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, debating eyes, 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, was _Fra Diavolo_ in
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 play _Fra Diavolo_ till the neighbors can't
stand it. Sally asked Lorelei what _Fra Diavolo_ means, 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 town after 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,
leaning over 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 a living 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
solo during 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 Diavolo_ the burden of it.
The chimes at Sadie's church two squares away, were playing,
"How beauteous are their feet
Who stand on Zion's hill,
Who bring salvation on their tongues
And words of peace reveal!"
From afar the triple bells of St. Simeon's flung their call on the
morning air. Nor Methodist nor yet Episcopalian would be singing _Fra
Diavolo_ on 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-ribbons stand 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 over the 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, resolute face, 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."
X
SO TRUTH BE IN THE FIELD
A YEAR later 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 was too 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 be _what_ her 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
the face 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 a wee '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 rill
How fair the lily grows,
How sweet the breath beneath the hill
Of 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 stealing
Kind 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 welcome
The 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. Rosalie said 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 fete
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 if I 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 fete for the church is no unmercenary matter. 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 and span 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
to their 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 you _don't_ know," from Uncle Charlie.
Fortunately for Emily Louise in the present case of Albert Eddie, twelve
verging on thirteen 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 fetes
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 fete.
Logan wore a baker's cap and carried a tray hung from his neck and piled
with his wares, which a placard set there among proclaimed to be
"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 of the five just outlined by
Hattie, and did some creditable calculating himself. Like Hattie he was
good at figures.