Friendly Neighbors

‘MRS. SCOTT is dead.’

Mrs. Anderson was shocked. She laid down her garden-shears and looked at Mrs. Hoxie, who was telling her.

For Mrs. Anderson had been planning to call; and she turned involuntarily toward Mrs. Scott’s house just in back of her. Mrs. Scott had bought that house just six years ago. She had planted the most wonderful red peonies — they were blooming now — if she was dead —

Mrs. Anderson turned rather indignantly on Mrs. Hoxie. How should she know? She lived a whole block away —

‘Mrs. Wilson saw the hearse at the door.’

A hearse!

Mrs. Anderson gazed at the silent house just behind. She had been planning to call.

‘Mrs. Wilson was shocked,’ Mrs. Hoxie went on. ‘She said she felt she ought to have known it before the hearse came, living only four houses away. A hearse is a shock, of course. Mrs. Wilson is a lovely woman.’

That certainly was no way to speak of the dead. Mrs. Anderson looked after Mrs. Hoxie with resentment. Then her own remorse deepened. She had been planning to call, and the red peonies blooming so heartlessly in Mrs. Scott’s own yard disturbed her. It was not right to let them stand that way if Mrs. Scott was dead. With a deep pang she wished she had called.

She went into Mrs. Lewis’s next door, to see if Mrs. Lewis knew.

Mrs. Lewis knew. She had just read it in the New York Tribune. The New York Tribune still lay on the floor where it had fallen.

Tears were in Mrs. Lewis’s eyes. It seemed so wrong, now, that they had lived so long almost back to back and had never spoken. ‘I have met her on the street too,’ said Mrs. Lewis, with profound regret.

Going back to her garden, Mrs. Anderson looked at Mrs. Scott’s sightless windows. She had often wondered if Mrs. Scott was looking. Now she knew there was no one behind those windows. It was dreadful certainty.

She wished she had called.

She saw Mrs. Allen, next door on the other side, and wondered if she knew. She stepped to the hedge, irresistibly impelled.

‘I don’t believe it,’ replied Mrs. Allen, with the utmost firmness.

Mrs. Anderson was aroused. Why a tone like that? Toward the dead? But she replied gently. The hearse had been seen at the door. And Mrs. Lewis had read it in the Tribune.

‘Oh!’ replied Mrs. Allen, unrelenting; ‘the Tribune.’

She had n’t known her personally, Mrs. Allen went on, seeming to think some explanation was due. All she knew of her was that, the day after they had moved in, a voice had called Mr. Allen on the ’phone, and asked if they were sure they had a buildingpermit to put up exactly that type of ready-cut garage.

Mrs. Anderson’s eyes drooped as she looked at the garage. And again she wondered, passionately, why she had n’t called on Mrs. Scott.

Young Mrs. Baker was just passing, with little Marjorie.

‘She’s the only other woman in the block with just one child,’ meditated young Mrs. Baker. ‘Is she dead?’ asked young Mrs. Baker with energy.

The hearse had been seen at the door, And it was in the Tribune.

‘Just before I left the house, not ten minutes ago,’ continued young Mrs. Baker, only growing firmer, ‘ the Board of Health called up to say they had been asked to instruct me to keep Marjorie on her own premises until she got over her cough. A neighbor. With one child. They are not allowed to give names.’

Together they gazed at the silent house.

A colored woman came out and began to pick the peonies.

‘I suppose she would know,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with a catch in her voice.

She washed she had called.

The colored woman picked all the peonies.

The house stared at them.

‘I was planning to call,’ said Mrs. Anderson.

Mrs. Anderson went in to get her market-basket. She felt as if she must get away for a little while. But even the market-basket was on a shelf by the window, and through the window she saw Mrs. Scott’s house.

‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Anderson to herself, ‘I wish I had called.’

At a turn of the road she stooped to help a small child with his rebellious sandal; and on lifting her head, looked straight at Mrs. Scott, pausing, interested.

‘Oh!’ Mrs. Anderson caught herself in time.

‘Yes,’ replied Mrs. Scott amused, tactful. ‘So many did. It was Mr. Scott’s mother. She had been visiting us.’

Swept on by the current of her relief, Mrs. Anderson felt a great need of saying something. She had been so profoundly moved. She had experienced so much in the last hour. It did not seem possible to have things return to their former basis. She had always felt that she would have liked Mrs. Scott. She had felt that Mrs. Scott was not quite understood by some. And to have died — actually died, without anyone’s knowing it, when she lived just back —

But, no, she had not.

Mrs. Anderson felt justified in the feeling she had always thought she would have had for Mrs. Scott.

She had felt that Mrs. Scott would not.

‘I have been intending to call,’ she said warmly, trying to crowd all the passionate remorse of the last hour into a few words.

‘Yes, do,’ replied Mrs. Scott, with answering cordiality, as she passed on. ‘Some time.’