NEIGHBORS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 5, 1881

NEIGHBORS.

“A new family has just moved into the tenant-house below us, Nell,” Mr. Gray said one evening as he took his tea from his wife’s hand.

“The mission house, as you used to call it? I haven’t kept track of the tenants there for the last year, they have changed so often. You know I used to try to be neighborly; but with people moving in and out every few months, it is not worth the while.”

“But this tenant has rented for a year, I understand. And the woman is an invalid, that was why I spoke of it. I saw her sitting in a rocking-chair before the house, directing where the furniture should be placed to-night, and felt sorry for her. They are poor, evidently, and there were a half-dozen children about.”

“I must go and see her,” Mrs. Gray said, answering her first generous impulse. “Do you know anything of the family?”

“She looked delicate and lady-like, I thought, but worn down and sharpened by trouble. The man is rather a shiftless fellow, and I fancy she carries the heavy burdens of the house. It’s a clear field for missionary effort, my dear. They have but just come to the place from the next town.”

“Ah, well! I will see what I can do. Of course I can’t go in at once—certainly not to-night, for I have to run down to Mrs. Hall’s for a pattern; but I will remember it.”

But coming home from her call, half resolved to ignore formality, since the stranger was an invalid, and see if she could be of any help, Mrs. Gray saw a faded, fretful woman in the door scolding two rough boys. She forgot the nervous wear of disease in listening to the sharp tones, and mentally resolved to be in no haste to cultivate her new acquaintance.

But the neighbor—or her children—seemed disposed to cultivate her, for a few days later the little maid-of-all-work answered a tap at the back door and brought back word that Mrs. Case would be much obliged for a little milk. As owner of the only cow in the neighborhood, Mrs. Gray furnished skim-milk to half a dozen families. “Certainly,” she said, now abstractedly repeating the recipe she was using: “Ten eggs, two cups sugar—the pan nearest the end, Hannah be sure—” and then a new thought striking her: “I wonder if this is the new neighbor?”

With the platter of eggs she was beating, she walked to the door to see. A rough-looking boy stood there; a large and lumbering boy with a shock of light hair, and very patched clothes. But since they were patched and not ragged, Mrs. Gray’s opinion of the mother rose. “Are you the ones that have just moved in here?” she asked, reckless of grammar.

“Yes,” answered the boy, stupidly watching her flying fingers, which never stopped beating her eggs.

“Your mother is sick, I hear.”

“Yes, been so a long time.”

“Tell her she is welcome to milk any time and”—a sudden vague compassion for the mother of a half-dozen such boys striking her, “tell her I am coming to see her.” And as the boy disappeared, her eyes turned involuntarily to a pretty painted motto, the work of her own hands, on the wall: “Know thy opportunity.” Here was hers, perhaps; and Mrs. Gray meant always to make this thought one of the main-springs of action with herself.

“I’ll go this afternoon,” she said now to herself; but little Bertie came in half sick from play, and she was kept busy with him until it was too late. The next day she had callers, and the next was Sunday; and by the time the washing and ironing was disposed of for the next week, the matter had really slipped her mind. So many other things claimed her attention: church and social duties, and a press of sewing just then; and a little extra house cleaning for expected guests, and then their entertainment in that graceful way for which she was famous with all her friends. Sometimes a thought of her invalid neighbor crossed her mind indeed; once her husband asked her if she had yet called, and mentioned that their pastor reported them as people needing social help. “Really,” Mrs. Gray said half petulantly, “I don’t know that that is my affair. I have more acquaintances now than I can keep up with.”

“It’s hardly a question of acquaintance in the usual way.”

“Well, I hate going to see people to do them good. And it never comes to anything. But I certainly mean to go see Mrs. Case, sometime.”

For Mrs. Gray was no aristocrat. She was merely thoughtless, hurried, careless; too busy about her own business to do the Lord’s, mayhap. Besides, it was now nearly two months since the neighbors had come, and she was beginning to feel too ashamed at her delay to wish to go at all. But just here the children made friends. Mrs. Gray went away on a week’s visit alone, leaving them to the care of little Hannah. When she came back, she heard, among other bits of news, that the two little ones had spent an afternoon at the neighbors, and enjoyed themselves ever so much. “And now,” thought Mrs. Gray, “I shall have to go to see if I can allow the children to play together.”

But when her husband came home the next night he said to her, “Did you know, Nell, that there is scarlet fever in the neighborhood? I hear one of our neighbor’s boys is down with it. You will have to be careful of the children, but I do wish you would go over and see if you can’t do something. They must need help.”

“I’m almost ashamed to go now, Fred. It’s so long since they moved in, and I’ve never been near them. I never meant to be so little neighborly; but it has seemed impossible to get the time.”

And then, a sudden, dreadful fear coming upon her, Mrs. Gray went up to her children. She remembered their visit of the day before; perhaps more than one had been made in her week’s absence. Indeed, as the result of her anxious questions it came out that it was so.

“The boy asked us to come, mamma,” Bertie said. “An’ he had a kite. An’ we had such a nice time. We meant to ask Hannah, but she was talking to the milk-man, and we didn’t think you’d care.”

“An’ his sister was sick,” little Allie added. “An’ his mamma. They don’t have many good times, I guess. We took them some apples.”

Vain was all Mrs. Gray’s care, now. A week later she was bent over one stricken darling, and the other, by some charm, escaping, had been sent to a sister out of town. Other friends did kind offices for her neighbors; cared for the sick girl and watched over the dead, and helped, as they could, for the shabby little funeral that a fortnight later left the tenant-house. Mrs. Gray saw it as it went past, but in her passion of fear for her own, it was only to cry. “She deserved almost to lose her child. What right had she to expose my darling to infection? She must have known. She should have sent them home that day. If I lose my boy it will be all her fault.”

But little Bertie did not die, and when the danger was over, better thoughts came to Mrs. Gray. Had she any right to consideration from her neighbor, when she had given her none? Had there not been a little patrician pride in her indifference? She had been drawing her circles to exclude a good, common woman; but one cannot draw social circles so that nothing shall escape into the publican world outside. And from others, who now, so late, had done their duty to the strangers, the duty which was her’s first, she heard much of the poor family; of their need of help; their social isolation; their longing to be like “other folks” in church and school observance. The little village society had rallied around them at last, and other women had done finally the work Mrs. Gray should have done months before. They did not need her friendly offices now; but at last, in the late summer, Mrs. Gray called on her neighbor. She did not apologize for her negligence. It had been atoned for over her child’s bed. She found her neighbor a feeble, suffering woman, bowed down by disease and sorrow; a woman who might have been her equal and friend, had not fate been against her in the bitter struggle of life and held her from all advantages. The common peril through which they had passed melted all formalities. They talked like old acquaintances, and Mrs. Gray’s frank sympathy was sweet to the sorrowing mother. So sweet, so soothing, that when, after an hour’s call, she rose to go, Mrs. Case’s last reserve melted away.

“Mrs. Gray,” she said, hesitatingly, “I don’t know but you blame me for your little boy’s getting the fever, and I had thought that if he died I’d never forgive myself. I didn’t know my girl had the fever the day they were over here—but I did suspect it a little. And I was mean enough to think that seeing you’d never taken the trouble to notice me in any way, I’d just let things take their course. I was all discouraged that day. Seemed as if we’d been sort of shunned and looked down on ever since we’d been here, and I’d made up my mind as nobody was neighborly to me I’d be neighborly to nobody. And the children had such a good time. It was dreadful mean of me, I’m free to admit; but you can’t tell how forsaken I felt, sick and alone and things not going straight in Mr. Case’s work. We used to go to church, but husband had made me give that up since we came here, for he said people snubbed us, and then when baby died—and every one was so kind—”

She stopped with a burst of sobs, but Mrs. Gray had seized her hand. “I was to blame, too,” she said hurriedly. “If I’d been neighborly at first, all this might never have happened. I can’t forgive myself, but indeed I’ll try to do better in the future. And it will be better for you, I am sure.”

And so it proved, for Mrs. Gray, interested now herself, soon interested others in steady aid to the poor family. She brought the children into the Sabbath-school and the husband and wife into the church. In brief, they were at last neighbors in deed as well as in name.

“And of all the chances to do good I ever had,” Mrs. Gray said afterward, “that was the very best. The pity was that it took me so long to find out my opportunity.”