VI
THE IMPERFECT OFFICES OF PRAYER
Recruiting Sunday occurred at Emmy Lou's Sunday school the winter she was eight. The change to this nature of thing was sudden. Hitherto when Hattie, her best friend, who was Presbyterian, spoke of Rally Day, or Sadie, her next best friend, who was Methodist, spoke of Canvassing Day, Emmy Lou of St. Simeon's refrained from dwelling on Septuagesima, or Sexagesima, or Quinquagesima Sunday, as the case might be, for fear it appear to savor of the elect. As, of course, if one has been brought up in St. Simeon's, and by Aunt Cordelia, one has begun to feel it does.
Hattie and Sadie, on the contrary, full of the business and zeal of Rally Day and Canvassing Sunday, looked with pity on Emmy Lou and St. Simeon's, and at thought of Quinquagesima and such kindred Sundays shook their heads. Which is as it should be, too.
For, while there is one common world of everyday school in the firmament of the week, drawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sadies into the fold of its common enterprise and common fellowship, there are varying worlds in the firmament of Sundays, withdrawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sadies into the differing folds of rival enterprises, Hattie to the First Presbyterian Church North, Sadie to the Second Avenue M. E. Church South, and Emmy Lou with no status or bias as to pole at all, if we except polemics, to St. Simeon's P. E.
And each one within her fold is so convinced her fold is the only fold, it is her part to make all others feel this. Which is as it should be, too. And, as Hattie pointed out when Sadie got worsted in being made to feel it and cried, is only the measure of each one's proper Christian zeal!
And Hattie, being full of data about her Rally Day, and Sadie, being full of grace from her Canvassing Day, were equipped at seemingly every point for making another feel it. Whereas when Sadie asked Emmy Lou what Quinquagesima or fifty days before Easter had to do with saving souls, and Hattie asked her to spell it, Quinquagesima not only died on her lips but she and it seemed indefensibly and reprehensibly in the wrong. Which Emmy Lou endeavored to remember was but a measure of Christian zeal again.
And now St. Simeon's, awakening to its needs in such zeal, was to have, not a Rally nor yet a Canvassing, but a Recruiting Sunday. For every Sunday school with any zeal whatever has a nomenclature of its own and looks with pity and contumely on the nomenclature of any other Sunday school. So that Emmy Lou heard with a shock of incredulity that what she knew as the Infant Class was spoken of by Hattie as the Primary, and by Sadie as the Beginners.
But this department of Sunday school, whatever its designation, belongs to the early stages of faith. Emmy Lou is in the Big Room, now, and here has heard about St. Simeon's Recruiting Sunday.
Mr. Glidden, the superintendent, announced it. He was a black-haired, slim, brisk young man. Emmy Lou knew him well. She liked Mr. Glidden. He came to see Aunt Louise, and admired her. Week days he was a young man who was going to do credit to his father and mother. Aunt Cordelia said so. Sundays, if he let his Christian zeal carry him too far, his betters at St. Simeon's would have to call him down. Uncle Charlie who was a warden at St. Simeon's said so, curtly, in a way most disturbing.
In announcing Recruiting Sunday, Mr. Glidden spoke with feeling. "In the business-run world of today," he told his Sunday school, "St. Simeon's must look at things in a business way. What with Rally Day and Canvassing Day in the other Sunday schools, St. Simeon's stands no chance. Emulation must be met with emulation. Let St. Simeon's get out and work. And while it works,"—Mr. Glidden colored; he was young—"let it not forget it shall be its Superintendent's earnest and also daily prayer that it be permitted to bring even the least of these into the fold."
Furthermore, there should be inducements. "For every new scholar brought in," said Mr. Glidden, "there shall be an emblazoned card. For every five emblazoned cards there shall be a prize. Cards and prizes I shall take pleasure in giving out of my own pocket."
In the light of after events, as Emmy Lou grasped them, the weakness in the affair lay in Mr. Glidden's failure sufficiently to safeguard his prayer.
Emmy Lou had considerable data about prayer, gathered from her two friends, Hattie being given to data, and Sadie being given to prayer. As Hattie expounded prayer as exemplified through Sadie, one fact stands paramount. You should be specifically certain in both what you ask and how you ask it. For the answer can be an answer and yet be calamitous too. Hattie used the present disturbing case with Sadie for her proof.
Sadie and her brother decided they wanted a little sister, and would pray for one. They did pray, fervently and trustfully, being Methodists, as Hattie pointed out, night after night, each beside her or his little white bed. And each was answered. It was twin little sisters. Since when, Sadie was almost as good as lost to her two friends, through having to hold one little sister while her mother held the other.
"You've got to make what you want clear," Hattie argued. "They both prayed for a little sister at the same time. If they'd prayed, Sadie one night, and Anselm the next, or if they'd said it was the same little sister, they wouldn't 'a' had a double answer and so been oversupplied."
Sadie was torn with conflict over it herself. Her little sisters weren't justified to her yet, but she wasn't going to admit they might not still be, though the strain on her Christian zeal was great.
For at Sadie's Sunday school you did not get a prize for the new scholars you brought in on Canvassing Day. You got a prize when the next Canvassing Day came around, if they were still there. And Canvassing Day was nearly here again, and her scholars were failing her.
"It's no easy thing to be a Methodist," she said in one of her moments of respite from a little sister, talking about it with pride through her gloom. "You work for all you get! When I could look my scholars up every week, and go by for 'em with Tom and the barouche when the weather was bad, I had them there for roll-call every Sunday. But now that I have to hold my little sisters and we haven't Tom or the barouche either because on account of my little sisters we can't afford them, they've backslid and dropped out."
Hattie had data as to that, too. "You needn't be so bitter about it, Sadie. I know you mean me! You went around and picked your scholars up anywhere you could find 'em, and I did too. It wasn't as if any one of 'em had a call to your Sunday school. Or as if they had a conviction. Except Mamie Sessums whose conviction took her away."
Sadie spoke even more bitterly. "You needn't count on Mamie. Because she had had a conviction that took her away from where she was, I counted on her the most of any of mine."
Hattie was positive. "But the conviction she has now took her away from yours. Her mother thinks there is too much about falling from grace at your Sunday school; she doesn't think it nice for little girls to hear so much about sin."
"She wouldn't have fallen from grace herself if I could have kept after her," from Sadie. "If I hadn't to hold my little sisters Mamie wouldn't be a backslider now. But my little sisters will be justified to me yet. I'm not going back on prayer."
It all emphasized the need of exceeding caution in prayer. Emmy Lou never had thought of it so. Time was, in fact, when, praying her "Gentle Jesus," at Aunt Cordelia's knee, she poured it out in Aunt Cordelia's lap, so to speak, and left it there. Not that Aunt Cordelia had not made her understand that prayer goes to God. But that Aunt Cordelia who attended to everything else for her would see about getting it there.
But that was when Emmy Lou was a baby thing, and God the nebulous center of a more nebulous setting, with the kindly and cheery aspect as well as the ivory beard of—— Was it Dr. Angell, the rector of St. Simeon's? Or was there in the background of Emmy Lou's memory a yet more patriarchal face, reverent through benignity, with flowing ivory beard? A memory antedating her acquaintance with Dr. Angell? She was a big girl now, and God was not quite so nebulous nor quite so cheery. His ivory beard was longer, and in the midst of nebulæ for support was a throne. But He yet could be depended on to be kindly. Aunt Cordelia was authority for that.
Her concept of prayer, too, had moved forward; prayer in her mind's eye now taking the form of little white cocked-hat billets-doux winging out of the postbox of the heart, and, like so many white doves, speeding up to the blue of Heaven. If God was not too busy, or too bothered, as grown people sometimes are on trying days, she even could fancy Him smiling pleasantly, if absently, as grown-up people do, when the cocked-hat billets-doux, a sort of morning mail, were brought in to Him.
And so she was glad that Sadie was not going back on prayer, but was sure that her little sisters would be justified to her. Indeed, her heart had gone out to Sadie about it, and she had sent up billets-doux of her own, and would send more, that the little sisters should be justified to her.
But from this new point of view supplied by Hattie, the winging billets-doux, as in the mind's eye they sailed upward, seemed to droop a little, weighted with the need of exceeding caution in prayer. And in the light of this revelation God in His aspect changed once more, again gaining in ivory beard and in throne what He again lost in cheer.
Long ago Aunt Cordelia used to rock her to sleep with a hymn. Emmy Lou had thought she knew its words, "Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face." Could she have reversed it? She had been known to do such things before. All this while had it been saying: "Behind a smiling providence, He hides a frowning face?"
At Emmy Lou's own home Aunt M'randy the cook, like Hattie, seemed to feel that prayer not sufficiently set around with safeguards and specifications could prove a boomerang. "Didn't I w'ar myse'f out with prayer to get rid er that no-account nigger house-boy Bob? To hev' thet prayer swing eroun' with this worse-account house-boy, Tom?"
Tom had gone to Hattie's house from Sadie's where they no longer could afford to have him, but he had not stayed there. He didn't get along with the cook. From there he came to be house-boy for Aunt Cordelia where Bob couldn't get along with the cook. Tom's idea of his importance apparently was in the number of places he had lived, and his qualifications he summed up in a phrase: "I ca'ies my good-will with me to the pussons I wuks foh."
The morning after Recruiting Sunday had been announced at St. Simeon's Sunday school, Uncle Charlie spoke of it at the breakfast table. He didn't seem to think much of it, and referred to it by another name, calling it an innovation.
Aunt Louise, on the contrary, defended it. She was teaching in the Sunday school now. "If everyone would show the energy and progressiveness of Mr. Glidden since he took the Sunday school," she said with spirit, "St. Simeon's would soon look up."
"Glidden!" said Uncle Charlie. "Willie Glidden! Pshaw!"
"Why you speak of him in that tone I don't see, unless it is because you are determined to oppose every innovation he proposes."
"I oppose his innovations?" heatedly. "On the contrary I am in favor of giving him his way so he may hang himself in his innovations the sooner." And Uncle Charlie, getting up to go downtown, slammed the door.
Which would have been astounding, Uncle Charlie being jocular and not given to slamming doors, had it not to do with that one of the many worlds in the firmament of the Sundays, St. Simeon's. Emmy Lou was glad she understood these things better now. For persons altogether amiable in the affairs of the week-days to grow touchy and heated over the affairs of Sundays is only a measure of their Christian zeal. There was comfort and reassurance in the knowledge. Time was when it would have frightened her to have Uncle Charlie slam the door, and made her choke over her waffle, and sent her down from her chair and round to Aunt Cordelia for comfort and reassurance.
Aunt Louise, addressing herself to Aunt Cordelia in her place behind the coffeepot, still further defended Mr. Glidden.
"He is even waking dear old Dr. Angell a bit. Not that we don't love Dr. Angell as he is, of course," hastily, "but he does lack progressiveness."
"Which may be why some of us do love him," said Aunt Cordelia tartly. Aunt Cordelia! Pleasant soul! Who rarely was known to sacrifice good temper even to Christian zeal! Emmy Lou choked on her waffle despite all! "But don't draw me into it! I decline to take sides."
"Which means, of course, that you've taken one," said Aunt Louise. "As if I could ever expect you to side with me against Brother Charlie."
"And if I do agree with Charlie, what then? To have the running of St. Simeon's passed over his head to Willie Glidden! The church our own grandfather gave the ground for! And he the senior warden who has run St. Simeon's his way for thirty faithful years!"
And Aunt Cordelia, getting up from behind the coffeepot and going toward the pantry to see about the ordering, broke forth into hymn, as was her way when ruffled. Emphatic hymn. And always the same hymn, too, Aunt Cordelia, like Uncle Charlie, objecting to innovations. Emmy Lou was long familiar with this hymn as barometer of Aunt Cordelia's state of being:
"Let the fiery, cloudy pillow,"
sang Aunt Cordelia, flinging open the refrigerator door.
What it meant, a fiery, cloudy pillow, further than that Aunt Cordelia was outdone, was another thing. Emmy Lou always intended to ask, but the very fact that Aunt Cordelia only sang it when outdone prevented—that and the additional fact that when Aunt Cordelia was outdone Emmy Lou in distress of mind was undone.
Aunt Louise waited until Aunt Cordelia, who could be seen through the open doorway, straightened up from her inspection of the refrigerator. "Still," she said, "you won't object that I entered Emmy Lou's name at Sunday school yesterday as a recruiter? To try her best and get a prize?"
"I do object if there are tickets about it," emphatically. "You can take care of them for her if so. Willie Glidden has gone mad over tickets. What with her blue tickets for attendance one place in my bureau drawer, and her pink tickets for texts in another place, I won't be bothered further."
Yet what were Sunday schools without tickets? Emmy Lou getting down from the breakfast table, her still unfinished waffle abandoned for all time now, was dumbfounded. The one thing common to all Sunday schools was tickets. Though St. Simeon's under the accelerating progressiveness of Mr. Glidden had gone further, and whereas in ordinary your accumulated tickets for every sort of prowess only got you on the honor roll, a matter of names on a blackboard, Mr. Glidden had instituted what he called "a drawing card." At St. Simeon's, now, when your blue tickets for attendance numbered four—or five those months when the calendar played you false and ran in another Sunday—you carried these back and got the Bible in Colors, a picture at a time. And, incidentally, a color at a time, too. Emmy Lou had a gratifying start in these, last month having achieved a magenta Daniel facing magenta lions in a magenta den, and this month adding a blue David with a blue sword cutting off the head of a not unreasonably bluer Goliath.
Pink tickets grow more slowly. Aunt Cordelia said that she could see to it that Emmy Lou got to Sunday school, but she could only do her best about the texts.
And she did do her best, Emmy Lou felt that she did.
"Say the text over on the way as you go," Aunt Cordelia had said to her as she started only yesterday. "That way you won't forget it before you get there."
And she had said it on the way, and had said it in the class, too, when called on by Miss Emerine.
Aunt Cordelia, plump and pleasant soul, had ways of her own, and Emmy Lou in ways even beyond the plumpness was modeled on her. Aunt Cordelia said "were" as though it were spelled w-a-r-e, and Emmy Lou said it that way too.
"'And five ware wise, and five ware foolish,'" Emmy Lou told Miss Emerine.
"Five what?" Miss Emerine asked, which was unfortunate, this being what Emmy Lou had failed to remember.
It was Tom, the new house-boy, who really started Emmy Lou's recruiting for St. Simeon's. Hearing Aunt Louise ask her what she was doing about looking up new scholars, he volunteered his help.
"There's a li'l girl up the street whar I wuked once is thinkin' about changin' her Sunday school. I'll tell her to come aroun' an' see you."
The little girl came around promptly. It was Mamie Sessums. Emmy Lou knew her at week-day school. Far from being without a conviction, as Hattie had claimed, she now had two.
"My mother says Tom don't do anything but try to have her change my Sunday school. He lived with us before he went to live at Sadie's. But she says she's very glad to have me stop Hattie's and go with you. She didn't send me there to have the minister go by our house every day and never come in. Sadie's minister never came to call on her when I went to that Sunday school either. Do you have tickets at your Sunday school?"
Tickets were vindicated. Emmy Lou hurried upstairs and came back with all her trophies of this nature. Mamie seemed impressed by the Bible in Colors.
"You get them a picture at a time," Emmy Lou explained. "The first one is Adam in buff."
"Buff?" said Mamie doubtfully.
"Buff," repeated Emmy Lou firmly, since it was so, and not to be helped because Mamie didn't seem to like it. "My Uncle Charlie says so."
But it was only lack of familiarity with buff on the part of Mamie. As a prize, it impressed her. "I'll meet you on your church steps on Recruiting Sunday," she said.
After Mamie left, Emmy Lou went around to see Hattie. "Don't let it make you feel bad, taking Mamie away from me," Hattie told her. "I never expected anything else. When it's not a call, nor even a conviction, they're like as not to fail you on the very doorstep."
Sadie, at her window holding a little sister, waved to Emmy Lou and Hattie on the sidewalk. It was hard Sadie couldn't be with her friends any more. Emmy Lou sent up a billet-doux that the little sisters might be justified to Sadie yet. Poor Sadie!
It was Tom who told Emmy Lou where to go for her next recruit. She had no idea it would be so easy. Sadie had worked hard for all she got but it didn't seem hard to Emmy Lou. "There's a li'l girl roun' on Plum Street where I wuked once, too. I'll speak to her, an' then you go roun' an' see her."
With Aunt Cordelia's permission, Emmy Lou went around. It proved that she knew this little girl at school, too. Her name was Sallie Carter. She was the richest little girl in the class and said so. Her curls shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, and her skirts stood out and flaunted.
Sallie had convictions too. She had tried Sadie's Sunday school while her own church was being rebuilt, and she was just about through trying Hattie's.
"My mother thinks it's strange that Tom should be sending you after me too. Though he did live with us before he lived with any of you. She is surprised at some of the little girls who go to Sadie's Sunday school. And after she took me away they were the first little girls I met on the steps at Hattie's Sunday school. My mother says I'm a Carter on one side and a Cannon on the other, and everybody knows what that means. We're high church and you are low, but she's glad to have me go with you to St. Simeon's for a while and try it. Do you have tickets?"
Tickets and more, the Bible in Colors. Emmy Lou, explaining it, felt again she couldn't sufficiently uphold tickets to Aunt Cordelia.
The very next day Tom came to Aunt Cordelia and said if she would let Emmy Lou go with him to Mr. Schmit's when he went to get the ice, he knew of some other little girls who might be persuaded to go to her Sunday school. At Aunt Cordelia's word, Emmy Lou got her hat and joined Tom with his basket.
The accustomed place to get extra ice before Tom came was Mr. Dawkins' at the corner. But Tom wouldn't hear of going to Mr. Dawkins'. He argued about it until Aunt Cordelia gave in. He said he used to live with Mr. Schmit and drive his wagon.
Emmy Lou knew Mr. Schmit herself. Tom, after an inquiry at the counter, took her through the store to the back yard where he left her, a back yard full of boxes and crates and empty coops. Mr. Schmit's little girl Lisa was here with a baby brother in her arms, and another holding to her skirts, Yetta, her little sister, and Katie O'Brien from next door completing the group. Emmy Lou knew Lisa and Katie at school, too. Lisa's round cheeks were mottled and red, and the plaits hanging down her back were yellow. She did not seem overly glad to see Emmy Lou though she came forward.
"Well?" she said.
It made it hard to begin. And even after Emmy Lou had explained that she had come to get them to go to Sunday school Lisa was unmoved.
"What do we want to go to Sunday school for? If we wanted to go to Sunday school we'd be going. We go to our grandfather's in the country now on Sundays. That way we get a ride in my papa's grocery wagon and we get to the country too."
"But if you would," urged Emmy Lou, "it would get me a prize."
"Sure I see," said Lisa. "I see that. But if Katie here and Yetta and me give up our ride out to my grandfather's, what do we get?"
"Oh!" said Emmy Lou, and hastened to set forth St. Simeon's largesse and system in tickets.
"What do we do to get the tickets?" asked Lisa. "We're Lutheran and Katie's Dominican. I don't know as we'd be allowed to. We wouldn't mind four Sundays and get a picture, would we, Katie?"
Katie, whose hair was black and whose eyes were blue, agreed.
"Sure, we'd like a picture. But I don't know as they'd let me at home. They said I shouldn't go to no more Sunday schools. The little girl who was sassy to us and said they didn't want us there was at two Sunday schools we've been to now."
"Still," said Lisa, "we'd like a picture. Which one is your Sunday school?"
When Emmy Lou rejoined Tom, she was overjoyed. "And they'll meet me on the church steps too. All of 'em will meet me on the church steps, Mamie and Sally and Lisa and Yetta and Katie."
And now it was Recruiting Sunday. But the shortness of manner with which Aunt Cordelia tied Emmy Lou's hair-ribbons was not on account of this, Recruiting Sunday for her having taken its place among the minor evils. Late on Saturday evening she had lost Tom, a case again of the house-boy not getting on with the cook.
"After I wore myse'f out with prayer to git rid of thet no-account Bob, to have thet prayer swing aroun' with this worse-account Tom," was Aunt M'randy's explanation of the disagreement.
"They want me over at Sadie's house tomorrow, anyway," Tom said with feeling as he went. "'Count of their grandfather walkin' in on 'em f'om Kansas City sudden there's big doin's hurried up about the twins. They're goin' to have a barouche roun' f'om the livery stable too, an' they want me to drive."
Then Tom became darkly cryptic. "I tol' you when I come, I ca'ies my goodwill with me to the pussons I wuks foh."
And now it was Sunday morning and no house-boy. "Charlie," said Aunt Cordelia to this person, "I wish you'd walk around to the Sunday school door with Emmy Lou. She's never been so far alone. Louise is not ready, and she's to meet all those children on the church step where they'll be waiting for her, and thinks she ought to be early."
"Surely," said Uncle Charlie. "I'm glad to. I've an idea it's about time for Willie Glidden to be hanging himself in some of his innovations."
At the corner Uncle Charlie and Emmy Lou met Tom coming back towards Sadie's with the barouche from the livery stable. One felt Tom saw them, though he looked the other way.
At the second corner they met Sally Carter. Her curls shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, and her skirts stood out and flaunted. She stopped when Emmy Lou stopped, but with reluctance, since it was palpable she was in a hurry.
"I've decided I didn't treat Sadie right. My name's still on her roll. Those little girls my mother didn't want me to associate with at the other Sunday schools were on your church steps, anyway, and she wouldn't want me to stay."
At the next corner they met Lisa and Yetta and Katie, scoured and braided and in their Sunday dresses. They didn't want to stop either, palpably being in even a greater hurry.
"As long as we're goin' to Sunday school we think well go back to the one we started from," said Lisa. "That sassy little girl our mothers said we shouldn't put up with was on your church steps anyhow, and was sassy to us some more."
At St. Simeon's itself they met Mamie. "I didn't want to wait, but I felt I ought to. I'm going back to Sadie's, and I'm late. Tom called to us here on the steps as he went by in the barouche, and said Sadie's little twin sisters were going to be baptized at her church right after Sunday school."
"Which," said Uncle Charlie the while his Emmy Lou swallowed tears, "hangs Willie Glidden neatly in his own innovations."
When Sadie and Hattie and Emmy Lou met at school the next day, Sadie's eyes were bright and her face shone. Why not? As she pointed out, her little sisters were justified to her, her erring scholars were returned, her grandfather said he'd see to it that they could afford to have Tom back and the barouche too, and it all went to prove the efficacy of prayer.
It would seem to. That is, of Sadie's prayer. Emmy Lou could see that. She indeed had sent up billets-doux in Sadie's behalf herself. But it did not explain everything.
"Mr. Glidden at my Sunday school prayed too, that the least of these be brought into the fold."
Hattie forgot her own right to grievance in the joy of this additional data in support of her position. Had she not claimed that an answer to prayer can be an answer and yet be calamitous too?
"Exactly," said Hattie. "'The least of these into the fold.' But he didn't say which fold!"
Did not say which fold? To God who knows everything? For Mr. Glidden meant his fold. Hattie, then, was right?
The concepts of Emmy Lou, eight years old, a big girl now, moved on again. Behind a smiling providence God hides a frowning face. And those winging billets-doux, already weighted with caution and now heavy with doubt, in the mind's eye faltered, hung, and came fluttering, drifting, so many falling white doves, wings broken, down from the blue.