V
LIONS IN THE PATH
Emmy Lou came home at close of her first day in the Second Reader. "I sit with Hattie," she said.
"Who is she?" asked Aunt Katie.
"Where does she come from?" added Aunt Louise.
Emmy Lou was perplexed. Who is Hattie? In her pink-sprigged dress with her plaits tied behind her either ear? Breathing briskness and conviction? Why, Hattie is Hattie. But how convey this to Aunt Katie?
And where does she come from? How does Emmy Lou know? Or how is she expected to know? The population of school, in common with the parallel world of Sunday school, has no background other than school itself, but assembling out of the unknown and segregated into Primer Class, First Reader, Second Reader, even as Sunday school is segregated into Infant Class, Big Room, and Bible Class, performs its functions and disperses. Where, then, does Hattie come from?
"She came out of the cloakroom, and she asked me to sit with her."
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise laughed. They have laughed at Emmy Lou before in this sense and so have others. She has said "Madam and Eve" happily and unsuspectingly all these years until Aunt Katie discovered it and not only laughed but told, and Aunt Louise, in whose person and carriage Emmy Lou takes pride, was a "blunette" until she found it out and laughed and told.
A little boy at school as long ago as last year laughed and told a boy named Billy who Emmy Lou had believed was her friend: "Ho, Teacher told her to wait there for the present, and she thinks it's a present," And at Sunday school a little girl laughed and told: "She thinks her nickel, that nickel in her hand, is going up to God."
In consequence of these betrayals of a heart too faithfully shown and a confidence too earnestly given, Emmy Lou is cautious now, laughter having become a lion in the path and ridicule a bear in the bush.
A picture hangs above Aunt Cordelia's mantelpiece. It has been there ever since Emmy Lou came to make her home with her aunties, but she was seven years old when she asked about it.
"Where is the man going?" she said then to Aunt Cordelia. "What will the lions do to him?"
"He is going right onward. The lions in his path will turn him aside if they can."
"Correct," said Uncle Charlie overhearing. "But the lions can't turn the trick. See the man's sword? And his buckler? The sword of his courage, and the buckler of the truth."
"Who is the man?" Emmy Lou wanted to know.
"The anxious pilgrim of all time," said Uncle Charlie.
But Aunt Cordelia, taking Emmy Lou on her lap, explained. "The man is any one of us—you, me, Uncle Charlie, your little friends Maud and Albert Eddie down at the corner, everybody. If we meet our lions as we should, with courage and the truth, they, nor anything, can prevent our going right onward."
"Oh, let the pilgrims, let the pilgrims then,
Be vigilant and quit themselves like men!"
said Uncle Charlie.
And now laughter has become a lion in Emmy Lou's path. Will Hattie, her new friend, laugh at her? One can refrain from showing one's heart to Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, but in the world of school Emmy Lou needs a friend.
Omniscience at home is strangely wanting about this world of school, perhaps because Emmy Lou's aunties in their days went to establishments such as Mr. Parson's Select Academy, where the pupil is the thing, and school and teachers even a bit unduly glad to have and hold her, whereas Emmy Lou at her school has not found herself in the least the thing.
In saying she was to sit with Hattie she was implying that she was grateful indeed for the overture, whereas Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, taking it the other way, ask who Hattie is and where she comes from.
Aunt Katie said more: "We must find out something about her. Suppose you try?"
But Emmy Lou in one short day has divined all she needs to know, though she does not know how to tell this to Aunt Katie. Hattie is Hattie, life a foe to be overcome, this world the lists, and Hattie the challenged, her colors lowered or surrendered never, though the lance of her spirit be shivered seventy times seven and her helmet of conviction splintered.
And Emmy Lou?—who, as complement to this divination, loves Hattie?—Emmy Lou, what with over-anxious debate, what with caution, what with weight of evidence and its considering, is the anxious pilgrim of all time, lions in the path and bears in the bush.
Hurrying off to school the next morning to resume the grateful business of sharing a desk with this new friend, Emmy Lou found Hattie waiting for her at the gate even as she had said she would be, and life today, even as life yesterday from the initial moment of acquaintance with Hattie, became crowded at once, even jostled and elbowed with happening and information.
As the two took their places in the line forming at the sound of the school-bell, a little girl pushed in ahead of them where there was no place until she by crowding made one. But she did not care for that and showed it, her curls, which shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, tossing themselves, and her skirts flaunting.
Hattie explained this. "She asked me to sit with her, that's why she's crowding us now. Her name is Sally Carter. But I choose, I don't take my friends." Her voice lowered and one gathered that following was an accusation, even an indictment. "She's the richest little girl in the class and wants you to know it. And she is an Episcopalian, too."
Emmy Lou felt anxious. Would Hattie laugh? "I don't know what an Episcopalian is."
But she seemed to regard the admission as commendable. "Sally's church gave an entertainment and called it for the orphans' fund, and she did the Highland Fling on the stage."
Emmy Lou had no idea what the Highland Fling was, either, but the line had reached the entrance doorway beyond which speech is forbidden. Except for this, must she have said she did not know? Or might she refrain from committing herself?
For there are different ways of meeting your lions. Emmy Lou knew two ways. Last year at school a little girl stood up in the aisle for no reason but a disposition to do so. Promptly and sharp came the rap of a pencil on the teacher's desk.
Lion in the path of the little girl! Lion of reprimand! But the little girl threw dust in the lion's eyes. "Oh, didn't the bell ring for everyone to stand?" she inquired. And sat down.
There is another way. Emmy Lou walked in on her friends the Dawkins one day, over the grocery at the corner, to find Albert Eddie in trouble. Possibly more than any person of Emmy Lou's acquaintance, he seemed an anxious pilgrim of all time too.
"Stand right where you are," Sarah his big sister was saying to him. "You've had something in your mouth again that you shouldn't. Don't tell me. Can't I smell it now I try?"
Albert Eddie was sniffling, which with a little boy is the first step on the road to crying. But he met his lion.
"It's cigars off the catalpa tree," he wept, and went on into the next room and to bed even as Sarah had forewarned him.
And so, as soon as Emmy Lou is free to speak, she must tell Hattie that she does not know what the Highland Fling is? Alas, that in the exigencies of sharing a desk with this person and incidentally fulfilling the functions of the Second Reader she forgot to do so!
At the school gate at the close of the day Hattie said, "Come go to the corner with me, and I'll show you where I live."
Go with Hattie? Her friend and more, her monitor and protector? Who the day through had steered her by the Charybdis of otherwise certain mistake, and past the Scylla of otherwise inevitable blunder? Go with her at her asking? Did rescued squire follow his protecting knight in fealty of gratitude? Did faithful Sancho fall in at heel at his Quixote's bidding? Emmy Lou, who always went hurrying home because she was bidden so to do, faced around today and went the other way.
Hattie lived in a brick house in a yard. Pausing at her gate she made a proposition. "If you could go to my Sunday school I can come by and get you."
"I go to Sunday school," said Emmy Lou.
Hattie was regretful but acquiescent. "Of course, if you go. I didn't know. I'll walk back with you and see where you live. I'm Presbyterian. What are you?"
Having no idea what Presbyterian was, how could Emmy Lou say in kind what she was?
A little girl just arrived at a neighboring gate, an habitué of the Second Reader also, though Emmy Lou did not know her, joined Hattie and Emmy Lou as they passed. Hattie knew her and, such is the open sesame of one achieved friend, Emmy Lou found that she was to be considered as knowing her also. Her name was Sadie.
"I've just told her I'm Presbyterian," Hattie explained.
"I'm Methodist," said Sadie. "That's my church across the street."
Methodist is Sadie's church, and Presbyterian then is Hattie's? The names in both cases being abbreviated without doubt, and in seemlier phrase, St. Methodist and St. Presbyterian? Emmy Lou is on ground entirely familiar to her now, and she shifts her school-bag and her lunch-basket relievedly, for while the pilgrim must not fail to say she does not know when she does not, yet surely she may take advantage of a knowledge gained through finding out?
"I go to St. Simeon's P. E. Church," she stated. "It's 'round on Plum Street."
"What sort of church is that?" said Hattie.
"It's a stone church with a vine," said Emmy Lou, nor even under questioning could she give further information.
Reversing the idea of Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, Hattie would seem to be gradually finding out who and what Emmy Lou is? Friendship evidently must rest upon declared foundations. Emmy Lou goes to Sunday school and her church is on Plum Street. So far so good. But one and yet another lion faced, another and another spring up.
"Have you taken the pledge?" asks Hattie.
Emmy Lou in her time has taken the measles and also the chicken-pox, and more latterly the whooping-cough. And also given it. But the pledge? Has she taken it, and failed to recall it? And is it desirable or undesirable that she should have taken it?
"I've taken it," says Sadie in a tone that leaves no doubt that one should have taken it.
While the pilgrim must scorn to throw dust in the eyes through evasion, may she not hope for advantage through finding out again? Or must she definitely draw her sword and face this lion by saying that she does not know?
Bob, the house-boy, sent to hunt her, is the instrument of her respite. He brought up before the advancing group. Time was when he would have said, "Reckon you is done forgot whut happened to thet li'l girl whut didn't come straight home like she was tol'." But Emmy Lou is a big girl and Bob acknowledges it. "Reckon you is done forgot whut happens about dessert for them that don't come on time to get it."
The implication dismaying even Hattie and Sadie, they took leave of Emmy Lou hastily.
"You can tell us about your pledge another time," Hattie called. "Maybe we will come around to see you this afternoon to get better acquainted."
Despite Bob's implication, Aunt Cordelia had saved some dessert for Emmy Lou. By diligent application to her dinner she even caught up with the others and thus achieved time for an inquiry. Was it on her mind that Hattie and Sadie might come around this afternoon?
"What's the pledge?"
"Which variety?" from Uncle Charlie. "It might be a toast."
"Or a pawn," said Aunt Louise.
"Or a surety," said Aunt Katie.
"And also an earnest," from Uncle Charlie. "Take your choice."
"Now stop mystifying her," said Aunt Cordelia. "There is altogether too much of it. I won't allow it. A pledge, Emmy Lou, such as you probably are thinking about, is a promise. I daresay some of the little boys you know have taken one. I hear it's quite the thing. Now, hurry. That's why I sent Bob after you. Dancing school has been changed from Saturday to Friday afternoon, and you have only half an hour to dress and get there. Aunt Katie is going with you."
"But," dismayed, "two little girls said maybe they would come to see me."
"Well, I'm sorry. I will see them for you if they come. Now, hurry."
And Emmy Lou accordingly hurried. For while the claims of school are all very well in Aunt Cordelia's regard, the claims of church, as Emmy Lou understands these claims, are imperative. And, moreover, while school centers itself and its activities within five days and its own four walls, St. Simeon's is the center of a clustering and revolving seven-day system.
On Monday Aunt Cordelia herself takes Emmy Lou to old Mrs. Angell's sewing class for the little girls of the Sunday school at the rectory next door to the church. On Thursday Aunt Louise takes her to the singing class for the children of the Sunday school at the organist's, across the street from the church. And her aunties share among them the duty of getting her twice a week to dancing school, taught by Miss Eustasia, the niece of Dr. Angell, at her home next door on the other side of St. Simeon's. The Church assembles its youthful populace here in force as Emmy Lou grasps it, old Mr. Pelot, who taught Miss Eustasia herself in her day and the mammas and papas of St. Simeon's in their day too, wielding a bow and violin and being her assistant.
Dancing school! Emmy Lou, hurrying, is getting ready. School among schools, secular, sewing, singing, or Sunday, of endeavor, effort, and anxious perturbation! Aunt Cordelia does her best to help Emmy Lou along. She takes her in the parlor from time to time, after dinner, after supper, and, sitting down to the piano, strikes the chords. Aunt Cordelia's playing has a tinkling, running touch, and her tunes have an old-fashioned sound.
"One, two, three, start now—" Aunt Cordelia says. "Why didn't you start when I said? Katie, go away from the door, you and Louise both. You have laughed at her dancing, and she won't do a thing while you are here."
Then again to the endeavor. One, two, three, one, two, three, alike the chant and hope and stay of dancing. Emmy Lou starts right; she is sure that her right foot leads out on time: but the difficulty is, the while she pantingly counts, to bring up the left foot on the moment.
Uncle Charlie stops in the parlor doorway while he lights a cigar before returning downtown. "We might think the left foot was faithful to the Church and only the right given over to the World, but that Eustasia plys her art in the shadow of St. Simeon's."
One foot to the Church and the other to the World? What does Uncle Charlie mean? Are aspersions to be cast on dancing by other than its victims? Or can it be that Uncle Charlie, too, like Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, is laughing at her?
But today Emmy Lou and Aunt Katie go hurrying off to dancing school, Emmy Lou in her Sunday dress devoted to St. Simeon's functions, carrying her slippers in their bag.
Miss Eustasia's house is old and shabby. She lives here with her mother who is Dr. Angell's sister, a lady who crosses her hands resignedly and says to the mammas and visitors at dancing school, "Eustasia was not brought up to this; Eustasia was raised with a right to the best."
Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou hurry in the front door. Miss Eustasia in the long parlor on one side of the hall is hurrying here and hurrying there, a little frown of bother and of earnestness between her brows, marshalling some classes into line, whirling others about face to face in couples. And old Mr. Pelot, tall and thin, with a grand manner and an arched nose, is rapping with his bow on the mantel and calling for order. Mammas and visitors are in place along the wall, and Dr. Angell, who sometimes, as now, comes over from the rectory to look on, beams and takes off his glasses and rubs them, and, putting them on, beams again.
All of which is as it should be, as Emmy Lou understands it; and Miss Eustasia, born and baptized, brought up and confirmed, as it were, in the church next door, had to have something to do. And St. Simeon's, gathering its children together, offered her this, and at the same time provided for Mr. Pelot, who, being on everybody's mind in his old age, also had to have something to do.
And St. Simeon's did itself proud. As Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou came in, its Infant Class, as Emmy Lou from long association knew it, was out on the floor taking its first position, while St. Simeon's Big Room, resolved into skirts, sashes, and curls, or neat shoes, smooth stockings, knickerbockers, jackets, broad collars, and ties, was waiting its turn to flutter lightly to places, or, bowing stiffly, go into duty stoutly. After which its Bible Class, now standing about in confidential pairs, would go through their new figure in the cotillion sedately. Or so it was that Emmy Lou coming in in her Sunday dress and her slippers understood it.
"Just in time," said Miss Eustasia to her briefly. "Get into line."
The Infant Class withdrawing to get its breath, Emmy Lou finds herself between Logan and Wharton in a newly forming line stretching across the room. She is glad, because they are her friends, having gone with her on occasion to the circus, and she can ask them about the pledge.
To each nature of school its vernacular: rudiments and digits, head and foot, medals and deportment, to the secular; bias and hem, whipping and backstitch, to the sewing; chorus and refrain, louder please, now softer, to the singing; sponsors, catechism, texts, to the Sunday; and Miss Eustasia now is speaking to the class in the vernacular of the dancing school.
"No, no, no," in discouragement of all attempts at conversation. "Eyes in front, everybody, on me, and take the first position. Now, right hand on right hip, so. Left hand lifted above left shoulder, so. Right foot out, heel first——"
"What do you call it?" from Logan, desperate with his efforts. "Have we had it before? What's its name?"
"Its name," said Miss Eustasia severely, "is the Highland Fling."
Emmy Lou found a moment before dispersal to interview Logan and Wharton. "What's the pledge? Have you taken it?"
"No, I haven't," said Logan, not so much curt as embittered, so one gathered, by his share in the afternoon.
Wharton was more explicit. "We don't have pledges at our Sunday school."
Emmy Lou knew another little boy, Albert Eddie. She went down to the corner the next morning to see him. If the truth be told, she still preferred the snugness of life over a grocery to a house in a yard.
Mrs. Dawkins, on what she called a pinch, went down in the grocery and helped. She was there this Saturday morning, and Maud with her. Sarah in the kitchen upstairs was mixing the Saturday baking in a crock, and Albert Eddie, being punished, was in a corner on a stool.
Politeness dictating that the person in durance be ignored, under these circumstances Emmy Lou immediately addressed herself to Sarah.
"What's the pledge? Do you know anybody who's taken it?"
Sarah brought Albert Eddie right into it, stool, corner, and all. "Albert Eddie can tell you for he's just taken one. He's been a bad boy again, and it wasn't catalpa cigars this time either. And after he's been warned. I've made him promise now. Albert Eddie, turn round here and say your pledge."
Monday morning found Emmy Lou at the school gate betimes. "I've got my pledge now," she told Hattie and Sadie eagerly, as together they arrived.
"Of course you have," from Hattie commendingly, "I knew you must have taken one. Say yours."
Emmy Lou said hers:
"I'll never use tobacco, no,
It is a filthy weed,
I'll never put it in my mouth——"
She stopped. As could be seen in the horrified faces of Hattie and Sadie, something was wrong.
"They taught you that at your Sunday school?" from Hattie.
"You, a little girl——?" from Sadie.
Whereupon the pilgrim, the pilgrim Emmy Lou, saw it all, saw that she had but endeavored to throw dust into eyes, beginning with her own.
"I didn't get my pledge at Sunday school, I got it from a little boy. I asked him and he taught it to me. We don't have pledges at my Sunday school."
"We went to see you on Friday like we said, and you were out," said Hattie severely.
"They changed the day and I had to go," from Emmy Lou. "I was at dancing school."
"Dancing school? Your Sunday school doesn't have pledges and you go to dancing school? Your church lets you go? Like Sally Carter's? And you didn't tell us?"
"My church might give up pledges if it had to," said Sadie, "but its foot is down on dancing."
Yet Hattie would be fair. "Your minister knows? What sort of dancing? What did you dance on Friday?"
"Our minister was there. It is the Sunday school that dances. We danced the Highland Fling."
The school bell rang.
"Well," said Hattie as she turned to go, "I'm Presbyterian."
Sadie bore witness as she turned to follow. "And I'm Methodist."
Emmy Lou lifted her buckler and drew her sword. Never dust in the eyes again. For she knew now what she was over and above being a St. Simeonite, having asked Aunt Cordelia. In this company it bore not only the odium of disapproval and the hall-mark of condemnation, but from the qualifying term applied to it by Aunt Cordelia would seem to merit both.
"I'm a low church Episcopalian," said Emmy Lou, the pilgrim, stoutly if wretchedly.
When Emmy Lou reached home that day Aunt Katie brought up an old matter. "Aunt Cordelia rather likes the looks of the little girl named Hattie who came here. So I suppose it is all right for you to go on sitting with her. What have you found out about her?"
What Emmy Lou would have liked to find out was, would Hattie go on sitting with her? But how make those things clear to Aunt Katie?
"Charlie," said Aunt Cordelia to her brother that night, "what on earth do children mean? Emmy Lou as she was getting ready for bed asked me why Hattie's church and Sadie's church have the pledge and hers has the Highland Fling? It isn't possible that she has confused dancing and Sunday school?"
Uncle Charlie stared at his sister, then his shout rang to heaven.