Then Madame Proudfit, she leans out from her star, gracious and benign, and certain sure that her star was the only one that had eternal truth inside it; and she spoke with a manner of waving her hand good natured to all the other little stars, including ours:
"You mad, mad, children!" she said. "Youaremad. But you are very picturesque in your decisions, there's no denying that. He would probably be better cared for, more scientifically fed, and all that, in a good, hired, private family. But that's as you see it. Be mad, if you like—I'm here to watch over you!"
She had quite a nice tidy high point of view about it—but oh, it wasn't ours. It wasn't ours. We three—the Brother-man and Miss Clementina and me—we sort of hugged our own way. And the little chap he kept smiling, like he sort of hugged it too.
So that was the way it was. Miss Clementina and the Brother-man—that she'd been afraid to meet, 'count of thinking mebbe he didn't mean his writings for living—were in love from before they knew it. And I think it was part because they both meant life strong enough for living and not just for thinking, like the lukewarm folks do.
I kept the little chap with me the three monthsor so that went by before the wedding—and I could hardly bear to let him go then.
"Why don't you keep him for them the first year or so?" Friendship Village ask' me. But there's some things even your own town doesn't always understand. "It's so unromantic for them to take him now," some of them even said.
But I says to them what I say now: "There's things that's bigger than romantic and there's things that's bigger than practical, so be some of both is mixed in right proportion. And the biggest thing I know in this world is when folks say over, 'You and me and all of us,' like voices, speaking to everybody's Father from inside the dark."
FOOTNOTE:[9]Copyright, 1913,The Delineator.
[9]Copyright, 1913,The Delineator.
[9]Copyright, 1913,The Delineator.
I says to myself: "What shall I do? What shall I do?"
I crushed the magazine down on my knee, and sat there rocking with it between my hands.
It was just a story about a little fellow with a brick. They met him, a little boy six years old, somewhere in Europe, going along up toward one of the milk stations, at sunrise. They wondered why he carried a brick, and they asked him: "Why do you have the brick?" "You see," he says, "it's so wet. I can get up on this." And he stood on his brick in the mud before the milk station for five hours, waiting for his supplies that was a pint of milk to take home to his mother.
Mebbe it was queer that this struck me all of a heap, when the big war I'd got used to. But you can't get used to the things that hurt a child.
And then I kept thinking about Bennie. Supposing it had been Bennie, with the brick? Bennie was the little boy that his young father had gone back to the old country, and Bennie hadn't any mother. So I had him.
Because I had to do something, I went out on theporch and called him. He came running from his swing—his coat was too big for him and his ears stuck out, but he was an awful sweet little boy. The kind you want to have around.
"Bennie," I says, "I know little boys hate it. Butcouldyou leave me hug you?"
He kind of saw I was feeling bad—like a child can—and he came right up to me and he says:
"I got one hug left.Hereit is!"
And he hugged me grand.
Then he ran back down the path, throwing his legs out sideways, kind of like a little calf, the way he does. And I set down on the side stoop, and I cried.
"Oh, blessed God," I says, "supposing Bennie was running round Europe with a brick, waiting five hours in the mud for milk for his ma, that he ain't got none?"
When I feel like that, I can't sit still. I have to walk. So I opened the side gate and left Bennie run through into Mis' Holcomb's yard, that was ironing on her back porch, and I says to her to please keep an eye on him. And then I headed down the street, towards nothing; and my heart just filled out ready to blow up.
As I went, I heard a bell strike. It was a strange bell, and I wondered. Then I remembered.
"The new Town Hall's new bell," I thought. "It's come and it's up. They're trying it."
And it seemed like the voice of the town, saying something.
In the door of the newspaper office sat the editor, Luke Norris, his red face and black hair buried behind a tore newspaper.
"Hello, Luke," I says, sheer out of wanting human looks and words from somebody.
He laid down his newspaper, and he took his breath quick and he says: "I wish't Europe wasn't so far off. I'd like to go over there—with a basket."
I overtook little Nuzie Cook, going along home,—little thin thing she was, with such high eye-brows that her face looked like its windows were up.
"Nuzie," I says, "how's your ma?" And that was a brighter subject, because Mis' Cook has only got the rheumatism and the shingles.
"Ma's in bed," says Nuzie. "She's worried about her folks in the old country—she ain't heard and she can't sleep."
I went to a house where I knew there was a baby, and I played with that. Then I went to call on Mis' Perkins, that ain't got sense enough to talk about anything that is anything, so she kind of rested me. But into Mis' Hunter's was a little young rabbit, that her husband had plowed into its ma's nest, and he'd brought it in with its leg cut by the plow, and they was trying to decide what best to do. And I begun hurting inside again, and thinking:
"Nothing but a rabbit—a baby rabbit—and over there...."
I didn't say anything. Pretty soon I turned back home. And then I ran into the McVicars—three of them.
The McVicars—three of them—had Spring hats trimmed with cherries and I guess raisins and other edibles; the McVicars—mother and two offspring, sprung quite a while back—are new-come to the village, and stylish. They hadn't been in town in two months when they'd been invited twice to drive to the cemetery in the closed carriages, though they hadn't known either corpse, personally. They impressed people.
"Oh, Mis' Marsh," says Mis' McVicar, "we wanted to see you. We're getting up a relief fund...."
I went down in my pocket for a quarter, automatic. I heard their thanks, and I went on. And it came to me how, all over the country, the whole 100,000,000 of us, more or less, had been met up with to contribute something to relief, and we'd all done it. And it had gone over there to this country and to that. But our hearts had ached, individual and silent, the way mine was aching that day—and there wasn't any means of cabling that ache over to Europe. If there was, if that great ache that was in all of us for the folks over there, could just be gathered up and got over to them in onemass, I thought it would do as much as food and clothes and money to help them.
I stood still by a picket fence I happened to be passing, and I looked down the little street. It had a brick sidewalk and a dirt road and little houses, and the fences hadn't been taken down yet. And all the places looked still and kind of dear.
"They all feel bad," I thought, "just as bad as I do, for folks that's starved. But they can't say so—they can't say so. Only in little dabs of money, sent off separate."
Bennie was swinging on Mis' Holcomb's gate, looking for me. He came running to meet me.
"I found a blue beetle," he says to me. "And that lady's kitty's home, with a bell on. And I got a new nail. An—an—an—"
And I thought: "He ain't no different from them—over there. The little tikes, with no pas and no suppers and nothing to play with, only mebbe a brick to lug."
And there I was, right back to where I started from. And I went out to get supper, with my heart hanging around my neck like a pail of rock.
Next day was Memorial Day. And Memorial Day in Friendship Village is something grand.
First the G. A. R. conducts the service in theCourt House yard, with benches put up special, and a speech from out of town and paid for.
Right away afterward everybody marches or drives, according to the state of their pocket-book, out to the Cemetery, to lay flowers on the soldiers' graves; and it's quite an event, because everybody that's got anybody buried out there and that is still alive themselves, they all whisk out the day before and decorate up their graves, so's everybody can see for themselves how intimate their dead is held in remembrance. And everybody walks around to see if so-and-so has thought to send anything from Seattle, or wherenot,thisyear. And if they didn't, it's something to tell about.
Then all the Ladies' Aid Societies serve dinners in the empty store buildings down town, and make what they can. And in the afternoon everybody lounges round and cuts the grass and tinkers with the screens and buys ice cream off the donkey-cart man.
I dressed Bennie up, clean and miserable, in the morning, and went down to the exercises. I couldn't see much, because the woman in front of me couldn't either, and she stood up; and I couldn't hear much, because the paid-for speaker addressed only one-half of his audience, and as usual I wasn't in the right half. But the point is that neither of them limitations mattered. I didn't have to see andI didn't have to hear. All that I had to do was to feel. And I felt. For I was alive at the time of the Civil War, and all you have to do to me is to touch that spring in me, and I'm back there: Getting the first news, reading about Sumter, sensing the call for 75,000 volunteers, hearing that this one and this one and this one had enlisted, peeking through the fence at Camp Randall where my two brothers were waiting to go; and then living the long four years through, when every morning meant news, and no news meant news, and every night meant more to hear. For years I couldn't open a newspaper without feeling I must look first for the list of the dead....
I set there on the bench in the spring sunshine, without anything to lean against, seeing the back breadths of Mis' Curtsey's gray flowered delaine, and living it all over again, with Bennie hanging on my knee. And it made it a thousand times worse, now that these Memorial Days were passing, with what was going on in Europe still going on.
And I thought: "Oh, I dunno how we can keep up feeling memorial for just our own soldiers, when the whole world's soldiers are lying dead, new every night...."
And getting a little more used to the paid speaker's voice, I could hear some of what he was saying. I could get the names,—Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Shenandoah, Missionary Ridge, all these, over andover. And my heart ached with every one. But it had a new ache, for names that the whole world will echo with for years to come. And sitting there, with nobody knowing, I says to myself:
"And, O Lord, I memorial all the rest of them—the soldiers of fifty years ago no more than the soldiers of now—the soldiers of Here no more than the soldiers of Over There. O Lord, I memorial them all, and I pray for them that survive over there—put all Your strength on them, Lord, as far as I am concerned, for us survivors here, we don't need You as much as they do—them that's new bereaved and new desolated. For Christ's sake. Amen."
On my way home, I saw Luke Norris sitting out by the door of his office again. He never went to any exercises because his wind-pipe was liable to shut up on him, and it broke up the program some, getting his breath through to him.
"Calliope," he says, "we want you should go on to the Committee for opening the new Town Hall, in about two months from now. We want the jim-dandiest, swell-upest celebration this town has ever had. Twenty years of unexampled prosperity—"
I stood still and stared down on him.
"Honest," I says, "do you want me to help in a prosperity celebrationthisSummer?"
"Sure," he says, "women are in on it."
"Luke," I says. "I dunno how you'll feel aboutthat when you come to think it over. But I feel—"
Bennie, fussing round on the side-walk, came over, tugging a chunk of wood. I thought at first he was carrying a brick.
I sat down in a handy chair, just inside Luke's door.
"Luke," I says, "Luke! That ain't the kind of a celebration this town had ought to have. You listen here to me...."
Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think about the next two Summer months. I lie awake and think how it all went, that planning, from first to last. I think about the idea, and about how it started, and kindled, and spread, and flamed. And I think about what finally came of it.
For one thing, it was the first living, human thing that Friendship Village ever got up that there wasn't a soul that kicked about. You can't name another thing that any of the town ever went in for, that the rest didn't get up and howl. Pavement—some of us said we couldn't afford it, "not now." New bridge—half of us says we was bonded to the limit as it was. Sewerage—three-fourths of us says for our town it was a engineering impossibility. Buying the electric light plant, that would be pure socialism. Central school building—a vast per cent of us allows it would make it too far for the children towalk, though out of school hours they run all over the town, scot-free and foot loose, skate, sled and hoop. As a town none of us would unite on nothing. Never, not till this time.
But this time it was different. And even if not anything had come of it, I'd be glad to remember the kind of flash I got from different folks, when we came to tell them about it.
I went first to the Business Men's Association, because it was them that was talking the Town Hall celebration the hardest. I'd been to them before, about playgrounds, about band concerts, about taking care of the park; and some of them were down on us ladies.
"You're always putting up propositions to give moneyout," says one of them once. "Why don't you propose us takinginsome? What do you think we are? Charity?"
"No," says I to him, "I don't. Nor yet love. You're dollar marks and ciphers, a few of you," I told him, candid, "and those don't make a number."
So when I stood up before them that night, I knew some of them were prepared to vote, automatic, against whatever we wanted. Some of them didn't even have to hear what us ladies suggested in order to be against it. And then I began to talk.
I told them the story of the little fellow with the brick. That stayed in my mind. I never see mymilk-man go along, leaving big, clean bottles in everybody's doors that I didn't image up that little boy standing in the mud on his brick, waiting. And then I mentioned Bennie to them too, that they all knew about. We hadn't heard from his father in two months now, and of course there didn't any of us know....
"I don't need to remind you," I says to them, "how we feel about Europe. Every one of us knows. We try not to talk about it, because there's some of it we can't talk about without letting go. But it's on us all the time. The other day I was trying to think how the world use' to feel, and how I'd felt, before this came on us. I couldn't do it. There can't any of us do it. It's on us, like thick dark, whatever we do. Giving money don't express it. Talking don't express it.... Oh, let's do something in this town! Instead of our new Town Hall Prosperity celebration, let's us do something on August 4 to let Europe see how bad we feel. Let's us."
We talked a little more, and then I told them our plan, and we talked over that. I'll never forget them, in the little Town Room with the two gas jets and the chairman's squeaky swivel chair and the tobacco smoke. But there wasn't one voice that dissented, not one. They all sat still, as if they were taking off some spiritual hats that didn't show. It was as if their little idea of a Prosperity celebrationsort of gave up its light to some big sun, blazing there on us, in the room.
The rest was easy. It kind of done itself. In a way it was already done. Something was in people's hearts, and we were just making a way for it to get out. And the air was full of something that was ready to get into people's hearts, and we made a way for it to get in. I don't know but these are our only job on this earth.
August 4—that's the Europe date that none of America can forget, because it's part our date too.
"What we going to do?" says Bennie, when I was dressing him. It was four months since we had had a letter from his father....
"We're going to do something," I says to him, "that you'll remember, Bennie, when you're an old man." And I gave his shoulders a little shake. "You tell them about it when you're old. Because they'll understand it better then than we do now. You tell them!"
"Yes, ma'am," says Bennie, obedient—and I kind of think he'll do it.
We were to meet in the Court House yard, that's central, and march to the Market Square, that's big. I was to march in the last detachment, and so it came that I could watch them start. And I could see down Daphne Street, with all the closed business houses with the flags hung out at half mast, someof them with a bow of black cloth tied on. And it was a strange gathering, for everybody was thinking, and everybody knew everybody else was thinking.
We've got a nice band in Friendship Village, that they often send for to play to the City. And when it started off ahead, beating soft with the Beethoven funeral march, I held my breath and shut my eyes.They were playing for Europe, four thousand miles away.
Then came the women. That seemed the way to do, we thought—because war means what war means to women. They were wearing white—or at least everybody was that had a white dress, but blue or green or brown marched just the same as if it was white; and they all wore black streamers—just cloth, because we none of us had very much to do with. Every woman in town marched—not one stayed home. And one of the women had thought of something.
"We'd ought not to carry just our flag," she said. "That don't seem real right. Let's us get out our dictionaries and copy off the other nations' flags over there; and make 'em up out of cheese-cloth, and carry 'em."
And that was what we done. And all the women carried the different ones, just as they happened to pick them up, and at half mast.
I don't know as I know who came next, or whatorder we arranged them. We didn't have many ex-foreigners living in Friendship Village, but them we had marched, in their own groups. They all came, dressed in their best, and we had cheese-cloth flags of their own nation, made for each group; and they marched carrying them, all together.
There was everybody that worked in the town, marching for Labor. Then come the churches, not divided off into denominations, but just walking, hit or miss, as they came; and though this was due to a superintendent or two getting rattled at the last minute and not falling in line right, it seemed good to see it, for the sorrow of one church for Europe isn't any whit different from the sorrow of every one of the rest. When your heart aches, it aches without a creed.
Last came the children, that I was going to march with; and someway they were kind of the heart of the whole. And just in front of them was the Mothers' Club—twenty or so of them, hard-worked, hopeful women, all wanting life to be nice for their children, and trying, the best they knew, to read up about it at their meetings. And they were marching that day for the motherhood of the nations, and there wasn't one of them that didn't feel it so. And the children ... when we turned the corner where I could look back on them, I had all I could do—I had all I could do. Three-four hundred of them, bobbing along, carrying any nation's flag that camehandy. And they meant so much more than they knew they meant, like children always do.
"You're going to march for the little boys and girls in Europe that have lost their folks," was all we said to them.
And when I see them coming along, looking round so sweet, dressed up in what they had, and their hair combed up nice by somebody, somehow, there came over me the picture of that little fellow with his brick, waiting there for that pint of milk; and I squeezed up so on Bennie's hand that I was walking with, that he looked up at me.
"You're lovin' me too hard in my fingers," he told me, candid.
"Oh, Bennie," I says, "you excuse me. I guess I was squeezing the hand of every little last one of them, over there."
We all came into the Market Square, in the afternoon sunshine, with our little still, peaceful street—laying and listening, and never knowing it was like heaven at all. Every soul in town was there, I don't know of one that didn't go. Even Luke Norris was there, his wind-pipe forgot. We didn't have much exercises. Just being there was exercise enough. We sung—no national airs, and above all, not our own; but just a hymn or two that had in it all we could find of sympathy and love. There wasn't anything else to say, only just those two things. Then Dr. June prayed, brief:
"Lord God of Love, our hearts are full of love this day for all those in Europe who are bereaved. We cannot speak about it very well—we cannot show it very much. But Thou art love to them. Oh, draw us near in spirit to those sorrowing over there, even as Thou are near to them all. Amen."
Then the band played the Chopin funeral march, while we all stood still. When it was done, up in the belfry of the new Town Hall, the new bell that we were so proud of began to toll. And it seemed like the voice of the town, saying something. We all went home to that bell, with the children leading us. And nobody's store was opened again that day. For the spirit of the time, and of Over There, was on the village like a garment, and I suppose none of us spoke of anything else at supper, or when the lamps were lit.
Quite a little while after supper I was sitting on my porch in the dark, when Luke Norris and some of them came in my gate.
"Calliope," said one of the women, "we've been thinking. Don't it seem awful pitiful that Europe can't know how we feel here to-day?"
"I thought of that," I said.
And Luke says: "Well, we've been looking up the cable charges. And we thought we might manage it, to cable something like this:
"Friendship Village memorial exercises held to-day for Europe's dead. Love and sympathy from our village."
"Friendship Village memorial exercises held to-day for Europe's dead. Love and sympathy from our village."
"It'll cost a lot," says Luke. "The McVicars want us to add the money to their relief fund instead. But I sayno!" he struck the porch post with his palm. "Leave us send it, cost or no cost, no matter what."
"I say so too," I says. "But tell me: Where'll you send it to?"
And Luke says simple:
"None of the newspaper dispatch folks'll take it—it ain't news enough for them. So I'm a-going to cable it myself, prepaid, to six Europe newspapers."
Pretty soon they went away, and I took Bennie and walked down to the gate. I thought about that message, going on the wire to Europe.... There wasn't any moon, or any sound. The town lay still, as if it was thinking. The world lay still, as if it was feeling.
FOOTNOTE:[10]Copyright, 1916,Collier's Weekly, as "Over There."
[10]Copyright, 1916,Collier's Weekly, as "Over There."
[10]Copyright, 1916,Collier's Weekly, as "Over There."
Never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget the evening that Jeffro got home from the War. It was one of the times when what you thought was the earth under your feet dissolves away, and nothing is left there but a little bit of dirt, with miles of space just on the under side of it. It was one of the times when what you thought was the sky over your head is drawn away like a cloth, and nothing is there but miles of space on the upper side of it. And in between the two great spaces are us little humans, creeping 'round, wondering what we're for. And not doing one-ninth as much wondering as you'd think we would.
Jeffro was the little foreign-born peddler, maker of toys, that had come to Friendship Village and lived for a year with his little boy, scraping enough together to send for his wife and baby in the old country. And no sooner had he got them here than the Big War came—and nothing would do but Jeffro must go back and fight it out with his country. And back he went, though how he got there I dunno, for the whole village loaded him downso with stuff that he must have been part helpless. How a man could fight with his arms part full of raspberry jam and hard cookies and remedies and apple butter, I'm sure I don't know. But the whole village tugged stuff there for days beforehand. Jeffro was our one hero. He was the only soldier Friendship Village had—except old Bud Babcock, with his brass buttons and his limp and his perfectly everlasting, always-coming-on and never-going-off reminiscences. And so, when Jeffro started off, the whole town turned out to watch him go; and when I say that Silas Sykes gave him a store-suit at cost, more no one could say about nothing. For Silas Sykes is noted—that is, he ain't exactly expected—that is to say,—well, to put it real delicate, Silas is as stingy as a dog with one bone. And a store-suit at cost from him was similar to a gold-mine from anybody else. Or more—more.
Well, then, for six months Jeffro was swallowed up. We never heard a word from him. His little wife went around white and thin, and we got so we didn't ask her if she'd heard from him, because we couldn't stand that white, hunted, et-up look on her face. So we kept still, village delicate. And that's a special kind of delicate.
Then, like a bow from the blue, or whatever it is they say, the mayor of the town got the word from New York that Jeffro was coming home with his right arm gone, honorably discharged. And aboutthe same time a letter from Europe, from somebody he knew that had got him the money to come with, told how he'd been shot in a sortie and recommended by the captain for promotion.
"A sortie," says Mis' Postmaster Sykes, thoughtful. "What kind of a battle is a sortie, do you s'pose?"
"Land," says Mis' Amanda Toplady, "ain't that what they call an evening musicale?"
When it heard Jeffro was coming home, Friendship Village rose up like one man. We must give him a welcome. This was part because he was a hero, and part because Mis' Postmaster Sykes thought of it first. And most of Friendship Village don't know what it thinks about anything till she thinks it for them.
"We must welcome him royal,"—were her words. "We must welcome him royal. Ladies, let's us plan."
So she called some of us together to her house one afternoon—Mis' Timothy Toplady, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Abigail Arnold, that keeps the Home Bakery, Mis' Photographer Sturgis, that's the village invalid, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that her husband's dead, but she keeps his title because we got started calling her that and can't bear to stop—and me. I told her I couldn't do much, being I was training two hundred school children for a Sunday night service that week, and Iwas pretty busy myself. But I went. And when we all got there, Mis' Sykes took out a piece of paper tore from an account book, and she says, pointing to a list on it with her front finger that wore her cameo ring:
"Ladies! I've got this far, and it's for you to finish. Jeffro will come in on the Through, either Friday or Saturday night. Now we'll have the band"—that's the Friendship Village Stonehenge Band of nine pieces—"and back of that Bud Babcock, a-carrying the flag. We'll take the one off'n the engine house, because that stands so far back no one will miss it. And then we'll have the Boy Scouts, and the Red Barns's ambulance; and we'll put Jeffro in that; and the boys can march beside of him to his home."
"Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "what'll you have the ambulance for?"
"Because we've got no other public ve-hicle," says Mis' Sykes, commanding, "without it's the hearse. If so, name what it is."
And nobody naming nothing, she went on:
"Then I thought we'd have the G. A. R., and the W. R. C. from Red Barns—they'll be glad to come over because they ain't so very much happening for them to be patriotic about, without it's Memorial Day. And then the D. A. R. of Friendship Village and Red Barns will come last, each a-carrying a flag in our hands. Friday is April 18th, andwe did mean to have a Pink Tea to celebrate Paul Revere's ride. But I'm quite sure the ladies'll all be willing to give that up and transfer their patriotic observation over to Jeffro. And we'll all march down in a body, and be there when the train pulls in. What say, Ladies?"
She leaned back, with a little triumphant pucker, like she'd scraped the world for ideas, and got them all and defied anybody to add to them.
"Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "and then what?"
"Then what?" says Mis' Sykes, irritable. "Why, be there. And wave and cheer and flop our flags. And walk along behind him to his house. And hurrah—and sing, mebbe—oh, wemustsing, of course!" Mis' Sykes cries, thinking of it for the first time, with her hands clasped.
Mis' Toplady looked troubled.
"Well-a," she says, "what would we sing for?"
"Sing for!" cried Mis' Sykes, exasperated. "Because he's got home, of course."
"With his arm shot off. And his eyes blinded with powder. And him half-starved. And mebbe worse. I dunno, Ladies," says Mis' Toplady, dreamy, "but I'm terrible lacking. But I don't feel like singing over Jeffro."
Mis' Sykes looked at her perfectly withering.
"Ain't you no sense of what'd due to occasions?" says she, regal.
"Yes," says Mis' Toplady, "I have. I guess that's just what's the matter of me. It's the occasion that ails me. I was thinking—well, Ladies, I was wondering just how much like singing we'd feel if we'dseenJeffro's arm shot off him."
"But wedidn'tsee it," says Mis' Sykes, final. That's the way she argues.
"Mebbe I'm all wrong," says Mis' Toplady, "but, Ladies, I can't feel like a man getting all shot up is an occasion for jollification. I can't do it."
Us ladies all kind of breathed deep, like a vent had been opened.
"Nor me." "Nor me." "Nor me." Run 'round Mis' Sykes's setting-room, from one to one.
I wish't you could have seen Mis' Sykes. She looked like we'd declared for cannibalism and atheism and traitorism, all rolled into one.
"Ain't you ladies," she says, "no sense of the glories of war? Or what?"
"Or what," says Mis' Toplady. "That's just it—glories of what. I guess it's thewhatpart that I sense the strongest, somehow."
Mis' Sykes laid down her paper, and crossed her hands—with the cameo ring under, and then remembered and crossed itover—and she says:
"Ladies, facts is facts. You've got to take things as they are."
Abigail Arnold flashed in.
"But you ain't takin' 'em nowheres," she says. "You're leavin' 'em as they are. War is the way it's been for five thousand years—only five thousand times worse."
Mis' Sykes tapped her foot, and made her lips both thin and straight.
"Yes," she says, "and it always will be. As long as the world lasts, there'll be war."
Then I couldn't stand it any longer. I looked her right square in the face, and I says:
"Mis' Sykes. Do you believe that?"
"Certainly I believe it," she says. "Besides, there's nothing in the Bible against war. Not a thing."
"What about 'Thou shalt not kill'?" says I.
She froze me—she fair froze me.
"That," she said, "is an entirely different matter."
"Well," says I, "if you'll excuse me for saying so, it ain't different. But leave that go. What about 'Love thy neighbor'? What about the brotherhood of man? What about—"
She sighed, real patient. "Your mind works so queer sometimes, Calliope," she says.
"Yes, well, mebbe," I says, like I'd said to her before. "But anyhow, it works. It don't just set and set and set, and never hatch nothing. This whole earth has set on war since the beginning, and hatched nothing but death. Do you think, honest,that we haven't no more invention to us than to keep on a-bungling like this to the end of time?"
Mis' Sykes stomped her foot.
"Look-a-here," she says. "Do you want to arrange something to go down to welcome Jeffro home, or don't you? If you don't, say so."
Mis' Toplady sighed.
"Let's us go down to meet him," she says. "Leave us do that. But don't you expect no singing off me," says she, final. "That's all."
So Mis' Sykes, she went ahead with her plan, and she agreed, grudging, to omit out the singing. And the D. A. R's. put off their Paul Revere Tea, and we sent to the City for more flags. Me, though, I didn't take a real part. I agreed to march, and then I didn't take a real part. I'd took on a good deal more than I'd meant to in training the children for the Sunday night thing, and so I shirked Mis' Sykes's party all I could. Not that I wouldn't be glad to see Jeffro. But I couldn't enthuse the way she meant. By Friday, Mis' Sykes had everything pretty ship-shape, and being we still didn't know which day Jeffro would come, we were all to go down to the depot that night, on the chance; and Saturday as well.
Friday afternoon I was working away on some stuff for the children, when Jeffro's wife came in. The poor little thing was so nervous she didn't know whether she was saying "yes" or "no." She'dgot herself all ready, in a new-ironed calico, and a red bow at her neck.
"Do you think this bow looks too gay?" she says. "It seems gay, and him so sick. But he always liked me to wear red, and it's all the red I've got. It's only cotton ribbin, too," says she, wistful.
She wanted to know what I was doing, and so's to keep her mind off herself, I told her. The hundred children, from all kinds and denominations and everythings, were to meet together in Shepherd's Grove that Sunday night, and I'd fixed up a little exercise for them: One bunch of them were to represent Science, and they were to carry little models of boats and engines and dirigibles and a little wireless tower. And one bunch was to represent Art, and they were to carry colors and figures and big lovely cardboard designs they made in school. And one bunch was to represent Friendship, and they were to come with garlands and arches that connected them each with all the rest. And one was to represent Plenty, with fruit and grain. And one Beauty, and one Understanding—and so on. And then, in the midst of them, I was going to have a little bit of a child walk, carrying a model of the globe in his hands. And they were all going to come to him, one after another, and they were going to give him what they had. And what we'd planned, with music and singing and a trumpeter and everything, was to be all around that.
"I haven't the right child yet to carry the globe though," I says to Jeffro's wife; "I can't find one little enough that's strong enough to lug the thing."
And then, all of a sudden, I remembered her little boy, and Jeffro's little boy. I remembered Joseph. Awful little he was, but with sturdy legs and arms, and the kind of a face that makes you wonder why all little folks don't look the same way. It seems the only way for them to look.
"Why," I says, "look here: Why can't I borrow Joseph for Sunday night, to carry the globe?"
"You can," she says, "without his father won't be wanting him to leave him, when he's just got home so. Mebbe, though," she says, "he's so sick he won't know whether Joseph is there or not—"
She kind of petered off, like she didn't have strength in her to finish with. She never cried though. That was one thing I noticed about her. She acted like crying is one of the things we ought to have outgrown—like dressing in black for mourning, and like beating a drum on the streets to celebrate anything, and like war. Honest, the way we keep on using old-fashioned styles like these makes me feel sorry for the Way-Things-Were-Meant-To-Be.
So it was arranged that Joseph was to carry the globe. And Jeffro's wife went home to wash out his collar so he could go at all. And I flew round so's to be all ready by six o'clock, when we were tomeet at Court House Park and march to the depot to meet Jeffro—so be he come that night.
You know that nice, long, slanting, yellow afternoon light that begins to be left over at six o'clock, in April? When we came along toward Court House Park that night, it looked like that. There was a new fresh green on the grass, and the birds were doing business some, and there was a little nice spring smell in the air, that sort of said "Come on." You know the kind of evening?
We straggled up to the depot, not in regular marching order at all, but just bunched, friendly. Mis' Sykes was walking at the head of her D. A. R. detachment, and she had sewed red and blue to her white duck skirt, and she had a red and blue flower in her hat, and her waist was just redded and blued, from shoulder to shoulder, with badges and bows. Mis' Sykes was awful patriotic as to colors, but I didn't blame her. She'd worn mourning so much, her only chance to wear the becoming shades at all was by putting on her country's colors. Honest, I don't s'pose she thought of that, though—well, I mean—I don't s'pose she really thought—well, let's us go ahead with what I was trying to tell.
While we were waiting at the depot, all disposed around graceful on trucks and trunks, the Friendship Village Stonehenge band started in playing, just to get its hand in. And it played "The Star Spangled Banner." And as soon as ever it startedin, up hopped Silas Sykes onto his feet, so sudden it must have snapped his neck. Mis' Amanda Toplady, that was sitting by me on the telegraph window sill, she looked at him a minute without moving. And then she says to me, low:
"Whenever a man gets up soawfulsudden when one of his country's airs is played, I always think," she says, "I'd just love to look into his business life, and make perfectly sure that he ain't a-making his money in ways that ain't patriotic to his country, nor a credit to his citizenship—in the real sense."
"Me, too," I says, fervent.
And then we both got to our feet deliberate, Silas having glared at us and all but beckoned to us with his neck. He was singing the song, too—negligent, in his throat. And while he did so, I knew Mis' Toplady and I were both thinking how Silas, a while ago, had done the town out of twice the worth of the property we'd bought from him, for a Humane Society home. And that we'd be paying him for ten years to come. I couldn't help thinking of it. I'm thinking of it now.
Before they were done playing the piece, the train whistled. We lined up, or banked up, or whatever you want to call it. And there we stood when the train slowed and stopped. And not a soul got off.
No; Jeffro wasn't on that train. He didn't come that night at all. And when the next night we all got down there to meet the Through again, in thesame grand style, the identical same thing happened. He didn't come that night, either. And we trailed back from the train, with our spirits dampened a little. Because now he couldn't come till Monday night, being the Through only run to the city on Sundays and didn't come out to Friendship Village at all.
So I had that evening to put my mind on the children, and finish up what I had to do for them. And I was glad. Because the service that I was planning for that night grew on me. It was a Spring festival, a religious festival—because I always think that the coming of Spring is a religious ceremony, really—in the best sense. It's when the new birth begins to come all over the earth at once, gentle, as if somebody was thinking it out, a little at a time. And as if it was hoping and longing for us to have a new life, too.
And yet I was surprised that they'd leave me have the festival on Sunday. We've got so used to thinking of religion—and one or two brands of patriotism—as the only holy things there are. I didn't know but when I mentioned having Science and Art and Friendship and Beauty and Plenty and Understanding and Peace at my Sunday evening service, they might think I was over-stepping some. I don't know but they did, too. Only they indulged me a little.
So everybody came. The churches had all agreedto unite, being everybody's children were in the festival. And by five o'clock that Sunday afternoon the whole of Shepherd's Grove was full of Friendship Village folks, come from all over the town and out on the edges, and in the country, to see the children have their vesper festival. That's what I'd called it—a vesper festival, so it'd help them that had their doubts.
There weren't any seats, for it wasn't going to be long, and I had them all stand in a pleasant green spot in the grove, on two sides of the little grass-grown road that wound through the wood, and down which, pretty soon, I was going to have Joseph come, carrying the globe of the world.
When we were ready, and the little trumpeter we'd got had stilled them all with the notes he'd made, that were like somebody saying something and really meaning it—the way a trumpet does—then the children began to sing, soft and all together, from behind a thicket of green that they'd made themselves: