Monteagle* by Pansy is a Christian domestic novel set during a sweltering Southern summer and at a Tennessee mountain resort. The story centers on Fidelia West, called Dilly, a twelve-year-old girl who has been left desperately weakened by a prolonged fever. She lives with her widowed father, a sober but impoverished laborer, in a cramped, stifling room in a poor neighborhood. When wealthy Mrs. Hammond stops to have a carriage strap repaired by Mr. West, she notices Dilly's hollow-eyed exhaustion and the hopelessness of her situation. On impulse, she invites the girl to accompany her family to their summer camp on Monteagle mountain, reasoning that the cool air may restore Dilly's health and that, once recovered, Dilly might help look after her energetic toddler, Effie. The arrangements are made swiftly. A washerwoman is sent to prepare Dilly's threadbare clothing, and a basket of suitable garments arrives from Mrs. Hammond. Father and daughter are overwhelmed with gratitude, and Dilly departs by carriage and train the following morning. On the journey up the mountain, she overhears Mrs. Hammond's son Hart expressing skepticism and mild irritation at his mother's charitable impulse, predicting Dilly will be a burden. Dilly is stung but resolves privately to prove him wrong and to recover her health for her father's sake. On Monteagle the transformation is rapid. The pure mountain air, wholesome food, and restful surroundings work steadily on Dilly's constitution, and within two weeks her cheeks begin to fill out with color. She proves entirely trustworthy with little Effie, who forms a devoted attachment to her. Mrs. Hammond watches with satisfaction, while Jeannette the nurse, initially suspicious, warms to the girl as well. Hart Hammond, meanwhile, is restless. He is handsome, good-natured, and well-liked, but he is attached to a city social circle whose habits of drinking wine trouble his mother deeply. He repeatedly eyes the train schedule as though considering flight. The novel's central spiritual concern emerges through a series of conversations and public meetings at the camp's open-air tabernacle. A visiting chalk artist delivers a vivid illustrated address showing how inward vices gradually disfigure a boy's face, and follows this with the tragic true story of a promising youth ruined by drink. Dilly attends and is deeply moved. Hart, who misses the train back to the city while absorbed in what he has witnessed, is struck in spite of himself. A children's Sunday-school lesson on Christ's promise to draw all people to himself sets Dilly thinking seriously about her own spiritual state. She recognizes she has been postponing a decision she has long known she ought to make, and identifies the postponement as Satanic management. A brief conversation with the artist confirms her thinking. That same afternoon, in her curtained tent room, she kneels and in a few words commits herself to follow Christ. The moment is simple but definitive. She then writes at length to her father, sharing the news with unaffected joy. These events also influence Hart. Dilly's unself-conscious earnestness, her open talk about belonging to Christ, and her genuine happiness in having decided, work on him more powerfully than any formal religious address. He had resisted a similar conviction since his school days. One evening he walks to his mother's room and, struggling to find words, tells her that he has enlisted in the service of Christ. Mrs. Hammond's response is one of overwhelming relief and joy, since she has long lived in fear that her son's drinking companions would destroy him. The novel closes in autumn. Dilly returns home strong and capable, keeping house beautifully and rejoicing in her father's happiness. The one grief she conceals is that schooling seems impossible. Hart, however, has been quietly working on a plan. Mrs. Hammond's invalid sister-in-law, Aunt Helen, who has spent her own life denied the schooling and activities she longed for, proposes to take Dilly as a companion and send her to school in her place, giving the girl the education Aunt Helen herself never had. Mr. West will be employed on the Hammond property and housed nearby. The arrangement suits everyone. Dilly will live next door to Aunt Helen, attend school on weekdays, and remain close to Effie. The novel ends with Hart reflecting warmly on Dilly and the mother bestowing on him a look entirely free of the anxious sorrow that had long marked her face.
By Pansy · First published 1886 · Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Moral Fiction, School Fiction · 12 chapters