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,355 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,356 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,357 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.”
358 “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, can359 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.
360 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 to361 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 come362 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,363 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.
364 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.
365 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 what366 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.
367 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.
368 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 if369 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 hours370 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 for371 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 kissing372 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.”
but the earth was silent, listening. for the city, the beautiful, green-robed city lying in her glorious night jewels, knew what was happening373 too. and when the lady lifted littlegirl, to carry her away, it was as if something had happened which had touched the life of the city herself. she listened, as the earth was listening, and the soft crooning which men thought was the roar of her traffic was really her song about what she heard. for the story of littlegirl spread and echoed, and other children’s stories like hers were in the song, and it was one of the times when the heart of the city was stirred to a great, new measure. at last the city understood the homelessness of children, and their labour, and their suffering, and the waste of them; and she brooded above them like a mother.... and suddenly she knew herself, that she was the mother of all little children, and that she must care for them like a mother if she was to keep herself alive. and if they were to grow up to be her family, and not just her pretend family, with nobody looking out for anybody else—as no true family would do.
“is it well?” asked the shadow, softly, of the earth.
“it is well,” said the earth, in deep content. “don’t you hear the human voices beginning374 to sing with her? don’t you see the other cities watching? oh, it is well indeed.”
“i’ll go and mention it to the uttermost spaces,” said the shadow.
and, in time, so he did.
