Buttonholes

by BEN HUR LAMPMAN

NEARLY fifty years ago, in a college town beside a pleasant river back East, there lived an angular, apologetic woman, and silent, whose calling in life was the working of buttonholes. Miss Sheila Smink worked buttonholes every day of her life except Sunday, for two cents a buttonhole, and it was by this means that she kept her old mother, a wisp of a woman who seemed always to have been old, quite as Sheila Smink seemed never to have been young.

So many years have passed with the flow of the river since Miss Smink, as everyone called her, worked her last buttonhole, that we need not feel sorry for her now, any more than folks did when she worked buttonholes for them— and, besides, there were certain sorts of buttonholes, such as the carefully corded ones in broadcloth coats, for which Sheila Smink received five cents apiece. But in spite of this her pale nose was forever near to her needle.

How dear it was to Sheila Smink, when she thought of her appointed task, and the number of buttonholes which constituted a day, to know that when people spoke of her and her craftsmanship they said. “Miss Smink’s buttonholes will outwear the garment.”This presents to fancy a vast array of garmentless buttonholes, marching and countermarching, perhaps playing croquet or stooping to prayer; but when it was said, it approximated the truth. An awareness of it enabled Sheila Smink to snip off a thread as smartly as ever when her back ached and her shy pale-blue eyes were more than ever like frightened skim milk. If ever you have written a great poem or constructed an Odd Fellows’ block, you will know how the buttonhole maker felt when they praised her. It seemed then to Miss Smink that life had its significance.

A buttonhole specialist in those times, when there were neither snaps nor zippers, had only hooks-andeyes to compete with, and most women favored buttons, an abundance of buttons, with a buttonhole for each. Most of the waists buttoned all the way down the back. These were prolific of two-cent rewards. What a windfall! But some of the goods would be fine, sheer organdy, and even in Miss Smink’s skilled hands this fabric fought with the buttonhole maker.

By the simplest of calculations you will know how many buttonholes Miss Smink worked to earn a dollar. Luck was with her, however, as it was with her mother, for the house in which they lived was their own, and there were only the taxes. There were only the taxes because Sheila Smink found, in her years of endeavor, that she never could work quite enough buttonholes to afford to have the house painted. We shall be reconciled to this, if she wasn’t, — though she did not complain, — for the house was more buttonhole factory than home.

Yet it was home, nevertheless, and a rose crept over the front-porch lattice, and there were two rockers on the porch, and at the gate stood a clump of syringa which in its season was a great comfort to Sheila Smink. A great comfort— and at times a sore trial.

In good times and bad times there was always a demand for well-worked buttonholes, and Miss Smink had reason to thank Providence, as she did, for its concern over her well-being. There were so many buttonholes to make that now and then the members of the Ladies’ Aid, when planning a church sociable, were accustomed to raise and dismiss the question of Sheila Smink’s baking a cake.

“Will Miss Smink have time to bake us a threelayer chocolate cake?” Mrs. J. K. Elmire would ask.

Perhaps it would be Mrs. Frank T. Atkins who would answer, “Goodness, no! Miss Smink has too many buttonholes to make! There’s my Susie’s party dress, and it must be ready by Tuesday!”

Sometimes it would be somebody’s wedding dress that required buttonholes. When they brought her a wedding dress, to work buttonholes, Sheila Smink used to say, “Oh, my! Such beautiful goods! Such nice silk!” She would promise, though nobody ever asked her, to be real careful. But Miss Smink always was careful. And sometimes it would be the ruffled blouse of a small boy, or a frock for a little girl. Then Miss Smink would exclaim, “Oh, isn’t it cute!”

2

Is IT hard to make buttonholes? If you had made as many thousands of them as Sheila Smink made, at two cents a buttonhole, sometimes five, you wouldn’t think it was hard. You would merely see buttonholes, buttonholes, buttonholes before your closed eyes those nights when you couldn’t go straight to sleep. Sheila Smink used to wonder whether these were buttonholes she had made or ones she should have to make. She wished they would go away. Sometimes it helped to get out of bed and kneel down again to say her prayers a second time. You may count sheep, but she couldn’t because of the buttonholes. When you come to see buttonholes in the sleepless hours, it is easy to make buttonholes in the waking ones. To Sheila Smink this was one of the facts of life.

And was she careful! Miss Smink always washed her hands, soaping them heavily, before she put on a fresh apron over her dress and sat down to work buttonholes. From her waist there dangled conveniently three strips of ribbon, clustered, and each bore a property of her calling. One ribbon tethered her buttonhole scissors, the second her emery pad, fashioned like a strawberry, with which to sharpen a tired needle, and the third a beeswax lump for the thread. Somehow, when Miss Smink stood erect, save for the droop of her shoulders, to welcome a buttonhole client, these dangling properties gave her dignity, as though she wore side arms. But you must not misunderstand. Miss Smink was never a figure of mirth to the townspeople of the college town beside the pleasant river. Almost, she herself was institutional.

There goes Miss Smink, hurrying down the street, leaning forward like a schooner’s figurehead, with her old straw sailor and her black skirt and blouse, and a carpetbag in one hand. In her long skirts Sheila Smink moved as though she were on rollers. Those times she would be taking a dress back to a patron, its buttonholes finished, or carrying another garment home to her buttonhole factory. Long after dark, if you walked down Elm Street and glanced in at the bay window, you could see Miss Smink bent above her buttonholes.

The syringa was in blossom again — and you know how fragrant it was — the mock orange that grew beside Sheila Smink’s front gate; the selfsame syringa which of spring nights cast the last shadow before you came to the arc light where the great beetles were whirling. And mixed with the scent of the syringa was the breathing of lilacs. Footsteps down Elm Street. They stopped in the shadow, and laughter was part of the softness of night. Then silence. Then laughter again, but low, whispering laughter. And silence. Soft silence and the whiteness of the sweet mock orange that cast the last shadow. Footsteps again on the wooden sidewalk. How many a springtime!

From her porch, where she sat in one of the two old rockers, resting her eyes, Sheila Smink watched them, the boy and the girl, walk hand in hand into the unsteady radiance of the arc light. She leaned forward in her rocking chair and watched them cross the street to enter the shadow again. Then Sheila Smink went slowly into the house, her eyes rested by the cool spring darkness, to work more buttonholes.