Three-four of us older ones were down winding up Red Cross, and
eight-ten of our daughters were helping; not my daughter--I ain't
connect'--but Friendship Village daughters in general. Or I don't know
but it was us older ones that were helping them. Anyway, Red Cross was
being wound up from being active, and the rooms were going to be rented
to a sewing-machine man. And that night we were to have our final
entertainment in the Friendship Village Opera House, and we were all
going to be in it.
There was a sound from the stairs like something walking with six feet,
and little Achilles Poulaki came in. He always stumbled even when there
was nothing in sight but the floor--he was that age. He was the Sykeses'
grocery delivery boy, that Mis' Sykes thinks is her social secretary as
well, and he'd been errand boy for us all day.
"Anything else, Mis' Sykes?" he says.
"I wonder," says Mis' Sykes, "if Killy can't take that basket of cotton
pieces down to old Mis' Herman, for her woolen rugs?"
We all thought he could, and some of the girls went to work to find the
basket for him.
"Killy," I says, "I hear you can speak a nice Greek piece."
He didn't say anything. He hardly ever did say anything.
"Can you?" I pressed him, because somebody had been telling me that he
could speak a piece his Greek grandfather had taught him.
"Yes'm," he says.
"Will you?" I took it further.
"No'm," he says, in exactly the same tone.
"You ought to speak it for me," I said. "I'm going to be Greece in the
show to-night."
But they brought the basket then, and he went off with it. He was a
little thin-legged chap--such awful thin legs he had, and a pale neck,
and cropped hair, and high eyebrows and big, chapped hands.
"Don't you drop it, now!" says Mis' Sykes, that always uses a club when
a sliver would do it.
Achilles straightened up his thin little shoulders and threw out his
thin little chest, and says he:
"My grandfather was in the gover'ment."
"Go _on_!" says Mis' Sykes. "In Greece?"
"Sure," he says--which wasn't Greek talk, though I bet Greek boys have
got something like it.
Then Achilles was scared to think he'd spoke, and he run off, still
stumbling. His father had been killed in a strike in the Friendship
mills, and his mother was sick and tried to sew some; and she hadn't
nothing left that wasn't married, only Achilles.
The work went on among us as before, only I always waste a lot of time
watching the girls work. I love to see girls working together--they seem
to touch at things with the tips of their fingers. They remind me of
butterflies washing out their own wings. And yet what a lot they could
get done, and how capable they got to be. Ina Clare and Irene Ayres and
Ruth Holcomb and some more--they were packing up and making a regular
lark of it. Seemed like they were so big and strong and young they could
do 'most anything. Seemed like it was a shame to close down Red Cross
and send them back to their separate church choirs and such, to operate
in, exclusive.
That was what I was thinking when Mis' Silas Sykes broke in--her that's
the leading woman of the Friendship Village caste of folks.
"I don't know," says Mis' Sykes, "I don't know but pride is wicked. But
I can_not_ help feeling pride that I've lived in Friendship Village for
three generations of us, unbroken. And for three generations back of
that we were American, on American soil, under the American flag--as
soon as ever it got here."
"_Was_ you?" I says. "Well, a strain of me is English, and a touch of me
way back was Scotch-Irish; and I've got a little Welsh. And I'd like to
find some Indian, but I haven't ever done it. And I'm proud of all them,
Mis' Sykes."
Mis' Hubbelthwait spoke up--her that's never been able to get a plate
really to fit her, and when she talks it bothers out loud.
"I got some of nearly all the Allies in me," she says, complacent.
"_What?_" says Mis' Sykes.
"Yes, sir," says Mis' Hubbelthwait. "I was counting up, and there ain't
hardly any of 'em I ain't."
"Japanese?" says Mis' Sykes, withering. "How interesting, Mis'
Hubbelthwait," says she.
"Oh, I mean Europe," says Mis' Hubbelthwait, cross. "Of course you can't
descend from different continents. There's English--I've got that. And
French--I've got that. And I-talian is in me--I know that by my eyes.
And folks that come from County Galway has Spanish--"
"Spain ain't ally," says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, majestic. "It's
neuter."
"Well, there's that much more credit--to be allies _and_ neuter," says
Mis' Hubbelthwait triumphant.
"Well, sir," says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. "I ain't got
anything in me but sheer American--you can't beat that."
"How'd you manage that, Mame?" I ask her. "Kind of a trick, wasn't it?"
"I don't know what you mean," she says. And went right on over my head,
like she does. "Ain't it nice, ladies," she says, "to be living in the
very tip-top nation of this world?"
"Except of course England," says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis.
"Why except England?" snaps Mame Holcomb.
"Oh well, we all know England's the grandest nation," says Mis' Sturgis.
"Don't the sun never set on her possessions? Don't she rule the wave?
Ain't she got the largest city? And all like that?"
Mame looked mad.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know," she says. "But from the time I studied
g'ography I always understood that no nation could touch us Americans."
"Why," says Mis' Sturgis, "I _love_ America best. But I never had any
doubts that England that my folks came from was the most important
country."
Mis' Holcomb made her mouth both tight and firm.
"Their gover'ment beats ours, I s'pose?" she says. "You know very well
you can't beat our gover'ment."
Berta, Mis' Sykes's little Switzerland maid, spoke up.
"Oh," she says, "I guess Sweetzerland has got the nicest gover'ment.
Everybody speaks so nice of that."
Mame looked over at me, behind Berta. But of course we wouldn't say a
word to hurt the poor little thing's feelings.
Up spoke that new Mis' Antonio, whose husband has the fluff rug store.
"Of course," she says, "nothing has Rome but Italy."
We kep' still for a minute. Nobody could contradict that.
"I feel bad," said Mis' Antonio, "for the new countries--America,
England--that have not so much old history in them. And no old
sceneries."
Berta spoke up again. "Yes, but then who's got part of the Alps?" she
wanted to know, kind of self-conscious.
Mame Holcomb looked around, sort of puzzled.
"Rome used to be nice," she admitted, "and of course the Alps is high.
But everybody knows they can't hold a candle to the United States, all
in all."
After that we worked on without saying anything. It seemed like pretty
near everything had been said.
Pretty soon the girls had their part all done. And they stood up,
looking like rainbows in their pretty furs and flowers.
"Miss Calliope," Ina Clare said to me, "come on with us to get some
things for to-night."
"Go with you and get out of doing any more work?" says I, joyful. "Well,
won't I!"
"But we are working," cried Ruth. "We've got oceans of things to
collect."
"Well," says I, "come along. Sometimes I can't tell work from play and
this is one of the times."
I thought that more than once while I went round with them in Ruth's big
car late that afternoon. How do you tell work from play when both are
the right kind? How do we know that some day play won't be only just the
happiest kind of work, done joyful and together?
"I guess you're going to miss this kind of work when Red Cross stops," I
said to them.
Ruth is tall and powerful and sure, and she drives as if it was only one
of the things she knows about.
"Miss it?" she said. "We'll be _lost_--simply. What we're going to do I
don't know."
"We've been some use in the world," said Clare, "and now we've got to go
back to being nothing but happy."
"We'll have to play bridge five nights a week to keep from being bored
to tears," says Irene--that is pretty but she thinks with her scalp and
no more.
Ruth, that's the prettiest of them all, she shook her head.
"We can't go back to that," she said. "At least, I _won't_ go back to
that. But what I'm going on to do I don't know."
What were they going on to do? That was what I kept wondering all the
while we gathered up the finishing touches of what we wanted for the
stage that night.
"Now the Greek flag," said Ruth finally. "Mis' Sykes said we could get
that at Mis' Poulaki's."
That was Achilles' mother, and none of us had ever met her. We went in,
real interested. And there in the middle of the floor sat Mis' Poulaki
looking over the basket of cotton rags that the Red Cross had sent down
by Achilles to old Mis' Herman.
"Oh," says little Mis' Poulaki, "you sent me such grand clothes for my
rags. Thank you--thank you!"
She had tears in her eyes, and there wasn't one of us would tell her
Achilles had just plain stole them for her.
"It is everything," she said to us in her broken talk. "Achilles, he had
each week two dollar from Mr. Sykes. But it is not enough. I have hard
time. Hard."
Over the lamp shelf I saw, just then, the picture of a big, handsome
man; and out of being kind of embarrassed, I asked who he was.
"Oh," says Mis' Poulaki, "he's Achilles' grandfather--the father of my
boy's father. He was officer of the Greek gover'ment," she added,
proud. "He taught my boy a piece to speak--something all the Greek boys
learn."
I told her I'd heard about that piece; and then we asked for the Greek
flag, and Mis' Poulaki got it for us, but she said:
"Would you leave Achilles carry it for you? He like that."
We said "yes," and got out as soon as possible--it seemed so sad, love
of a country and stealing all mixed up promiscuous in one little boy.
Out by the car there was a whole band of little folks hanging round
examining it. They were all going to be in the drill at the
entertainment that night, and they all came running to Ruth that had
trained them.
"Listen," she said to us, and then she held up her hand to them. "All
say 'God bless you' in your own language."
They shouted it--a Bedlam, a Babylon. It seems there were about fourteen
different nations of them, more or less, living around down there--it
wasn't a neighborhood we'd known much about. They were cute little bits,
all of them; and I felt better about taking part in the performance, at
my age, for the children were so cute nobody would need to look at us.
Just as we got in the car, Achilles Poulaki came running home to his
supper--one of the kind of suppers, I suppose, that would be all right,
what there was of it; and enough of it, such as it was. When he see us,
his eyes got wide and dark and scared--it was terrible to see that look
in that little boy's face, that had stole to help his mother. We told
him about the Greek flag, and his face lit, and he said he'd bring it.
But he stood there staring at us, when we drove away.
His look was haunting me still when I went into the Friendship Village
Opera House that night for the Red Cross final entertainment. "The Feast
of Nations," it was going to be, and us ladies had worked at it hard and
long, and using recipes we were not accustomed to using.
There's many different kinds of excitement in this vale of tears, but
for the sheer, top-notch variety give me the last few minutes before the
curtain goes up on a home-talent entertainment in a little town. All the
different kinds of anxiety, apprehension and amateur agony are there
together, and gasping for utterance.
For instance, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman was booked to represent a
Jugo-Slav. None of us ladies knew how it ought to be done, so we had
fixed up kind of a neutral costume of red, white and blue that couldn't
be so very far out of the way. But the last minute Mis' Merriman got
nervous for fear there'd be a Jugo-Slav in the audience, and she balked
out on going on, and it took all we could do to persuade her. And then
the Balkans got nervous--we weren't any of us real clear about the
Balkans. And we didn't know whether the Dolomites was states or
mountains, so we left them out altogether. But we'd been bound the
little nations were going to be represented whether anybody else was or
not--and there we were, nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the
Americas and the provinces, and somebody for every one of them. And for
a curtain we'd sewed all the flags of every nation together because we
were so sick and tired of the advertisements and the pink lady on the
old Opera House curtain.
It's no part of my purpose, as the orators say, to tell about the
Friendship Village "Feast of Nations" entire. It would take sheets. To
mention the mere mistakes and misadventures of that evening would be
Arabian Nights long. Us ladies were the nations, and the young girls
were the spirits--Liberty, Democracy, To-morrow, Humanity, Raw
Materials, Trade Routes, the High Seas, Disputed Territory, Commerce,
Peace, and like that. There ought to have been one more, and she did
come all dressed up and ready, in white with gold and silver on her; and
then she sat flat down on a scaffold, and she says:
"I _can_ not do it. I _can_ not pronounce me. I shall get," she says
wild, "nothing said out loud but a whisper. And what _is_ the use?"
We gathered round her, and we understood. None of us could pronounce
her easy, especially when scared. She was Reciprocity.
"Make a sign," says somebody, "make a sign with her name on it, and hold
it over her head."
But that was no better, because nobody could spell her, either,
including her herself. So we give it up, and she went down in the
audience and looked on.
"It's all right," says Mis' Sykes. "Nobody knows what it means, anyway."
"No," says I, "but think of the work her mother's put on her dress."
And we all knew what that meant, anyway; and we all felt bad, and
thought mebbe the word would be more in use by the next show we give, if
any.
About in the middle of the program, just after Commerce and Raw
Materials and Disputed Territory tried to raise a row, and had got held
in place by Humanity, Mis' Sykes came to me behind the scenes. She was
Columbia, of course, and she was dressed in the United States flag, and
she carried an armful of all the other flags. We had had all we could do
to keep her from wearing a crown--she'd been bound and determined to
wear a crown, though we explained to her that crowns was going out of
fashion and getting to be very little worn.
"But they're so regal!" she kept saying, grieving.
"Crowns are all right," we had agreed with her. "It's the regal part
that we object to. Not on Columbia you don't put no crown!"
And we made her wear a wreath of stars. But the wreath was near over
one eye when she came to me there, between the acts.
"Killy Poulaki," she says, "he stole that whole basket of stuff we sent
down to old Mis' Herman by him. Mis' Herman found it out."
"For his ma, though," I says pitiful.
"Ma or no ma, stole is stole," says Mis' Sykes. "We're going to make an
example of him."
And I thought: "First we starve Achilles on two dollars a week, and then
when he steals for his ma, we make an example of him. Ain't there
anything else for him...."
There wasn't time to figure it out, because the flag curtain was parting
for the children--the children that came capering up to do their drill,
all proud and pleased and important. They didn't represent anything only
themselves--the children of all the world. And Ruth Holcomb stood up to
drill them, and she was the _Spirit of To-morrow_.
The curtains had parted on the empty stage, and _To-morrow_ had stepped
out alone and given a short, sharp word. And all over the house, where
they were sitting with their families, they hopped up, boys and girls,
and flashed into the aisles. And the orchestra started them, and they
began to sing and march to the stage, and went through what Ruth had
taught them.
Nothing military. Nothing with swords or anything of that. But instead,
a little singing dance as they came up to meet _To-morrow_. And she gave
them a star, a bird, a little pretend animal, a flower, a lyre, a green
branch, a seed, and she told them to go out and make the world more
beautiful and glad. They were willing! That was something they knew
about already. They lined up at the footlights and held out their gifts
to the audience. And it made it by far the more wonderful that we knew
the children had really come from so many different nations, every one
with its good gift to give to the world.
You know how they looked--how all children look when you give them
something like that to do. Dear and small and themselves, so that you
swallow your whole throat while you watch. Because they _are_ To-morrow,
and they want life to be nice, and they think it's going to be--but we
haven't got it fixed up quite right for them yet. We're late.
As they stood there, young and fine and ready, Ruth, that was
_To-morrow_, said:
"Now!"
They began speaking together, clear and strong and sweet. My heart did
more things to my throat while I looked at them.
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Somebody punched at me, violent.
"Ain't it magnificent to hear 'em say it?" says Mis' Sykes. "Ain't it
truly magnificent?"
But I was looking at Achilles and thinking of her being willing to make
an example of him instead of helping him, and thinking, too, of his two
dollars a week.
"It is if it is," says I, cryptic.
_To-morrow_ was speaking again.
"Those of you whose fathers come from Europe, hold up your hands."
Up shot maybe twenty hands--scraggy and plump, and Achilles' little thin
arm in the first row among them.
And at the same minute, out came us ladies, marching from the wings--all
those of us that represented the different countries of the world; and
we formed back of the children, and the stage was full of the nations of
Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, the islands and all.
And _To-morrow_ asked:
"What is it that your fathers have sworn to, so that you now all belong
to one nation?"
Then we all said it with the children--waveringly at first, swelling,
mounting to full chorus, the little bodies of the children waving from
side to side as we all recited it:
"I absolutely and entirely renounce and adjure all allegiance and
fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, and
particularly to--"
Here was a blur of sound as all the children named the ruler of the
state from which their fathers had come.
"--of whom I have heretofore been subject ... that I will support and
defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign or domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same, so
help me God...."
Before they had finished, I began to notice something. I stood on the
end, and Achilles was just near me. He had looked up and smiled at me,
and at his Greek flag that I was carrying. But now, while the children
recited together, Achilles stood there with them saying not one word.
And then, when the names of the rulers all blurred together, Achilles
scared me, for he put up the back of his hand as if to rub tears from
his eyes. And when they all stopped speaking, only his sobbing broke the
stillness of the hall.
I don't know how it came to me, save that things do come in shafts of
light and splendor that no one can name; but in that second I knew what
ailed him. Maybe I knew because I remembered the picture of his
grandfather on the wall over the lamp shelf. Anyway, the big pang came
to me to speak out, like it does sometimes, when you have to say what's
in you or die.
"_To-morrow!_" I cried out to Ruth, and I was glad she had her back to
the audience so they couldn't see how scared she looked at me speaking
what wasn't in my part. "_To-morrow!_ I am Greece! I ask that this
little Greek boy here say the words that his Greek grandfather taught
him!"
Ruth looked at Achilles and nodded, and I saw his face brighten all of a
sudden through his tears; and I knew he was going to speak it, right out
of his heart.
Achilles began to speak, indistinct at first, then getting clearer, and
at last his voice went over the hall loud and strong and like he meant
it:
"'We will never bring disgrace to this our city by any act of dishonor
or cowardice, nor ever desert our suffering comrades in the ranks. We
will revere and obey the city's laws, and do our best to incite a like
respect and reverence in those above us who are prone to annul them or
set them at naught. We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public
sense of civic duty. Thus in all these ways, we will transmit this city
not less but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted
to us.'"
It was the Athenian boy's creed of citizenship, that Achilles' father
had learned in Greece, and that Achilles' grandfather, that officer in
the Greek government, had taught to them both.
The whole hall cheered him--how could they help that? And right out of
the fullness of the lump in my throat, I spoke out again. And I says:
"_To-morrow! To-morrow!_ You're going to give us a world, please God,
where we can be true to our own nation and true to all others, for we
shall all belong to the League of the World."
Oh, and they cheered that! They knew--they knew. Just like every hamlet
and cross-roads in this country and in this world is getting to
know--that a great new idea is waiting, for us to catch the throb of its
new life. To-morrow, the League of the World is going to teach us how to
be alive. If only we can make it the League of the World indeed.
Right then came beating out the first chords of the piece we were to
close with. And as it was playing they brought out the great world flag
that us ladies had made from the design that we had thought up and made
ourselves: A white world and white stars on a blue field.
It floated over the heads of all of us that were dressed as the nations
of the earth, and not one of us ladies was trying to tell which was the
best one, like we had that afternoon; and that flag floated over the
children, and over _To-morrow_ and _Democracy_ and _Liberty_ and
_Humanity_ and _Peace_ and like that. And then we sang, and the hall
sang with us:
"The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's common goal is brotherhood."
And when the curtains swept together--the curtains made of everybody's
flags--I tell you, it left us all feeling like we ain't felt in I don't
know when.
Within about a minute afterward Ruth and Ina and Irene were around me.
"Miss Calliope," they said, "the Red Cross isn't going to stop."
"No?" I said.
"We're going to start in with these foreign-born boys and girls--" Ina
said.
"We're going to teach them all the things _To-morrow_ was pretending to
teach them," Ruth said.
"And we're going to learn a thing or two they can teach us," I says,
"beginning with Achilles."
They knew what I meant, and they nodded.
And the flag of the white world and white stars on a blue field was all
ready-made to lead us--a kind of picture of God's universe.