"Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,And blesseth her with his two happy hands!"
Such in substance was the bridesmaid's understanding of it, if not in just these words.
To be sure the occasion held its disappointment. The concentration of gifts upon the bride would argue that others shared with Emmy Lou a sense of the inadequacy of the bridegroom in his inglorious black clothes.
There was a steel engraving above the mantel in the dining-room called "The Cavalier's Wedding," at which Emmy Lou glanced againtoday as she came in, and in which the bridegroom has a hat in his hand with a feather which sweeps the ground, and wears a worthy lace-trimmed coat.
At the dinner-table she repeated the news which had so dismayed and astounded her.
"There's a little girl in my class named Charlotte Wright whose papa and mamma don't live together."
"Dear, dear!" expostulated Aunt Cordelia, "I don't like you to be hearing such things."
This would seem to ratify Hattie's position. "Then I mustn't play with her?"
"Why, Emmy Lou, what a thing for you to say!"
"Then I can play with her?"
"The simple code of yea, yea, and nay, nay," said Uncle Charlie.
"Charlie, be quiet." Then to Emmy Lou, "You mustn't pin me down so; I will have to know more about it."
"I fancy I know the case and the child," said Uncle Charlie. "The father worked on my paper for a while, a fine young fellow with a big chance to have made good." Then to Emmy Lou, "Uncle Charlie wants you to be as nice to the little girl as you know how, for the sake of the father who was that fine young fellow."
Emmy Lou was glad to get her bearings. Hattie would be glad to get them too. The status is fixed by a father and they could play with Charlotte. One further item troubled. "What are light dispositions?" she inquired.
"Leaven for the over-anxious ones," said Uncle Charlie. "If you meet any, pin to them."
Emmy Lou turned to Aunt Cordelia. "May I get Charlotte, then, and go to see Alice Pulteney and Rosalie and Amanthus Maynard? They've just moved on our square?"
"Agree, Cordelia, agree," urged UncleCharlie as he arose from the table. "If we are to infer they have light dispositions, drive her to see Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus."
Emmy Lou started forth by and by. The shower of the morning was over and the September afternoon was fresh and clear. It was heartening to feel that she was standing by her colors, by Charlotte, and going to see her new friends.
The boarding house was unattractive and the vestibule where Emmy Lou stood to ring the bell embarrassed her by its untidiness. As Charlotte joined Emmy Lou at the door, her mother who had followed her halfway down the stairs called after her. She was almost as pretty as Aunt Katie, though she was in a draggled wrapper more showy than tidy, and she seemed fretful and disposed to blame Charlotte on general principles.
"Now do remember when it's time to comehome. Though why I should expect anybody to remember in order to save me——"
Rosalie and Alice and Amanthus were waiting at their gate and led them in, not to the house, but across the clipped lawn gleaming in the slanting light of the mid-afternoon, to a clump of shrubberies so old and hoary that beneath their branches was the spaciousness of a room. Here the ground was heaped with treasure, a lace scarf, some trailing skirts, a velvet cape, slippers with spangled rosettes, feathers, fans, what not?
"I am the goose-girl waiting until the prince comes," said Amanthus.
"I am the beggar-maid waiting for the king," said Rosalie.
"I am the forester's foster-daughter lost in the woods until the prince pursuing the milk-white doe finds her," said Alice.
"Then in the twinkling of an eye our rags will be changed to splendor," said Amanthus."There is a skirt for everyone and a feather and a fan. Who will you be?" to Emmy Lou and Charlotte.
They were embarrassed. "I never heard of the goose-girl and the others," said Emmy Lou. Nor had Charlotte.
Dismay ensued and incredulous astonishment.
A lady came strolling from the house across the lawn. She was tall and fair, and as she drew near one saw that her smile was in her quiet eyes. Emmy Lou felt promptly that she loved her.
"Mother," cried Alice.
"Cousin Adeline," cried Rosalie and Amanthus.
"Emmy Lou and Charlotte never have heard of the goose-girl and the beggar-maid——"
"May we have the green and gold book that was yours when you were little, to lend them?"
Alice's mother, who was Mrs. Pulteney, smiled at the visitors. "And this is Emmy Lou? And this is Charlotte? Certainly you may get the book to lend them."
Emmy Lou felt that one not only did well to love Mrs. Pulteney but might go further and adore her.
It was agreed that Charlotte should take the book first. She kept it two days and brought it to Emmy Lou, her small, thin face alight. "I read it in school and got a bad mark, but I've finished it. It all came right for everybody."
She left an overlooked bookmark between the leaves at the story of the outcast little princess who went wandering into the world with her mother.
Emmy Lou in her turn finished the book. Charlotte got one thing out of it and she got another. For Charlotte it all came right. Emmy Lou entered its portals and the gloryof understanding came upon her. Looking back from this land which is that within the sweep of the far horizon, to the old and baffling world left behind, all was made plain.
Even as Hattie drew a line between those who are right and those who are wrong, so a line is drawn between those who have entered this land of the imagination and those who are left behind. One knew now why Alice flits where others walk, why the hair of Amanthus gleams, why laughter dwells in the cheek of Rosalie, why the face of Charlotte is transfigured. And one realizes why she instinctively loves Mrs. Pulteney. It is because she owned the green and gold book when she was little!
Emmy Lou also felt that she understood at last why Mr. Reade made so poor a showing as a bridegroom. It is because while every goose-girl, beggar-maid, princess or queen may be and indeed is a bride, there is nothingless than a prince sanctioned for bridegroom, in any instance, by the green and gold book!
The glory of the green and gold book upon her, Emmy Lou went to Hattie. But she declined the loan of it, saying she didn't believe in fairy tales. She had not believed in Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus at first, either, though she had accepted them now.
Emmy Lou took this new worry home. "Hattie doesn't believe in fairy tales."
"She will," from Uncle Charlie confidently.
"When?"
"When she gets younger, with time, like us, or when she overtakes a light disposition looking for an owner. But I wouldn't be hard on her. Keep up heart and coax her along."
Hard on Hattie? Her best friend? Coax her along? When were she and Hattie apart?
At Thanksgiving, Mrs. Maynard, the mother of Amanthus and Rosalie, a close rival herself to Aunt Katie in prettiness, gave aparty for her two little daughters, a party calling for white dresses and sashes and slippers.
"Hattie doesn't want to go, but I've coaxed her," Emmy Lou reported at home.
"Doesn't want to go?" from Aunt Cordelia. "Why not?"
"She says she hasn't got a disposition for white dresses and slippers, she'd rather go to parties with candy-pulling and games."
Christmas came, with a Christmas Eve pantomime at the theater, which was given, so Uncle Charlie said, because so many of what he called the stock company were English.
Mrs. Pulteney gave a party to this pantomime for Alice and her friends, and though Uncle Charlie had asked Emmy Lou to go with him, in the face of this later invitation he withdrew his.
"You may give our tickets to Hattie and Sadie if they are not already going."
Hattie had to be coaxed again. She saidshe didn't believe in theaters and felt she had to stand by her colors. Her papa who chanced along at the moment helped her decide. "There's such a thing as making a nuisance of your colors," he said, and took the tickets for her from Emmy Lou.
A dreadful thing happened at school the day before the Christmas holidays. A little girl got mad at Alice. "We've all known something about you and wouldn't tell it," she said, while the group about the two stood aghast. "Your papa and your mamma don't live together, and that's why you live with Rosalie and Amanthus. And it's true because it was all in the paper."
Emmy Lou hurried home all but weeping and told it.
"Hush, my dear, hush," said Aunt Cordelia. "For the sake of Alice's brave mother we must forget it. I hoped you would not hear it."
Alice's brave mother? Now the status isfixed by a mother. Life is perplexing. One must explain to Hattie.
The Christmas pantomime! Emmy Lou had been to the theater before. Aunt Cordelia had taken her to see "Rip Van Winkle."
"Uncle Charlie wants you to be able to say you have seen certain of the great actors," she had said, but Emmy Lou did not grasp that she was seeing the actor until it was explained to her afterward. She had no idea that a great actor would be a poor, tottering old man, white-haired and ragged, who brought tears to the onlooker as he lifted his hand to his peering eyes, standing there bewildered upon the stage.
Aunt Louise took her to another play called "The Two Orphans." She understood this less. "The name on the program isHenriette. Why do they call it 'Onriette'? Is it a cold in their heads?" She was cross and spoke fretfully because she was bothered.
But the pantomime! Christmas Eve, the theater brilliant with lights and garlands, evergreens wreathing the box wherein she sat in her new crimson dress with Alice, Rosalie, Amanthus, and Charlotte, and Mrs. Pulteney just behind—fair and lovely Mrs. Pulteney who, like the mother of Charlotte, did not live with her husband, though Emmy Lou is doing her best to forget it.
The lights go down, the curtain rises, the pantomime is beginning!
Can it be so? Palace and garden, an open market-place, the public fountain, the shops and dwellings of a town, and threading the space thus set about, a crowding, circling throng, jugglers, giants, dwarfs, fairies, a crutch-supported witch, a white-capped baker! It is the world of the green and gold book!
The goose-girl is here, about to put her teeth into an apple. The beggar-maid and her king are recognized. A princess and a prince, kissingtheir finger-tips to the boxes, are the center of the stage.
No,Harlequinin his parti-colored clothes with his dagger, whoeverHarlequinmay be, is that center, causing the baker at a touch to take off his head and carry it under his arm, striking the apple from the lips of the goose-girl, tipping the crown from the head of the prince, twitching the scepter from the fingers of the princess.
Clownery? Buffoonery?Grotesquerie?Emmy Lou never suspects it if it be. Rather it is life, which with the same perversity baffles the single-hearted, bewilders the seeker, and juggles with and decapitates the ideas even asHarlequindismembers the well-meaning and unoffending baker. With this difference, that in the world Emmy Lou is gazing on all will be made right before the end.
The play moves on. Who are these who now are the center of the scene? Emmy Lou hasnot met them before? Sad and lovelyGabriellaat her wheel in her woodland cottage, in reality a princess stolen when in the cradle, andBertramher husband, forester of the ignoble deeds, whose hands have wrung the white doe's neck in wantonness.
And who are these as the play moves on?Florizel, once high-hearted prince, forced to dig in the nether world for gold to replace that forever slipping through the unmended pocket ofGonderigahis wife, standing by, princess of the slovenly heart, who is no princess in truth at all, but a goose-girl changed in the cradle.
The play moves on to its close. The curtain falls, the lights come up, the pantomime is over.
Hattie and Sadie joined the box party at the door of the theater and all went home together on the street car. It was Christmas Eveand the shops and streets were alight and crowded. As the car reached the quieter sections the lights of the homes shone through the dusk.
Charlotte left the car at her corner which was reached first, to go home to her mother in the boarding house. Mrs. Pulteney and her group of three said good-bye at the next corner. At the third, Hattie, Sadie, and Emmy Lou got off together.
Hattie detained the others ere they could go their separate ways. Her voice was awed.
"Maybe Charlotte's father was likeFlorizel, once high-hearted prince——"
Emmy Lou and Sadie gazed at Hattie. They caught the point. No wonder Hattie was awed.
"—and maybe Mrs. Pulteney is beautifulGabriella——?"
That night after supper Emmy Lou pausedbefore the picture of "The Cavalier's Wedding." She was far from satisfied with Aunt Katie's choice.
"Why did Mr. Reade wear those black clothes?" she asked.
"What are you talking about?" from Aunt Cordelia.
But Uncle Charlie seemed to comprehend in part, at least. "Those were the trappings and the suits of woe."
"Woe?"
"Certainly. He was the bridegroom."
Hattie came around the day after Christmas. Stern daughter of the voice of God in general, today she was hesitant. "If you haven't returned that book of fairy tales, I'll take it home and read it."
SO BUILD WE UP THE BEING THAT WE ARE
Aunt Cordeliastood behind Emmy Lou who was seated at the piano with "Selections From the Operas, for Beginners," open on the rack. She paused in her counting. "Now try it again by yourself. You have to keep time if you want harmony."
Harmony? The mind of the performer dwelt on the word as she started over again. What is harmony?
Aunt Cordelia relaxing her attention for the moment turned to speak to Uncle Charlie who was reading his paper by the droplight. "It's no easy thing to bring up a child, Charlie." As it happened, she was not referring to the practicing. "Louise thinks Emmy Lou ought tobe confirmed. She says now that she is eleven years old she surely ought to know where she stands."
It is no easy thing to be the child brought up either, as Emmy Lou on the piano-stool could have rejoined. Life and Aunt Cordelia might perch her on the stool but, as events were proving, that did not make her a musician. Would going up the aisle of St. Simeon's to kneel at the rail, she had watched the confirmation class for some years now, make her——?
What was it supposed to make her? An Episcopalian? What is an Episcopalian? Did she want to be one? Or did she want to be what Papa is?
"Repeat, repeat," said Aunt Cordelia behind her. "Don't you see the dots at the end of the passage?"
Emmy Lou repeated, came to the end of her selection, and, to the relief of herself, atleast, got down. She was thinking about Papa.
She had gathered from somewhere that when Mamma after marriage left her church and went with Papa to his church, there was feeling.
Emmy Lou adored Papa. Aunt Cordelia had a brother and two sisters to go with her to St. Simeon's. Surely there should be someone to go with Papa? But where? What was he?
Emmy Lou had asked this question outright a good while ago. Papa was paying her a visit at the time. Unknown to her he had looked over her head at Aunt Cordelia and laid a finger on his lips. Considering the extent and the nature of his obligation to Aunt Cordelia, possibly his idea was there must be no more feeling, though Emmy Lou could not know this.
Having thus communicated with Aunt Cordelia, he answered the question. "Had my twograndfathers elected to be born on one side of the Tweed and not the other, I probably would have been an Episcopalian," he said.
"Tweedledee, in other words, instead of Tweedledum," said Uncle Charlie.
All of which meant that Papa was not an Episcopalian. What was he? Emmy Lou, eight years old then and eleven now, was still asking the question.
At bedtime Aunt Cordelia spoke again about confirmation. "Think it over for the rest of the week and then come tell me what you have decided."
Emmy Lou was glad to be alone in bed. At eleven there is need for constant adjustment and readjustment of the ideas and also for pondering. The relations of one little girl to Heaven and of Heaven to one little girl call for pondering. People assort themselves into Episcopalians, Methodists, and the like. Rebecca Steinau is a Jew, Katie O'Brien is aDominican, Aunt M'randy in the kitchen is an Afro-American, her insurance paper entitling her to one first-class burial says so. Mr. Dawkins' brother is a Canadian; Maud and Albert Eddie say their father sometimes is sorry he's not a Canadian, too.
Is each of these assortments a religion? Or all the assortments religion? Has God a special feeling about having Emmy Lou an Episcopalian when Papa is something else? Is it not strange that He never, never speaks? In which case she could ask Him and He would tell her.
When Emmy Lou arrived at the grammar school the next morning, for she is thus far on the road of education now, Sadie and Hattie had something to tell her.
There is a pupil in the class this year named Lorelei Ritter. Emmy Lou has heard it claimed by some that she can speak French, by others that she speaks German. The factis self-evident that she speaks English. She is given to minding her own affairs and in other ways seems sufficient to herself. Miss Amanda, the teacher, is pronouncedly cold to her; they do not seem to get along.
"Where is the Rio de la Plata River, and how does it flow?" Miss Amanda asked her in the class only yesterday.
Lorelei had hesitated a moment. She was plainly bothered.
"I thoughtRiowas river——?" she began, and stopped. Miss Amanda's face was red.
"Go to your seat," she said.
For what? How had Lorelei offended? The class had no idea.
Miss Amanda had shown steady disapproval of Lorelei before this, and this morning Sadie and Hattie knew why.
"A girl in a class upstairs told us," said Sadie. "Her name is Sally White and she lives near Lorelei. She says Miss Amandalives next door to Lorelei and they play the piano at Lorelei's house all day Sunday with the windows wide open."
"Tunes," Sadie went on to qualify. "It isn't even as if it were hymns."
"Or voluntaries," said Hattie. Voluntaries were permitted at Hattie's church before service and Sadie did not approve of them.
Sadie was continuing. "Sally said the neighbors sent word to the Ritters that it was a thing a Christian neighborhood couldn't and wouldn't put up with, but the Ritters go right on playing."
This was more painful to Emmy Lou than Sadie could know. Papa who comes to see her once a month keeps the piano open on Sunday, and plays what Sadie and Hattie differentiate as "tunes" as opposed to hymns and voluntaries, often as not dashing into what he explains to Uncle Charlie is this or that from this or that new opera.
He plays at any and all times on Sunday, dropping his paper or magazine to stroll to the piano to pick and try, strum and hum, or jerking the stool into place, to fall into sustained, and to Emmy Lou who herself is still counting aloud, breathless and incredible performance.
She is aware that Aunt Cordelia does not willingly consent to this use of the piano on Sunday, and she also is aware of a definite stand taken by Uncle Charlie in the matter, to which Aunt Cordelia reluctantly yields.
In the past Papa has been Papa, personality with no detail, accepted and adored, just as Aunt Cordelia has been and is Aunt Cordelia, supreme and undisputed. But now Papa's personality is beginning to have its details. He still is Papa, but he is more. He is tall and slight and has quick, clever hands, and impatient motions of the head, together with oddly regardful, considering, debatingeyes, fixed on their object through rimmed eye-glasses.
Papa is "brilliant," vague term appropriated from Uncle Charlie who says so. If he were not a brilliant editor he would have been a brilliant musician. Uncle Charlie says this also.
And today at school Emmy Lou hears from Sadie that piano playing on Sunday is a thing a Christian neighborhood can't and won't put up with!
"Aren't the Ritters Christians?" she asked anxiously.
"How can they be when they play all day Sunday?" Sadie returned. "Lorelei told Sally that her father, Signor Ritter, wasFra Diavoloin an opera once. And Sally says they are proud of it and can't forget it. Every one of the family plays on some instrument and they take Sunday when they're all home to playFra Diavolotill the neighbors can'tstand it. Sally asked Lorelei whatFra Diavolomeans, and she said Brother Devil."
This again was information more painful to Emmy Lou than Sadie could know. Papa on his visits, while dressing in the mornings, or later when wandering about the house or running through the contents of some book picked up from the table, breaks into song, palpably familiar and favored song even if absently and disjointedly rendered. Emmy Lou has heard it often as not on Sunday. Uncle Charlie in speaking of it once said it was "in vogue"—another term appropriated by Emmy Lou—when Papa was a young man studying in Paris.
The song favored thus ended with up-flung and gayly defiant notes and words that said and resaid with emphatic and triumphant finality, "Fra Diavolo"! Though what the words meant Emmy Lou had no idea until now.
"If the Ritters are not Christians, what are they?" she asked.
Sadie had information about this. "Sally says the neighbors say they are Bohemians."
Unfortunately Emmy Lou has heard this term before, though she had not grasped that it was a religion. Aunt Cordelia frequently worries over Papa.
"He's a regular Bohemian," she frets to Uncle Charlie.
Before school was dismissed on this same Friday, there were other worries for Emmy Lou. When in time she arrived home, full of chagrin, Papa was there for his usual visit and wanted to hear about the chagrin and its cause.
Words are given out in class at grammar school, as Papa knows, to be defined and illustrated by a sentence. One may be faithful to the meaning as construed from the dictionary, and lose out in class too.
"A girl in the class named Lorelei Ritter laughed at my sentence, and then the rest laughed too."
"What was the word?" inquired Papa.
"Concomitant."
"And what did you say?"
"'A thing that accompanies.' He played the concomitant to her song."
Uncle Charlie shouted, but Papa's laugh was a little rueful. "Poor little mole working i' the dark. Will the light never break for her, Charlie, do you suppose?"
What did he mean, and why is he rueful? Is the trouble with her who would give all she is or hopes to be in adoring offering to Papa? Can he, even in the light of what she has heard today, be open to criticism? Certainly not. Papa may be a Bohemian, and a Bohemian may not be a Christian, but what he is that shall Emmy Lou be also.
To decide is to act. Papa went down townafter dinner with Uncle Charlie, and Emmy Lou took her place at the piano. Ordinarily she is loath to practice, going through the ordeal because Aunt Cordelia requires it. But today she goes about it as a practical matter with a definite purpose.
Papa brought her the "Selections From the Operas" some while back, with the remark that a little change from exercises to melody might introduce cheer into a melancholy business all around. But so far this had not been the result, "Selection No. 1—Sextette from Lucia," reducing her to tears, and "Selection No. 2—I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls," doing almost as much for Aunt Cordelia.
But now that Emmy Lou had a purpose, the matter was different. There was a table of contents to the "Selections From the Operas," and a certain title therein had caught her eye in the past. Seated on the piano-stool, leaningover the book on her lap, she passed her finger down the list.
Selection 13. She thought so. She found the page and replaced the open book upon the rack.Fra Diavolo. She set to work. What Papa is that will she be also.
She desisted by and by long enough to go and ask a question of Aunt Cordelia.
"If I were to be confirmed at St. Simeon's could I practice my selections on Sunday?"
"Practice them on Sunday?" Aunt Cordelia had enough trouble getting her to practice on week-days to be outdone with the question. "Why do you ask such a thing? You know you could not."
That night Emmy Lou asked Papa a question a little falteringly: "Are you a Bohemian?"
"Instead, the veriest drudge you ever knew," he said. "There's too much on me, making aliving for us both, to be so glorious a thing."
Then what was Papa?
She went around to ask a question of Sadie the next morning. She had been to Sadie's church often enough to know that she liked to go. The prayers were long but the singing was frequent and hearty. No one need mark the time at Sadie's church, the singing marking its own time warmly and strongly until it seemed to swing and sway, and Sadie sang and Emmy Lou sang and everybody sang, and Emmy Lou for one wasn't sure she did not swing and sway too, and her heart was buoyant and warm. She loved the songs at Sadie's church; what matter if she did not know what they meant?
"Oh, there's honey in the Rock, my brother,There's honey in the Rock for you,Leave your sins for the blood to cover,There is honey in the Rock for you, for you."
She could wish that Papa might be a Methodist. It hardly was likely, all things considered, but one could make sure.
"Would 'Selections From the Operas' be allowed by your church on Sunday?" she asked Sadie.
Sadie not only was horrified but, like Aunt Cordelia, was outdone. "Why, Emily Louise McLaurin, you know they would not be!" she said indignantly.
Emmy Lou had no such desire for Papa to be a Presbyterian. She had been with Hattie often enough to know that the emphasis is all on the sermon there. Hattie knew her feeling and when inviting her to go put the emphasis on the voluntary of which she was proud.
This very Saturday afternoon she came around full of information and enthusiasm. "Our soprano has done so well with her new teacher, he is going to play our organ tomorrow by request and she is going to sing a soloduring the collection. I want you to come from Sunday school and go."
She had other news. "I asked Lorelei Ritter yesterday after school if she was a Bohemian and she got mad. She said no, she wasn't, she was a Bavarian."
Aunt Louise spoke to Aunt Cordelia that night. "Emmy Lou must decide in the next day or two if she is going to enter the confirmation class this year; I have to report for her."
The next day was Sunday, and Emmy Lou heard Papa humming and singing in his room as he dressed,Fra Diavolothe burden of it.
The chimes at Sadie's church two squares away, were playing,
"How beauteous are their feetWho stand on Zion's hill,Who bring salvation on their tonguesAnd words of peace reveal!"
From afar the triple bells of St. Simeon's flung their call on the morning air. NorMethodist nor yet Episcopalian would be singingFra Diavoloon Sunday morning as he dressed. What was Papa?
What was he? As he and Emmy Lou went down the stairs together to breakfast, she caught his hand to her cheek in a sudden passion of adoring. What Papa was, she would be!
She hurried from Sunday school around to Hattie's church on Swayne Street. Hattie defended the absence of a bell by saying they didn't need a bell to tell them when to go to church; they knew and went.
It was a brick church, long built, and a trifle mossy as to its foundations, discreet in its architecture, and well-kept.
Hattie was waiting for Emmy Lou at the door. Her very hair-ribbons, a serviceable brown, exact and orderly, seemed to stand for steadiness and reliability in conviction.
What did Emmy Lou's blue hair-ribbonsstand for? Blue is true, and she would be true to whatever the conviction of Papa.
"The strange organist is going to play the voluntary too," Hattie explained. "It's almost time for him to begin. Hurry."
As they went in, she told another thing: "Lorelei and her mother are here, sitting in a back pew."
There were two points of cheer in the service at Hattie's church as Emmy Lou saw it, the voluntary and the collection. She had referred to this last as the offertory on a visit long ago, but never would make the mistake again, so sharply had Hattie corrected her.
Hardly were they settled in their places in the pew with Hattie's father and mother, when a large man with black hair and shaggy brows made his way to the organ in the loft behind the minister, and the voluntary began.
This the voluntary that along with hymns is advocated for Sundays? This that stole overthe keys hunting the melody, to find it here and lose it there, with a promise that baffled and a familiarity which eluded, to overtake it at length and proffer it in high and challenging measure that said gayly and triumphantly above the thunderous beat supporting it, in all but words,Fra Diavolo!
Hattie's face was shining! And the faces of her mother, of her father, and of the congregation around, radiated approval and satisfaction!
And in time the soprano of Hattie's church arose in the loft above the minister, supported by the choir. It was the collection.
It was more. It was "Selection No. 1—Sextette from Lucia"! Though the words did not say so!
Hattie, then, had not been blaming Lorelei but defending her? It was Sadie who disapproved of voluntaries and Lorelei?
Emmy Lou with heightened color, resoluteface, and blue bows, arrived at home. She went straight to Papa just returned from Uncle Charlie's office and strumming on the piano.
"You're a Presbyterian," she said.
"It sounds like an indictment," said Uncle Charlie. "But he will have to own up. Admit your guilt, Alec. How did you find it out?"
"Presbyterians play and sing 'Selections From the Operas' on Sunday, and so does he."
"You look ruffled, Alec," from Uncle Charlie, "But so does someone else. Your cheeks are hot," to Emmy Lou. "Something else is disturbing; out with it."
"The girl named Lorelei Ritter who laughed at me Friday in class was at church and spoke to me coming out."
"What did she say?"
"She said did I know it was her father who played the concomitant to the soprano's song?"
"Invite her round, and urge her to be friendly," begged Uncle Charlie when he stopped shouting. "We need her badly. Besides I'm sure I'd like to know her."
Aunt Cordelia came downstairs that night after seeing Emmy Lou to bed. "Whatever is to be done with the child? Has she talked to you, Alec? She says she can't be confirmed because she is going to be a Presbyterian. And then she cried bitterly. They stand up to pray and sit down to sing, she told me desperately. That if it was right—which it wasn't, of course,—she'd wish people didn't have to be Episcopalians or Bohemians or Presbyterians, but just Christians. I told her I thought we would drop the question of confirmation until next year."
SO TRUTH BE IN THE FIELD
A yearlater Sarah, the sister of Albert Eddie Dawkins, saw him through the six weeks of the confirmation class, up the aisle of St. Simeon's and confirmed. The next day she started to England to visit her mother's people who had prospered.
"In a way I can feel he is safe now," she said to Aunt Louise at Sunday school on the day of his confirmation. "I wasn't easy about him before, if he is my brother. If he'll only go ahead now, he'll do."
Aunt Cordelia saw Emmy Lou through the same class of preparation, up the aisle and confirmed, and then came home and had a hearty cry. She who always claimed she wastoo busy seeing to meals, the house, and those within it, to give way!
"I am sure she is where her mother would have her," she said to Aunt Louise through her tears. "And her father would not hear to the alternative when I offered to discuss it. If only I can feel that in time she will bewhather mother would have her!"
This seemed to put the odium on Emmy Lou in the event of failure. She would be thirteen years old in another month, her cheek-line was changing from round to oval, she was preparing for the high school, and her waist, according to Miss Anna Williams, the seamstress who made her confirmation dress, is coming round to be a waist.
She looked in distress at Aunt Cordelia who was drying her eyes in vain since the tears were continuing, and who seemed far from reassured that she will be what her mother would have her. There was nothing for it in theface of the implication but for Emmy Lou to throw herself into Aunt Cordelia's lap and cry too. After which the atmosphere cleared, the normal was resumed, and everybody felt better.
Sarah, who spoke with more flattering certainty about the future of Albert Eddie, wore her hair coiled on her head now, and her skirts were long. Capable, dependable, and to the point as ever, she was a young lady.
When Aunt Cordelia, accompanied by Emmy Lou, went to do her marketing the Saturday before Sarah left for England, her mother called her down to say good-bye.
"It's a long journey for you at eighteen, Sarah," said Aunt Cordelia, "and we will be glad when we hear you have reached its end safely."
"I can trust Sarah; I always could," said her mother. "If anything goes wrong she'll just have to remember what her grandmother, my mother, used to say to her when she was awee 'un, and prone to fret when matters snarled and she found she couldn't right 'em, 'When you get to wit's end you'll always find God lives there.'"
Aunt Cordelia shook hands with Sarah, but Emily Louise, as many persons now called her, went up on her toes and kissed her.
"You must ask the prayers of the church for the preservation of all who travel by land and by water," Aunt Cordelia said to Mrs. Dawkins, "and we ourselves must remember her in our prayers. We will miss you, Sarah, in the singing of the hymns on special days and Wednesday evenings when we haven't a choir. I'm glad you went to the organist and had those lessons. A fresh young voice, sweet and strong and sure, like yours, can give great comfort and pleasure."
Hattie was a member of her church now, and Sadie of hers. Rosalie, Alice, and Amanthus were making ready for confirmation at St.Philip's which was high church. All had gone their ways, each to the portal of her own persuasion, as it were, and knocked and said, "I am informed that by this gate is the way thither."
And in answer the gate which is the way thither, according to the understanding of each, had opened and taken the suppliant in and closed behind her.
Which, then, is the gate? And which the way? Each and all so sure?
Time was, before the eyes of Emmy Lou were opened, when she supposed there was but one way. She even had pictured it, sweet and winding and always upward.
This was at a time when Sarah gathering Maud and Albert Eddie and Emmy Lou around her in the sitting-room above the grocery, about the hob, which is to say the grate, sang them hymns. It was from one of these hymns that Emmy Lou had pictured the way.
By cool Siloam's shady rillHow fair the lily grows,How sweet the breath beneath the hillOf Sharon's dewy rose.
According to Sarah's hymns there were two classes of travelers on this sweet and goodly way.
Children of the Heavenly King,As ye journey sweetly sing!
These Emmy Lou conceived of first. Later she saw others of whom Sarah sang, less buoyant, less tripping, but with upturned faces no less expectant.
And laden souls by thousands meekly stealingKind Shepherd turn their weary steps to Thee.
Emmy Lou listening to Sarah's hymns even saw these welcomed.
Angels of Jesus,Angels of light,Singing to welcomeThe pilgrims of the night.
But that was time ago. There is no one and common road whose dust as it nears Heaven is gold and its pavement stars. Each knocks at the portal of his own persuasion and says, "I am informed that by this gate is the way thither."
But Albert Eddie, having entered his portal, was in doubt. "What is it she wants me to do now I'm in?" he said to Emmy Lou, by "she" meaning Sarah, and by "in," the church of his adoption. His question began in a husky mutter of desperation and ended in a high treble of exasperation. Or was it merely that his voice was uncertain?
For to each age its phenomena, as inevitable as inexplicable. Albert Eddie's voice these days was undependable. Emmy Lou felt an uncharacteristic proneness to tears. Rosaliesaid it would be wisdom teeth next for everybody all round.
But if Albert Eddie seemed baffled and hazy as to what his duties were following confirmation, Aunt Louise left no doubt with Emmy Lou. The confirmation had been in May, and now a week later lawns were green and lilacs and snowballs in bloom.
"Now that you are a member of the church you can't begin too soon to take your place and do your part," Aunt Louise told her. "The lawn fête is Thursday night on the Goodwins' lawn. I am going to give you ten tickets to sell, and send ten by you to Albert Eddie since Sarah is not here to give them to him."
Emmy Lou took the tickets prepared to do the best she could. She had had experience with them before. It is only your friends who take them of you, as a necessity and a matter of course, a recognized and expected tax on friendship, as it were.
Associates who are not intimates decline. One named Lettie Grierson, in declining Emmy Lou's tickets now, voiced it all.
"Why should I buy tickets from you? You never bought any from me."
Hattie took one and said she'd go home and get the money and bring it round.
When she arrived that afternoon she brought a message from home with the money. "Mamma says to tell you our church is going to have a lecture on the Holy Land on the twenty-fifth."
Sadie was present, having come to pay for her ticket. "Our Sunday school is going to have a boat excursion up the river in June. The tickets will be twenty-five cents," she told Emmy Lou.
Rosalie arrived a bit later with the money for her ticket. "Alice and Amanthus can't go. They went to Lettie Grierson's church concert last week and I didn't. I can go ifI may come and go with you from your house."
These three tickets thus disposed of, Emmy Lou's own, and the three taken by Uncle Charlie for the rest of the household made a fairly creditable showing.
Albert Eddie had less luck. Maud, his sister, so he explained, had been ahead of him, and wherever he might have gone, she had been.
"Joe Kiffin, our driver, took one, though he won't go, and the other one I've sold is for myself."
He seemed worried. "I tried," he said. "I promised Sarah I'd try every time it was put up to me."
It was arranged that not only Rosalie but Hattie and Sadie should come and go with Emmy Lou. When they arrived, on the day, about five o'clock, each had her ticket and her money.
A lawn fête for the church is no unmercenarymatter. Your ticket only admits you to the lantern-hung grounds, which is enough for you to expect, and once within you have to buy your supper. That it is paid for and eaten largely by those whose homes have donated it has nothing to do with the matter, Aunt Cordelia having been notified that her contribution would be beaten biscuit, a freezer of ice-cream and chickens.
In this case there must be carfare also, the Goodwins and their lawn being half an hour's ride by street car from the center of things.
Aunt Cordelia came to the door with Emmy Lou to meet the three. "Go ahead," she said. "Louise is already there and will look after you. Eat your suppers when you prefer. Charlie and I will come later and bring you home."
The four found Albert Eddie at the corner waiting for the car. His hair was very, very smooth, and his Sunday suit was spick andspan as if Sarah were home to see to it instead of well on her way to England, her rules and regulations evidently being of a nature to stay by one.
Perhaps it was an ordeal for Albert Eddie to have four girls descend on him, for he turned red and cleared his throat as though forced into declaring himself in maintaining his ground. Emmy Lou was his friend, and ignoring the others he addressed her.
"Maud went ahead with some friends of her own," he explained. "She said they wouldn't want me."
The obvious thing was to ask him to go with them. Had Emily Louise been speaking for herself alone, she would have done so, Albert Eddie being her friend and going to her Sunday school. On the other hand, his father kept a grocery at the corner just passed, and lived over it with his family. He wasn't the friend of her three companions and he didn't go totheir Sunday school. Emily Louise understood many things which Emmy Lou wot not of. Would they want him?
Verging' on thirteen, one has heard this nature of thing and its distinctions discussed at home.
Aunt Louise objected to certain associates of Emily Louise not long ago. "It's why I am and always have been opposed to the public school for her. She picks up with every class and condition."
"And why I have opposed your opposition," returned Uncle Charlie, "since it is her best chance in life to know every class and condition."
"I'm sure I don't know why she should," Aunt Louise had said.
"An argument in itself in that youdon'tknow," from Uncle Charlie.
Fortunately for Emily Louise in the present case of Albert Eddie, twelve verging onthirteen was yet democratic. "We'll all go together," said Hattie as a matter of course, and the others agreed.
Hattie, as ever, was marshal and spokesman. They boarded the car and sat down. "Fifty cents all around to begin with," she stated after fares were paid and the common wealth displayed. "Five cents put in for carfare. Forty-five cents left all around. Five cents to come home on, five cents to spend, and thirty-five cents for supper just makes it."
Church creeds and nomenclatures may vary but the laws of church fêtes and fairs are the same. As the five left the car and approached the Goodwins' home, Whitney and Logan were patrolling the sidewalk outside the gate and the lantern-hung yard from whence arose the hustle and chatter of the lawn fête.
Logan wore a baker's cap and carried a tray hung from his neck and piled with his wares, which a placard setthere amongproclaimed tobe "Homemade Caramel Taffy, Five a Bag." Whitney was assisting Logan to dispose of his wares.
The two stopped the five. "We haven't a show against the girls on the inside to sell anything," they said. "Buy from us."
"Five cents for a bag all around and forty cents left, five cents to get home and thirty-five cents for supper," from Hattie the calculator, who liked to keep things clear.
Five bags were being exchanged for five cents all around when an elderly gentleman came along. Negotiations with the five being held up while he was pressed to buy candy, he brusquely replied that he had no change.
Neither had Logan or Whitney, business having been brisker than they admitted. But they did not let that deter them from cornering the gentleman into a showdown. Nor did a two-dollar bill, when produced, bother them.
Whitney had heard the financial status ofthe five just outlined by Hattie, and did some creditable calculating himself. Like Hattie he was good at figures.
"You have five forties between you," he said. "You take the bill and let us have the change. You'll get it fixed all right when you get your suppers."
The party of five was loath but saw no way out of it. Held up, as it were, they reluctantly gave over their forty cents around and pinned their gazes anxiously on the two-dollar bill in the hand of the elderly gentleman.
He seemed no better pleased than they, showing indeed a degree of temper unbecoming under the circumstances and using language somewhat heated for a church fair.
"What in heaven's name do I want with caramel taffy without a tooth in my head that's my own?"
He thrust the bill at Albert Eddie who took it hastily, and the five moved on.
"Who was it?" Sadie asked Emmy Lou and Albert Eddie, since this was their lawn fête. "He's coming in the gate behind us. Do you know?"
Unfortunately they did. It seemed to detract from that cordiality of welcome they would prefer to associate with their lawn fête.
"It's Mr. Goodwin," Emily Louise told them. "It's his house and yard. He must just be getting home."
One's friends are loyal. Hattie covered the silence. "His wife must have said they could have it here before she asked him. I've known it to happen so before."
"We'll go get our suppers," said Albert Eddie anxiously. "That way we'll each get our carfare back and it'll be off our minds."
They found Emmy Lou's Aunt Louise under a grape-arbor, dishing ice-cream from a freezer into saucers on the ground aroundit. A great many things are in order at a church fête that would not be tolerated at home.
"Go get your suppers," she said to the group. "I'm busy and will be; don't depend on me for anything."
The party of five took their places about a table a few moments after. Two of them were familiar figures in the Big Room at St. Simeon's Sunday school. The three young ladies who rushed up, tray in hand, to wait on them, were far, far older—eminent representatives of that superior caste of St. Simeon's Sunday school, the Bible Class.
It was a friendly rivalry that was on among the three, each waitress of the evening endeavoring in her earnings to outstrip and eclipse all other waitresses and so carry off the glory of the occasion. In the present instance the swiss apron and cap with the yellow ribbons won out, and the other two waitresses withdrewwith laughter and recrimination of a vigorous nature, leaving the party of five overwhelmed by the notice from the surrounding tables and the publicity thus brought upon them.
The wearer of the swiss apron with the yellow ribbons was an arch and easy person, overwhelming her five charges further with offhand and jocose remarks indicative of condescension as she brought five suppers, substantial, lemonade, ice cream and cake, put them down, and, as it were, got through with it.
Even to the payment. And as Albert Eddie produced a two-dollar bill and she took it, she was easily, superlatively, meaningly arch as she said,
"We don't give change at church fairs to gentlemen."
Uncle Charlie, with Aunt Cordelia, taking the party home, paid everyone's carfare butAlbert Eddie's. When the time came for leaving he could not be found.
"We lost him right after supper," Hattie explained.
"As soon as he heard us say you were coming to get us," from Emmy Lou.
"He didn't eat any supper, just pretended to," from Sadie. "He was trying not to cry."
"Sadie!" from Rosalie.
"We never, never should tell it if he was," from Hattie.
"Logan and Whitney said he left early," said Rosalie, "that he told them he would have to walk home."
Uncle Charlie deposited the members of the party at their several homes and then, being the editor of a newspaper, went back downtown.
Emmy Lou, oftener than she could enumerate, had waked in the past to hear him on his return in the late, or, to be exact, the earlyhours, stop at Aunt Cordelia's door with news that the world would hear the next morning.
She waked at his return tonight. He did more than tap at Aunt Cordelia's door, he went in. Hearing Aunt Cordelia cry out at his words, Emmy Lou went hurriedly pattering in from her adjoining room. As she entered, the door on the opposite side of the room opened and Aunt Louise came in, slipping on her bedroom wrapper.
The light was on and Aunt Cordelia was sitting up in bed with tears running unrestrainedly down her face.
Uncle Charlie, about to explain to Aunt Louise, looked at Emmy Lou and hesitated.
"No, go on," Aunt Cordelia told him. "She is a big girl and must hear these things from now on with the rest of us."
Uncle Charlie, reflective for a moment, seemed to conclude she was right and went on.
"The ship on which Sarah Dawkins crossedfoundered on the rocks off the Irish coast in a heavy sea this morning and went to pieces against the cliffs in the sight of shore. The dispatches report only three persons saved, and tell of a cook who went about with pots of coffee, and of a girl named Sarah Dawkins who gathered some children about her and whose voice could be clearly heard by those on shore in the lulls of the storm singing hymns to them to the end."
Something happened to Uncle Charlie's voice. After finding it he went on. "I hurried right home. It's past twelve, Cordelia, but don't you think you had better dress and let me take you up to Mrs. Dawkins at once?"
Emmy Lou crept into Aunt Cordelia's bed as Uncle Charlie went out and Aunt Cordelia got up and began to dress hastily.
Strange tremors were seizing Emmy Lou, but she must not weep, must not detain or distract Aunt Cordelia. She was a big girl andmust hear and bear these things now with the rest.
"The child, the poor, poor child, alone on that great ship without kith or kin!" said Aunt Cordelia as she fastened her collar, still weeping. Then she came and kissed Emmy Lou.
"I may be gone some time. Stay where you are and I'll leave the light."
Did the tears come before or after Aunt Louise kissed and soothed her and then went back to bed? Emmy Lou rather thought they came after she was gone. And after the tumult of tears had spent themselves?
A picture arose in her mind, unbidden and unexpected, of Albert Eddie, hurt, mortified, and outraged, walking home block after block from the lawn fête because church fairs do not give any change.
"What is it she wants me to do now I'm in?" he had asked following his confirmation.
And what was it that Sarah did want of AlbertEddie? Sarah who saw him confirmed and left next day? Sarah assembling the children on the ship and singing hymns to them to the end?
And suddenly Emmy Lou, twelve years old verging on thirteen, saw for the first time!
Sarah dependably mixing the Saturday baking in the crock, Sarah looking after her younger sister and brother as best she knew how, Sarah singing hymns to them sitting about the hob, which is the grate, was being made into that Sarah who could gather the children about her on the sinking ship and sing to them to the end. Not Sarah mixing the baking in the crock, but Sarahdependablymixing the baking in the crock. Herein came the light.
And all the while Emmy Lou had thought the digit on the slate in its day was the thing, and later the copybook, and only yesterday, the conjugation of the verb. Whereas Sarahnow had shown her what nor home, nor school, nor Sunday school, nor confirmation class had made her see, that the faithfulness with which the digit is put on the slate, the script in the copybook, and the conjugation of the verb on the tablets of the mind, is the education and the thing!
This, then, is the gate? This the way that leads thither? The sweet and common road along which the children of the Heavenly King are journeying? Faithful little Sister from the alley of so long ago, gentle and loving Izzy of that same far-gone day, Hattie helping a schoolmate comrade over the hard places? This is the road whereon those older, laden souls are stealing? The road, if once gained by the pilgrim, whether he be Episcopalian, Bohemian, Presbyterian, or Afro-American, on which he will go straight onward. The path where, like bells at evening pealing, the voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea.
Sea? Prayers of the church were asked that Sarah be preserved from the perils of land and water! And Sarah was lost!
Lost? Was Sarah lost?
"We'll miss your voice, so sweet and strong and true, in the hymns," Aunt Cordelia had told Sarah.
Would her voice be missed? Her voice singing to the children to the end? It came with a flash of sudden comprehension to Emmy Lou, lying there in Aunt Cordelia's big bed waiting for her return, that Sarah's voice would not be missed but heard forever, singing hymns to the end to those little children of the King.
"What does she want me to do now I'm in?" asked Albert Eddie. Sarah had answered him. Make himself ready for whatsoever part should be his.
"The child, the poor, poor child, alone on that great ship without kith or kin!" Aunt Cordelia had said, weeping.
Was she thus alone? "When you get to wit's end you will always find God lives there," her grandmother had told her when she was a wee 'un. Had not Sarah given proof that when she got to wit's end God did live there?
Emmy Lou was weeping no longer. She lay still. A wonder and an awe suffused her. To the far horizon the landscape of life was irradiated. She was tranquil. The Silence had spoken at last.
Aunt Louise remarked to Aunt Cordelia a few days later, "Did I tell you that we made a hundred and fifty dollars at the lawn fête?"
"By fair means or foul?" asked Uncle Charlie, overhearing. "I must say, Louise, in the name of the church I stand for, I don't like your methods."
Perhaps Uncle Charlie and Emily Louise were seeing the same thing, Albert Eddie, hurt, mortified, and outraged, walking home in thenight because St. Simeon's lawn fête didn't give change to gentlemen.
Aunt Cordelia spoke after Emmy Lou went up to bed. "She brought home her report of the final examinations from school today. She got through!"
"By the skin of her teeth as usual?" from Uncle Charlie.
"Just that. She works so hard to so little end, Charlie. I don't understand it. But at least she is always faithful."