GREAT PREPARATIONS.
The morning of the procession had come--such a glorious
morning!--bright sunshine, blue sky, and a soft breeze blowing down
from the hill. At an early hour the whole town was astir. Every one was
anxious to join in or to see this procession; for the brave general for
whose home-coming it was planned was the favourite of the town, and all
were anxious to do him honour.
It seemed to them only a few days ago that they had seen his sturdy
figure walking down the shady alley accompanied by his sons, fine
fair-haired young fellows, who had since then fallen wounded to death
in the dreadful battle of Sedan.
Those whose work could be got over in the early morning rose with the
sun, so as to leave the afternoon free to do honour to their general.
The washerwomen at the river's edge were battering their linen on the
stones from early dawn, while the usually sulky river crept in to-day
bright with little rivulets of gold; and the walls of the gray old
castle were gay with flags, whose shining spear-heads caught the first
rays of the rising sun.
In the streets the pigeons were already pecking happily, for the noisy
tread of the early risers had disturbed them; and beneath the windows
of Violet's house a whole cluster were collected, Madam Adler having
already risen and thrown out to them a large sieveful of corn which she
had brought from the bakery for the purpose.
She looked up at Violet's window before she turned to re-enter the
shop, and sighed heavily. She had been, in the evening before, to
see her little darling, and to show her Ella dressed in her angel's
garments,--soft white raiment, and glistening wings. But the effect on
Violet had been so overpowering that Madam Adler had hurried Ella away,
and had herself been obliged to listen to a lecture from Evelina for
having so thoughtlessly broken in on the child's evening sleep and set
her heart beating with a distress too deep for words.
Madam Adler had made no reply to Evelina's reproaches, for her own
heart was too full of pain, to see the great change which had lately
come over the little wan face; and when she saw the sudden lustre
which burned in Violet's eyes at the first sight of Ella with the
white dress and the shining wings, and then listened to the passionate
sobbing which followed, she had gone back to her own house overwhelmed
with grief at the result of her visit, and she longed for the day
of the procession to be over, that the subject might pass away from
Violet's mind, and Ella's wings be folded up and put away.
Ella, upstairs in her room, was awake also this morning at an unusually
early hour. She could not rest, with the joyous expectation of being
an angel and walking in the great procession; and ever so many times
she had risen and gone over and touched with her soft, fat fingers the
wings so beautifully tipped with silver and shining with stars, and
which lay upon the table in the middle of the room: but every time she
looked at them a sorrowful remembrance came over her of Violet's face
and her bitter tears; and at last the little girl walked back to her
bedside, and kneeling down said softly,--
"Oh, thou good Lord Jesus, be very kind to poor Violet in the house
opposite, and give her wings too, like Ella!"
She looked up very steadily at the ceiling as she said these words. Her
wide-open eyes seemed to see far up above the roof and the chimneys and
the storks. The soft yellow hair was straggling out in long loops and
curls from under her linen night-cap, her elbows rested on the bed,
and her dimpled fingers were clasped. Was she, after all, so unlike
an angel, this "fat Miss Ella," at whose appearance Evelina could not
restrain her laughter?
When Ella had finished her little prayer, and was just saying "Amen" in
a rather loud voice, the door opened and Fritz walked in.
"What art thou doing, Ella?" he said rather curiously. "Out of bed
already, at this early hour, and saying thy prayers! Dost thou think
thou art an angel already?"
Ella blushed crimson as she stood up, and she shuffled her little pink
feet over each other uneasily on the carpet.
"It was only about Violet," she said nervously, and her eyes travelled
back again to the wings shining so softly on the dark oil-cloth cover
of the table.
"So thou hast been thinking of her too," said Fritz, drawing a deep
breath. "I have thought of nothing else all night, and that is why I
too am up so early, and dressed, as thou seest, for going out."
Ella had noticed that Fritz had his cap in his hand, and she had
wondered at it.
"Well, well?" she asked open-mouthed.
"Well, I am going off to the police barrack to try and see Violet's
friend. Mother told me last night that she heard the procession was not
to pass through our street at all, but was to turn up by the cathedral
and across the market square to the station; and then poor Violet
could not see it at all, or hear any of the music. Mother says she is
glad, but I am not a bit; for look at this, Ella." Fritz drew from his
trowsers pocket a little crumpled scrap of paper and spread it out upon
the palm of his hand. "She dropped this out of the window to me last
night;--and I know this one thing." Fritz spoke in a curious, husky
voice, and turned away his face.
"What thing, Fritz?"
"Violet will never send me any more notes. Look at this;--I was half an
hour before I could make it out."
There was a large V, and then a lot of trembling up-and-down strokes
without any pretence at printing, only there was a dot over one
stroke, and a letter something like a "t" at the end; then came the
word "wants," pretty fairly readable; then another trembling set of
meaningless lines, and the word "angels;" and again a word which Fritz
after much trouble had made out to be "sing."
"Violet wants to hear the angels sing;" that was her message.
"And I am going straight now to the barracks, and I shall show this to
our policeman, and he shall go to the general's wife, and they shall
arrange together that the procession _is_ to go through this street. I
have settled it all in the night when I was lying awake."
"Perhaps the general's wife will not do it."
"Perhaps she will, thou little ass," replied Fritz curtly, as he banged
the door after him and went out.
"Ah, if I could give Violet my wings," said Ella softly, as, once more
returning to the table, she touched the silver pinions which lay spread
out upon it shiningly; "but the good Lord Jesus is much much kinder
than Ella, and perhaps he will lend her some wings just for this one
day."
Ella went over to the casement and looked across and down at the closed
shutters of Violet's window. She was singing softly to herself the
words of the angels' song, which her mother had with much care been
teaching to her for the last few days,--
"Angels, sing on, your faithful watches keeping,
Sing us sweet fragments of the songs above,
Till morning's joy shall end the night of weeping,
And life's long shadows break in endless love."
Ella had the sweetest childish voice that one could hear anywhere:
yes, it was for this reason she had been chosen to form one of the
angel-choir, and now as she came to the end of her verse, she sang out
the chorus loud and clearly,--
"Angels of Jesus,
Angels of light,
Singing to welcome
The pilgrims of night."
Ella did not quite understand what the words of the hymn meant, though
her mother had given many long minutes to their explanation. She only
knew they were about the good Lord Jesus, and she felt that they were
words Violet would love to hear; so she sang them loud enough and clear
enough for the sound to reach her ears were she awake.
But there was no stir in the oriel window except a burst of song
from the canary opposite, behind whose cage the curtains of Violet's
casement had been loosely folded; but the blind in the room next to
hers was at this moment quickly drawn up, and Ella saw Evelina look
out hurriedly into the street, and then withdraw as quickly behind the
table. She was up early, too, and dressed already in a pretty white
and blue muslin dress, which she was evidently trying on before the
looking-glass, for Ella saw her take up some blue bows from the table
and pin them on her dress, arranging them first in one place and then
in another until she was satisfied with their effect.
Ella wondered that Evelina should be so smartly dressed at so early an
hour; but she wondered still more when she saw her turn back a moment
from the window and then reappear with a large Leghorn hat in her hand,
covered with some pale blue flowers, and lined with a pretty light blue
satin, the same colour as the ribbon bows upon her dress.
She turned it backwards and forwards for a few moments, picking up the
blue flowers with her fingers, just here and there where they stuck
too closely to the straw; and she bent the broad flap a little to one
side, and pinned it up with much care; and then she placed it on her
head, smiling a little and moving to and fro in front of the mirror.
All at once she turned and walked away. Ella saw her hurriedly snap off
the hat and throw it on the bed, and then move forward as if towards
Violet's room. Ella watched for her to come back; but at last growing
tired of waiting she lay down on her little bed, and, still humming the
angels' chorus, she fell into a light sleep.
Before, however, she had quite wandered off into the land of dreams the
door of her room opened again, and Fritz came in with flushed face and
excited manner.
"It is all of no use," he cried, flinging his cap down at the foot of
the bed. "I have seen the policeman, and he says it is no good for him
to ask."
"And he will not even try?" asked Ella, opening her sleepy eyes.
"Oh yes, he will try. He has gone off now to see the colonel; but he
knows it is all no use." Fritz sat down on the side of Ella's little
cot, and suddenly burst out crying.
"I wish I had never told her anything about it," he said sobbing.
"Why, dear Fritz?" and Ella threw her fat arms round her brother's neck.
"That old cat Evelina told the policeman that since I had told Violet
about the angels she has had no sleep and can eat nothing, and that in
a few days she will be quite dead."
"Quite dead," echoed Ella mournfully; "and poor Fritz will never see
her nor speak to her any more."
"Hush, Ella," cried Fritz, springing up from the bed angrily; "Fritz
will see her again. Fritz will speak to Violet again. He will go this
instant and ask the Lord Jesus this very day to make her quite well, to
take all the sickness away from her; and the Lord Jesus must listen to
Fritz this time, for he will go out on the very top of the house and
call ever so loud, so loud that he must hear him." And Fritz, his face
all quivering with the anguish of the moment, started up and rushed
wildly out of the room; and Ella heard his feet ascending the little
wooden ladder that led out among the nasturtiums and the red geraniums
on to the red-tiled roof above.