IX
SO BUILD WE UP THE BEING THAT WE ARE
Aunt Cordelia stood behind Emmy Lou who was seated at the piano with "Selections From the Operas, for Beginners," open on the rack. She paused in her counting. "Now try it again by yourself. You have to keep time if you want harmony."
Harmony? The mind of the performer dwelt on the word as she started over again. What is harmony?
Aunt Cordelia relaxing her attention for the moment turned to speak to Uncle Charlie who was reading his paper by the droplight. "It's no easy thing to bring up a child, Charlie." As it happened, she was not referring to the practicing. "Louise thinks Emmy Lou ought to be confirmed. She says now that she is eleven years old she surely ought to know where she stands."
It is no easy thing to be the child brought up either, as Emmy Lou on the piano-stool could have rejoined. Life and Aunt Cordelia might perch her on the stool but, as events were proving, that did not make her a musician. Would going up the aisle of St. Simeon's to kneel at the rail, she had watched the confirmation class for some years now, make her——?
What was it supposed to make her? An Episcopalian? What is an Episcopalian? Did she want to be one? Or did she want to be what Papa is?
"Repeat, repeat," said Aunt Cordelia behind her. "Don't you see the dots at the end of the passage?"
Emmy Lou repeated, came to the end of her selection, and, to the relief of herself, at least, got down. She was thinking about Papa.
She had gathered from somewhere that when Mamma after marriage left her church and went with Papa to his church, there was feeling.
Emmy Lou adored Papa. Aunt Cordelia had a brother and two sisters to go with her to St. Simeon's. Surely there should be someone to go with Papa? But where? What was he?
Emmy Lou had asked this question outright a good while ago. Papa was paying her a visit at the time. Unknown to her he had looked over her head at Aunt Cordelia and laid a finger on his lips. Considering the extent and the nature of his obligation to Aunt Cordelia, possibly his idea was there must be no more feeling, though Emmy Lou could not know this.
Having thus communicated with Aunt Cordelia, he answered the question. "Had my two grandfathers elected to be born on one side of the Tweed and not the other, I probably would have been an Episcopalian," he said.
"Tweedledee, in other words, instead of Tweedledum," said Uncle Charlie.
All of which meant that Papa was not an Episcopalian. What was he? Emmy Lou, eight years old then and eleven now, was still asking the question.
At bedtime Aunt Cordelia spoke again about confirmation. "Think it over for the rest of the week and then come tell me what you have decided."
Emmy Lou was glad to be alone in bed. At eleven there is need for constant adjustment and readjustment of the ideas and also for pondering. The relations of one little girl to Heaven and of Heaven to one little girl call for pondering. People assort themselves into Episcopalians, Methodists, and the like. Rebecca Steinau is a Jew, Katie O'Brien is a Dominican, Aunt M'randy in the kitchen is an Afro-American, her insurance paper entitling her to one first-class burial says so. Mr. Dawkins' brother is a Canadian; Maud and Albert Eddie say their father sometimes is sorry he's not a Canadian, too.
Is each of these assortments a religion? Or all the assortments religion? Has God a special feeling about having Emmy Lou an Episcopalian when Papa is something else? Is it not strange that He never, never speaks? In which case she could ask Him and He would tell her.
When Emmy Lou arrived at the grammar school the next morning, for she is thus far on the road of education now, Sadie and Hattie had something to tell her.
There is a pupil in the class this year named Lorelei Ritter. Emmy Lou has heard it claimed by some that she can speak French, by others that she speaks German. The fact is self-evident that she speaks English. She is given to minding her own affairs and in other ways seems sufficient to herself. Miss Amanda, the teacher, is pronouncedly cold to her; they do not seem to get along.
"Where is the Rio de la Plata River, and how does it flow?" Miss Amanda asked her in the class only yesterday.
Lorelei had hesitated a moment. She was plainly bothered.
"I thought Rio was river——?" she began, and stopped. Miss Amanda's face was red.
"Go to your seat," she said.
For what? How had Lorelei offended? The class had no idea.
Miss Amanda had shown steady disapproval of Lorelei before this, and this morning Sadie and Hattie knew why.
"A girl in a class upstairs told us," said Sadie. "Her name is Sally White and she lives near Lorelei. She says Miss Amanda lives next door to Lorelei and they play the piano at Lorelei's house all day Sunday with the windows wide open."
"Tunes," Sadie went on to qualify. "It isn't even as if it were hymns."
"Or voluntaries," said Hattie. Voluntaries were permitted at Hattie's church before service and Sadie did not approve of them.
Sadie was continuing. "Sally said the neighbors sent word to the Ritters that it was a thing a Christian neighborhood couldn't and wouldn't put up with, but the Ritters go right on playing."
This was more painful to Emmy Lou than Sadie could know. Papa who comes to see her once a month keeps the piano open on Sunday, and plays what Sadie and Hattie differentiate as "tunes" as opposed to hymns and voluntaries, often as not dashing into what he explains to Uncle Charlie is this or that from this or that new opera.
He plays at any and all times on Sunday, dropping his paper or magazine to stroll to the piano to pick and try, strum and hum, or jerking the stool into place, to fall into sustained, and to Emmy Lou who herself is still counting aloud, breathless and incredible performance.
She is aware that Aunt Cordelia does not willingly consent to this use of the piano on Sunday, and she also is aware of a definite stand taken by Uncle Charlie in the matter, to which Aunt Cordelia reluctantly yields.
In the past Papa has been Papa, personality with no detail, accepted and adored, just as Aunt Cordelia has been and is Aunt Cordelia, supreme and undisputed. But now Papa's personality is beginning to have its details. He still is Papa, but he is more. He is tall and slight and has quick, clever hands, and impatient motions of the head, together with oddly regardful, considering, debating eyes, fixed on their object through rimmed eye-glasses.
Papa is "brilliant," vague term appropriated from Uncle Charlie who says so. If he were not a brilliant editor he would have been a brilliant musician. Uncle Charlie says this also.
And today at school Emmy Lou hears from Sadie that piano playing on Sunday is a thing a Christian neighborhood can't and won't put up with!
"Aren't the Ritters Christians?" she asked anxiously.
"How can they be when they play all day Sunday?" Sadie returned. "Lorelei told Sally that her father, Signor Ritter, was Fra Diavolo in an opera once. And Sally says they are proud of it and can't forget it. Every one of the family plays on some instrument and they take Sunday when they're all home to play Fra Diavolo till the neighbors can't stand it. Sally asked Lorelei what Fra Diavolo means, and she said Brother Devil."
This again was information more painful to Emmy Lou than Sadie could know. Papa on his visits, while dressing in the mornings, or later when wandering about the house or running through the contents of some book picked up from the table, breaks into song, palpably familiar and favored song even if absently and disjointedly rendered. Emmy Lou has heard it often as not on Sunday. Uncle Charlie in speaking of it once said it was "in vogue"—another term appropriated by Emmy Lou—when Papa was a young man studying in Paris.
The song favored thus ended with up-flung and gayly defiant notes and words that said and resaid with emphatic and triumphant finality, "Fra Diavolo"! Though what the words meant Emmy Lou had no idea until now.
"If the Ritters are not Christians, what are they?" she asked.
Sadie had information about this. "Sally says the neighbors say they are Bohemians."
Unfortunately Emmy Lou has heard this term before, though she had not grasped that it was a religion. Aunt Cordelia frequently worries over Papa.
"He's a regular Bohemian," she frets to Uncle Charlie.
Before school was dismissed on this same Friday, there were other worries for Emmy Lou. When in time she arrived home, full of chagrin, Papa was there for his usual visit and wanted to hear about the chagrin and its cause.
Words are given out in class at grammar school, as Papa knows, to be defined and illustrated by a sentence. One may be faithful to the meaning as construed from the dictionary, and lose out in class too.
"A girl in the class named Lorelei Ritter laughed at my sentence, and then the rest laughed too."
"What was the word?" inquired Papa.
"Concomitant."
"And what did you say?"
"'A thing that accompanies.' He played the concomitant to her song."
Uncle Charlie shouted, but Papa's laugh was a little rueful. "Poor little mole working i' the dark. Will the light never break for her, Charlie, do you suppose?"
What did he mean, and why is he rueful? Is the trouble with her who would give all she is or hopes to be in adoring offering to Papa? Can he, even in the light of what she has heard today, be open to criticism? Certainly not. Papa may be a Bohemian, and a Bohemian may not be a Christian, but what he is that shall Emmy Lou be also.
To decide is to act. Papa went down town after dinner with Uncle Charlie, and Emmy Lou took her place at the piano. Ordinarily she is loath to practice, going through the ordeal because Aunt Cordelia requires it. But today she goes about it as a practical matter with a definite purpose.
Papa brought her the "Selections From the Operas" some while back, with the remark that a little change from exercises to melody might introduce cheer into a melancholy business all around. But so far this had not been the result, "Selection No. 1—Sextette from Lucia," reducing her to tears, and "Selection No. 2—I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls," doing almost as much for Aunt Cordelia.
But now that Emmy Lou had a purpose, the matter was different. There was a table of contents to the "Selections From the Operas," and a certain title therein had caught her eye in the past. Seated on the piano-stool, leaning over the book on her lap, she passed her finger down the list.
Selection 13. She thought so. She found the page and replaced the open book upon the rack. Fra Diavolo. She set to work. What Papa is that will she be also.
She desisted by and by long enough to go and ask a question of Aunt Cordelia.
"If I were to be confirmed at St. Simeon's could I practice my selections on Sunday?"
"Practice them on Sunday?" Aunt Cordelia had enough trouble getting her to practice on week-days to be outdone with the question. "Why do you ask such a thing? You know you could not."
That night Emmy Lou asked Papa a question a little falteringly: "Are you a Bohemian?"
"Instead, the veriest drudge you ever knew," he said. "There's too much on me, making a living for us both, to be so glorious a thing."
Then what was Papa?
She went around to ask a question of Sadie the next morning. She had been to Sadie's church often enough to know that she liked to go. The prayers were long but the singing was frequent and hearty. No one need mark the time at Sadie's church, the singing marking its own time warmly and strongly until it seemed to swing and sway, and Sadie sang and Emmy Lou sang and everybody sang, and Emmy Lou for one wasn't sure she did not swing and sway too, and her heart was buoyant and warm. She loved the songs at Sadie's church; what matter if she did not know what they meant?
"Oh, there's honey in the Rock, my brother,
There's honey in the Rock for you,
Leave your sins for the blood to cover,
There is honey in the Rock for you, for you."
She could wish that Papa might be a Methodist. It hardly was likely, all things considered, but one could make sure.
"Would 'Selections From the Operas' be allowed by your church on Sunday?" she asked Sadie.
Sadie not only was horrified but, like Aunt Cordelia, was outdone. "Why, Emily Louise McLaurin, you know they would not be!" she said indignantly.
Emmy Lou had no such desire for Papa to be a Presbyterian. She had been with Hattie often enough to know that the emphasis is all on the sermon there. Hattie knew her feeling and when inviting her to go put the emphasis on the voluntary of which she was proud.
This very Saturday afternoon she came around full of information and enthusiasm. "Our soprano has done so well with her new teacher, he is going to play our organ tomorrow by request and she is going to sing a solo during the collection. I want you to come from Sunday school and go."
She had other news. "I asked Lorelei Ritter yesterday after school if she was a Bohemian and she got mad. She said no, she wasn't, she was a Bavarian."
Aunt Louise spoke to Aunt Cordelia that night. "Emmy Lou must decide in the next day or two if she is going to enter the confirmation class this year; I have to report for her."
The next day was Sunday, and Emmy Lou heard Papa humming and singing in his room as he dressed, Fra Diavolo the burden of it.
The chimes at Sadie's church two squares away, were playing,
"How beauteous are their feet
Who stand on Zion's hill,
Who bring salvation on their tongues
And words of peace reveal!"
From afar the triple bells of St. Simeon's flung their call on the morning air. Nor Methodist nor yet Episcopalian would be singing Fra Diavolo on Sunday morning as he dressed. What was Papa?
What was he? As he and Emmy Lou went down the stairs together to breakfast, she caught his hand to her cheek in a sudden passion of adoring. What Papa was, she would be!
She hurried from Sunday school around to Hattie's church on Swayne Street. Hattie defended the absence of a bell by saying they didn't need a bell to tell them when to go to church; they knew and went.
It was a brick church, long built, and a trifle mossy as to its foundations, discreet in its architecture, and well-kept.
Hattie was waiting for Emmy Lou at the door. Her very hair-ribbons, a serviceable brown, exact and orderly, seemed to stand for steadiness and reliability in conviction.
What did Emmy Lou's blue hair-ribbons stand for? Blue is true, and she would be true to whatever the conviction of Papa.
"The strange organist is going to play the voluntary too," Hattie explained. "It's almost time for him to begin. Hurry."
As they went in, she told another thing: "Lorelei and her mother are here, sitting in a back pew."
There were two points of cheer in the service at Hattie's church as Emmy Lou saw it, the voluntary and the collection. She had referred to this last as the offertory on a visit long ago, but never would make the mistake again, so sharply had Hattie corrected her.
Hardly were they settled in their places in the pew with Hattie's father and mother, when a large man with black hair and shaggy brows made his way to the organ in the loft behind the minister, and the voluntary began.
This the voluntary that along with hymns is advocated for Sundays? This that stole over the keys hunting the melody, to find it here and lose it there, with a promise that baffled and a familiarity which eluded, to overtake it at length and proffer it in high and challenging measure that said gayly and triumphantly above the thunderous beat supporting it, in all but words, Fra Diavolo!
Hattie's face was shining! And the faces of her mother, of her father, and of the congregation around, radiated approval and satisfaction!
And in time the soprano of Hattie's church arose in the loft above the minister, supported by the choir. It was the collection.
It was more. It was "Selection No. 1—Sextette from Lucia"! Though the words did not say so!
Hattie, then, had not been blaming Lorelei but defending her? It was Sadie who disapproved of voluntaries and Lorelei?
Emmy Lou with heightened color, resolute face, and blue bows, arrived at home. She went straight to Papa just returned from Uncle Charlie's office and strumming on the piano.
"You're a Presbyterian," she said.
"It sounds like an indictment," said Uncle Charlie. "But he will have to own up. Admit your guilt, Alec. How did you find it out?"
"Presbyterians play and sing 'Selections From the Operas' on Sunday, and so does he."
"You look ruffled, Alec," from Uncle Charlie, "But so does someone else. Your cheeks are hot," to Emmy Lou. "Something else is disturbing; out with it."
"The girl named Lorelei Ritter who laughed at me Friday in class was at church and spoke to me coming out."
"What did she say?"
"She said did I know it was her father who played the concomitant to the soprano's song?"
"Invite her round, and urge her to be friendly," begged Uncle Charlie when he stopped shouting. "We need her badly. Besides I'm sure I'd like to know her."
Aunt Cordelia came downstairs that night after seeing Emmy Lou to bed. "Whatever is to be done with the child? Has she talked to you, Alec? She says she can't be confirmed because she is going to be a Presbyterian. And then she cried bitterly. They stand up to pray and sit down to sing, she told me desperately. That if it was right—which it wasn't, of course,—she'd wish people didn't have to be Episcopalians or Bohemians or Presbyterians, but just Christians. I told her I thought we would drop the question of confirmation until next year."