“Free and equal.” But there were Mary Elizabeth and I, were we equal?
Perhaps, though, it didn’t mean little girls--only grown-ups. But there
were Mary Elizabeth’s father and mother, and all the other fathers
and mothers, they were grown up, and were they equal? And what were
they free from, I wondered. Perhaps, though, I didn’t know what these
words meant. “Free and equal” sounded like fairies, but folks I was
accustomed to think of as burdened, and as different from one another,
as Judge Rodman was different from Mary Elizabeth’s father. This,
however, was the first time that ever I had caught the word right: Not
Decoration, but Declaration of Independence, it seemed!
Mary Elizabeth’s father finished, and closed the book, and stood for
a moment looking over the Wood Yard. He was very tall and pale, and
seeing him with something of dignity in his carriage I realized with
astonishment that, if he were “dressed up,” he would look just like
the men in the choir, just like the minister himself. Then suddenly
he smiled round at us all, and even broke into a moment of soft and
pleasant laughter.
“It has been a long time,” he said, “since I have had occasion to
remember the Declaration of Independence. I am glad to have had it
called to my attention. We are in danger of forgetting about it--some
of us. May I venture to suggest that, when it is taught in the schools,
it be made quite clear to whom this document refers. And for the rest,
my friends, God bless us all--some day.”
“Bless us,” was what Judge Rodman had said. I remember wondering if
they meant the same thing.
He turned and went down the steps, and at the foot he staggered a
little, and I saw with something of pride that it was my father who
went to him and led him away.
At once the band struck gayly into a patriotic air, and the people on
all the benches got to their feet, and the men took off their hats. And
above the music I heard Stitchy Branchitt beginning to shout again:--
“Here’s what you get--here’s what you get--here’s what you get!
Something cheap--cheap--_cheap!_”
* * * * *
When I came home from the fireworks with Delia’s family and Mary
Elizabeth, my father and mother were sitting on the veranda.
“It’s we who are to blame,” I heard my father saying, “though we’re
fine at glossing it over.”
I wondered what had happened, and I sat down on the top step and began
to untie my last torpedo from the corner of my handkerchief. Mary
Elizabeth had one left, too, and we had agreed to throw them on the
stone window-sills of our rooms as a final salute.
“Let’s ask her now,” said father.
Mother leaned toward me.
“Dear,” she said, “father has been having a talk with Mary Elizabeth’s
father and mother. And--when her father isn’t here any more--which may
not be long now, we think ... would you like us to have Mary Elizabeth
come and live here?”
“With us?” I cried. “_With us?_”
Yes, they meant with us.
“To work?” I demanded.
“To be,” mother said.
“Oh, yes, _yes!_” I welcomed it. “But her father--where will he be?”
“In a little while now,” father said, “he will be free--and perhaps
even equal.”
I did not understand this wholly. Besides, there was far too much to
think about. I turned toward the house of the New Family. A light
glowed in Mary Elizabeth’s room. I brought down my torpedo on the
brick walk, and it exploded merrily, and from Mary Elizabeth’s window
came an answering pop.
“Then Mary Elizabeth will get free and equal too!” I cried joyously.
XIX
EARTH-MOTHER
And for that day and that night, and for all the days and all the
nights, I should like to tell a story about the Earth, and about some
of the things that it keeps expecting.
And if it were Sometime Far Away--say 1950--or 2050--or 3050--I should
like to meet some Children of Then, and tell them this story about Now,
and hear them all talk of what a curious place the earth must have been
long ago, and of how many things it did not yet do.
And their Long Ago is our Now!
* * * * *
For ages and ages (I should say to the Children of Then) the Earth was
a great round place of land and water, with trees, fields, cities,
mountains, and the like dotted about on it in a pattern; and it spun
and spun, out in space, like an enormous engraved ball tossed up in the
air from somewhere. And many people thought that this was all there was
to know about it, and after school they shut up their geographies and
went about engraving new trees, fields, cities, and such things on the
outside of the earth. And they truly thought that this was All, and
they kept on doing it, rather tired but very independent.
Now the Earth had a friend and companion whom nobody thought much
about. It was Earth’s Shadow, cast by the sun in the way that any other
shadow is cast, but it was such a big shadow that of course it fell
far, far out in space. And as Earth went round, naturally its Shadow
went round, and if one could have looked down, one would have seen the
Shadow sticking out and out, so that the Earth and its Shadow-handle
would have seemed almost like a huge saucepan filled with cities and
people, all being held out over the sun, to get them done.
Among the cities was one very beautiful City. She wore robes of
green or of white, delicately embroidered with streets in a free and
exquisite pattern, and her hair was like a flowing river, and at night
she put on many glorious jewels. And she had the power to change
herself at will into a woman. This was a power, however, which she had
never yet used, and indeed she did not yet know wholly that she had
this power, but she used to dream about it, and sometimes she used to
sing about the dream, softly, to herself. Men thought that this song
was the roar of the City’s traffic, but it was not so.
Now the Earth was most anxious for this City to become a woman because,
although the Earth whirled like an enormous engraved ball and seemed
like a saucepan held over the sun, still all the time it was really
just the Earth, and it was very human and tired and discouraged, and
it needed a woman to rest it and to sing to it and to work with it, in
her way. But there were none, because all the ordinary women were busy
with _their_ children. So the only way seemed to be for the City to be
a woman, as she knew how to be; and the Earth was most anxious to have
this happen. And it tried to see how it could bring this about.
I think that the Earth may have asked the Moon, because she is a woman
and might be expected to know something about it. But the Moon, as
usual, was asleep on the sky, with a fine mosquito-netting of mist all
about her, and she said not a word. (If you look at the Moon, you
can see how like a beautiful, sleeping face she seems.) I think that
the Earth may have asked Mars, too, because he is so very near that
it would be only polite to consult him. But he said: “I’m only a few
million years old yet. Don’t expect me to understand either cities or
people.” And finally the Earth asked its Shadow.
“Shadow, dear,” it said, “you are pretty deep. Can’t you tell me how to
make this City turn into a woman? For I want her to work with me, in
_her_ way.”
The Shadow, who did nothing but run to keep up with the Earth, let a
few thousand miles sweep by, and then it said:--
“Really, I wouldn’t know. I’m not up on much but travel.”
“Well,” said the Earth, “then please just ask the Uttermost Spaces. You
continually pass by that way and somebody ought to know something.”
So the Shadow swept along the Uttermost Spaces and made an
abyss-to-abyss canvass.
“The Uttermost Spaces want to know,” the Shadow reported next day,
“whether in all that City there is a child. They said if there is, it
could probably do what you want.”
“A child,” said the Earth. “Well, sea caves and firmaments. Of course
there is. What do the Uttermost Spaces think I’m in the Earth business
for if it isn’t for the Children?”
“I don’t know,” said its Shadow, rather sulkily. “I’m only telling you
what I heard. If you’re cross with me, I won’t keep up with you. I’m
about tired of it anyway.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the Earth, “You mustn’t mind me. I’m
always a little sunstruck. A thousand thanks. Come along, do.”
“A child,” thought the Earth, “a child. How could a child change a City
into a woman? And _what_ child?”
But it was a very wise old Earth, and to its mind all children are
valuable. So after a time it concluded that one child in that City
would be as good as another, and perhaps any child could work the
miracle. So it said: “I choose to work the miracle that child who is
thinking about the most beautiful thing in the world.”
Then it listened.
Now, since the feet of people are pressed all day long to earth, it
is true that the Earth can talk with everyone and, by listening, can
know what is in each heart. When it listened this time, it chanced that
it was the middle of the night, when nearly every little child was
sleeping and dreaming. But there was one little girl lying wide awake
and staring out her bedroom window up at the stars, and as soon as the
Earth listened to her thoughts, it knew that she was the one.
Of what do you suppose she was thinking? She was thinking of her
mother, who had died before she could remember her, and wondering
where she was; and she was picturing what her mother had looked like,
and what her mother would have said to her, and how her mother’s
arms would have felt about her, and her mother’s good-night kiss;
and she was wondering how it would be to wake in the night, a little
frightened, and turn and stretch out her arms and find her mother
breathing there beside her, ready to wake her and give her an
in-the-middle-of-the-night kiss and send her back to sleep again. And
she thought about it all so longingly that her little heart was like
nothing in the world so much as the one word “Mother.”
“It will be you,” said the Earth.
So the Earth spoke to its Shadow who was, of course, just then fastened
to that same side, it being night.
“Shadow, dear,” Earth said, like a prescription, “fold closely about
her and drop out a dream or two. But do not let her forget.”
So Shadow folded about her and dropped out a dream or two. And all
night Earth lapped her in its silences, but they did not let her
forget. And Shadow left word with Morning, telling Morning what to do,
and she kissed the little girl’s eyelids so that the first thing she
thought when she waked was how wonderful it would be to be kissed awake
by her mother. And her little heart beat _Mother_ in her breast.
As soon as she was dressed (“Muvvers wouldn’t pinch your feet with the
button-hook, or tie your ribbon too tight, or get your laxtixs short
so’s they pull,” she thought), as soon as she was dressed, and had
pressed her feet to Earth, Earth began to talk to her.
“Go out and find a mother,” it said to her.
“My muvver is dead,” thought the little girl.
Earth said: “I am covered with mothers and with those who ought to be
mothers. Go to them. Tell them you haven’t any mother. Wouldn’t one of
those be next best?”
And the Earth said so much, and the little girl’s heart so strongly
beat _Mother_, that she could not help going to see.
On the street she looked very little and she felt--oh, _much_ littler
than in the house with furniture. For the street seemed to be merely a
world of Skirts--skirts everywhere and also the bottoms of men’s coats
with impersonal Legs below. And these said nothing. Away up above were
Voices, talking very fast, and to one another, and entirely leaving
her out. She was out of the conversations and out of account, and it
felt far more lonely than it did with just furniture. Now and then
another child would pass who would look at her as if she really were
there; but everyone was hanging on its mother’s hand or her Skirt, or
else, if the child were alone, a Voice from ahead or behind was saying:
“Hurry, dear. Mother won’t wait. Come and see what’s in _this_ window.”
Littlegirl thought how wonderful that would be, to have somebody ahead
looking back for her, and she waited on purpose, by a hydrant, and
pretended that she was going to hear somebody saying: “_Do_ come on,
dear. Mother’ll be late for her fitting.” But nobody said anything.
Only an automobile stood close by the hydrant and in it was a little
yellow-haired girl, and just at that moment a lady came from a shop and
got in the automobile and handed the little girl a white tissue-paper
parcel and said: “Sit farther over--there’s a dear. Now, that’s for
you, but don’t open it till we get home.” _What_ was in the parcel,
Littlegirl wondered, and stood looking after the automobile until it
was lost. One little boy passed her, holding tightly to his mother’s
hand, and she stooping over him and he _crying_. Littlegirl tried to
think what could be bad enough to cry about when you had hold of your
mother’s hand and she was bending over you. A stone in your shoe? Or
a pin in your neck? Or because you’d lost your locket? But would any
of those things matter enough to cry when your mother had hold of your
hand? She looked up at the place beside her where her own mother would
be walking and tried to see where her face would be.
And as she looked up, she saw the tops of the high buildings across
the street, and below them the windows hung thick as pictures on a
wall, and thicker. The shop doors were open like doors to wonderful,
mysterious palaces where you went in with your mother and she picked
out your dresses and said: “Wouldn’t you like this one, dear? Mother
used to have one like this when _she_ was a little girl.” And
Littlegirl saw, too, one of the side streets, and how it was all lined
with homes, whose doors were shut, like closed lips with nothing to say
to anybody save those who lived there--the children who were promised
Christmas trees--and _got_ them, too. And between shops and homes was
the world of Skirts and Voices, mothers whose little girls were at
home, daddys who would run up the front steps at night and cry: “Come
here, Puss. Did you grow any since morning?” Or, “_Where’s my son?_”
(Littlegirl knew how it went--she had heard them.) Shops and homes and
crowds--a City! A City for everybody but her.
When the Earth--who all this time was listening--heard her think that,
it made to flow up into her little heart the longing to belong to
somebody. And Littlegirl ran straight up to a lady in blue linen, who
was passing.
“Are you somebody’s muvver?” she asked.
The lady looked down in the little face and stood still.
“No,” she said soberly.
Littlegirl slipped her hand in her white glove.
“I aren’t anybody’s little girl,” she said. “Let’s trade each other.”
And the Earth, who was listening, made to flow in the lady’s heart an
old longing.
“Let’s go in here, at any rate,” said the Lady, “and talk it over.”
So they went in a wonderful place, all made of mirrors, and jars of
bonbons, and long trays, as big as doll cradles, and filled with
bonbons too. And they sat at a cool table, under a whirry fan, and had
before them thick, foamy, frozen chocolate. And the Blue Linen Lady
said:--
“But whose little girl are you, really?”
“I’m _my_ little girl, I think,” said Littlegirl. “I don’t know who
else’s.”
“With whom do you live?” asked the Lady.
“Some peoples,” said Littlegirl, “that’s other people’s muvvers. Don’t
let’s say about them.”
“What shall we say about?” asked the Lady, smiling.
“Let’s pretend you was my muvver,” said Littlegirl.
The lady looked startled, but she nodded slowly.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll play that. How do you play it?”
Littlegirl hesitated and looked down in her chocolate.
“I don’t know berry well,” she said soberly. “_You_ say how.”
“Well,” said the Lady, “if you were my little girl, I should probably
be saying to you, ‘Do you like this, dear? Don’t eat it fast. And take
little bits of bites.’ And you would say, ‘Yes, mother.’ And then what?”
Littlegirl looked deep down her chocolate. She was making a cave in one
side of it, with the foamy part on top for snow. And while she looked
the snow suddenly seemed to melt and brim over, and she looked at the
lady mutely.
“I don’t know how,” she said; “I don’t know how!”
“Never mind!” said the Lady, very quickly and a little unsteadily,
“I’ll tell you a story instead--shall I?”
So the Blue Linen Lady told her a really wonderful story. It was about
a dwarf who was made of gold, all but his heart, and about what a
terrible time he had trying to pretend that he was a truly, flesh and
blood person. It made him so unhappy to have to pretend all the time
that he got _scandalous_ cross to everybody, and nothing could please
him. His gold kept getting harder and harder till he could move only
with the greatest difficulty, and it looked as if his heart were going
golden too. And if it did, of course he would die. But one night, just
as the soft outside edges of his heart began to take on a shining
tinge, a little boy ran out in the road where the dwarf was passing,
and in the dark mistook him for his father, and jumped up and threw
his arms about the dwarf’s neck and hugged him. And of a sudden the
dwarf’s heart began to beat, and when he got in the house, he saw that
he wasn’t gold any more, and he wasn’t a dwarf--but he was straight
and strong and real. “And so,” the Lady ended it, “you must love every
grown-up you can, because maybe their hearts are turning into gold and
you can stop it that way.”
“An’ must _you_ love every children?” asked Littlegirl, very low.
“Yes,” said the Lady, “I must.”
“An’ will you love me an’ be my muvver?” asked Littlegirl.
The Blue Linen Lady sighed.
“You dear little thing,” she said, “I’d love it--I’d love it. But I
truly haven’t any place for you to live--or any time to give you.
Come now--I’m going to get you some candy and take you back where you
belong--_in an automobile_. Won’t that be fun?”
But when she turned for the candy, Littlegirl slipped out the door and
ran and ran as fast as she could. (She had thanked the lady, first
thing, for the thick, frozen, foamy chocolate, so _that_ part was
all right.) And Littlegirl went round a corner and lost herself in a
crowd--in which it is far easier to lose yourself than in the woods.
And there she was again, worse off than before, because she had felt
how it would feel to feel that she had a mother.
The Earth--who would have shaken its head if it could without
disarranging everything on it--said things instead to its Shadow--who
was by now on the other side of the world from the City.
“Shadow, dear,” said the Earth, “what _do_ you think of that?”
“The very Uttermost Spaces are ashamed for her,” said the Shadow.
But of course the Blue Linen Lady had no idea that the Earth and its
Shadow and the Uttermost Spaces had been watching to see what she did.
Littlegirl ran on, many a weary block, and though she met
mother-looking women she dared speak to none of them for fear they
would offer to take her back in an automobile, with some candy, to the
people with whom she lived-without-belonging. And of late, these people
had said things in her presence about the many mouths to feed, and she
had heard, and had understood, and it had made her heart beat _Mother_,
as it had when she wakened that day.
At last, when she was most particularly tired, she came to the park
where it was large and cool and woodsy and wonderful. But in the park
the un-motherness of things was worse than ever. To be sure, there
were no mothers there, only nurse-maids. But the nurse-maids and the
children and the covers-to-baby-carriages were all so ruffly or lacy
or embroidery or starchy and so white that _mother_ was written all
over them. Nobody else could have cared to have them like that. How
wonderful it would be, Littlegirl thought, to be paid attention to as
if you were a really person and not just hanging on the edges. Even
the squirrels were coaxed and beckoned. She sat down on the edge of
a bench on which an old gentleman was feeding peanuts to a squirrel
perched on his knee, and she thought it would be next best to having
a Christmas tree to be a squirrel and have somebody taking pains like
that to keep her near by.
“Where’s your nurse, my dear?” the old gentleman asked her finally, and
she ran away so that he should not guess that she was her own little
girl and nobody else’s.
Wherever she saw a policeman, she lingered beside a group of children
so that he would think that she belonged to them. And once, for a long
way, she trotted behind two nurses and five children, pretending that
she belonged. Once a thin, stooped youth in spectacles called her and
gave her an orange. He was sitting alone on a bench with his chin in
his chest, and he looked ill and unhappy. Littlegirl wondered if this
was because he didn’t have any mother either, and she longed to ask
him; but she was afraid he would not want to own to not having any, in
a world where nearly everyone seemed to have one. So she played through
the long hours of the morning. So, having lunched on the orange, she
played through the long hours of the afternoon. And then Dusk began to
come--and Dusk meant that Earth’s Shadow had run round again, and was
coming on the side where the City lay.
And when the Shadow reached the park, there, on a knoll beside a
barberry bush, he found Littlegirl lying fast asleep.
In a great flutter he questioned the Earth.
“Listen,” said Shadow, “what _are_ you thinking of? Here is the child
who was to work the miracle and make the City turn into a woman. And
she is lying alone in the park. And I’m coming on and I’ll have to make
it all dark and frighten her. What does this mean?”
But the Earth, who is closer to people than is its Shadow, merely
said:--
“Wait, Shadow. I am listening. I can hear the speeding of many feet.
And I think that the miracle has begun.”
It was true that all through the City there was the speeding of many
feet, and on one errand. Wires and messengers were busy, automobiles
were busy, blue-coated men were busy, and all of them were doing the
same thing: Looking for Littlegirl. Busiest of all was the Blue Linen
Lady, who felt herself and nobody else responsible for Littlegirl’s
loss.
“It is too dreadful,” she kept saying over and over, “I had her with
me. She gave me my chance, and I didn’t take it. If anything has
happened to her, I shall never forgive myself.”
“That’s the way people always talk _afterward_,” said the Earth’s
Shadow. “Why don’t they ever talk that way before? I’d ask the
Uttermost Spaces, but I know they don’t know.”
But the wise Earth only listened and made to flow to the Blue Linen
Lady’s heart an old longing. And when they had traced Littlegirl as far
as the park--for it seemed that many of the busy Skirts and Coats and
Voices had noticed her, only they were so very busy--the Blue Linen
Lady herself went into the park, and it was the light of her automobile
that flashed white on the glimmering frock of Littlegirl.
Littlegirl was wakened, as never before within her memory she had been
wakened, by tender arms about her, lifting her, and soft lips kissing
her, many and many a time. And waking so, in the strange, great Dark,
with the new shapes of trees above her and tenderness wrapping her
round, and an in-the-middle-of-the-night kiss on her lips, Littlegirl
could think of but one thing that had happened:--
“Oh, I’m _glad_ I died--I’m _glad_ I died!” she said.
“You haven’t died, you little thing!” cried the Blue Linen Lady.
“You’re alive--and if they’ll let you stay, you’re never going to leave
me. I’ve made up my mind to _that_. Come--come, dear.”
Littlegirl lay quite still, too happy to speak or think. For somebody
had said “dear,” had even said “Come, dear.” And it didn’t mean a
little girl away ahead, or away back, or in an automobile. _It meant
her._
The Earth’s Shadow brooded over the two and helped them to be very near.
“It’s worth keeping up with you all this time,” Shadow said to the
Earth, “to see things like this. Even the Uttermost Spaces are touched.”