[10] Copyright, 1916, Collier's Weekly, as "Over There."
WHEN THE HERO CAME HOME[11]
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 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 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?"