It was the day of the exhibition. At close of the half year the Third
Reader Class had suffered a change in teachers, the first having been a
Substitute, whereas her successor was a Real Teacher. And since the
coming of Miss Carrie, the Third Reader Class had lived, as it were, in
the public eye, for on Fridays books were put away and the attention
given to recitations and company.
Miss Carrie talked in deep tones, which she said were chest tones, and
described mysterious sweeps and circles with her hands when she talked.
And these she called gestures. Miss Carrie was an elocutionist and had
even recited on the stage.
She gave her class the benefit of her talent, and in teaching them said
they must suit the action to the word. The action meant gestures, and
gestures meant sweeps and circles.
Emmy Lou had to learn a piece for Friday. It was poetry, but you called
it a piece, and though Uncle Charlie had selected it for Emmy Lou, Miss
Carrie did not seem to think much of it.
Emmy Lou stood up. Miss Carrie was drilling her, and though she did her
best to suit the action to the word, it seemed a complicated
undertaking. The piece was called, "A Plain Direction." Emmy Lou came to
the lines:
"Straight down the Crooked Lane
And all round the Square."
Whatever difficulties her plump forefinger had had over the first three
of these geometrical propositions, it triumphed at the end, for Emmy Lou
paused. A square has four sides, and to suit a four-sided action to the
word, takes time.
Miss Carrie, whose attention had wandered a little, here suddenly
observing, stopped her, saying her gestures were stiff and meaningless.
She said they looked like straight lines cut in the air.
Emmy Lou, anxious to prove her efforts to be conscientious, explained
that they were straight lines, it was a square. Miss Carrie drew
herself up, and, using her coldest tones, told Emmy Lou not to be funny.
"Funny!" Emmy Lou felt that she did not understand.
But this was a mere episode between Fridays. One lived but to prepare
for Fridays, and a Sunday dress was becoming a mere everyday affair,
since one's best must be worn for Fridays.
No other class had these recitations and the Third Reader was envied.
Its members were pointed out and gazed upon, until one realised one was
standing in the garish light of fame. The other readers, it seemed,
longed for fame and craved publicity, and so it came about that the
school was to have an exhibition with Miss Carrie's genius to plan and
engineer the whole. For general material Miss Carrie drew from the whole
school, but the play was for her own class alone.
And this was the day of the exhibition.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They had
spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home with
instructions to return at half past two. The exhibition would begin at
three.
"Of course," Miss Carrie had said, "you will not fail to be on time."
And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou had wondered how she could even dream of
such a thing.
It was not two o'clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first to
return.
They were in the same piece. It was The Play. In a play one did more
than suit the action to the word, one dressed to suit the part.
In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the orphaned
children of a soldier who had failed to return from the war. It was a
very sad piece. Sadie had to weep, and more than once Emmy Lou had found
tears in her own eyes, watching her.
Miss Carrie said Sadie showed histrionic talent. Emmy Lou asked Hattie
about it, who said it meant tears, and Emmy Lou remembered then how
tears came naturally to Sadie.
When Aunt Cordelia heard they must dress to suit the part she came to
see Miss Carrie, and so did the mamma of Sadie and the mamma of Hattie.
"Dress them in a kind of mild mourning," Miss Carrie explained, "not too
deep, or it will seem too real, and, as three little sisters, suppose we
dress them alike."
And now Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate ready for the
play. Stiffly immaculate white dresses, with beltings of black sashes,
flared jauntily out above spotless white stockings and sober little
black slippers, while black-bound Leghorn hats shaded three anxious
little countenances. By the exact centre, each held a little
handkerchief, black-bordered.
"It seems almost wicked," Aunt Cordelia had ventured at this point; "it
seems like tempting Providence."
But Sadie's mamma did not see it so. Sadie's mamma had provided the
handkerchiefs. Tears were Sadie's feature in the play.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou wore each an anxious seriousness of
countenance, but it was a variant seriousness.
Hattie's tense expression breathed a determination which might have
been interpreted do or die; to Hattie life was a battling foe to be
overcome and trodden beneath a victorious heel; Hattie was an infantile
St. George always on the look for The Dragon, and to-day The Exhibition
was The Dragon.
Sadie's seriousness was a complacent realization of large
responsibility. Her weeping was a feature. Sadie remembered she had
histrionic talent.
Emmy Lou's anxiety was because there loomed ahead the awful moment of
mounting the platform. It was terrible on mere Fridays to mount the
platform and, after vain swallowing to overcome a labial dryness and a
lingual taste of copper, try to suit the action to the word, but to
mount the platform for The Play--Emmy Lou was trying not to look that
far ahead. But as the hour approached, the solemn importance of the
occasion was stealing brainward, and she even began to feel glad she was
a part of The Exhibition, for to have been left out would have been
worse even than the moment of mounting the platform.
"My grown-up brother's coming," said Hattie, "an' my mamma an' gran'ma
an' the rest."
"My Aunt Cordelia has invited the visiting lady next door," said Emmy
Lou.
But it was Sadie's hour. "Our minister's coming," said Sadie.
"Oh, Sadie," said Hattie, and while there was despair in her voice one
knew that in Hattie's heart there was exultation at the very awfulness
of it.
"Oh, Sadie," said Emmy Lou, and there was no exultation in the tones of
Emmy Lou's despair. Not that Emmy Lou had much to do--hers was mostly
the suiting of the action to some other's word. She was chosen largely
because of Hattie and Sadie who had wanted her. And then, too, Emmy
Lou's Uncle Charlie was the owner of a newspaper. The Exhibition might
get into its columns. Not that Miss Carrie cared for this herself--she
was thinking of the good it might do the school.
Emmy Lou's part was to weep when Sadie wept, and to point a chubby
forefinger skyward when Hattie mentioned the departure from earth of
the soldier parent, and to lower that forefinger footward at Sadie's
tearful allusion to an untimely grave.
Emmy Lou had but one utterance, and it was brief. Emmy Lou was to
advance one foot, stretch forth a hand and say, in the character of
orphan for whom no asylum was offered, "We know not where we go."
That very morning, at gray of dawn, Emmy Lou had crept from her own into
Aunt Cordelia's bed, to say it over, for it weighed heavily on her mind,
"We know not where we go."
As Emmy Lou said it the momentous import of the confession fell with
explosive relief on the _go_, as if the relief were great to have
reached that point.
It seemed to Aunt Cordelia, however, that the _where_ was the problem in
the matter.
Aunt Louise called in from the next room. Aunt Louise had large ideas.
The stress, she said, should be laid equally on _know not_, _where_, and
_go_.
Since then, all day, Emmy Lou had been saying it at intervals of half
minutes, for fear she might forget.
Meanwhile, it yet lacking a moment or so to two o'clock, the orphaned
heroines continued to linger at the gate, awaiting the hour.
"Listen," said Hattie, "I hear music."
There was a church across the street. The drug-store adjoined it. It was
a large church with high steps and a pillared portico, and its doors
were open.
"It's a band, and marching," said Hattie.
The orphaned children hurried to the curb. A procession was turning the
corner and coming toward them. On either sidewalk crowds of men and boys
accompanied it.
"It's a funeral," said Sadie, as if she intuitively divined the
mournful.
Hattie turned with a face of conviction. "I know. It's that big
general's funeral; they're bringing him here to bury him with the
soldiers."
"We'll never see a thing for the crowd," despaired Sadie.
Emmy Lou was gazing. "They've got plumes in their hats," she said.
"Let's go over on the church steps and see it go by," said Hattie, "it's
early."
The orphaned children hurried across the street. They climbed the
steps. At the top they turned.
There were plumes and more, there were flags and swords, and a band led.
But at the church with unexpected abruptness the band halted, turned, it
fell apart, and the procession came through; it came right on through
and up the steps, a line of uniforms and swords on either side from curb
to pillar, and halted.
Aghast, between two glittering files, the orphaned children shrank into
the shadow behind a pillar, while upstreamed from the carriages below an
unending line--bare-headed men, and ladies bearing flowers. Behind,
below, about, closing in on every side, crowded people, a sea of people.
The orphaned children found themselves swept from their hiding by the
crowd and unwillingly jostled forward into prominence.
A frowning man with a sword in his hand seemed to be threatening
everybody; his face was red and his voice was big, and he glittered with
many buttons. All at once he caught sight of the orphaned children and
threatened them vehemently.
"Here," said the frowning man, "right in here," and he placed them in
line.
The orphaned children were appalled, and even in the face of the man
cried out in protest. But the man of the sword did not hear, for the
reason that he did not listen. Instead he was addressing a large and
stout lady immediately behind them.
"Separated from the family in the confusion, the grandchildren
evidently--just see them in, please."
And suddenly the orphaned children found themselves a part of the
procession as grandchildren. The nature of a procession is to proceed.
And the grandchildren proceeded with it. They could not help themselves.
There was no time for protest, for, pushed by the crowd which closed and
swayed above their heads, and piloted by the stout lady close behind,
they were swept into the church and up the aisle, and when they came
again to themselves were in the inner corner of a pew near the front.
The church was decked with flags.
So was the Third Reader room. It was hung with flags for The Exhibition.
Hattie in the corner nudged Sadie. Sadie urged Emmy Lou, who, next to
the stout lady, touched her timidly. "We have to get out," said Emmy
Lou, "we've got to say our parts."
"Not now," said the lady, reassuringly, "the programme is at the
cemetery."
Emmy Lou did not understand, and she tried to tell the lady.
"S'h'h," said that person, engaged with the spectacle and the crowd,
"sh-h-"
Abashed, Emmy Lou sat, sh-h-ed.
Hattie arose. It was terrible to rise in church, and at a funeral, and
the church was filled, the aisles were crowded, but Hattie rose. Hattie
was a St. George and A Dragon stood between her and The Exhibition.
She pushed by Sadie, and past Emmy Lou. Hattie was as slim as she was
strenuous, or perhaps she was slim because she was strenuous, but not
even so slim a little girl as Hattie could push by the stout lady, for
she filled the space.
At Hattie's touch she turned. Although she looked good-natured, the
size and ponderance of the lady were intimidating. She stared at Hattie;
people were looking; it was in church; Hattie's face was red.
"You can't get to the family," said the lady, "you couldn't move in the
crowd. Besides I promised to see to you. Now be quiet," she added
crossly, when Hattie would have spoken. She turned away. Hattie crept
back vanquished by this Dragon.
"So suitably dressed," the stout lady was saying to a lady beyond;
"grandchildren, you know."
"She says they are grandchildren," echoed the whispers around.
"Even their little handkerchiefs have black borders," somebody beyond
replied.
Emmy Lou wondered if she was in some dreadful dream. Was she a
grandchild or was she an orphan? Her head swam.
The service began and there fell on the unwilling grandchildren the
submission of awe. The stout lady cried, she also punched Emmy Lou with
her elbow whenever that little person moved, but finally she found
courage to turn her head so she could see Sadie.
Sadie was weeping into her black-bordered handkerchief, nor were they
the tears of histrionic talent. They were real tears. People all about
were looking at her sympathetically. Such grief in a grandchild was very
moving.
It may have been minutes, it seemed to Emmy Lou hours, before there came
a general up-rising. Hattie stood up. So did Sadie and Emmy Lou. Their
skirts no longer stood out jauntily; they were quite crushed and
subdued.
There was a wild, hunted look in Hattie's eyes. "Watch the chance," she
whispered, "and run."
But it did not come. As the pews emptied, the stout lady passed Emmy Lou
on, addressing some one beyond. "Hold to this one," she said, "and I'll
take the other two, or they'll get tramped in the crowd."
Emmy Lou felt herself grasped, she could not see up to find by whom. The
crowd in the aisle had closed above her head, but she heard the stout
lady behind saying, "Did you ever see such an ill-mannered child!" and
Emmy Lou judged that Hattie was struggling against Fate.
Slowly the crowd moved, and, being a part of it however unwillingly,
Emmy Lou moved too, out of the church and down the steps. Then came the
crashing of the band and the roll of carriages, and she found herself in
the front row on the curb.
The man with the brandishing sword was threatening violently. "One more
carriage is here for the family," called the man with the sword. His
face was red and his voice was hoarse. His glance in search for the
family suddenly fell on Emmy Lou. She felt it fall.
The problem solved itself for the man with the sword, and his brow
cleared. "Grandchildren next," roared the threatening man.
"Grandchildren," echoed the crowd.
Hattie and Sadie were pushed forward from somewhere, Hattie lifting her
voice. But what was the cry of a Hattie before the brazen utterance of
the band? Sadie was weeping wildly.
Emmy Lou with the courage of despair cried out in the grasp of the
threatening man, but the man lifting her into the carriage, was speaking
himself, and to the driver. "Keep an eye on them--separated from the
family," he was explaining, and a moment later Hattie and Sadie were
lifted after Emmy Lou into the carriage, and as the door banged, their
carriage moved with the rest up the street.
"Now," said Hattie, and Hattie sprang to the farther door.
It would not open. Things never will in dreadful dreams.
Through the carriage windows the school, with its arched doorways and
windows, gazed frowningly, reproachfully. A gentleman entered the gate
and went in the doorway.
"It's our minister," said Sadie, weeping afresh.
Hattie beat upon the window, and called to the driver, but no mortal ear
could have heard above that band.
"An' my grown-up brother, an' gran'ma an' the rest," said Hattie. And
Hattie wept.
"And the visiting lady next door," said Emmy Lou. She did not mean to
weep, tears did not come readily to Emmy Lou, but just then her eyes
fell upon the handkerchief still held by its exact centre in her hand.
What would The Exhibition do without them?
Then Emmy Lou wept.
Late that afternoon a carriage stopped at a corner upon which a school
building stood. Since his charges were but infantile affairs, the
coloured gentleman on the box thought to expedite matters and drop them
at the corner nearest their homes.
Descending, the coloured gentleman flung open the door, and three little
girls crept forth, three crushed little girls, three limp little girls,
three little girls in a mild kind of mourning.
They came forth timidly. They looked around. They hoped they might reach
their homes unobserved.
There was a crowd up the street. A gathering of people--many people. It
seemed to be at Emmy Lou's gate. Hattie and Sadie lived farther on.
"It must be a fire," said Hattie.
But it wasn't. It was The Exhibition, the Principal, and Miss Carrie,
and teachers and pupils, and mammas and aunties and Uncle Charlie.
"An' gran'ma--" said Hattie.
"And the visiting lady--" said Emmy Lou.
"And our minister," said Sadie.
The gathering of many people caught sight of them presently, and came to
meet them, three little girls in mild mourning.
The little girls moved slowly, but the crowd moved rapidly.
The gentlemen laughed, Uncle Charlie and the minister and the papa or
two, laughed when they heard, and laughed again, and went on laughing,
they leaned against the fence.
But the ladies could see nothing funny, the mammas, nor Aunt Cordelia.
That mild mourning had been the result of anxious planning and
consultation.
Neither could Miss Carrie. She said they had failed her. She said it in
her deepest tones and used gestures.
Sadie wept, for the sight of Miss Carrie recalled afresh the tears she
should have shed with Histrionic Talent.
The parents and guardians led them home.
Emmy Lou was tired. She was used to a quiet life, and never before had
been in the public eye.
At supper she nodded and mild mourning and all, suddenly Emmy Lou
collapsed and fell asleep, her head against her chair.
Uncle Charlie woke her. He stood her up on the chair and held out his
arms. Uncle Charlie meant to carry her as if she were a baby thing again
up to bed.
"Come," said Uncle Charlie.
Emmy Lou stood dazed and flushed, she was not yet quite awake.
Uncle Charlie had caught snatches of school vernacular. "Come," said he,
"suit the action to the word."
Emmy Lou woke suddenly, the words smiting her ears with ominous import.
She thought the hour had come, it was The Exhibition.
She stood stiffly, she advanced a cautious foot, her chubby hand
described a careful half circle. Emmy Lou spoke--
"We know not where we go," said Emmy Lou.
"No more we do," said Uncle Charlie.