I
OUT OF GOD'S BLESSING INTO THE WARM SUN
For a day or two after Emmy Lou, four years old, came to live with her uncle and her aunties, or in fact until she discovered Izzy who lived next door and Sister who lived in the alley, Aunt Cordelia's hands were full. But it was Emmy Lou's heart that was full.
Along with other things which had made up life, such as Papa, and her own little white bed, and her own little red chair, and her own window with its sill looking out upon her own yard, and Mary the cook in Mary's own kitchen, and Georgie the little neighbor boy next door—along with these things, she wanted Mamma.
Not only because she was Mamma, all-wise, all-final, all-decreeing, but because, being Mamma and her edicts therefore supreme, she had bade her little daughter never to forget to say her prayers.
Not that Emmy Lou had forgotten to say them. Not she! It was that when she went to say them she had forgotten what she was to say. A terrifying and unlooked-for contingency.
Two days before, Papa had put his Emmy Lou into the arms of Aunt Cordelia at the railroad station of the city where she and Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise and Uncle Charlie lived. They had come to the train to get her. As he did so, Mamma, for whose sake the trip south was being made in search of health, though Emmy Lou did not know this, smiled and tried to look brave.
Emmy Lou's new little scarlet coat with its triple capes was martial, and also her new little scarlet Napoleon hat, three-cornered with a cockade, and Papa hastened to assume that the little person within this exterior was martial also.
"Emmy Lou is a plucky soul and will not willingly try you, Cordelia," he told his sister-in-law.
"Emmy Lou is a faithful soul and has promised not to try you," said Mamma.
"Kiss Mamma and kiss me," said Papa.
"And say your prayers every night at Aunt Cordelia's knee," said Mamma.
"Pshaw," said Uncle Charlie, the brother of Mamma and the aunties, and wheeling about and whipping out his handkerchief he blew his nose violently.
"Brother!" said Aunt Katie reproachfully. Aunt Katie was younger than Mamma and almost as pretty.
"Brother Charlie!" said Aunt Louise who was the youngest of them all, even more reproachfully.
"Shall I send her to Sunday school at our church, or at your church?" said Aunt Cordelia, plump and comfortable, and next to Uncle Charlie in the family succession. For Papa's church was different, though Emmy Lou did not know this either—and when Mamma had elected to go with him there had been feeling.
"So she finds God's blessing, Sister Cordelia, what does it matter?" said Mamma a little piteously. "And she'll say her prayer every night and every morning to you?"
On reaching home, Aunt Cordelia spoke decidedly, "Precious baby! We'll give her her supper and put her right into her little bed. She's worn out with the strangeness of it all."
Aunt Cordelia was right. Emmy Lou was worn out and more, she was bewildered and terrified with the strangeness of it all. But though her flaxen head, shorn now of its brave three-cornered hat, fell forward well-nigh into her supper before more than a beginning was made, and though when carried upstairs by Uncle Charlie she yielded passively to Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Katie undressing her, too oblivious, as they deemed her, to be cognizant of where she was, they reckoned without knowing their Emmy Lou.
Her head came through the opening of the little gown slipped on her.
"Shall I say it now?" she asked.
"Her prayer. She hasn't forgotten, precious baby," said Aunt Cordelia and sat down. Aunt Katie who had been picking up little garments, melted into the shadows beyond the play and the flicker of the fire in the grate, and Emmy Lou, steadied by the hand of Aunt Cordelia, went down upon her knees.
For there are rules. Just as inevitably as there are rites. And since life is hedged about with rites, as varying in their nature as in their purpose, and each according to its purpose at once inviolate and invincible, it is for an Emmy Lou to concern herself with remembering their rules.
As when she goes out on the sidewalk to play "I-spy" with Georgie, the masterful little boy from next door, and his friends. Whereupon and unvaryingly follows the rite. The rule being that all stand in a row, and while the moving finger points along the line, words cabalistic and potent in their spell cryptically and irrevocably search out the quaking heart of the one who is "It."
So in the kitchen. The rule being that Mary, who is young and pretty and learning to cook under Mamma's tutelage, shall chant earnestly over the crock as she mixes, words which again are talismanic and potent in their spell, as "one of butter, two of sugar, three of flour, four eggs," or Mary's cake infallibly will fall in the oven, stable affair as the oven grating seems to be.
And again at meals, rite of a higher class, solemn and mysterious. When Emmy Lou must bow her head and shut her eyes—what would happen if she basely peeked she hasn't an idea—after which, Papa's "blessing" as it is called, having been enunciated according to rule, she may now reach out with intrepidity and touch tumbler or spoon or biscuit.
So with prayer, highest rite of all, most solemn and most mysterious. Prayer being that potency of the impelling word again by which Something known as God is to be propitiated, and one protected from the fearful if dimly sensed terrors of the dark when one comes awake in the night.
Emmy Lou's Mamma, hitherto the never-failing refuge from all that threatened, haven of encircling sheltering arms and brooding tender eyes, provided this protection for her Emmy Lou before she went away and left her. And more. She gave Emmy Lou to understand that somewhere, if one grasped it aright, was a person tenderly in league with Mamma in loving Emmy Lou, and in desiring to comfort her and protect her. A person named Jesus. He was to be reached through prayer too, and, like God in this also, through Sunday school, this being a place around the corner where one went with Georgie, the little boy from next door.
These things being made clear, no wonder that Mamma bade her Emmy Lou not to fail to go to Sunday school, and never to forget to say her prayers!
And no wonder that Emmy Lou quite earnestly knew the rules for her prayers. That it hurt her knees to get down upon them had nothing to do with the case. The point with which one has to do is that she does get down on them. And being there, as now, steadied to that position by the hand of Aunt Cordelia, she shuts her eyes, as taught by Mamma, though with no idea as to why, and folds her hands, as taught by Mamma, with no understanding as to why, and lowers her head, as taught by Mamma, on Aunt Cordelia's knee. And the rules being now all complied with, she prays.
But Emmy Lou did not pray.
"Yes?" from Aunt Cordelia.
But still Emmy Lou failed to pray. Instead her head lifted, and her eyes, opening, showed themselves to be dilated by apprehension. "Mamma starts it when it won't come," she faltered.
Aunt Cordelia endeavored to start it. "Now I lay me . . ." she said with easy conviction.
Emmy Lou, baby person, never had heard of it. Terror crept into the eyes lifted to Aunt Cordelia, as well as apprehension.
"Our Father . . ." said Aunt Katie, coming forward from the shadows. Emmy Lou's attention seemed caught for the moment and held.
". . . which art in Heaven," said Aunt Katie.
Emmy Lou shook her head. She never had heard of that either, though for a moment it appeared as if she thought she had. A tear rolled down.
"Go to bed and it will come to you tomorrow," from Aunt Cordelia.
"Say it in the morning instead," from Aunt Katie.
But Emmy Lou shook her head, and clung to Aunt Cordelia's knees when they would lift her up.
Aunt Cordelia was worn out, herself. One does not say good-bye to a loved sister, and assume the care of a chubby, clinging baby such as this one, without tax. "Whatever is to be done about it?" she said to Aunt Katie despairingly. Then to Emmy Lou, "Isn't there anything you know that will do?"
There are varying rites, differing in their nature as in their purpose, but each according to its purpose inviolate and invincible.
"I know Georgia's count out?" said Emmy Lou. "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo? Will that do?"
But Aunt Cordelia, however sorely tempted, could not bring herself, honest soul, to agree that it would. Nor yet Aunt Katie.
Aunt Louise came tipping in and joined them.
"I know Mary's cake count," said Emmy Lou. "'One of butter, two of sugar, three of flour, four eggs.' Will that do?"
Not even Aunt Louise could agree that it would.
Uncle Charlie came tipping in.
"I know Papa's blessing," said Emmy Lou. "'We thank Thee, Lord, for this provision of Thy bounty. . . ?'"
"The very thing," said Uncle Charlie heartily. "Set her up on her knees again, Cordelia, and let her say it."
And Papa's blessing had served now, night and morning, since, though it was evident to those about her that Emmy Lou was both dubious and uneasy.
The processes of the mind of an Emmy Lou, however, if slow, are sound, if we know their premises. There was yet another way by which God could be propitiated, and Jesus, who desired to love her and protect her, reached. On the morning of her third day with her aunties, she inquired about this.
"When is Sunday school?"
They told her. "Today is Saturday. Sunday school is tomorrow."
She took this in. "Will I go to Sunday school?"
"Certainly you will go."
She took this in also. So far it was reassuring, and she moved to the next point, though nobody connected the two inquiries. "There's a little boy next door?"
"Yes," from Aunt Katie, "a little boy with dark and lovely eyes."
"A sweet and gentle little boy," from Aunt Cordelia.
"A little boy named Izzy," from Aunt Louise.
Emmy Lou, looking from auntie to auntie as each spoke, sighed deeply. The rules in life, as she knew it, were holding good. As, for example, was not Aunt Cordelia here for Mamma? And Uncle Charlie for Papa? And the substitute little white bed for her little bed? And the substitute little armchair wherein she was sitting at the moment, for her chair?
To be sure the details varied. Hitherto the cook in the kitchen had been Mary, pink-cheeked and pretty. Whereas now the cook in the kitchen not only is round and rolling and colored and named Aunt M'randy, but there is a house-boy in the kitchen, too, whose name is Bob. The stabilizing fact remains, however, that there is a cook, and there is a kitchen.
And now there is a little boy next door. For you to go to Sunday school with the little boy next door, holding tight to his hand, while his Mamma at his door, and your Mamma at your door, watch you down the street. That he lords it over you, edicting each thing you shall or shall not do along the way, is according to immutable ruling also, as Georgie makes clear, on the incontrovertible grounds that you are the littler.
He has been to Sunday school too, before you ever heard of it, as he lets you know, and glories in his easy knowledge of the same. And whereas you, on your very first Sunday, get there to learn that Cain killed Mabel, and are visibly terrified at the fate of Mabel, according to Georgie it is a mild event and nothing to what Sunday school has to offer at its best.
He knows the comportment of the place, too, and at the proper moment drags Emmy Lou to her knees with her face crushed to the wooden bench beside his own. And later he upbraids her that she fails in the fervor with which he and everybody else, including the lady who told Emmy Lou she was glad to see her, pour forth a hum of words. When he finds she does not know these words his scorn is blighting. Though when she asks him to teach them to her, it develops that he, the mighty one, only knows a word here and there to come in loud on himself.
For a moment, the other night, Emmy Lou had fancied Aunt Katie was saying these words used at Sunday school, but how could she be sure, seeing that she did not know them herself?
And now there was a little boy next door here! And Emmy Lou arose, her aunties having gone about their Saturday morning affairs, and seeking her little sacque with its scalloped edge, which she pulled on, and her little round hat which she carried by its elastic, went forth into the warm comfort of the Indian Summer morning to find him.
He was at his gate! The rule again! Georgie was ever to be found even so at his gate. Emmy Lou was shy, but not when she knew what she had to do, and why. Opening her gate and going out, paling by paling she went along past her house and her yard, to the little boy at the gate of his house and his yard. When he saw her coming he even came to meet her.
As her aunties had said, he was a dark-eyed and lovely little boy. When she reached him and put out her hand to his, he took it and led her back to his gate with him. His name, she remembered, was Izzy.
"Sunday school is tomorrow?" she said, looking up at Izzy.
"Sunday school?" said Izzy.
"Where Cain killed Mabel?"
Izzy's dark eyes lit. He was a gentle and kindly little boy. Emmy Lou felt she would love Izzy. "We call it 'Temple.' But it is today. My Mamma told me to walk ahead and she would catch up with me."
"Today?"
Surely. With such visible proofs of it upon Izzy. Do little boys wear velvet suits with spotless collar and flamboyant tie but for occasions such as Sunday school? Aunties and even Mammas know less about Sunday school than the Georgies and Izzys, who are authorities since they are the ones who go. Emmy Lou put on her little hat even to the elastic. Then her hand went into Izzy's again.
"I thought it was tomorrow?"
Izzy's face was alight as he took in her meaning. She was going with him. His face was alight as he led her along.
"It's 'round the corner?" she asked.
"'Round two corners," said Izzy. "How did you know?"
A golden dome crowned this Sunday school, and wide steps led high to great doors. They waited at their foot, Izzy and Emmy Lou, a dark-eyed little boy in a velvet suit, and a blue-eyed little girl in a gingham dress and scalloped sacque, while others went up and in, old men, young men, old women, young women, little boys, little girls. Waited until Izzy's Mamma arrived and found him.
She was dark-eyed and lovely too. She listened while he explained. Did a shadow, as of patient sadness, cross her face?
"The little girl does not understand, Israel, little son," she said. "Hold her hand carefully, and take her back to her own gate. I will wait for you here."
Emmy Lou, bewildered as she was led along, endeavored to understand.
"It isn't Sunday school?" she asked Izzy.
His face was no longer alight, only gentle and, like his mother's, patient. "Not yours. I thought it was. Mine and my mother's and my father's."
Little girls left at their own gates, little girls who have come to live at their aunties' home, go around by the side way to the kitchen door. Emmy Lou had learned that already. If anyone had missed her there was no evidence of it. Aunt M'randy, just emerging from this kitchen door, a coal-bucket heaped with ashes in her hand, as Emmy Lou arrived there, paused in her rolling gait, and invited her to go.
Where? Emmy Lou in her little sacque and her round hat hadn't an idea, but seeing that she was expected to accept, took Aunt M'randy's unoccupied hand and went.
And so it was that she found Sister. For Aunt M'randy was going down the length of the back yard, a nice yard with a tree and a bush and what, palpably in a milder hour had been flowers in a border, to the alley-gate to empty the ashes. And beyond this alley gate, outside which stood the barrel they were seeking, in the alley itself, with the cottage shanties of the alley world for background, stood Sister! One knew she was Sister because Aunt M'randy called her so.
Sister was small and brown and solid. Small enough to be littler than Emmy Lou. Her face was serious and her eyes in their setting of generous white followed one wonderingly.
Littler than Emmy Lou! The rule in life was extending itself. Hitherto she, Emmy Lou, had been that littler one, and hers the eyes to follow wonderingly, and the effect of meeting one thus littler than oneself is to experience strange joys, palpably and patently peculiar to being the larger.
Emmy Lou dropped the hand of Aunt M'randy and went out into the alley and straight to Sister.
Nor did Sister seem surprised at this, but when Emmy Lou reached her and paused, sidled closer, and her little brown hand crept into Emmy Lou's white one and clung there. Whereupon the white one, finding itself the bigger, closed on the brown one and Emmy Lou led Sister in through the alley gate, past Aunt M'randy, and up through the yard with its tree and its bush and its whilom flower border.
More! There was a depression in the pavement leading up to the house, a depression all of the depth of about three of Emmy Lou's fingers. Whereat she stopped, and putting her arms about Sister, solid for all she was a baby thing, with straining and accession of pink in the face, lifted her over! And the joy of it was great! Emmy Lou never had met one littler than herself before!
That evening at dusk, Aunt Louise came in, brisk and animated. Her news was for Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Katie, though certainly Emmy Lou had a right to be interested.
"I met Molly Wright, the teacher of the infant class at Sunday school," she said, "and I stopped and told her that in the morning you would send Emmy Lou around to her class. That our house-boy would bring her."
Aunt Cordelia had her ready the next morning aforetime, red coat with triple capes, martial hat and all, ready indeed before Bob, the house-boy, had finished his breakfast.
The day was warm and sleepily sunny and smiling.
"You may go outside and wait for Bob at the gate if you like," Aunt Cordelia told Emmy Lou.
But Emmy Lou had no idea of waiting at any gate. Indecision with her was largely a matter of not knowing what she was expected to do. She knew in this case. By the time Bob was ready and out looking for her, she had been down through the alley gate and back, bringing by the hand that person littler than herself, Sister. Had led her through the front gate and along to the next gate where Izzy was standing.
Bob afterward explained his part vociferously if lamely. But as Aunt M'randy said, that was Bob.
"There they wuz, the three uv 'em, strung erlong by the han's an' waitin' foh me. Seem lak there warn't no call foh me to say nothin' tell we got there."
"And then?" from Aunt Cordelia, while Aunt M'randy sniffed with skepticism.
"When we come to the infant class door roun' on the side street like you tol' me, there wuz a colored boy I know, drivin' a kerridge, an' he called me. An' I tol' the chil'ren to wait while I spoke to him. When I turned roun' ag'in I saw 'em goin' in th'ough the doah. An' I come home."
Emmy Lou in truth led them in. Give her something that she knew to do, and she could do it. Holding to the rule, Izzy was due to be there because he was the larger, and Sister, laconic little Sister, solid and brown, was due to be there because, in the former likeness of Emmy Lou, she was the littler.
One's place at Sunday school in company with Georgie, has been the front bench. The rule holds good, and Emmy Lou led the way to the front bench now, where she and Izzy lifted Sister to a place, then took their own places either side of her. If the rest of the infant class already assembled were absorbed in these movements, Emmy Lou did not notice it, in that she was absorbed in them herself.
Miss Mollie Wright came in next, breezy and brisk and a minute late, and in consequence full of zeal and business.
Hitherto the rule has never varied. As Emmy Lou knew Sunday school, the lady teacher now says, "Good morning, children." And these say, "Good morning," in return.
But the rule varied now. Miss Mollie Wright coming around to the front before the assembled class on its several benches, stopped, looked, then full of sureness and business came to Izzy and Emmy Lou and Sister, and took Izzy by the hand.
"I doubt if your mother and father would like it, Izzy," she said. "I think you had better run home again. And this little girl next to you doesn't belong here either." Miss Mollie Wright was lifting Sister down. "I think she had better run along as you go." And in the very nicest way she started Izzy and Sister toward the door. "What?" turning back to the third little figure in a martial coat with triple capes and a martial hat. "Why, are you going, too?"
Aunt Cordelia explained to Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise and Uncle Charlie afterward. "M'randy saw them when they reached home and passed her kitchen window going back through the yard, and came and told me, and she and I went down to the alley gate after them."
"What were they doing?" asked Aunt Louise.
Aunt Cordelia answered as one completely exasperated and outdone. "Sitting right down on the ground there in the alley, in their Sunday clothes, watching M'lissy, on her doorstep, comb Letty's hair."
True! Around M'lissy, the mother of Sister, brown herself and kindly, with teeth that flashed white with the smile of her there in the sun, and Letty, the even littler sister of Sister, firm planted on the lowest step, between M'lissy's knees.
And bliss unspeakable as Izzy and Sister and Emmy Lou in a circle on the ground around the doorstep watched. For Letty's head, by means of the comb in M'lissy's hand, was being criss-crossed by partings into sections, bi-sections, and quarter-sections, and such hair as was integral to each wrapped with string in semblance of a plait, plait after plait succeeding one another over Letty's head. The while M'lissy sang in a mounting, joyful chant, interrupted by Letty's outcry now and then beneath the vigor of the ministration.
"Ow-w, Mammy!"
The chant would hold itself momentarily for a reply.
"Shet up," M'lissy would say.
Which would be too much even for laconic Sister who from her place on the ground between Izzy and Emmy Lou would defend Letty. "When Mammy wrops yer h'ar, she wrops hard."
After which the combing and the wrapping and the chanting would go on again, M'lissy's voice rising and falling in quaverings and minors:
"Come to Jesus, come to Jesus,
Come to Jesus just now,
Ju-u-st no-o-w co-o-me to-o Jesus,
Come to Jesus ju-u-st now."
Mamma's friend! In league with her in loving Emmy Lou and desiring to comfort her and protect her! Found not where she had looked for Him at all but here with M'lissy in the alley!
That night, according to rule, as Emmy Lou's head came through the opening of the gown slipped over it, she said:
"Shall I say it now? Papa's blessing?"
And Aunt Cordelia, according to rule, sitting down and steadying Emmy Lou to her knees, waited.
What should have brought it back, Emmy Lou's own little prayer as taught her by Mamma? She only knew that it came of itself, and that while her heart heaved and her breath came hard, she stopped in the midst of Papa's blessing, "We thank Thee, Lord, for this provision of Thy bounty,——" sobbed, caught herself, opened her eyes and looked mutely at Aunt Cordelia, closed them and said:
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child;
Pity my simplicity,
Suffer me to come to Thee."