Part 15

"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, some of 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 what order 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 came handy. 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."

"It'll cost a lot," says Luke. "The McVicars want us to add the money to their relief fund instead. But I say _no_!" 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."

WHEN THE HERO CAME HOME[11]

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 down so 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 about the 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 I was 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, and we 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, we _must_ sing, 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'd _seen_ Jeffro's arm shot off him."

"But we _didn't_ see 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 the _what_ part 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 it _over_--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'd got 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 to meet 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 started in, 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 so _awful_ sudden 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 the same 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.