VIII
STERN DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE OF GOD
HATTIE'S rule of life was simple, but severe. She set it forth for EmmyLou. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you have to draw the linebetween. And when you've chosen which side you're on, you have to standby your colors."
She went on to diagram her meaning. "I heard my father tell my brotherswhat it means to stand by your colors. He said they couldn't be toocareful in their associates. That now they've joined the League for theRight they must show their faith by their works. You and I can'tassociate with anyone who chooses the other side either. If Lisa Schmitwill go to Sunday picnics, she's wrong, and you and I have to show ourcolors and tell her so."
Emmy Lou hesitated at such consignment of Lisa to the limbo defined aswrong, but Hattie said she didn't dare hesitate. She even showed adisposition to take Emmy Lou's right of election into her keeping,saying if she felt this way about it she'd speak for her.
"No, we won't come into your game of prisoner's base," she told Lisa andYetta at recess; "we're going to have a game of our own."
The contumely for the unfriendly act nevertheless fell on Emmy Lou whoknew them best. "She's getting to be stuck up," Lisa said bitterly toher own group, with a jerk of her head toward Emmy Lou standing byHattie. "She won't play with Yetta and me any more because our papakeeps a grocery."
"No such thing!" said Hattie. "She won't play with you because you go topicnics on Sunday."
Was this true? Or was it because Hattie had told her she must not playwith them because they went to picnics on Sunday?
Hattie called this bringing of Lisa and Yetta to judgment "drawing theline." It was a painful process to the rejected. Lisa went off with herface suffused and Yetta who followed her was crying.
Next followed the case of Mittie Heinz whose mamma kept a little shopfor general notions, a stock that Emmy Lou never had been able toidentify, often as she had been there to buy needles or thread orcambric for Aunt Cordelia.
Mittie read her storybook on the steps of the shop on Sunday and Hattieexplained to her that this made it impossible to include her in a gameof catcher.
"Right's right, and wrong's wrong," she said. "If we are going to drawthe line we have to draw it."
"I read my books on Sunday," expostulated Emmy Lou, for Mittie'sstartled face showed surprise as she turned away, and her eyes lookedreproach at Emmy Lou.
"But they are books you get out of your Sunday school library, and don'tcount anyway because you say you don't like them," from Hattie.
This lamentable and unhappy knowledge of good and evil was forced onEmmy Lou when in the ascending scale of years she simultaneously reachedher ninth birthday, the Fourth Reader, and the estate of bridesmaid toAunt Katie.
Life from this eminence appeared broad-spread and beautiful, anddiversified by variant paths within the sweep of a far horizon until nownever suspected. But Hattie, youthful Virgil to her youthful Dante,permitted personally conducted excursions only, and these along asomewhat monotonous because strait and narrow path--all other roads,whether devious or parallel, flower-bedecked or somber, ascending ordescending, leading but to questionable ends.
The first travelers pointed out by Hattie as trudging these alien roadswere Lisa, Yetta, and Mittie, as has been shown. The second groupjourneying on an upland, flowery way paralleling the strait and narrowpath in general direction, at least, were Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus.Charming names! Enchanting figures!
School opened early in September. Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus, who werenewcomers, were given desks across the aisle from Emmy Lou. Alice,seeing her earnestly scrubbing her desk each morning before school andarranging it for the day, laughed in her eyes. Amanthus, seeing her testher pen and try her ink for the coming ordeal of copybook, laughed inher dimple. And Rosalie, asking her what she was hunting on theoutspread page of her geography, laughed aloud when Emmy Lou repliedthat it was Timbuctoo, and that she could find it easier if she knewwhether it was a country, or a mountain, or a river. On which they allcame across the aisle and hugged her.
"You said in class that the plural of footnote was feetnotes," saidRosalie.
"You said, when the teacher held you down about the spelling in yourcomposition, that a dog didn't have fore-feet but four feet," saidAmanthus.
"It's so funny and so dear," said Alice.
"What?" asked Emmy Lou.
"You," said Amanthus, and they all kissed her.
"Come and see us," said Rosalie; "we're your neighbors now. We've movedin the white house with the big yard on your square, and Alice, ourcousin, and her mother have come to live with us. We've never been to apublic school before. You live in a white house at the other end of thesquare. We saw you in the yard."
"I'll come this afternoon," said Emmy Lou, "and I'll bring Hattie. I'llget her now so she'll know you."
But Hattie declined to come. She shook her head decidedly. "They'velight dispositions and I've not. My mamma said so about some otherlittle girls I couldn't get along with. I don't want to come, andbesides I'm not sure I want to know them."
Which would imply that light dispositions were undesirable apart fromHattie's inability to get along with them! Hattie could be mostdisturbing.
Towards noon a sudden shower fell, and the class was told to remain inits room for recess and eat its luncheons at its desks.
Across the aisle on the other side of Emmy Lou sat Charlotte Wright.She, too, had shown every disposition to be friendly but Hattiediscouraged this also. She leaned from her desk now. "Will you have apiece of my homemade hickory-nut candy?" She spoke with pride. "My mammalet me make it myself on the grate."
On the grate? Why not in the kitchen on the stove? Still that wasCharlotte's own affair. More showy than tidy in her dress, she seemedone of those detached and anxious little girls hunting for friends. Thekindly impulse was to respond to overtures, Emmy Lou knowing a pastwhere she had needed friends. And besides there was the candy.Hickory-nut candy does not have to look tidy to look good. She had aliberal lunch outspread on the napkin upon her desk, but she had nocandy.
But Hattie leaving her desk and approaching, held her back. "No, shewon't have any candy," she said, and gathering up Emmy Lou's lunch inthe napkin and thus forcing her to follow, walked away.
Whereupon Rosalie and Amanthus, arising and going around to Charlotte,flung back their curls as they crowded into her desk, one on either sideof her, and _asked_ for a piece of her candy.
"I don't say it wasn't hard to do," said Hattie, flushed and evenapologetic. "But I had to. She's not your kind, and she's not mine."
Yet Rosalie and Amanthus were sharing Charlotte's desk and her candy.Was she their kind?
Hattie's voice had dropped and was even awe-struck as she explained."Charlotte's papa and her mamma don't live together. I heard my motherand my aunt say so. She and her mother live in a boarding house next tothe confectionery."
In a boarding house? Charlotte through necessity making her candy on agrate, therefore, and not in the kitchen! And proof indeed that she wasnot their kind, even to Emmy Lou, in a day when the home, however small,was the measure of standing and the rule!
Yet Alice has arisen and is looking across at Charlotte. Emmy Lou lovesAlice. Light disposition or not, she is drawn to her. Her hair is a palegold while the curls of her cousins are sunny, and her smile is in herreflective eyes while theirs is in lip and dimple. Of the three sheloves Alice. Why? She has no idea why. Alice moves forward suddenly andgoing around to Charlotte leans to her and kisses her.
"Is Charlotte their kind?" Emmy Lou asks Hattie who also was watching.
"Ask them; they ought to know," tersely. "We can't afford to care, evenif it does make us sorry. My father said people have to stand by theircolors."
Later as school was dismissed and the class was filing out, Rosaliecalled to Emmy Lou, "If you will go by for Charlotte, she says she willcome this afternoon, too."
Emmy Lou went home disturbed. Charlotte's father and mother did not li
vetogether, and because of this Charlotte was not their kind.
Marriage then is not a fixed and static fact? As day and night, winterand summer? Would she yet learn that the other family relations asbrother and sister, parent and child, are subject to repudiation andreadjustment, too?
Emmy Lou was just through serving as bridesmaid for Aunt Katie, in afilmy dress with a pink sash around what Uncle Charlie said was bycommon consent and courtesy her waist, whatever his meaning by this, andcarrying a basket from which she earnestly scattered flowers up theaisle of St. Simeon's in the path of the bride, and incidentally in thepath of Mr. Reade, the bridegroom, and had supposed she now knewsomething about marriage.
The sanction of St. Simeon's was upon the bride, crowned with the veiland orange blossoms of her solemn dedication, or so the bridesmaid hadunderstood it.
"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 injust these words.
To be sure the occasion held its disappointment. The concentration ofgifts upon the bride would argue that others shared with Emmy Lou asense of the inadequacy of the bridegroom in his inglorious blackclothes.
There was a steel engraving above the mantel in the dining-room called"The Cavalier's Wedding," at which Emmy Lou glanced again today as shecame in, and in which the bridegroom has a hat in his hand with afeather which sweeps the ground, and wears a worthy lace-trimmed coat.
At the dinner-table she repeated the news which had so dismayed andastounded her.
"There's a little girl in my class named Charlotte Wright whose papa andmamma don't live together."
"Dear, dear!" expostulated Aunt Cordelia, "I don't like you to behearing such things."
This would seem to ratify Hattie's position. "Then I mustn't play withher?"
"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; Iwill have to know more about it."
"I fancy I know the case and the child," said Uncle Charlie. "The fatherworked on my paper for a while, a fine young fellow with a big chance tohave made good." Then to Emmy Lou, "Uncle Charlie wants you to be asnice to the little girl as you know how, for the sake of the father whowas that fine young fellow."
Emmy Lou was glad to get her bearings. Hattie would be glad to get themtoo. 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 meetany, pin to them."
Emmy Lou turned to Aunt Cordelia. "May I get Charlotte, then, and go tosee Alice Pulteney and Rosalie and Amanthus Maynard? They've just movedon our square?"
"Agree, Cordelia, agree," urged Uncle Charlie as he arose from thetable. "If we are to infer they have light dispositions, drive her tosee Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus."
Emmy Lou started forth by and by. The shower of the morning was over andthe September afternoon was fresh and clear. It was heartening to feelthat she was standing by her colors, by Charlotte, and going to see hernew friends.
The boarding house was unattractive and the vestibule where Emmy Loustood to ring the bell embarrassed her by its untidiness. As Charlottejoined Emmy Lou at the door, her mother who had followed her halfwaydown the stairs called after her. She was almost as pretty as AuntKatie, though she was in a draggled wrapper more showy than tidy, andshe seemed fretful and disposed to blame Charlotte on generalprinciples.
"Now do remember when it's time to come home. Though why I shouldexpect anybody to remember in order to save me----"
Rosalie and Alice and Amanthus were waiting at their gate and led themin, not to the house, but across the clipped lawn gleaming in theslanting light of the mid-afternoon, to a clump of shrubberies so oldand hoary that beneath their branches was the spaciousness of a room.Here the ground was heaped with treasure, a lace scarf, some trailingskirts, 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 princepursuing 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 andfair, 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 thebeggar-maid----"
"May we have the green and gold book that was yours when you werelittle, to lend them?"
Alice's mother, who was Mrs. Pulteney, smiled at the visitors. "And thisis Emmy Lou? And this is Charlotte? Certainly you may get the book tolend them."
Emmy Lou felt that one not only did well to love Mrs. Pulteney but mightgo further and adore her.
It was agreed that Charlotte should take the book first. She kept it twodays and brought it to Emmy Lou, her small, thin face alight. "I read itin school and got a bad mark, but I've finished it. It all came rightfor everybody."
She left an overlooked bookmark between the leaves at the story of theoutcast little princess who went wandering into the world with hermother.
Emmy Lou in her turn finished the book. Charlotte got one thing out ofit and she got another. For Charlotte it all came right. Emmy Louentered its portals and the glory of understanding came upon her.Looking back from this land which is that within the sweep of the farhorizon, 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 arewrong, so a line is drawn between those who have entered this land ofthe imagination and those who are left behind. One knew now why Aliceflits where others walk, why the hair of Amanthus gleams, why laughterdwells in the cheek of Rosalie, why the face of Charlotte istransfigured. And one realizes why she instinctively loves Mrs.Pulteney. It is because she owned the green and gold book when she waslittle!
Emmy Lou also felt that she understood at last why Mr. Reade made sopoor 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 isnothing less 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 fairytales. 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 fairytales."
"She will," from Uncle Charlie confidently.
"When?"
"When she gets younger, with time, like us, or when she overtakes alight 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 andHattie apart?
At Thanksgiving, Mrs. Maynard, the mother of Amanthus and Rosalie, aclose rival herself to Aunt Katie in prettiness, gave a party for hertwo little daughters, a party calling for white dresses and sashes andslippers.
"Hattie doesn't want to go, but I've coaxed her," Emmy Lou reported athome.
"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 wasgiven, so Uncle Charlie said, because so many of what he called thestock 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 faceof this later invitation he withdrew his.
"You may give our tickets to Hattie and Sadie if they are not alreadygoing."
Hattie had to be coaxed again. She said she didn't believe in theatersand felt she had to stand by her colors. Her papa who chanced along atthe moment helped her decide. "There's such a thing as making a nuisanceof your colors," he said, and took the tickets for her from Emmy Lou.
A dreadful thing happened at school the day before the Christmasholidays. A little girl got mad at Alice. "We've all known somethingabout you and wouldn't tell it," she said, while the group about the twostood aghast. "Your papa and your mamma don't live together, and that'swhy you live with Rosalie and Amanthus. And it's true because it was allin the paper."
Emmy Lou hurried home all but weeping and told it.
"Hush, my dear, hush," said Aunt Cordelia. "For the sake of Alice'sbrave mother we must forget it. I hoped you would not hear it."
Alice's brave mother? Now the status is fixed by a mother. Life isperplexing. One must explain to Hattie.
* * * * *
The Christmas pantomime! Emmy Lou had been to the theater before. AuntCordelia had taken her to see "Rip Van Winkle."
"Uncle Charlie wants you to be able to say you have seen certain of thegreat actors," she had said, but Emmy Lou did not grasp that she wasseeing the actor until it was explained to her afterward. She had noidea that a great actor would be a poor, tottering old man, white-hairedand ragged, who brought tears to the onlooker as he lifted his hand tohis peering eyes, standing there bewildered upon the stage.
Aunt Louise took her to another play called "The Two Orphans." Sheunderstood this less. "The name on the program is _Henriette_. Why dothey call it 'Onriette'? Is it a cold in their heads?" She was cross andspoke fretfully because she was bothered.
But the pantomime! Christmas Eve, the theater brilliant with lights andgarlands, evergreens wreathing the box wherein she sat in her newcrimson dress with Alice, Rosalie, Amanthus, and Charlotte, and Mrs.Pulteney just behind--fair and lovely Mrs. Pulteney who, like the motherof Charlotte, did not live with her husband, though Emmy Lou is doingher 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 publicfountain, the shops and dwellings of a town, and threading the spacethus set about, a crowding, circling throng, jugglers, giants, dwarfs,fairies, a crutch-supported witch, a white-capped baker! It is the worldof the green and gold book!
The goose-girl is here, about to put her teeth into an apple. Thebeggar-maid and her king are recognized. A princess and a prince,kissing their finger-tips to the boxes, are the center of the stage.
No, _Harlequin_ in his parti-colored clothes with his dagger, whoever_Harlequin_ may be, is that center, causing the baker at a touch to takeoff his head and carry it under his arm, striking the apple from thelips 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 itbe. Rather it is life, which with the same perversity baffles thesingle-hearted, bewilders the seeker, and juggles with and decapitatesthe ideas even as _Harlequin_ dismembers the well-meaning andunoffending baker. With this difference, that in the world Emmy Lou isgazing 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 has not met them before? Sad and lovely _Gabriella_ at herwheel in her woodland cottage, in reality a princess stolen when in thecradle, and _Bertram_ her husband, forester of the ignoble deeds, whosehands have wrung the white doe's neck in wantonness.
And who are these as the play moves on? _Florizel_, once high-heartedprince, forced to dig in the nether world for gold to replace thatforever slipping through the unmended pocket of _Gonderiga_ his wife,standing by, princess of the slovenly heart, who is no princess in truthat 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 allwent home together on the street car. It was Christmas Eve and theshops and streets were alight and crowded. As the car reached thequieter sections the lights of the homes shone through the dusk.
Charlotte left the car at her corner which was reached first, to go hometo her mother in the boarding house. Mrs. Pulteney and her group ofthree said good-bye at the next corner. At the third, Hattie, Sadie, andEmmy Lou got off together.
Hattie detained the others ere they could go their separate ways. Hervoice was awed.
"Maybe Charlotte's father was like _Florizel_, once high-heartedprince----"
Emmy Lou and Sadie gazed at Hattie. They caught the point. No wonderHattie was awed.
"--and maybe Mrs. Pulteney is beautiful _Gabriella_----?"
* * * * *
That night after supper Emmy Lou paused before the picture of "TheCavalier's Wedding." She was far from satisfied with Aunt Katie'schoice.
"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 werethe trappings and the suits of woe."
"Woe?"
"Certainly. He was the bridegroom."
* * * * *
Hattie came around the day after Christmas. Stern daughter of the voiceof God in general, today she was hesitant. "If you haven't returned thatbook of fairy tales, I'll take it home and read it."