When Sunday school was over they trooped up to church, and sat in their pew with Mamma, good, but inexpressibly bored. They rather enjoyed the hymns and singing, “We Praise Thee, O God,” and there was always the hope that a dog might stray in or the boy who pumped the organ bellows might grow dreamy and let the air out; but these distractions weren’t to be counted on, and oh, the weariness, the long exhaustion of the lessons and the sermon.
They couldn’t have stood it, if they hadn’t had their own private diversions. Maggie watched herself doing the most wonderful things on the crossbeams, running along them over the heads of the congregation, hanging from them by her toes, leaping from one to another. May went on with the endless story she was always telling herself. She was the beautiful princess who had just been locked up in a tall tower on an island in the middle of the sea; the prince would rescue her, but he would have his own troubles doing it. Lily looked for the faces made by patches of damp on the dark raspberry-red walls and pale sea-green ceiling. As for Victor, he leaned against the well-filled smoothness of Mamma’s lilac silk señorita-body, looked at his shoes stuck straight out in front of him, looked at the lozenges of colored glass at the top of each pointed casement window—red sky and leaves, green, purple, yellow, and blue as bright and dark as bluing. Then he yawned, and looked at the altar cross that, as he looked, blurred into a dazzle of light, came swimming out to him, then faded into darkness.
When church was over, they couldn’t get into the carriage and drive right home, for Mamma had to talk with people like Miss Hessie Farley and Mr. and Mrs. Almond, and speak pleasantly to people like Mrs. Trewhitt and Miss Perry, the seamstress. They told each other what a lovely day it was, but how hot—quite unseasonable. Mrs. Almond said Mamma’s lilac bonnet, with its white crushed roses under the brim, was sweetly becoming; Miss Hessie said she was having a new postillion-coat made of that very shade, but couldn’t decide on the shape of the buttons—did they think the Egyptian fashion was going to take? Because if so, she would have triangular buttons, like the Pyramids, but one didn’t want to be extreme. Mr. Almond said it was a fine year for cherries, if the robins didn’t get them all. Miss Martin, the organist, hurried out of church with her music under her arm, small and grey and whiskered like a mouse, and squeaked “good mornings.” And Mrs. Almond, and Mrs. Trewhitt, and Miss Perry, and Miss Martin, and all the other ladies, spoke to little Victor in the small, lilting voices children endure with such patient disdain.
Lunch on Sundays was cold, to save the servants. There was Saturday’s roast-beef, and bread and butter, and then a great tin pan of solidified sour milk, slippy and pale, called “bonny-clabber,” and eaten unenthusiastically with cream and sugar. The little girls didn’t like it, but Mamma said, “Eat it up,” so they ate it up. But Victor wouldn’t, so he had apple jelly. Mamma said he was delicate and his appetite must be tempted.
After lunch Mamma took a nap, and the children went into the garden with their Sunday books. The weekday books were all put away, together with the dolls, the cup and ball, the battledore and shuttlecock. There were no games on Sunday, no excitements except when something happened like the first crocus or the first snowstorm. Funny that God didn’t seem to understand that exciting things mustn’t happen on Sundays.
Maggie had “ ‘Blind Lillias; or, Fellowship with God. A Tale for the Young.’ By A Lady,” and May had “ ‘Arthur and Marion’s Sundays,’ by Mrs. Bradley and Miss Neeley.” The two youngest looked at the pictures in their Old Testament storybook, terrifying pictures—brazen serpents, and fathers about to sacrifice their little boys. And Trusty lay panting across their feet, hot and heavy. They were all heavy and depressed, with Sunday surrounding them like an invisible bell shutting out the air. Even the garden looked different. The beech-tree that was their playhouse on week days knew that the dolls and the little thick white china tea-set were put away; the apple tree knew it wasn’t to be climbed; and the pansies and feather-ball poppies seemed to be saying, “Go away, children, we can’t play today.”
But Monday morning! Monday morning! Oh, the cool touch of the dew-wet grass on little bare feet! The box hedges were covered with soaking cobwebs; the heavy dawn-pink peonies pearled with dew held showers for whoever shook them. In the kitchen shed Martha washed the clothes, rainbow-colored suds, foaming up around her dark arms, singing, and sounding as happy as if she would burst—
“ ‘Nobody knows de trouble Ah’ve seen,
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows de trouble Ah’ve seen,
Glory Hallelujah!’ ”
The children went tearing over the lawn, and Trusty circled yelping around them, mad with delight.
The Circus had passed in the night—there were the elephant’s footprints in the dust of the road! Little Victor, hands on knees, squatted to look at them in solemn rapture.
“Let’s play circus!” cried Maggie. “I choose to be elephant!”
“No, I choose to be elephant,” said Lily, but she knew they wouldn’t let her be.
“I choose to be effalunt!”
“No, Victor, you can’t be, you’re too little.”
Victor wept. He was young, but he had learned how to rule his women.
But, when he was elephant, he didn’t know what to do. He just stood still. So they gave up having a circus, and went to play house under the beech-tree. The beech-tree spread its branches like a cool tent, and under it was dark moss and between its grey toes little ferns came up.
Chloe had let
