Tradition tells also of a parson who trod the mazes of the ritual so uncertainly that he was just as likely to jump backwards as forwards in the psalter. With inimitable delicacy Littleville would stand holding its prayer-books at attention, ready to jump with him, whichever way he went. However, certain women have confided to me how fearful they were, on their wedding-day, lest this retrograde movement might occur during the solemnization of matrimony.
Thus it came about, I fancy, that Littleville received us with relief as well as warmth, for our theology was so simple and sound that hardly could the agnostic barber find fault with it; a family studiously normal, we showed
“Never mole, harelip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious;”—
and we proved able to conduct service with sonorous equilibrium.
Here we have been accepted and courteously entreated. Here we have not had to live up to any parochial pretensions, for my little town does not play bridge or give dinner-parties. Here in my little town we need not rise betimes to perform miracles of domestic service on the sly in order to be free to attend on the lordly city parishioner possessed of maidservants and manservants. Rather we may wear our gingham pinafores on the front porch, and pop our peas under the very nose of the senior warden, and very probably with his assistance, if he perchance slouch down beside us, blue-overalled and genial.
Littleville, always leisurely, took its time about getting acquainted with us. It hurtled us through no round of teas, it did not put us through the paces of a parish reception. Rather it came and hammered together our broken furniture, decayed by much moving, it stole in at the back door to help us when we were sick, it let us know it missed us when we went worldward, visiting. Of such as it had, it made us gifts,—a yellow pumpkin vaulting our back fence, potatoes rattling into our cellar-bins unannounced while we were still abed, golden maple syrup flowing for us at the time when tin pails gleam all up and down the street, and the sap-vats bubble and steam pungently; or perhaps the gift is the reward of the gunning season, as when a vestryman-huntsman, as we stand about the social door after church, darts aside into the coalbin and thence presents a newspaper package streaked with pink; peeped at to please his beaming eye, it exhibits a brace of skinned squirrels, which we bear oozily homeward from divine service.
There is in the mere aspect of Littleville a latent friendliness perceptible to all eyes that give more than a touring-car glance. Over our hilly streets slumbers eternal leisure. Whatever it is, Littleville always has time to talk about it. When anything happens we all go running out of our front doors to discuss it, but otherwise our streets are very still: rows of farmhouses planted side by side for sociability, while behind each stretch its acres of stony pasture and half-shorn woodland. At night, silence and darkness settle upon us early. By nine even the hotel has gone to bed, so that it would with difficulty be summoned forth in protesting pajamas if a late traveler should clamor at the door. Of a starless night you may look forth at eight and see no glimmer of light or life all up and down the street. When we come to church of a winter evening, we carry lanterns as we plod a drifted path in high-girt skirts and generous goloshes. One’s sleep is sometimes startled by a flare of light that streams from wall to wall and passes, as some mysterious late lantern-bearer goes by, leaving the night again all blackness, pierced sometimes by the crazy laughter of an owl, or beaten upon by the insistent clamor of frogs.
Those who live by Littleville’s quiet streets have had time to have their little ways. For example, they still have “comp’ny” in Littleville. In other places they no longer have comp’ny, no longer sacrifice for unprotesting hours and days and weeks all domestic peace and privacy to the exigencies of an intrusive guest. Comp’ny, imminent, instant, or past, is discussed in bated whispers at back doors. Assistance and sympathy are proffered as in a run of fever. As for the comp’ny itself, it knows its privileges and never resigns its prerogatives. However efficient at home, when a-visiting, it can sit on the barnyard bars in its best store suit and without an emotion of conscience watch its host milk twenty cows, or within doors it can fold its house-wifely hands upon its waistline, regard without compunction a lap for once apronless, and rock and chatter hour after hour while its hostess pants and perspires to feed it. But Littleville has one revenge: one day, it, too, can put on its best and drive off, and itself be somebody’s comp’ny.
Comp’ny by definition comes from abroad, invading our peaceful citadel from some hillside farm or neighboring village; within our own bulwarks we are all too neighborly for any such alien stiffness. Our streets are cheery with greeting. Among the younger fry, “Hello” is the universal term of accost. “Hello!” some youngster yodels to me from across the street, “hello,” supplemented by the frank employment of my baptismal name, sign and seal of my adoption. We are careless of the little formalities of Miss and Mr. here, just as our gentlemen are careless of their hat-raising. Why should Littleville man endanger head and health from false deference to his hearty, workaday comrade, woman? From the older men, surely, twinkle and grin are greeting enough without any up-quirking of rheumatic elbows; and as for the younger men, I have a fondness for their method of raising the right index finger to the hat-brim, with a smile that points in the same direction.
Although we are without formality, certain conventions always belong to a call. The popular hours are two and six, with the tacit exemption of Saturday evening, for then we might inconsiderately intercept the gentleman of the house en route from his steaming wash-tub in the kitchen to his ice-bound bedroom. We have our set forms of greeting and departure. A hostess must always meet a caller with a hearty, “Well, you’re quite a stranger.” A caller must always remain a cordial two hours, and rising to leave must invariably say, “Well, I’m making a visit, not a call”; to which the hostess responds, “Why, what’s your hurry?” Conversation must hold itself subject to interruption, must be prepared to arrest itself in the midst of the most lurid recital in order that all may fly to the window if man or beast or both pass by.