II

When I was a little girl, a cardinal bird came one summer and nested in

our yard. They almost never come so far north, and I loved him like a

friend. When autumn came, the other birds all went, but he didn't go.

And one day, in the first snow and high wind, he was storm-beaten into

our little porch, and we caught him. We dare not let him go, in the

cold. So we kept him until he died. I shall never forget the change that

the days made. I cannot bear to tell or to think about the change in him

that the days made. That is why I will never have about me a caged

thing, bird or beast or spirit. The cardinal helped me to understand. I

wonder if the death of any beauty or any life is as much Nature's will

as we still think it is....

This is why I shrink from telling what next happened to Jeffro--what I

knew must happen to him if he came here and lived the life of his

kind--of my kind. Lived it, I mean, with his eyes open. There are plenty

who live it and never know anything about it, after all. But Jeffro

would know. He had seeing eyes, and his heart was the heart of a child,

and his face was always surprised--surprised, but believing it all too,

and trusting the good. He trusted the good just as you and I did, in the

beginning. Just as you and I do, in the end. But in between the two

trusts there comes a black time; and if it hasn't come to you, then you

don't know the Big Land; and you don't see what's going on in it; and

you haven't questioned where it's all going to lead. As, after a while,

Jeffro questioned it.

All summer he worked at his toys, and all the autumn. But when winter

began to come, the little house was hard to heat. The roof was decayed,

the windows were shrunken, the floor was in a draft from all four

directions; and I didn't have the money to make the house over--which

was just about what it needed. I offered to rent him and the little boy

a room in my house, and to let him do his work there; but it was far for

the little fellow to go to school. And just then came the Offer.

A man from a mining town in the next state gave Jeffro a chance to go

there with him, and he'd give him work in the mines all winter. Jeffro

listened, and heard about the good pay, and the plain, hearty food, and

the chance to get ahead; and Miss Mayhew said she'd keep the little boy;

and Jeffro thought about the cold little house, and feeding himself all

winter, and about standing on street corners with his pack; and there

was Miss Mayhew's nice, warm house and woman-care for the little boy.

And in the end Jeffro went. I told him to leave his things in the little

house and I wouldn't charge him rent, which it wasn't worth it.

The night before he started he come round to my house to say good-by. He

thanked me, so nice, for what I'd done, off and on. And then he pulled

something out of his pocket.

"Look!" he said. "It is from the National Bank. It is my bank-book--the

proofs that I have money there. Here is my checker book," said he. "You

know how these things go. See that!" His eyes got big and deep. "They

give me credit--and thes' two books," he said. "And they vill give me

interest on thes' little money. It vill make money for me vile I am

gone. It is a vonder. I ask' them vat there is to pay for this chance,

and the man laughed. And see--all the vile I am gone, Joseph vill be

learning free. I pay no more than his little board. It is a vonder."

He showed me the entry, thirty-seven dollars, his summer's savings. He

had had to keep back the amount of his fare.

"The ticket is much," he said, "but thes' vay I can save enough by

spring so they can come. They can live in your little house--oh, it is a

plenty room. Ve shall have a little garden--as big as Joseph's plate!

She vill keep a little coop of chickens--"

So he ran on with his happy planning. I remember how he looked when he

left my house that night--his two books tightly clasped, his shoulders

back, his head full of dreams, his face sort of held up to the stars. I

never saw him that way again.

It was a long winter. It's strange how the calendar sets down winter as

just being three months when everybody that's lived through one knows

how it's either long or short and never, never clipped right off at the

three months, same as the almanac would have you believe. This one was

long, and it was white, and it was deep. It kept me shoveling coal and

splitting kindling and paying for stove-wood and warming my feet, and

it seemed to me that was pretty near all I did do those months. It's

surprising and it's discouraging how much of our lives goes along just

doing the little fussy things necessary to keep a-going, that you can't

count in on just pure, sheer living.

"Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for

exercise," they used to tell me; and I used to think: "Yes, but what

about just messing-round?" That don't get itself counted in at all, and

that just eats up time by the dialful. And I think, if you look close,

that one of the things we've got to learn is how to do less of the

little hectoring, wearing messing-round, and to do more of the big,

plain, real, true, unvarnished living--like real work, and real play,

and real talk, and real thinking. And fewer little jobs--fewer little

jobs.

But after a while the winter got done, and early April came--a little

faint green down below, a little fine gold up above, and a great wide

wash of pale blue at the top; Spring in three layers.

I'd been often to see Joseph, and he was well, and in the reader ahead

of the reader a boy of his age would naturally have been in. He had had

several short letters from his father, and I was looking to have one of

them say when we might expect him, but none of them did.

Then in April no letter came. We thought it meant that he'd be home.

I'd been over and cleaned the little house. And then when April was

almost to a close, and he hadn't come yet, I saw it would be too late

for his garden, so I planted that--a few vegetables, and a few flowers,

and a morning-glory or two over the stoop. And I laid in a few canned

things in his cupboard, so's he would have something to start in on.

May came, and we wondered. Then one day there was a letter in a strange

writing. Jeffro was in the hospital, it said, and he wanted to send word

that he was all right and would send a letter himself in a little while.

That was all that it told us.

Everybody in Friendship Village remembers that spring, because it was

the year the bank closed down. Nobody knew the reason. Some day, when

the world gets really to going, one of the things they'll read about in

musty books and marvel over will be the things we call panics. They'll

know then that, put simple, it's just another name for somebody's greed,

dressed up becoming as Conditions. We're beginning now to look at the

quality of the clothes Conditions dress in, and we're finding them

pretty poor quality sometimes, and cut awful old-fashioned, and the dye

rubs off. But in those days, all we knew was that the bank had

"suspended payment."

"But what's that mean--'suspended payment?'" I says to Silas Sykes that

told me. "You can't suspend your debts, can you? I never could."

"It means," Silas says, "that they'll never pay a cent on the dollar.

That's what it means."

"But," I says, "I don't understand. If I owe you ten dollars, I can't

put down my curtain and suspend _that_ payment, _can_ I?"

"Well, you ain't banks," says Silas. "And banks is."

I was walking away and thinking it over, when I stopped stock-still in

the street. The National Bank--it was the National Bank that Jeffro had

his thirty-seven dollars in.

I felt as if I had to do something for him, then and there. And that

afternoon I took my trowel and went up to his little place, and thought

I'd dig round some in the garden that was coming up, gay as a button.

When I stepped inside the gate, I looked up at the house, and I saw the

front door was open. "Land," I thought, "I hope they haven't stole what

little he had in there, too." And I stepped up to the door.

In the wooden chair in the middle of the floor sat Jeffro. His hat was

pulled down over his eyes, his legs were thrust out in front of him, one

of his arms was hanging down, and the other one was in a white sling.

"Mr. Jeffro--Mr. Jeffro!" I says. "Oh--what's the matter?"

He looked up, and his face never changed at sight of me, nor he never

got up or moved. And his look--well, it wasn't the look of Jeffro any

more than feathers have the look of a bird. But one thing I knew about

that look--he was hungry. I could tell that look anywhere, because I've

been hungry myself, with no food coming from anywheres.

I flew to the cupboard where I'd put in the few things, and in a jiffy I

had some soup heating and a box of crackers opened. I brought the bowl

to the table, all steaming and good-smelling, and he drew up there

without a word and ate with his hat on--ate like I never saw a man eat

before.

When he got through: "Tell me about it, Mr. Jeffro," I says. And he told

me.

It wasn't anything very new. Jeffro had been in the mines since the

first of November, and the first of January the strike had begun--the

strike against a situation that Jeffro drew for me that afternoon,

telling it without any particular heat, but just plain and quiet. He

told me how he had gone with some of the men to the house of one of the

owners to talk of settlement.

"I spoke out to him once," said Jeffro. "I said: 'Will _you_ tell me how

this is? They can not make me understand. America gives me free all the

things that I did not expect: The fire-engine, it takes no pay. My

little boy's school costs me not anything. When I come to this state I

have no passport to get, and they did not search me at the frontier. All

this is very free. But when we want more bread, and we are willing to

work for it all day long with our hands, you will not let us have more,

even then. Even when we pay with work. Will you tell me how this is?'"

Of all that the man had said to him, kindly enough, Jeffro understood

nothing. And he could speak the language, while many of the men in the

mines could not say one word of English.

"But they could strike in Russian and Polish and Lithuanian," Jeffro

said, "and they did."

Then came the soldiers. Jeffro told me about that.

"Ve vere standing there outside the Angel mine," he said, "to see that

nobody vent to vork and spoiled our hopes, ven somebody cried out: 'The

soldiers!' Many of the men ran--I did not know vy. Here was some of the

United States army. I had never seen any of the army before. I hurried

toward them, my cap in my hand. I saw their fine uniforms, their fine

horses, this army that was kept to protect me, a citizen, and vich I did

not have to pay. I stood bowing. My heart felt good. They had come to

help us then--free! And then somebody cried. 'He's one of the damned,

disorderly picketers. Arrest him!' And they did; and nothing I could say

vould make them understand. I vas in jail four days, but all those days

I thought it vas a mistake. I smiled to think how sorry they vould be

ven they found out they had arrested von they were paid to

protect--free."

He told me how there went on the days, the weeks, of the strike; hunger,

cold; the militia everywhere. The little that Jeffro had earned was

spent, dime by dime. He stayed on, hoping for the settlement, certain

that it would all be right as soon as everybody "understood."

"It vas this vay," he said laboriously. "Mine-owners and money and

militia vere here. Over here vere the men. Vrong vas done on both

sides--different kinds of vrong. The sides could not speak together

clear. No von understood no von."

Then a miner had resisted an officer who tried to arrest him, the

officer fired, and Jeffro had the bullet in his shoulder, and had been

locked up for being "implicated"--"I don't know yet vat they mean by

that long vord," Jeffro said--and had been taken to the courthouse and

later to the hospital. On his discharge, eight days ago, he had started

to walk home to Friendship Village.

"To-morrow," Jeffro said, "I vill get out from the bank my money--I have

not touched that--and send to her vat I have. It may be she has saved a

little bit. Somehow she vill come. To-morrow I vill get it, as soon as

the bank is open."

I knew I had to tell him--I knew I had to tell him right then. "Mr.

Jeffro--Mr. Jeffro," I said, "you can't. You can't get your money. The

bank's failed."

He looked at me, not understanding.

"Vat is that?" he said. "'Failed'--for a bank?"

"I don't know what it is," I told him. "It's something banks can do. You

never can tell when. And this one has done it."

"But," he cried, "vat do you mean? It vas the _National_ Bank! This

nation can not fail!"

"This much of it has," I says. "The bank's shut up tight. Everybody that

had money in it has lost it--unless maybe they pay back to each one just

a little bit."

He stood up then and looked at me as if I were strange. "Then this too,"

he says, "can happen in America. And the things I see all winter--the

soldiers to shoot you down?"

"No, no," I says. "You mustn't think--"

"I do not think," says Jeffro. "I know. I have seen. I am there ven it

happens. And more that I did not tell. In March a man came to me ven I

was hungry, and tried to buy my vote. Ven I understood, I struck him in

his face, just the same as if I have von. But I saw men sell their vote,

and laugh at it. And now I understand. You throw dust in our eyes, free

fire-engines, free letter-carriers, free this and free that, and all the

time somebody must be laughing somewhere at how it makes us fools. I

hate America. Being free here, it is a lie!"

And me, I set still, trying to think. I set looking at the

bright-colored poster that Jeffro had found on his cow-shed in the old

country, and I was trying to think. I knew that a great deal of what

he'd said was true. I knew that folks all over the country were waking

up and getting to know that it was true. And yet I knew that it wasn't

all the truth. That there was more, and that something had got to make

him know. But what was going to do that?

Faint and high and quite a ways off, I heard a little call. It wasn't

much of a call, but when another came and then another, it set my heart

to beating and the blood to rushing through me as though it was trying

to tell me something.

I stood up and looked. And up the street I saw them--running and

jumping, shouting little songs and laughing all the way--the children,

coming out of the Friendship Village schoolhouse, there at the top of

the hill. And in a minute it came over me that even if I couldn't help

him, there was something to do that mebbe might comfort him some, just

now, when he was needing it.

I stepped to the door, and up by the locust-tree I see Joseph coming. I

could pick out his little black head and his bobbed hair and his red

cheeks. And I called to him.

"Joseph, Joseph!" I says. "You come over here--and have the rest come

too!"

He came running, his eyes beginning to shine. And the others came

running and followed him, eager to know what was what. And up the road a

piece I see some more coming, and they all begun to run too.

Joseph ran in the gate ahead of everybody, and past me, and in at the

door that was close to the road. And he threw away his book, and ran to

his father, and flung both arms around his neck. And the rest all came

pressing up around the door, and when they see inside, they set up a

shout:

"It's the Present-man! It's the Present-man! He's back a'ready!"

Because I guess 'most every one of them there had had something or other

of Jeffro's making for Christmas. But I'd never known till that minute,

and neither had he, that they'd ever called him that. When he heard it,

he looked up from Joseph, where he stood holding him in his arms almost

fierce, and he come over to the door. And the children pressed up close

to the door, shouting like children will, and the nearest ones shook his

hand over Joseph's shoulder.

And me, all of a sudden I shouted louder'n they did: "Who you glad to

see come home?"

And they all shouted together, loud as their lungs: "_The Present-man!

The Present-man!_"

And then they caught sight of Miss Mayhew, coming from the school, and

they all ran for her, to tell her the news. And she came in the gate to

shake hands with him. And then in a minute they all trooped off down the

road together, around Miss Mayhew, one or two of them waving back at

him.

Then I turned round and looked at Jeffro.

"Why, they have felt--felt glad to see me!" he says, breathless. And

back to his face came creeping some of the old Jeffro look.

"Why, they are glad," says I. "We all are. We've missed you like

everything--trudging along with your toys."

Joseph wasn't saying a word. He was just snuggling up, nosing his

father's elbow, like a young puppy. Jeffro stood patting him with his

cracked, chapped hand. And Jeffro was looking down the road, far as he

could watch, after the children.

"I've got a little canned stuff there in the cupboard for your suppers,"

I says, not knowing what else to say. "And I stuck a few things in the

ground for you out there, that are coming up real nice--potatoes and

onions and a cabbage or two. And they's a little patch of corn that'll

be along by and by."

All of a sudden Jeffro turned his back to me and walked a few steps

away. "A garden?" he says, not looking round. "A little garden?"

"Kind of a one," I told him. "Such as it is, it's all right--what there

is of it. And Abigail Arnold," I says, "wants you should make her

another wooden bridal pair for the cake in the window--the groom to the

other one is all specked up. And I heard her say you could set some of

your toys there in her front case. Oh yes, and Mis' Timothy Toplady's

got a clucking hen she's been trying to hold back for you, and she says

you can pay her in eggs--"

I stopped, because Jeffro frightened me. He wheeled round and stood

looking out the door across the pasture opposite, and his lips were

moving. I thought maybe he was figuring something with them, and I kept

still. But he wasn't--he was thinking with them. In a minute he

straightened up. And his face--it wasn't brave or confident the way it

had been once, but it was saying a thing for him--a nice thing, even

before he spoke.

He came and put out his hand to me, round Joseph. "My friend," he says,

"I vill tell you what it is. Thes' is what I thought America was like."

Wasn't that queer, when I understood all he had hoped from America, and

all he hadn't found? A lump come in my throat--not a sad one though! But

a glad one. And oh, the difference in them lumps!

He went back to work at his toys again, and he began at the bottom, a

whole year after his first coming, to save up money to bring over his

wife and the little ones. And it wasn't two weeks later that I went

there one night and saw him out working on the hole in the road again.

"I work for you this time, though," he said, when he see I noticed.

"Thes' I do not for America--no! I do it for you and for thes' village.

No one else."

And I thought, while I watched him pounding away at the dirt:

"Anybody might think Friendship Village knows things America hasn't

found out yet--but of course that can't be so."