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[Pg 274] 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[Pg 275] 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[Pg 276] 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[Pg 277] 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.
[Pg 278]
"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.
[Pg 279]
"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,[Pg 280] 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[Pg 281] 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.
[Pg 282]
"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............