The Need

‘Now let’s us invite in somebody,’ said Abel, glowing.

He looked about on the new furniture, the new piano, the two shelves of bright books.

Emily Louise clapped her hands.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘yes. Let’s!’

On the face of Victoria, the mother, the pleased pride gave place to a look of trouble.

‘We don’t know so very many,’ she said.

‘We!’ Abel repeated. ‘I don’t know nobody. How should I? I work all day like a dog since I came to this place. I’ve no time to know nobody. But you — you stay about here. Have you not made friends?’

‘Not well enough to invite them in,’ she said. ‘Why, you know yourself, Abel, nobody has invited us yet.’

‘What difference does that make?’ he wanted to know irritably. ‘Prob’ly they can’t afford it. Prob’ly they ain’t nice enough things. Neither did we have. But now, we got them. I get them for you. Now you must invite in different ones. Let us see — we have Tuesday. Saturday is a good day. I am early home Saturday. Have it then.’

‘Goody, goody,’ said Emily Louise. ‘A party, won’t it be?’

Her eyes met her mother’s serenely and she went away to school. Abel ran for his train. The new things had come late in the evening and he had risen early to unpack them before he went to work. Left alone, Victoria faced the new responsibility.

They had lived for six months in the suburb. She rehearsed those to whom in that time she had spoken. There was the woman in the yellow house on the corner to whom Victoria had once bowed, though she could not be sure that her greeting had been returned; in the brick house across the street, Mrs. Stern, who had called upon her; the next-door neighbor, who had not called but with whom she had sometimes talked across the fence; and Emily Louise’s school-teacher, Miss Moody, who had come to see her about the child’s throat. With the exception of the tradespeople, these were all. How, then, was it possible that she should give a party?

But how was it that she knew no one, she wondered. It was true, they went to no church; but then, there are people who go to no churches and who still have friends. It could not be Abel’s fault—he looked just like any other man; and Emily Louise, she was a neat and pretty child. It must be she, herself, Victoria thought.

She looked in the mirror of the new side-board. She was worn and untidy. She went to her closet and examined her stock of clothes. Her black best dress, she decided, would pass very well, but she never wore it; and even her gray second-best she had seldom troubled to put on in the afternoons. It was hard to dress for nobody.

Still, that afternoon she put on the gray dress and sat rocking on the front porch for a long time. The suburb lay naked to the August sun. New sidewalks cut treeless stretches of brown grass where insects shrilled. There were few houses, and these, at ragged intervals, exposed narrow, staring fronts or backs which looked taken unaware. To and fro on the highway before her door continually rolled touring cars, filled with people who hardly saw the little town and never knew its name. From the yellow house on the corner the woman — a Mrs. Merriman — came out and crossed the street. For a moment Victoria thought that she was coming to see her, but she went to the next-door neighbor’s.

‘Well,’ said Abel that night, ‘I do everything I can to help you. When I got off the train I spoke to that fine bakery place there on the corner. I told him he should make us ice-cream and make us cakes for Saturday. He says, “Sure,” and he wants I should toll him how many.’

‘Abel,’ Victoria said, ’I don’t know what to do about this party. I ain’t acquainted with enough folks to make a party — honest.'

‘You’re too particular, maybe,’ he told her. ‘ Well, that is right,’ he added complacently, ‘that is how you should be, particular. But not too.’

‘But, Abel,’ she persisted, ‘I tell you that I don’t know — ’

He turned to her indignantly.

‘When I married you,’ he said, ‘you knew half the village. In Eland’s you know the ladies yet. Here we have been six months already, and you say you cannot give a party. I tell you, you should ask what few you know and make a start. If you don’t, how will you get started? Ain’t it you don’t appreciate what I get for you? Ain’t it a party should make you some hard work a’ready? Or what?’

She was silent. That night she tried to think it out. In the morning she went to the next-door neighbor.

‘My husband and I want your husband and you should come over to our house and spend the evening next Saturday. Could you?’ she recited formally.

The woman’s vast face, with its unnecessary chins, was genuinely regretful. She was going that day to her mother, who was sick in the city, and her husband was to stay nights at her mother’s.

Victoria went resolutely to Mrs. Stern’s door, at the brick house. And there the heavens opened. Mrs. Stern would come.

‘O, thank you!’ Victoria breathed, and hesitated — deploring Mrs. Stern’s widowhood. ‘Would — would you like to bring somebody with you?’ she asked. ‘I’m going to have things as nice as I can.’

Mrs. Stern, a sad little woman with an unexpectant droop, contrived to make her answer all kindness.

’How many can come to the party?’ Abel inquired that evening.

’Mrs. Stern can come,’ Victoria replied.

‘Well?’ said Abel expectantly.

‘ I have n’t — there is n’t anyone else. Abel, I don’t think I can do it, truly,’ she said.

The man’s face tightened.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you cannot do like other men’s wives when they get a neat up-to-date little home furnished like this. Is that it?’

‘I have n’t had time yet, either, Abel,’ she pleaded weakly. ‘It takes longer. I — I have n’t heard.’

She remembered how hard he worked and how few were his pleasures. She thought of his pride in their new furniture. And in her flesh was the sting of his words about other men’s wives. Surely he was right — since they had the furniture and the means, there must be people who would come. In the morning, when she told him goodbye in the confldenceof the sun, ‘Abel,’ she said with determination, ‘the party will be Saturday! But I can’t tell yet how many — that is the only thing.’

‘So,’ he said, his satisfaction returning. ‘Of course, when a person wants to give parties, people hang around ’em! You should manage, Victoria.’

There was, Victoria knew, a little club of women which met in the parlor of a near-by public hall on Thursdays. She had seen the members pass her house on the way to the meetings. On Thursday she presented herself at the door of the little room and asked for the president. It had come to Victoria that if she could join, she would invite that whole club and their husbands to her house on Saturday evening. She waited in the ante-room through which went women talking as if they had known each other for a long time. At last the president appeared. This woman held her head back, cither to focus her glasses or to keep them on, and her hands were filled with loose papers.

‘What was it?’ she asked.

She was in haste, and it was hard for Victoria to begin.

‘Could other folks join your club?’ Victoria finally inquired.

‘If you get two members of the club to propose the name,’ the president answered kindly. ‘Then it is voted on two weeks after it is proposed. Was that all?’

That night Abel came home with a large box. He was gay with mystery. The box was not to be opened until after dinner. Emily Louise was warned away. To please him Victoria guessed: a rug, a picture, new curtains, a bedspread.

‘Yet more magnificent!’ cried Abel, and cut the string.

It was a suit of evening clothes. Abel had never worn evening clothes. These had been made for another man and had not been received on delivery.

‘Now you should not be ashamed when I am welcoming our company,’ he said. ‘Can you tell yet how many are coming?’ he demanded.

‘Not yet,’ Victoria said.

‘I should let that baker know tomorrow without fail,’ he declared.

On Friday Victoria took the step over which she had hesitated. She wrote a note and sent it by Emily Louise to Mrs. Merriman in the yellow house on the corner. The note said: —

MRS. MERRIMAN

MY DEAR NEIGHBOR: —

We are going to have a party Saturday night. Will you and your husband come, and your little girl, if you think she would enjoy it. I would like to have my neighbors come.

Yours sincerely,

MRS. ABEL HOPE.

‘Then,’ Victoria thought, ‘if she has n’t called just because she’s been busy, she’ll come.'

When she was preparing lunch for herself and Emily Louise, the reply was delivered by a maid.

‘Mr. and Mrs. William Merriman regret that they are unable to accept the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Hope for Saturday evening.'

Victoria dropped these regrets on the coals of the cooking stove. Her heart was heavy in her, and she felt a kind of physical nausea. Abel had bought this fine suit. He would look like any other man giving a party and having a wife who made friends. What should she do now?

While Emily Louise ate her lunch, Victoria ate nothing. She tried to think it out, and she sat staring at the automobiles rolling to and fro on the highway. She was hardly conscious of the child’s chatter until at last one sentence leaped from the rest and held her.

‘Miss Moody says she’s coming to see you again about my throat,’ said Emily Louise.

Miss Moody! Why had she not invited her?

‘I like Miss Moody, but I like Mr. Allen better,’ Emily Louise continued candidly. ‘He’s—’

Victoria bent toward the child.

‘Emily Louise,’ she said breathlessly, ‘how many teachers is they in your school-house?’

At once the child became important. She named them all, proud of her knowledge, and Victoria and she counted them. There were seven.

Seven! That number in itself would make a party. People were always doing nice things for teachers. She would have them all. She said nothing to the child, but when Emily Louise returned to school, she took to Miss Moody a note asking her to invite all the other teachers to Emily Louise’s house for Saturday evening.

That night the child waited, as she sometimes did, for her father’s train, and she came home with him. Victoria took Miss Moody’s note secretly and laid it on a shelf in the pantry. She was in the midst of getting dinner, but this was not the real reason for the delay. She dreaded to open the note.

‘How,’ Abel inquired, ‘is our party now? By now you got to know how many come. Not?’

‘Ten,’ said Victoria faintly. ‘Counting us, ten.’

Oh, yes, she said to herself, the teachers would come. They must come. Surely they would be glad to come.

Abel pursed his lips. ‘You should have got more,’ he rebuked her. ‘We could afford more, w’ile we’re doing it.’

She said nothing. After dinner, while he was on the sofa playing with Emily Louise, she went to the pantry and opened the note. Miss Moody was genuinely sorry and they all were, appreciating as they did this attention from the parents of a pupil, but on Saturday night they must all be at a teachers’ conference in town.

Victoria washed the dinner dishes and laid the table for breakfast. When she could make no further excuse for delay, she went in the other room to tell Abel. She was pale and faint, and when she closed the kitchen door she stood leaning against it, trembling.

Only Emily Louise was in the room.

‘Daddy’s gone to the bakery to tell him how many,’ she announced. ‘Just think, mother! To-morrow night the party’ll be being! Ain’t it grand! ’

Victoria took her in her arms and sat waiting for Abel’s return. She dared not think what he would do. He had a temper of unreason and of violence, and he would see only what he already saw. Yet when he came back, filled with innocent pride in the brick icecream and the little fancy cakes which he had selected, it was not so much her fear that held her silent as her sick unwillingness to quench that almost child-like planning.

‘We should change the book-case and the piano,’ he declared. ‘It will make the room stand to look wider across.’

She even helped him to fold back the rug and to move the furniture.

‘We should shake hands here,’ said he. ‘Where do they put their coats? Why don’t you talk some planning?’

Somehow she evaded everything save assent, and Abel was not one to wonder at any monologue of his own. Quite blithely he arranged it all. He talked of it incessantly.

At last Victoria crept to bed and faced what on the morrow she must do. From the sleep which came to her toward dawn, she was early awakened by Emily Louise jumping in her bare feet at the bed-side and calling,—

‘ The party’s to-night! The party’s to-night!’

The phrase beat at Victoria’s ears through the morning. She saw Abel set off for his work, and she said to herself that she would never see him just like this again — perhaps she would never see him again at all. He would work all day thinking of the evening. They had never given a party. Then he would come home and find the truth. She confronted the chief misery of every unhappiness: the tracing of avoidable events by which the thing has so incredibly come about.

She made ready and cooked a fowl and a roast and other food, enough to last Abel for several days. She set her house in order and packed her own belongings. She put on the gray dress, and dressed Emily Louise — perhaps, she thought, Abel would follow her for the child, and then she might make him understand. After their lunch she sat down to write two notes. The one to Mrs. Stern was brief and explained that, she had been obliged unexpectedly to leave home. The note to Abel was harder to write.

DEAR ABEL: — I am so sorry it will hurt you that I could n’t invite a party like the other women. I tried to. I asked the ones I know any, but only Mrs. Stern could, and anyway there was n’t enough. . . '

She was still writing at this when she heard a sharp noise and voices. In the road was standing a large touring car. She watched the men descend and examine the machine, and then one of them came to her door. Victoria had never spoken with a man like him, or heard speech so perfect. When she had told him that she had no telephone and had directed him to Mrs. Stern’s house, she could not forbear a sympathetic question.

‘Thank you, yes,’ he said. ‘A rear axle. If it had been a front one —’

He smiled, and Victoria smiled too, although to her his words meant nothing.

‘We’ll be tied up for some time, I’m afraid,’ he added.

There were in the car three women and three men. Presently Victoria saw them all go into Mrs. Stern’s garden. One of the women had to be helped a little. She went into the house, but the others sat under the trees. The men went away and the women laid aside their veils. Mrs. Stern came running across the street.

‘Oh, Mrs. Hope,’ she said, her dull face quickened, ‘have you got any lemons in the house? Those folks have got. to sit here till they can send out from the city to mend their car — one of the ladies is lame. I thought I’d give ’em something cool to drink.’

Victoria was looking at her breathlessly.

‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘ that they’d come over here with you for dinner ? I could have it real prompt.’

To the Audreys and their friends, sitting somewhat disconsolately in Mrs. Stern’s little garden, Victoria appeared in a confusion which unmasked her eagerness. They protested: it was too much; their own dinner hour was late — there was no need. . . .

‘I want you should come,’ Victoria said earnestly, as if there were a need. ‘I never have any company come out here. I want you to come.’

They followed her involuntary glance to the treeless stretches and the sidewalks that led nowhere and that betrayed to how few footsteps they ever echoed. Some hint of Victoria’s tragedy was in the bleak open of the blocks.

‘Why, thank you,’ Mrs. Audrey said gently. ‘Then if you will really let us, we will come.’

Victoria could hardly believe. She sped across the street, the past days fallen from her. She made ready the roast and the fowl that she had meant to leave for Abel, the vegetables and salad fresh from the garden. Emily Louise was sent to hurry the baker, and later to strip the vines of their sweet peas. Many tasks were to be done, but Victoria made of them nothing. When Abel came home the savor of the preparation filled the little house.

‘It’s a dinner!’ she triumphantly told him.

‘A dinner! So that was what was up your sleeve!’ cried Abel, and ran to look over the table. ‘That is right — that is fine,’ he approved, ‘only we should had more here. It was no more trouble — to have more.’

At six o’clock all was ready: Victoria in her black best gown, Abel in the new suit of which the sleeves were a bit too long, so that he constantly pushed them up at the armholes. When he saw their guests at the gate, he drew Victoria to the place he had appointed. Emily Louise opened the door.

‘Most pleased to welcome you hospitable under my little roof,’ Abel said, as he had planned to say.

He mastered the names by careful attention and repetition. Victoria slipped away to serve the dinner. When she called them with, ‘You can come now,’ from the doorway, Abel genially led the way.

‘Take your seats where you like!’ he cried.

The six guests were from another world. Of everything that they did they made graces. At Abel’s table they were instantly at home, and they were found putting Victoria at her ease.

‘You in business around here or in the city?’ Abel inquired of Audrey.

Audrey, a man of forty, of fine distinction and fine humor and a genuine love of men, replied that his work was in town.

‘What company you with?’ Abel wished to know. ‘The Badington Electric!’ he repeated with a shout. ‘Why, that’s my firm! Sure —I’m for ten years a builder. What’s your job with ’em, may I ask? Travel for ’em, maybe?’

‘Something of that sort,’ said Audrey, to whom a majority of the Badington stock belonged. ‘All three of us here are slaves for that company,’ he added.

‘Well, then,’ cried Abel, ‘we are already acquainted, ain’t it? We understand each other like a family. We got a kind of a common feeling. Not?’

After that the talk made itself. Abel talked, and to his eyes came the passions of the men with whom he worked, their needs, their bonds, their confusions. The three men listened and said what they could, wondering at this unfamiliar agglomeration which to Abel meant the firm; and then they sought to show him vistas of which he had taken no account. The guests praised the little house, and Victoria told them how, though she herself had lived in a village and had had more experience, Abel had until now always lived in a flat — ‘ Abel’s never lived before, what you might say, private,’ she said.

When the brick ice-cream and the baker’s little cakes were set before them, Abel almost kept silence while he ate, as one giving meet observance; and he sent glances of pleased pride to Victoria.

Finally, Abel proposed to the men that they go out to the porch ‘where they could smoke,’ and the women who had fallen in talk about Emily Louise, were left lingering at the table. Mrs. Audrey had a little girl at home, the others had children grown. The three women told anecdotes of childish doing.

‘Your little girl must be a great deal of company for you,’ the lame lady said quaintly.

‘She has to be,’ Victoria said — and in the warmth of their presence, she told them the history of her party and of how it had almost failed. The furniture, the club, her other invitations — she told it all, except that Abel’s new suit she did not mention. ‘You see what you done for me,’ she ended. When Audrey came to tell them that the car was ready, the eyes of the women were filled with tears.

‘Well, now,’ said Abel, when they went with their guests to their car, ‘you must all drop in on us some evening. We’d like it, would n’t we, Victoria?’

‘We mean to come,’ the women told Victoria.

‘And I’ll look you up at the works some time, if you don’t mind,’ Audrey heard himself saying to Abel.

‘Sure,’ said Abel, ‘we stand to know each other better from now on — not? That is what a man needs. Sure!’

‘ Come soon again — come soon again!’ Emily Louise called after the car.

Mrs. Stern was speaking softly to Victoria.

‘That club you told us about,’ she said, ‘I belong to that. I’ll get your name put up, if you want.’

Abel, having carefully changed the new suit, went into the kitchen to help his wife with the dishes and to talk it over. To his surprise, she had done nothing; she stood leaning in the outside kitchen doorway. In the late light the open land had almost the face of the country; and to that which had seemed to be defined, color of twilight was now giving new depths and delicacies. He came and stood beside her.

‘Victoria,’ he said admiringly,

‘where’d you meet ’em? They’re the right kind of friends for anybody!’

Then she told him, melting suddenly to tears in her happiness and her contrition. And she showed him the note that she had meant to leave. For an instant something of her tragedy was clear to Abel. He put out his hand.

‘I don’t care how you done it,’ he said loyally, ‘you done it magnificent.’