Emmy Lou's Road to Grace: Being a Little Pilgrim's Progress

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?"