, at least,didn't purpose to be a member of the shock troops. She compromised by agreeingto take charge of the frappé bowl, far in the rear of the long hall.
On Friday afternoon the old hall over Hodge's Dry Goods Emporium looked, asthe "Enterprise" would later describe it, "a bower of loveliness." Under Ella'sdirection the school children had magnanimously brought in half the mapleleaves and at least two-thirds of the blazing sumac in the precinct.
Red-faced, puffy Mrs. Tom Tuttle had on a dark purple silk which gave herthe appearance of being about to expire from an apoplectic stroke. Tall,angular Minnie Adams, with an aigrette from her last winter's hat in her hair,had, in defiance of Biblical axiom, by taking thought added a cubit to herstature. Mrs. Meeker's best black silk was slightly awry from much journeyingto and fro between the sandwich table and the coffee pot. Addie Smith had on areally beautiful gown purchased at Capitol City.
"If she only doesn't say 'have saw,'" thought Ella.
Ella, herself, was in white—a dainty, sheer dress which she carriedwith that little indefinable air that no one else in Centerville possessed.
"You look like a bride yourself, Ella," Mrs. Meeker paused in one of herbreathless flittings to the kitchen. "I wish to the land it was you—you'd'a' made Jim a real smart wife."
"Ah, madam, I thank you!" Ella bowed in mock solemnity and then laughedgayly, while The-Thing-In-Her-Heart winced and moaned.
The assemblage was noticeably lacking in masculinity. To be sure, a fewbrave souls were there—Doctor Smith and old Judge Adams and the twoministers and the editor of the "Enterprise." But not for the President of theUnited States would the majority of the Centerville men have gone through thatboiled-shirt ordeal.
It was almost time now. The receiving line nervously eyed the chalk markswhich designated the exact spot where, in a few moments, it was tofunction.
The train whistled in. That was the cue for several dozen people to doseveral dozen different things. Ella's particular response to this signal wasto go down two flights of stairs to the cellar under the dry-goods store andbring up part of the cold frappé, which had been packed since noon in anice-filled tub, as the ice from the old frog pond was too dirty to put into thebeverage. She did her assigned task, and then, with taut nerves, stood by therear window of the hall and looked out over the dismal array of boxes, barrelsand sheds, waiting—
At a slight commotion on the stairway she breathed a little prayer forcomposure and walked over to take her place at the frappé bowl. Even sowalked Marie Antoinette out onto the balcony at Versailles.
THEY were coming in. There was Jim, taller, leaner, browner, his head thrownback with that familiar air, and the boyish smile she knew so well.And—that—beautiful—girl! She was not over twenty-twoor-three, lithe, lovely, radiant. She was in gray, a soft, exquisitepearl-gray. From the tips of her slender gray-shod feet and the tips of herslender gray-gloved hands to the drooping dove-winged hat, she wasperfection.
Jim was shaking hands with Mrs. Tuttle, while his wife stood waiting with apretty air of shy interest, until, with a protective gesture, he drew herforward.
Ella's feet and hands were cold and her cheeks blazing. She did not knowthat, in the heightened color of her fair skin, the soft waves of her hair, thecornflower blue of her eyes, and the lovely contour of her face, she was asbeautiful as the young girl she envied.
She only knew that everything was going wrong. Mrs. Tuttle, in her atrociouspurple dress, had bounced out of the receiving line, thrown her massive armsaround the girl and kissed her. Ella shuddered. From experience she knew what acombustion it had been.
The whole line was breaking up. Everyone was laughing immoderately. Shecould hear Minnie Adams's high henlike cackle, and Mrs. Meeker's bass rumblethat always sounded as though she were using a megaphone. And in a few minutesJim would bring that exquisite creature back here to meet her and to drinkiceless punch. How characteristic of Centerville was that dirty frog-pond ice!The whole thing was horrible. They were frog-pond people, doing things in afrog-pond way. Oh, she was ashamed of Centerville, ashamed of Mrs. Tom Tuttle'seffusion, ashamed of her own handmade dress that she had thought so dainty inits white laciness. The girl would laugh at them all. And Jim—because heloved her—Jim would laugh with her. She could not endure it!
"Georgiana!" she called to a young girl who had come up the back stairway."Georgiana Meeker! I'm going to run down and see about the rest of thefrappé. Will you come and take charge of the bowl, please?" Some oflife's bitterest moments are also its politest.
Ella did not pause until she was in the kind, if cobwebby, seclusion of thecellar. Good sense told her that she would have to go back to face the musiceventually, but, for a few moments, away from all prying eyes, she would nurseand cuddle the hurt little-girl heart of her. Mechanically, like all faithfulsouls who work while they grieve, she picked up a chunk of ice to replenish themelting supply in the tub.
Two blue serge legs were coming down the narrow stairway. They seemed to bebringing Jim Sheldon with them. He had to duck his head to get through thedoorway. "Where are you, Ella Norer, I adore 'er?"
The little half-dark, wholly-dusty cellar seemed electrically charged withthe sheer vitality of his presence. He was coming toward her with both handsout. Nervously, Ella dropped the ice. According to laws immutable, the tendencyof all falling objects is to descend in a perpendicular line. The frappéwas at the lower end of the perpendicular line. Further, in accordance withanother of nature's laws that no two objects shall occupy the same place at agiven time, several quarts of frappé politely slopped out to make wayfor the ice.
"Oh, Jim!" she said feebly. "I've spoiled the frappé. That was icefrom the old frog pond."
He threw back his head and laughed.
"What's a frog or two between friends, Ellanora?" He ran the words of hername together musically, so that they sounded like a caress.
Together they fished out the ice, and after that, with an immaculatehandkerchief, he wiped the spots on her dress and dried her handscomfortably.
Then, quite suddenly, a singular thing happened. James Warren Sheldon,somewhat worldly-wise, wholly capable of taking care of himself, plainlyembarrassed, dropped Ella's hands. With the way of femininity since the worldbegan, Ella immediately became mistress of the situation.
"It seems nice to see you, Jim. We're all so glad that you took time to cometo us. She's a darling—and so pretty."
"Isn't she? And she's as sweet as she is pretty." Jim's temporarydiscomfiture had vanished. "Poor little girl! Her mother died first, and thenher daddy was killed in an auto accident the first time I was in France. When Igot back, she seemed to cling to me so—"
SO THAT was the way it happened! Wasn't that just like kind-hearted Jim? ToElla there came the fleeting vision of her own independent self. No, assuredly,she had not been of the clinging type.
"Ella, I'm wondering if you'll do something for me. Could you—would itbe inconvenient—could I leave her here with you for a few days while I goon a short business trip? She needs mothering so badly; and while you seem aperfect kid to me in most ways, you've always seemed motherly, too. Gee! Iremember one time when I busted my head and you spilled liniment and tears allover me." They both laughed, and for a moment Ella gave no thought to thedifficult task before her.
Suddenly, Jim caught one of her hands in both of his. "Ella, I didn't seemto realize what you meant to me—until I got out there—in Flanders!Queer, how everything fell away from me out there but the things that count! Ialways thought a lot of you, but I supposed it was just a good friendship. Whenit came to me—so clear—its full meaning—I knew if I lived toget back to you I'd tell you what a mistake I had made, and how much I hadalways cared."
The creeping, crawling horror in Ella's mind twisted around her heart andclutched, biting, at her throat, so that she put her free hand up to it. Notthat! Surely not that—when it was too late. It wasn't worthy of Jim totalk like this! It was an unbearable thing to see him fall from his pedestal ofRight and Honor. Love was big, but Love's ideal was bigger.
She seized the lapels of his coat and spoke swiftly: "Jim, don't say it! Asyou care for our friendship and the days gone by, never think itagain—never think of thinking it! I did care—and perhaps you didtoo, and didn't realize it. But that's over. That had to do with your heart;but the thing you've just said now has to do with your soul! and—"
"Ella,"—he put his hands over her own that were tugging desperately athis coat, and gave them a little shake—"what are you talking about?"
"Oh, the immeasurable wrong of your saying that! After you're married!"
There was a lightning-like change of expression on Jim's face. "Good lord,Ella! I'm not married!" He seemed divided between merriment and the seriousnessof the moment. "That's Grace—little Gracie Sheldon, my kid cousin. Do youmean you weren't upstairs when we first came in and straightened matters out?Such a pow-wow!" Jim was laughing boyishly. "It was certainly rich! I thoughtthe dear old souls would eat her up. And you should have seen Grace andGeorgiana Meeker fall on each other's necks. It was Tom Tuttle's mistake, andmine too. If I had called her 'Grace' over the 'phone, he'd have known, Isuppose, but I said 'Miss Sheldon,' as I naturally call her to other people.And Tom, of course, thought 'Mis' Sheldon' was a newly-acquired bride."
It is a very dizzying process—taking an emotional plunge like that. Itleft Ella very weak and limp, both physically and mentally.
Jim put his hand under her chin and lifted her scarlet face, but she wouldnot raise her eyes. "No, Ellanora, I'm not married—and you said youcared."
"That was saidunder—under—a—misconception—of—"
"I'll grant that—but it can never be unsaid." He dropped his voice toits tenderest tone. "Say it again, Ellanora; without any misunderstanding."
She lifted the lids from love-brimming eyes: "Oh, Jim! I—I docare."
SO IT came about that the guest of honor climbed up two flights of stairs alittle later, carrying the frappé to his own party. And Ella followed tokiss shyly the familiar-strange little neighbor-girl who had grown into such acharming young lady. Then, with prickly little chills chasing up and down herspine, and her cheeks ablaze, she served to the perspiring multitude a greatdeal of frappé permanently weakened by several quarts of well-water.
And always, no matter where she was looking, she could see Jim looming upabove everyone, shaking hands, laughing; could hear him saying, "Auntie Tuttle,you certainly look good to me!" And, "Mrs. Meeker, I'll bet forty cents theseare your sandwiches. They're worth a trip half around the world."
Oh, the deliciousness of the secret! The surprise of Centerville! Jim hadsaid he would give her just two weeks to get ready, had scouted her notion offinishing the school year, had said she didn't need any new clothes, that theyhad a few dresses left down in New York. Oh, the exquisite joy of knowing shewas going with Jim! Everywhere—anywhere! Honolulu, Hongkong, themoon!
With brimming heart Ella looked at the noisy crowd about her. How kindeveryone seemed! What a good old place Centerville was! She was recklesslyunashamed of a dozen children who had taken possession of a temporarilyabandoned sandwich table and were breaking world records in cramming down thespoils; was shamelessly unabashed when old Sandy Wing, overalled, coal-grimed,wiping his face with a red bandana, came up the back stairway to wring Jim'shand; was audaciously laughter-stricken—with Jim—when Mrs. Meekerhissed across at her, "My good land of liberty, Ella, there's a lot of littlesticks and leaves in the bottom of this frappé bowl!"
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