Part 6

"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving _children_ away from a meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men with their talk about a _paying_ Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung 'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment, I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real business bringer.

"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the way out.

"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'

"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a whisper.

"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was put on to from one to five committees--I mean most of them that works. The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them, serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each other, private.

"'What under the canopy _is_ a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when we met at her house to plan about refreshments.

"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.

"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'

"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's what it is. From England.'

"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on things--it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis' Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o' some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers had ought to know.

"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I see,' she says, 'in the _Caterer's Gazette_ a picture called "Marquee Decorated for Fête." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could a tent have anything to do with it?'

"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done, Abagail.'

"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names of and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the article about our Fourth flared out in the _Friendship Daily_ and Red Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before: 'Garden Party.' 'All Day Fête.' '_Al Fresco_ Celebration,' the editors had wrote it up.

"'All _what_?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'

"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I bet, though, that's what it'll be.'

"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and seats on the 'common'--that wan't nothing but the market where loads of wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was on one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes, but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket dinner--just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.

"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin' the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the sight of the Lord?'

"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like it had ought to of rang. They wan't no _glow_ to it. We all went around like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing, and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the grave, and I donno but bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an automobile full o' city folks.

"'The _marquee's_ come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word clickish.

"Nobody said anything. Seems it _was_ a tent all along.

"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes, complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'

"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.

"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks _for_ but such work?' says she, puckering.

"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'

"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.

"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev _one_ day to love liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'

"'_Don't it!_' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.

"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'

"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'

"'"_By a long shot_,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either of them parliamental _or_ decent.

"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'

"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of these All Frost celebrations--or whatever it is they say.'

"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third--or the fifth.'

"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to do that I wanted back as it was the _feeling_. Why, none of our spines use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'--and that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.

"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I says, restless.

"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'

"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with it.'

"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.

"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech. His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place. Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin' it in the _Weekly_ so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock. Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'

"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't talk, because when he'd stopped, they all stood there with their mouths open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.

"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does as a Fourth is.'

"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy, what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis' Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her flat and thick.

"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just leave us ladies in on this thing to do more'n take orders, an' you needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all stand by me. What say, ladies?'

"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.

"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'

"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to make up--'

"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an' Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein' bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?' she put it to him.

"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'

"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the _stores_ of this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though _that_,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it, bein' the--tent's here,' she could _not_ bring herself to use that other word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none of us.'

"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to _do_ if the men decides to let you try this?'

"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for the men to _let us do_ nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no talk o' "_runnin_'" by either side.'

"'But what's the idee--what's the idee?' says Silas. 'Dang it all, somebody's got to hev an idee.'

"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 A.M., all day on that day, every business house in town has got to shut down.'

"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'

"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'

"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an' you know it.'

"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail, frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.

"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman, you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'

"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.

"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last--that's quite vain of being firm.

"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.

"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she, 'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden? When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any more scant of idees about our own nation?'

"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the thought of Red Barns and Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in Friendship Village and they went off to do it,--resolved, but groaning some, like men will.

"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee, like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'

"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned like mad.

"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new. We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted out--none of them would of been in _their_ programme, and they wan't in ours. Some of the things that was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the years an' _remembering_--not so much what we'd done as the way we use' to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from now--so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town, or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant about, 'way down inside.

"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy and white, like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back, and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds--except a little bit of a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it, was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings better and sweeter and _goldener_ than any other day. I ain't got much of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this, here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'

"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies' hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the parade was begun. We was all on the market square--hundreds of us, seems though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was pruning-hooks--or whatever that quotation time is--both towns looking for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it, biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says, 'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean the--tent,' she says--she would _not_ say the other word; but then I guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there in white duck an' white shoes--her that ain't a grandmother sole because of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything was all seeming light and confident--but I tell you we didn't feel so confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more than toy doings beside of it.

"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,--with Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice. We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the glitter--and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats. Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses--nice, plump horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding--because the town owns its own telephone, too--and then the four Centrals, in pretty shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers--the telephone office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then of course they was more things--some of them with day fireworks shooting up from them--but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.