III
A FEW STRONG INSTINCTS AND A FEW PLAIN RULES
Every exigency in life save one, for an Emmy Lou at six, seemingly is provided for by rules or admonition, the one which sometimes is overlooked being lack of understanding.
"'Take heed that thou no murder do,'" was the new clause of the Commandments In Verse, she had recited at Sunday school only yesterday.
"'The way of the transgressor is hard,'" said Dr. Angell from his pulpit to her down in the pew between Uncle Charlie and Aunt Cordelia an hour later. Or she took it that he was saying it to her. For while one frequently fails to follow the words in this thing of admonition, there is no mistaking the manner. When she came into church with Uncle Charlie and Aunt Cordelia, in her white piqué coat and her leghorn hat, Dr. Angell had met her in the aisle and seemed glad to see her, even to patting her cheek, but once he was in his pulpit he shook an admonishing finger at her and thundered.
Nor did Emmy Lou, a big girl now for all she still was pink-cheeked and chubby, lack for admonitions at home from Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise above stairs, and Aunt M'randy in the kitchen below—a world of aunts, in this respect, it might have seemed, had Emmy Lou, faithful to those she deemed faithful to her, been one to think such things.
Admonitions vary. Aunt Cordelia and Aunt M'randy drew theirs from the heart, so to put it. "When you mind what I say, you are a good little girl. When you do not mind what I say, you are a bad little girl," said Aunt Cordelia.
"When I tell you to go on upstairs outer my way, I want you to go. When I tell you to take your fingers outen thet dough, I want you to take 'em out," said Aunt M'randy. Admonitions put in this way are entirely comprehensible. There is no getting away from understanding mandates such as these.
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise drew their admonitions from a small, battered book given to them when they were little for their guidance and known as "Songs for the Little Ones at Home."
"O that it were my chief delight
To do the thing I ought;
Then let me try with all my might,
To mind what I am taught,"
said Aunt Katie.
"O dear me, Emma, how is this?
Your hands are very dirty, Miss;
I don't expect such hands to see
When you come in to dine with me,"
said Aunt Louise.
Nor did Emmy Lou suspect that it was because their advice did not come from the heart it reduced her to gloom; that Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise delighted in it not because it was advice, but because it did reduce her to gloom; that Aunt Katie, who was twenty-two, and Aunt Louise, who was twenty, did it to tease?
Bob, the house-boy, too, had his line of ethics for her. And while he went to Sunday school, and to what he called Lodge, and had what he termed fun'ral insurance, observances all entitling him to standing, he pointed his warnings with dim survivals from an older, darker lore which someone wiser than Bob or Emmy Lou might have recognized as hoodoo. Not that Bob or Emmy Lou either knew this. Nor yet did Emmy Lou grasp that he to whom she was told to go for company a dozen times a day when the others wanted to get rid of her used the same to get rid of her himself. On the contrary, her faith in him being what it was, his warnings sank deep, the dire fates of his examples being guaranty for that. Moreover his examples came close home.
The little girl who wouldn't go play when they wanted to get rid of her. The little boy who would stay out visiting so late they had to send the house-boy after him. The little girl who wouldn't go 'long when told to go, but would hang around the kitchen. Treated as a class by Bob, a class, so his gloomy head-shakings would imply, peculiarly fitting to his present company, their fates were largely similar.
"They begun to peak, an' then to pine. An' still they wouldn't mind. Thar ha'r drapped out in the comb. An' still they wouldn't mind. Thar nails come loose. An' still they wouldn't mind. Thar teeth drapped out. But it wuz too late. When they tried to mind they couldn't mind!"
And while his audience might chafe beneath the almost too personal tone of these remarks, she dared not question them. Examples dire as Bob's were vouched for every day. Only the Noahs were saved in the ark. Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt. The bear came out of the woods and ate the naughty children. Aunt Cordelia and Sunday school alike said so. The wicked sisters of Cinderella were driven out of the palace. Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise said so. The disobedient little mermaid was turned into foam. The little girl down at the corner, named Maud, who owned the book, said so.
These things all considered, perhaps it came to be a matter of too many and cumulative admonishings with Emmy Lou. Nature will revolt at too steady a diet perhaps even of admonitions. Or it may be that even an Emmy Lou in time rebels, when elders so persistently refuse to recognize that there is another, an Emmy Lou's side, to most affairs.
For at six the peripatetic instinct has awakened and the urge within is to move on. Where? How does an Emmy Lou know? Anywhere so that the cloying performances of outgrown baby ways are behind her.
Many whom she knew in the receded stages of five years old, and four, have moved on or away before this. Izzy who lived next door. Minnie who lived next to Izzy. Lisa Schmit whose father had the grocery at the corner but now has one at a corner farther away.
And others have moved into Emmy Lou's present ken. Mr. Dawkins has the grocery at the corner now, and his little girl is Maud, guarantor for the mermaid, and his big girl is Sarah, and his little boy is Albert Eddie. The peripatetic instinct impelling, Emmy Lou goes to see them as often as Aunt Cordelia will permit.
There is fascination in going if one could but convey this to Aunt Cordelia in words. Any can live in houses; indeed most people do; or in Emmy Lou's time did; but only the few live over a grocery.
It argues these different. Mr. Schmit was German. Mr. Dawkins is English. At Emmy Lou's, the teakettle, a vague part in family affairs, boils on the stove, but at Maud's, the teakettle, a family affair of moment, boils on the "hob," which is to say, the grate. And more, the father and mother of Maud and Albert Eddie not only have crossed that vague something, home of the little mermaid, the ocean, but their mother has all but seen the Queen.
"You know the Queen?" the two had asked Emmy Lou anxiously.
And she had said yes. And she did know her. Knew her from long association and by heart. She sat in her parlor at the bottom of the page, eating bread and honey, while the maid and the blackbird were at the top of the next page.
"Tell her about it," Maud and Albert Eddie then had urged Sarah, their elder sister, "about when mother all but saw the Queen?"
Sarah complied. "'Now hurry along home with your brother in the perambulator while I stop at the shop,' mother's mother said to her. Mother was twelve years old. But she didn't hurry. She stopped to watch every one else all at once hurrying and running, and so when she reached the corner the Queen, for the Queen it was, had gone by."
"If she had minded her mother——" from Albert Eddie.
"And hurried on home with the perambulator——" from Maud. Proof not only of a worthy attitude on their part towards the admonition of the tale, but of an evident comprehension of what a perambulator was.
But Aunt Cordelia, not always a free agent, was no longer permitting so much visiting.
"You are letting her actually live on the street," said Aunt Katie.
"With any sort of children," supplemented Aunt Louise.
Undoubtedly Aunt Cordelia came the nearest to understanding there is another side to these affairs. "Sometimes I think she's lonesome," she said.
"Those children who are all the day,
Allowed to wander out,
And only waste their time in play,
Or running wild about——"
said Aunt Katie. Aunt Louise finished it:
"Who do not any school attend,
But trifle as they will,
Are almost certain in the end,
To come to something ill."
And while it almost would seem that Aunt Cordelia was being admonished too, and from the little book, in the light of what followed, it appeared that Aunt Katie, Aunt Louise, and the little book were right.
The day in question started wrong. In the act of getting out of bed, life seemed a heavy and a listless thing. If Emmy Lou, less pink-cheeked than usual if any had chanced to notice, but full as chubby, ever had felt this way before, she would have told Aunt Cordelia that her head ached. But if the head never has ached before?
Her attention was distracted here, anyhow, and she, startled, let her tongue pass along the row of her teeth. Milk teeth, those who knew the term would have called them. There is much, however, that an Emmy Lou, one small person in a household of elders, is supposed to know that she does not, knowledge coming not by nature but through understanding.
Then, reassured, her attention came back to the affairs of the moment, the chief of these being that life is a heavy and listless affair and the labyrinthine windings of stockings more than ever fretting in effect upon the temper. And after stockings come garments, ending with the pink calico dress apportioned to the day, and succeeding garments come buttons. Aunt Katie in the next room was cheerful.
"I love to see a little girl
Rise with the lark so bright,
Bathe, comb and dress with cheerful face——"
One was in no mood whatever for the little book, and showed it. Aunt Louise in the next room too, possibly grasped this.
"Why is Sarah standing there
Leaning down upon a chair,
With such an angry lip and brow,
I wonder what's the matter now?"
Aunt Cordelia was struggling with the buttons. "Let her alone, both of you. Sometimes I think you are half responsible."
The outrages of the day went on at breakfast. Emmy Lou's once prized highchair, a tight fit now, and which, could she have had her own way, would have been repudiated some time ago, was in itself provocative. She climbed into it stonily.
Bob placed a saucer before her. If she ever had suffered the qualms of an uneasy stomach before, she would have known and told Aunt Cordelia.
"I don't want my oatmeal," said Emmy Lou.
"You must eat it before you can have anything else," said Aunt Cordelia.
"I don't want anything else."
"She's fretful," said Aunt Katie.
"She's cross," said Aunt Louise.
"I am coming to think you are right, Louise," said Aunt Cordelia. "What she needs is to be at school with other children. School opens the day after tomorrow, and I'll start her."
"This baby?" from Uncle Charlie incredulously, his gaze seeking Emmy Lou in her highchair.
"Look at that oatmeal still untouched," from Aunt Cordelia. "Charlie, she is getting so she doesn't want to mind!"
The outrages went on during the morning. Emmy Lou did not know what to do with herself, whereas Aunt Cordelia had a great deal to do with herself. "You little hindering thing!" by and by from that person with exasperation. "Go on out and talk with Bob. He's cleaning knives on the kitchen doorstep."
But Bob, occupied with his board and bath-brick and piece of raw potato, had no idea of talking with her. He talked to himself.
"Seems like I done forgot how it went, 'bout thet li'l boy whut would stan' roun' listenin'. Some'n' like 'bout thet li'l girl whut wouldn't go about her business——"
Gathering up his knives and board, he went in to set his table. Turning around by and by he found her behind him in the pantry. He talked to himself some more.
"Reckon is I done forgot how it went? 'Bout thet li'l girl got shet up in the pantry after they tol' her to keep out? She knowed ef she coughed they'd hear an' come an' fin' her thar. An' she hed to cough. An' she wouldn't cough. An' she hed to. An' she wouldn't. An' she hed to. An' she DID. But it wuz too late. The pieces of her wuz ev'ey whar, even to the next spring when they wuz house-cleanin', an' foun' her knuckle-bone on the fur top shelf. Looks lak to me, somebody else is gettin' ready for a good lesson. Better watch out."
The final outrage was yet to come. At the close of dinner Emmy Lou came round to Aunt Cordelia's chair. Aunt Cordelia was worn out. She had never known her Emmy Lou to behave as she had in the last day or so.
"Now don't come asking me again," she said, forestalling the issue. "I've gone over the matter with you several times before today. You cannot go play with anybody. No, not with Maud at the corner or anybody else." Then to Uncle Charlie, shaking his head over this unwonted friction as he rose to start back down town: "They tell me there is whooping-cough around everywhere, Charlie." Then to Emmy Lou: "Now try and be a good girl for the rest of the day, Aunt Cordelia will have her hands full. It is Bob's afternoon out. Try and be Aunt Cordelia's precious baby."
But Emmy Lou, her tongue traveling the row of her teeth anew, didn't propose to be anybody's precious baby. She was a big girl, now, almost six years old, and wanted it recognized that she was. And she didn't feel good in the least, but like being quite the reverse for the rest of the day.
This was at two o'clock. At three Aunt Cordelia's own Emmy Lou, the pink calico upon her person and a straw hat upon her head, turned the knob of the front door. Having obeyed thus far in life, she was about to disobey.
The front door, its knob requiring both hands and her tiptoes, whereas the kitchen door would have been open. But Aunt M'randy was in the kitchen.
As it chanced, Bob was leaving by the kitchen door, and coming around by the side pavement as Emmy Lou came down the steps, they met. His idea seemed to be that she was tagging after him, an injury in itself when she divined it. He was of the same mind evidently when a moment later she was still beside him outside the gate.
He paused and addressed the air disparagingly before he went. "Looks like to me I'll have to bresh up my ricollection 'bout thet li'l girl whut would come outside her own gate after she was tole not to come. Spoilin' for one good lesson, thet li'l girl wuz, an' 'pears like to me she got it. Better watch out." And Bob was gone, up the street, whereas it was the definite intention of the other person at that gate to go down the street.
Mr. Dawkins' grocery fronted on the main street while his housedoor opened on the side-street. A few moments later a small figure in a familiar pink dress and straw hat reached this side door, and, pausing long enough for her tongue to pass uneasily along the row of her teeth, opened it upon a flight of stairs and went in.
Five o'clock it was and after when Mr. Dawkins' eldest daughter Sarah, followed by Maud and Albert Eddie, came down these steps propelling a visitor in a pink dress and straw hat, a visitor known from the Dawkins' viewpoint as that little girl from up the street in the white house that get their groceries from Schmit.
Perhaps this fact explained Sarah's small patience with this person who in herself would seem to invite it. She not only was pale, and her lips pressed with unnatural while miserable firmness together, but her eyes, uplifted when Sarah most undeniably shook her, were anguished.
"If you'd open your mouth and speak," said Sarah with every indication of shaking her again.
A stout gentleman coming along the side street which led from a car-line crossed over hastily.
"Here, here! And what for?" Uncle Charlie asked with spirit.
Sarah looked up at him. With her long, tidy plaits and her tidy person she conveyed the impression that she was to be depended on. Maud looked up at him. With her small tidy plaits and her tidy person she conveyed the impression that she was to be depended on, too.
Albert Eddie looked up. Mr. Dawkins was to be congratulated on his family. There was dependability in every warm freckle of Albert Eddie's face.
Emmy Lou, Uncle Charlie's own Emmy Lou, had been looking up the while, anguished. She was a reliable person in general herself, or Uncle Charlie always had found her so.
"If she'd open her mouth and speak," said Sarah. "Half an hour ago by the clock it was, she gave a sound, and I turned, and here she was like this."
"Sister was telling us a story——" from Albert Eddie.
"The story of naughty Harryminta——" from Maud.
"No use your trying, sir," from Sarah. "I've been trying for half an hour. We're taking her home."
"Excellent idea." He took Emmy Lou's little hands. "So you won't tell Uncle Charlie either?"
Evidently she would not, though it was with visible increase of anguish that she indicated this by a shake of her head.
"We'll walk along," said Sarah. "I've my part of supper to get, but we'll feel better ourselves to see her home."
They walked along.
"I was talking to them peaceful as might be——" from Sarah again.
"Sister was telling us a story——" from Albert Eddie.
"The story of naughty Harryminta——" from Maud.
Was it a sound here from Uncle Charlie's Emmy Lou, or the twitch of her hand in his, which betrayed some access to her woe?
"And what was the story?" asked Uncle Charlie. It might afford a clue.
Maud volunteered it. "The little girl's mother said to her, 'Don't.' And her name was Harryminta. And when she got back from doing what she was told not to do, her mother was waiting for her at the door. 'Whose little girl is this?' And Harryminta said, 'Why, it's your little girl.' But her mother shook her head. 'Not my little girl at all. My little girl is a good little girl.' And shut the door."
"Talk about your coincidence," said Uncle Charlie afterward. "Talk about your Nemesis and such!"
For as the group came along the street—the Dawkins family, Uncle Charlie, and Emmy Lou—and turned in at the gate, Aunt Cordelia flung the front door open. Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise were behind her. They had really just missed Emmy Lou.
"Whose little girl is this?" said Aunt Cordelia, severely. But not going as far as the mother of Araminta she did not shut the door. Instead, Sarah explained.
"Half an hour ago by the clock——" Sarah began.
They led her into the hall, and Aunt Cordelia lifted her up on the marble slab of the pier table. Aunt Cordelia's admonitions and mandates came from the heart. "Open your mouth and speak out and tell me what's the matter?"
Emmy Lou opened her mouth, and in the act, though visibly against her stoutest endeavor even to an alarming accession of pink to her face, ominously and unmistakably—whooped; the same followed on her part by the full horror of comprehension, and then by a wail.
For with that whoop the worst had happened. As with the little boys and girls in Bob's dire category of naughty little boys and girls, her sin had found her out indeed.
"I'm coming to pieces," wailed their terrified Emmy Lou, "because I didn't mind."
And according to her understanding she was, since after her vain endeavor for half an hour by Sarah's clock to hold it in place with tongue and lips, in her palm lay a tooth, the first she had shed or known she had to shed, knowledge coming not by nature but through understanding.
Aunt Cordelia did not carry out her program the day school opened. There was whooping-cough at her house, and a day or so after there was whooping-cough at Mr. Dawkins'.
"He is very indignant about it," Aunt Cordelia told Uncle Charlie. "He stopped me as I came by this morning from my marketing. He said it wasn't even as though we were customers."
"Which is the least we can be after this, I'm sure you will agree," said Uncle Charlie.
Just here in the conversation, Emmy Lou, miserable and stuffy in a pink sacque over her habitual garb because Aunt Cordelia most emphatically insisted, whooped.
"Those good little girls, Marianne and Maria,
Were happy and well as good girls could desire—"
said Aunt Louise.
Aunt Cordelia, approaching with a bottle and spoon as she did after every cough, shook her head. "Little girls who mind are good little girls," she said.
"Emmy Lou is learning to be a good little girl while she is shut up in the house sick," said Aunt Katie. "She knows all of her Commandments In Verse for Sunday school now. Let Aunt Cordelia wipe the cough-syrup off your mouth and say them for Uncle Charlie before he goes."
Emmy Lou learning to be a good little girl said them obediently.
"Thou shalt have no more gods but me;
Before no idol bow thy knee.
Take not the name of God in vain,
Nor dare the Sabbath day profane.
Give both thy parents honor due,
Take heed that thou no murder do.
Abstain from deeds and words unclean,
Nor steal though thou art poor and mean;
Nor make a willful lie nor love it,
What is thy neighbor's, dare not covet."
Aunt Cordelia, Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise looked pleased. Emmy Lou had said the verses without stumbling. Uncle Charlie looked doubtful. "Five words with understanding rather than ten thousand in an unknown tongue? How about it, Cordelia?"
But Bob, bringing Emmy Lou's dinner upstairs to her on a tray, had the last disturbing word. "Been tryin' to riccollect how it went, 'bout thet li' girl kep' her tongue outer the place whar her tooth drapped out, so's a new tooth would grow in."