Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think about the next two Summer months.
I lie awake and think how it all went, that planning, from first to
last. I think about the idea, and about how it started, and kindled, and
spread, and flamed. And I think about what finally came of it.
For one thing, it was the first living, human thing that Friendship
Village ever got up that there wasn't a soul that kicked about. You
can't name another thing that any of the town ever went in for, that the
rest didn't get up and howl. Pavement--some of us said we couldn't
afford it, "not now." New bridge--half of us says we was bonded to the
limit as it was. Sewerage--three-fourths of us says for our town it was
a engineering impossibility. Buying the electric light plant, that would
be pure socialism. Central school building--a vast per cent of us allows
it would make it too far for the children to walk, though out of school
hours they run all over the town, scot-free and foot loose, skate, sled
and hoop. As a town none of us would unite on nothing. Never, not till
this time.
But this time it was different. And even if not anything had come of it,
I'd be glad to remember the kind of flash I got from different folks,
when we came to tell them about it.
I went first to the Business Men's Association, because it was them that
was talking the Town Hall celebration the hardest. I'd been to them
before, about playgrounds, about band concerts, about taking care of the
park; and some of them were down on us ladies.
"You're always putting up propositions to give money _out_," says one of
them once. "Why don't you propose us taking _in_ some? What do you think
we are? Charity?"
"No," says I to him, "I don't. Nor yet love. You're dollar marks and
ciphers, a few of you," I told him, candid, "and those don't make a
number."
So when I stood up before them that night, I knew some of them were
prepared to vote, automatic, against whatever we wanted. Some of them
didn't even have to hear what us ladies suggested in order to be against
it. And then I began to talk.
I told them the story of the little fellow with the brick. That stayed
in my mind. I never see my milk-man go along, leaving big, clean
bottles in everybody's doors that I didn't image up that little boy
standing in the mud on his brick, waiting. And then I mentioned Bennie
to them too, that they all knew about. We hadn't heard from his father
in two months now, and of course there didn't any of us know....
"I don't need to remind you," I says to them, "how we feel about Europe.
Every one of us knows. We try not to talk about it, because there's some
of it we can't talk about without letting go. But it's on us all the
time. The other day I was trying to think how the world use' to feel,
and how I'd felt, before this came on us. I couldn't do it. There can't
any of us do it. It's on us, like thick dark, whatever we do. Giving
money don't express it. Talking don't express it.... Oh, let's do
something in this town! Instead of our new Town Hall Prosperity
celebration, let's us do something on August 4 to let Europe see how bad
we feel. Let's us."
We talked a little more, and then I told them our plan, and we talked
over that. I'll never forget them, in the little Town Room with the two
gas jets and the chairman's squeaky swivel chair and the tobacco smoke.
But there wasn't one voice that dissented, not one. They all sat still,
as if they were taking off some spiritual hats that didn't show. It was
as if their little idea of a Prosperity celebration sort of gave up its
light to some big sun, blazing there on us, in the room.
The rest was easy. It kind of done itself. In a way it was already done.
Something was in people's hearts, and we were just making a way for it
to get out. And the air was full of something that was ready to get into
people's hearts, and we made a way for it to get in. I don't know but
these are our only job on this earth.
August 4--that's the Europe date that none of America can forget,
because it's part our date too.
"What we going to do?" says Bennie, when I was dressing him. It was four
months since we had had a letter from his father....
"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.