Talk

Book One The Store

TALK

Everybody in Merville was worried about Delia Morehouse. Everybody said, “Now what’s going to happen to that poor child?” For, according to Kentucky custom in 1899, she should have found a home with her nearest male kin, and Delia had none, not even a cousin’s aunt’s husband.

At another time, counting on her girlish innocence, the elders of the town might have juggled her affairs so as to pull a gilded rabbit out of an empty hat. But such con jury would strain them financially after the panic of ’93, and Merville was espec¬ ially shaken by the crash of the Morehouse Bank. Delia’s father had languidly undermined that institution which her grandfather had founded so firmly that the people loyally imagined a con¬ spiracy to explain its failure, a conspiracy that during the first shock they resented more than the loss of their own fortunes.

When investigation proved Roland Morehouse’s carelessness to be the cause, he promptly got pneumonia, with his usual tact. He was spared the effort of defending his mistakes and the further effort of supporting Delia, by that which the Merville News called the Grim Reaper. His charming wife had died a few months before.

Good society was compact and patriarchal; it assumed a re¬ sponsibility for its daughters; it was concerned about Delia’s plight, though at the Livery Stable, where the tone of talk was

TALK always pitched, nobody could think beyond, “Now, what’s going to happen to that poor child?”

At Trenton’s livery stable any wife could locate any husband at any time of the day. It was on the Public Square. And the boarded slope which crossed the sidewalk for the horses’ footway was flanked in fine weather by chairs, tilted for the ease of the horses’ present, past or future owners, and commentators thereof. Hereabouts men coined political shibboleths; here was William Goebel adored or detested; and here was the note of local gossip. Here they discussed the undressed flesh Eudora Dexter’s princess dress had failed to cover at the last Fair Hop and how Faltha Reeves had told the ladies that it would be better if she exhibited better biscuits and less bosom at her parties, but Page Reeves was rushing Eudora and his mother wanted an heiress for him. Here they wondered where the Humphreys got the money to follow the latest fads and who paid for the Railroad party they gave for Charlie May, with the parlor made to look like a coach and the dining room like a lunch counter. Here they chuckled over Les Henderson’s remark to Mrs. Reeves. He was visiting the Humphrey farm and she drove out to ask the major’s advice about buying a cow. “Major’s down with the hogs,” he said. “You can tell him. He’s got a hat on.”

Les, with the other boys, loafed at Mayfield’s Corner Drug Store, amid patent-medicine advertisements, faintly saccharine and heartily obscene. A bicycle rack stood on the pavement. Next door, Billy Bassett’s saloon was strictly utilitarian because feet could be recognized beneath its mirrored swinging doors.

And in other stores around the square the ladies gossiped as they lingered over purchases of thread or spinach or bonnets. Even the stone nymph which presided over the little green park

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S in the center was never still. It gurgled a clear, chameleon stream into the fountain, a lovely stream which took color from the atmosphere.

All this, topographically, was in a basin and three residential hills sprayed from it. The fourth street sagged, flattened where it crossed the Kentucky and Tennessee Railroad tracks, and slumped into the deep waters of Pherson River. Thus the Public Square was like a caldron from which earth and stone and water literally overflowed. It seethed with the stir of politics against grandiloquence and wit, and it rang with the clash of manners and customs against individual desires.

It was late afternoon in late autumn.

In the livery stable, Nero the billy goat wandered aimlessly, dignified of beard, dainty of hoof, and pungent of smell. Though dampness had driven a flock of flies into his domain, satiated, he eyed them languidly. One-eyed Jake Jenkins curried a country mule, assuring it “ ’at everybody ’at talked ’bout heav’n wam’t going theah.” And guffaws came from the stable office where the elders of the town were gathered.

The office was dim with pipe smoke and an acrid mixture of steam. Steam rose from a pile of horse blankets on the floor and from a kettle on the stove, supposed to moisten the air. It was a fat little monkey stove with a red-hot bulging belly which went s-puzzz-sizzle when an aim at the spittoon landed on it.

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Mr. Roger Gale, president of the Merville National Bank, opened the door.

“Come in,” said Pilch Trenton. “Take a chair, sir; take two chairs.” Pilch Trenton was chief among town wits. Some held that he ran a livery stable to supply himself with auditors.

“I’m leaving,” said Squire Preston. “My grandfather got a licking for saying that to his grandfather. It was so old then. Anyway, Pilch, I don’t believe that fish story you’ve just told and I don’t believe the one you’re about to tell.”

The company roared their appreciation. They always did.

The squire knocked the tobacco out of his corn-cob pipe. His round face had the look of a solemn baby as it turned to Mr. Gale. “Did you find anything?” he asked.

“Nope. It’s worse than we thought. Not a red cent left,” said Mr. Gale.

Major Humphrey stared at them. He had a large expressive nose which twitched now with curiosity. He used his infallible method to satisfy it.

“Too bad,” he said, for if you pretended*to know a thing you usually found it out.

Mr. Gale smiled. “It’s no secret,” he said, “about poor Delia Morehouse. The only thing left is Webster’s Bookstore, and that’s more of a liability than an asset, eating up taxes. She couldn’t pay anybody to run it for her. It’s been closed for five years. I don’t know what’s going to become of her. I don’t envy you, Squire, having to tell her.”

“Any more kindling in that bottle, Pilch?” asked the squire, gloomily.

The bottle was passed around.

“We never know where misfortune will strike.” By way of

TALK averting it from himself, Major Humphrey tapped one hand on the wooden baseboard and then rubbed the rabbit’s foot which he carried in his pocket. That rabbit had been killed by a black cat at midnight on the grave of the first white child born in Kentucky. “Well, Delia’s a sweet, pretty girl. I reckon there’ll be some orange blossoms growing over Delia’s mourning weeds, soon. He’d have to be well off, though. My Charlie May says she ain’t any better housekeeper than her poor sainted mother was.”

“Is there any special young man on the scene now?” asked Mr. Gale.

“I haven’t heard of one,” said the major. “I think she has her programs filled at dances, she ain’t a wallflower, but she ain’t carrying off any palms, either. She hasn’t much dash; just one of these nice girls that ’ll make a fine wife and mother.”

“Lucky she wasn’t a boy,” mused Pilch Trenton. “She might have taken after her father in a business way. That damned Republican Royall from Louisville claimed the bank must have been insolvent for months. It looked like a shooting scrape was coming off in the courtroom, when the judge overruled Will Fletcher, and Willy said, ‘Judge, just leave it to the crowd.’ ”

“Royall’d have a hell of a job indicting a Morehouse in Pherson County,” said the major. “And now little Delia, the last one, alone in the world. It’s like a play.” The major rubbed his nose, relishing the picture of a lone and pretty female.

“Well, I’ve got a hell of a job ahead of me, telling her about it,” whimpered Squire Preston, “and you tell any lawyer in this town that the next man that makes me his executor when he ain’t leaving nothing to be executed but me . . .” He growled inarticulately as he slammed the door behind him.

TALK

Delia Morehouse huddled in a Morris chair near the Frank¬ lin stove in the parlor. The stove was chillier than the air, but Delia couldn’t make a fire burn.

And Aunt Mandy, who used to work for the Morehouses, had returned to her washing in Shak Rag. The neighbors also had gone home. They had flocked to console Delia when her father died so pitifully and romantically soon after her mother. Delia, being a girl, could make herself comfortable until the men settled what she was to do. Though everybody knew that com¬ fort was a gift which neither she nor her mother had possessed, at such a sad time nobody would say so.

Delia, inert, unseeing, watched the purple dusk mingle with purple wisps of smoke from bonfires along the street. Children were burning fallen leaves. When she heard them shouting she frowned slightly, in wonder, not in irritation. At her stage of grief she wondered how anyone could be happy; she wondered that other people seemed to be going on as before.

Her hands were clasped loosely in her lap. She pressed them convulsively. She had felt and thought so much that she had stopped doing either.

The onyx clock on the mantel had no pendulum; there wasn’t a timepiece in the house to remind her of supper. And Delia only ate when she was hungry and she didn’t care what she ate. No¬ body was there to see or comment. And ever since she had tried to boil a chicken without removing its insides, she simply fried a slice of ham and made some cocoa when she needed food.

It was getting dark, but the cottage which the Morehouses had

TALK rented after the failure was not equipped with gas, much less elec¬ tricity. And Delia hadn’t cleaned the lamps. There was some¬ thing mysterious about wicks which she and her mother had not been able to fathom.

Mrs. Morehouse had been deficient in all domestic arts save charm; and that, until the bank failed, had sufficed. She used to tell Delia that if you didn’t know how to cook or clean, a man would always get some one to do it for you, and that the more you demanded the more you got.

Now the hair-cloth-and-mahogany furniture was covered with a mauve veil of dust. Delia had flicked at it with a feather duster which made it rise and fall back again. From the kitchen which adjoined the parlor came a faint charred smell. The cocoa wouldn’t scrape off the pan.

Because Delia despised household tasks, she couldn’t do them. And her mother had told her they weren’t worth while. So when Delia attempted them, her fingers, being resentful, were clumsy.

Her body was not clumsy. It was incased and corseted in the hour-glass mold of the period, which suited her. Her silvery blond hair, wavy when it was brushed, was suited to the Gibson pompadour. Her skin was deep cream, almost dark, and without color. She had wide apart, slanting, broody blue eyes.

They fixed now on a rent in the lace curtain, through which they watched Squire Preston drive his buggy close to the curb¬ stone. He propped a large rock against each rear wheel.

He had pulled down the lever of the front-door bell before Delia realized that he was coming to see her and that he would see her with her hair disheveled. She wore an old black dress that had been her mother’s. It didn’t fit and its huge bell sleeves were out of style.

IO

TALK

She was too spent with tears and fatigue and bewilderment to care. She didn’t know what to say or how to act. Why did people come and stare at you when you were grieving and make you go all over it again? They came to watch you suffer, and if you didn’t suffer right before their eyes they talked about you and called you hard-hearted. Well, she had cried so much, she had no tears left. And then her eyes and throat filled with them.

She greeted Squire Preston wordlessly as she huddled back into her chair and drearily blew her nose. She hoped the squire wouldn’t notice that she didn’t have a black-bordered hand¬ kerchief.

The squire took off the wide cape he wore, shivered and put it on again. He “There-there-ed.” He deplored the early winter and its effects on the crops. He spoke of the Goebel election law, of the election contest, and said that if the Republican party had been rotten in that fraudulent election, those traitor Demo¬ crats who joined with them against Goebel had been putrid. He apologized for such strong language. And with the aid of a few inappropriate quotations from Wordsworth he told her what everyone else in Merville knew.

It was unreal and it wasn’t nice. To be orphaned and penniless was like a novel, or a story in a yellow journal. Nor was it nice to talk about money. But there was nobody to find things out for her and then “arrange.” She used to think that dis¬ agreeable things were always “arranged.”

“I haven’t anything?” she asked.

“Nothing but Webster’s Bookstore, sole real property of your lovely mother, decea—er—umph. I don’t know a soul who could undertake to run it for you, Delia.”

She had said one obvious thing, and now she said another.

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“Why shouldn’t I run it myself?”

“You! Don’t be ridiculous,” he snorted, brutally.

Pathetic and young and alone, clinging to that Morris chair, she, with those quaint huge sleeves, looked to him like some for¬ gotten remnant for which there was neither use nor place. He stopped being brutal and laughed at her tenderly.

“Why, honey, you couldn’t do that! Well-born ladies stay in their homes. You couldn’t expose yourself to insults. It’s not to be thought of. You’re not one of these new women; we don’t have ’em in Kentucky. Our ladies had rather have new bonnets than new ballots, bless their sweet hearts. Why, you were brought up to balance a sunshade and gladden the hearts of all the young men until you choose one of them to be your mate and settle down to the blissful duties of your own home.”

A pale moon had risen. As it crept across the sky it seemed to pause outside the window, and through the bared tree branches, to point a jagged shaft of light at the mauve veil on all the furniture. It was cruel to that bleak room. It made you see that comfort had not perished temporarily there; it had never existed. The four chairs, the table, the sofa, each stood apart, separate. No homing gift had pulled that room together.

The squire was puzzled. He was a contented old bachelor at forty. There was no woman in his quarters over Mayfield’s drug store, but there was warmth and comfort in them.

For Delia things began to swing into focus as they had done after chloroform when she had her appendix removed. That was when they were the Morehouses, doing the latest things, even to having appendicitis. Her father had teased her about being in style ... her darling father. ... No, she must stop feeling new, she must think.

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She had never been forced to think things out for herself. She had dozed through a calm girlhood, dreaming inarticulate dreams, seeing herself in pictures which had not developed. Delia as the belle of the ball had been spoiled because she didn’t dance well, she mixed her german figures. Delia as the solace of her stricken home had been spoiled because she could neither cook nor clean. She had never fitted into any picture. Now she imagined a Delia in crisp attire, running a small store, the heroine of the community!

“What else is there for me to do?” she asked.

“Damned if I know! I beg your pardon, Delia. But ladies don’t run stores. It’s not to be thought of. I don’t see how you ever thought of it. What would happen if a mouse ran across the floor?”

The squire watched her through the dusky room. She lifted her head spiritedly from the cushion. The squire decided that he was unfair to her. Of course ladies didn’t run stores, but she had been nervy to suggest it. Actually, what was there for her to do? Some one might be persuaded to give her a home. She could help out with the housework and do a little sewing. . . . But her mother’s domestic shortcomings and the fact that Delia had inherited them were bywords in Merville. Suppose she did open that little store? She’d be off his hands while she tried it. He didn’t know what to do with her! She was sweet and pretty and all the young men would find her pitiful and appealing behind a counter. Otherwise, in mourning, she’d be apart from the town, she wouldn’t see any young men. Squire Preston suddenly understood how far-fetched must be the schemes of a managing mamma.

TALK i3

“People would think it was funny. They might talk about it. I wonder if they’d act right?” he said, dubiously.

Delia shrank back into her chair. Her new and alluring picture of herself would be spoiled if she were the talk and not the heroine of the community.

“You reckon they would talk about it?” she quavered.

It struck him as delightfully feminine that she, who had not quailed at going out in the world or at the amazing thought of going into business, did quail at the thought of people talking about it. And as she quailed he naturally became more convinced that it was the only thing for her to do. It was a personal relief to him; he had a shrewd presentiment that others, feeling vaguely responsible for her, would find any disposal a relief.

“Don’t you bother about that, honey. Your family has meant too much to this town for the town not to be a help in your trouble. Nobody can figure out what you can do, and I’ll promise you that I’ll make them understand.”

“Are you sure you can? I wouldn’t want anybody to think that I was . . . trying . . . er . . . being . . . horrid.” Her blue eyes grayed, dimmed. She blew her rather tiptilted nose again.

“Don’t you bother your little head one second; just leave all that to me, child. And, Delia, I’m proud of you! When I think of you, a tender young girl, willing to go out into the rough world. A noble Kentucky gentlewoman.” Squire Preston, affected by his own oratory, wiped his eyes. “Now I reckon you’d better move over to Mollie Henderson’s to live. Of course her way of meeting misfortune is mighty ladylike, honey, supplying a home to those without family circles and cooks ... I reckon you couldn’t take paying guests, you being unmarried.”

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Delia laughed gently. “Now, Squire, no guest of mine would pay anything. I couldn’t keep house, if I had one to keep. Aunt Mandy says I can’t help it; I was bawn that way. Now, you’re sure nobody’ll say. . . .”

“Sure! Positive. I’ll tell Bob Fletcher he can rent this cottage again. And I’ll help you; no, I’ll send Page Reeves to help you get started downtown. He’s been reading law in my office. He’s an elegant young fellow. . . . Um! . . . Bless the good Lord who alway provides,” he added, cryptically.

Since the good Lord had provided to wit, a pretty young lady in distress, and to wit, an elegant young fellow, the squire would provide propinquity. For this amazing venture of Delia’s must be brief. A woman of her social consequence might take in paying guests, she might take in sewing secretly, she might, if necessary, teach, but she might not work in a store. Delia’s was an unusual case. She had no living relations, she was not equipped to do any of the possible things. She had to attempt the impossible. And a few words would explain that it was a temporary measure, a few words would put it in the light of a church fair.

“Everybody’s going to appreciate what you’re about to do,” he promised, “to buffet the billows of adversity with your own sweet self; your troubles are like lingering winter in the lap of spring, you must . . . uk . . . uk . . .” Squire Preston’s voice died in his throat. His own oratory inevitably affected his feelings. Its depth had ruined his political career.

Delia glowed from his praise, which was new and sweet. She felt that he would “arrange,” that there would be nothing dis¬ agreeable said about what she was going to do. She shouldn’t feel happy now; she missed her father and mother . . . horribly.

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IS

She dared not let herself realize that she was utterly alone, that they were gone, just gone. She dared not let herself think of her father as he had looked beneath the glass coffin top, right in that very room. So small and queer and waxen he had looked, like a doll. She wanted to remember him as he was, dear and warm and alive, but they had said she must look at him, that he looked so natural. And she had been afraid that if she didn’t they would think she didn’t care. But it was because she cared so much that she didn’t want to look.

She jerked her thoughts away.

After the squire left her she automatically planned to have those bell sleeves slashed into style. She wondered if it would be mourning enough to wear stiff linen collars with black ties. They were fashionable and becoming and they would be appropriate for the store.

The moon, bright now, made green shifting spots of light on the walls and floor. Perhaps she should have accepted Charlie May Humphrey’s offer to spend the night. Charlie May was her best friend. But Delia knew that Charlie May didn’t want to come, that she had offered to because she thought she should. Charlie May had a way of offering favors, sweetly but con¬ sciously, so that they were usually refused. And then she was capable and critical. If Delia didn’t give her a nice supper she would talk about it, regretfully, afterward.

As Delia went into the kitchen that charred-cocoa smell grew i6

TALK sourly sweet. She went for some candles, but she decided that she was hungry. Something hot would feel comforting.

She couldn’t find the lifter for the cook stove. She broke a finger nail and bent a fork before she got a lid off, and then a whiff of ashes arose, like smoke from a genie’s bottle. The coal scuttle was too heavy for her, so she filled the stove with coal, lump by lump, and covered the coal with kindling and the kindling with paper. She struck a match to it, and banged the lid back.

In the sink was a tin saucepan that leaked, an iron skillet filmed with blackened grease, and the pan she had used for cocoa, which had a purple-brown clotted rim inside. The tea¬ kettle was clean.

She began to hum:

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true,

I’m half crazy, all for the love of you-oo—

She knew she must not sing now. Anyone who heard her would say she was heartless.

Down went the teakettle on the stove, the quiet stove, the icy stove. Inside it, the paper had burned, the kindling had scorched, and the coal lay undisturbed.

Delia sighed. Well, milk was filling, and as long as it was food and filling, what it was didn’t matter. She was going to Mrs. Mollie’s the next day. Keep paying guests herself? Delia giggled softly. She wouldn’t keep them long! She drank some milk and buttered some bread and watched the candle-light flicker over the dilapidated little kitchen.

It was fine, she decided, to live in the New Century with electric lights and modern ideas. Women were going out in the

TALK l 7 world gracefully, and she would be one of the first. The Ladies* Book Club was studying Shaw and Ibsen, and the Periodical Club had had several articles on female suffrage. Of course Delia wouldn’t go that far. Having a career shouldn’t keep her from being feminine.

Soft-voiced, she’d say, “Have you read this? It’s Rosa Carey’s latest book.”

And some fascinating He would say, “No, but I will if you recommend it.”

And there’d be people around her coming and going and admiring her, and she’d be gloriously, not tediously, busy. She’d be a part of things, not away from them. How chill and lonely it was in that house! She was not afraid, but she was lonely.

She undressed quickly and put on her high-necked, long-sleeved nightgown, and before she crept into bed she knelt, and to her usual prayer she added:

“And dear God, please bless what I am about to do, and make people understand.”

Then, she slept and dreamed that she was riding in the ring at the county fair. She wore the short tight coat that belonged to a lady’s habit, but she was riding astride like a man. She had on trousers. Her father and mother were in the grand stand and everybody was looking at her and clapping hands. She rode faster and faster, and hurdles appeared for her to jump. She hadn’t ridden since she was a child, but she jumped them, and everybody shouted. And then there was an enormous one with an enormous projecting point in the middle, and that frightened her, but she rode toward it, anyway, trembling, but faster and faster . . . Then it vanished in a dreamless sleep.

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After Squire Preston’s discreet explanation, people took it as he had foreseen and as he had taken it. At first they were shocked and then they were amused and then they were relieved. The elders of the town, who had considered Delia’s plight some¬ thing of a personal responsibility, supported and applauded her venture. And what the Humphreys and the Gales and the Birdwoods and the Fletchers applauded, the rest of Merville acclaimed.

In a month Webster’s Bookstore was a going concern. While Aunt Mandy and her daughter and her grandson, Tessum Napoleon, had applied soap and water and white paint, Delia had explored.

Among a heap of rubbish she found dozens of tiny Japanese parasols which she piled on a table labeled, “ Favors for Euchre Parties and Cotillions.” They inspired Eudora Dexter to give a Japanese german, and that meant ordering fans and harakari daggers besides.

The Louisville Planet was running a series of puzzle pictures called, “Books the Wide World Knows.” The picture of a man standing on the balls of his feet, craning his head in the opposite direction, suggested, Looking Backward. And Delia put all the old novels into a showcase labeled, “Books the Wide World Knows,” at fifteen cents each, assuming that when a competitor for the prize had deciphered a picture he would pay fifteen cents to keep another competitor from seeing the book itself. She found a lot of ancient harmonicas, and Tessum built them kito a magnificent glittering tower for the show window. And

TALK against the tower she propped her most ambitious label. Com¬ prising several popular songs, it read:

“In the Evening by the Moonlight, Don’t Tell Her That You Love Her, Serenade Her, with The Latest Hit.”

Delia’s labels were made of pasteboard, cut in the shape of four-leaved clovers (for luck), and written in violet ink. They helped to start the store before she could send for new stock. They helped to make it possible for her to send for new stock.

And everybody said that Delia had inherited her grandfather’s business ability, and wasn’t it a pity she was a girl. And every¬ body saw that she had her mother’s charm, too. For being in trade did not keep her from being feminine.

When Squire Preston came in at the end of the first month to unsnarl her finances, and found them smooth, she didn’t crow over him. She made him feel as if his going over them had made them smooth.

He went next door and told the crowd in the livery stable that Delia Morehouse was just as sweet in that store as if she were in her mother’s parlor. Major Humphrey said she proved that Merville girls were the finest in the land. After three whiskies he proved he meant it. He bought a new set of Shakes¬ peare, although he had two in his library.

For Delia had ordered sets of Shakespeare for her store; she ordered the Latin classics, too. She knew that Horace, as well as David Hamm , was quoted at Trenton’s. She knew her town and she knew her store. Marvelously, intuitively, she knew it. She had never fitted anywhere, but she fitted into that store like a picture into its frame.

She used to be tired all the time; she wasn’t tired in the store. Each movement was quick and purposeful. She tapped

TALK energy that fed upon and renewed itself. It was creative and practical. It had found no outlet at home or in society, it had turned inward to dreams and discontent. Now it filled the gaps in her untrained mind with a sort of instinct that was almost ridiculously sound. She was a person who had found herself. Of course people felt this. It was one reason why they liked to go into the store. Mrs. Humphrey named it when she said the store was restful.