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Title: Emily Climbs (1925)
Author: L M Montgomery
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: Emily Climbs (1925)
Author: L M Montgomery
Contents
Writing Herself Out
Salad Days
In the Watches of the Night
"As Ithers See Us"
Half a Loaf
Shrewsbury Beginnings
Pot-pourri
Not Proven
A Supreme Moment
The Madness of an Hour
Heights and Hollows
At the Sign of the Haystack
Haven
The Woman Who Spanked the King
"The Thing That Couldn't"
Driftwood
"If a Body Kiss a Body"
Circumstantial Evidence
"Airy Voices"
In the Old John House
Thicker than Water
"Love Me, Love My Dog"
An Open Door
A Valley of Vision
April Love
WRITING HERSELF OUT
Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon
farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the
olden years before the world turned upside down. She was at that
moment as perfectly happy as any human being is ever permitted to
be. Aunt Elizabeth, in consideration of the coldness of the night,
had allowed her to have a fire in her little fireplace--a rare
favour. It was burning brightly and showering a red-golden light
over the small, immaculate room, with its old-time furniture and
deep-set, wide-silled windows, to whose frosted, blue-white panes
the snowflakes clung in little wreaths. It lent depth and mystery
to the mirror on the wall which reflected Emily as she sat coiled
on the ottoman before the fire, writing, by the light of two tall,
white candles--which were the only approved means of illumination
at New Moon--in a brand-new, glossy, black "Jimmy-book" which
Cousin Jimmy had given her that day. Emily had been very glad to
get it, for she had filled the one he had given her the preceding
autumn, and for over a week she had suffered acute pangs of
suppression because she could not write in a nonexistent "diary."
Her diary had become a dominant factor in her young, vivid life.
It had taken the place of certain "letters" she had written in her
childhood to her dead father, in which she had been wont to "write
out" her problems and worries--for even in the magic years when one
is almost fourteen one has problems and worries, especially when
one is under the strict and well-meant but not over-tender
governance of an Aunt Elizabeth Murray. Sometimes Emily felt that
if it were not for her diary she would have flown into little bits
by reason of consuming her own smoke. The fat, black "Jimmy-book"
seemed to her like a personal friend and a safe confidant for
certain matters which burned for expression and yet were too
combustible to be trusted to the ears of any living being. Now
blank books of any sort were not easy to come by at New Moon, and
if it had not been for Cousin Jimmy, Emily might never have had
one. Certainly Aunt Elizabeth would not give her one--Aunt
Elizabeth thought Emily wasted far too much time "over her
scribbling nonsense" as it was--and Aunt Laura did not dare to go
contrary to Aunt Elizabeth in this--more by token that Laura
herself really thought Emily might be better employed. Aunt Laura
was a jewel of a woman, but certain things were holden from her
eyes.
Now Cousin Jimmy was never in the least frightened of Aunt
Elizabeth, and when the notion occurred to him that Emily probably
wanted another "blank book," that blank book materialized
straightway, in defiance of Aunt Elizabeth's scornful glances. He
had gone to Shrewsbury that very day, in the teeth of the rising
storm, for no other reason than to get it. So Emily was happy, in
her subtle and friendly firelight, while the wind howled and
shrieked through the great old trees to the north of New Moon, sent
huge, spectral wreaths of snow whirling across Cousin Jimmy's
famous garden, drifted the sundial completely over, and whistled
eerily through the Three Princesses--as Emily always called the
three tall Lombardies in the corner of the garden.
"I love a storm like this at night when I don't have to go out in
it," wrote Emily. "Cousin Jimmy and I had a splendid evening
planning out our garden and choosing our seeds and plants in the
catalogue. Just where the biggest drift is making, behind the
summer-house, we are going to have a bed of pink asters, and we are
going to give the Golden Ones--who are dreaming under four feet of
snow--a background of flowering almond. I love to plan out summer
days like this, in the midst of a storm. It makes me feel as if I
were winning a victory over something ever so much bigger than
myself, just because _I_ have a brain and the storm is nothing but
blind, white force--terrible, but blind. I have the same feeling
when I sit here cosily by my own dear fire, and hear it raging all
around me, and LAUGH at it. And THAT is just because over a
hundred years ago great-great-grandfather Murray built this house
and built it well. I wonder if, a hundred years from now, anybody
will win a victory over anything because of something _I_ left or
did. It is an INSPIRING THOUGHT.
"I drew that line of italics before I thought. Mr. Carpenter says
I use far too many italics. He says it is an Early Victorian
obsession, and I must strive to cast it off. I concluded I would
when I looked in the dictionary, for it is evidently not a nice
thing to be obsessed, though it doesn't seem quite so bad as to be
POSSESSED. There I go again: but I think the italics are all right
this time.
"I read the dictionary for a whole hour--till Aunt Elizabeth got
suspicious and suggested that it would be much better for me to be
knitting my ribbed stockings. She couldn't see exactly why it was
wrong for me to be poring over the dictionary but she felt sure it
must be because SHE never wants to do it. I LOVE reading the
dictionary. (Yes, those italics are NECESSARY, Mr. Carpenter. An
ordinary 'love' wouldn't express my feeling at all!) Words are
such FAScinating things. (I caught myself at the first syllable
that time!) The very sound of some of them--'haunted'--'mystic'--
for example, gives me THE FLASH. (Oh, dear! But I HAVE to
italicize THE FLASH. IT isn't ordinary--it's the most extraordinary
and wonderful thing in my whole life. When it comes I feel as if
a door had swung open in a wall before me and given me a glimpse
of--yes, of HEAVEN. MORE ITALICS! Oh, I see why Mr, Carpenter
scolds! I MUST break myself of the habit.)
"Big words are never beautiful--'incriminating'--'obstreperous'--
'international'--'unconstitutional.' They make me think of those
horrible big dahlias and chrysanthemums Cousin Jimmy took me to see
at the exhibition in Charlottetown last fall. We couldn't see
anything lovely in them, though some people thought them wonderful.
Cousin Jimmy's little yellow 'mums, like pale, fairy-like stars
shining against the fir copse in the north-west corner of the
garden, were ten times more beautiful. But I am wandering from my
subject--also a bad habit of mine, according to Mr. Carpenter. He
says I MUST (the italics are his this time!) learn to concentrate--
another big word and a very ugly one.
"But I had a good time over that dictionary--much better than I had
over the ribbed stockings. I wish I could have a pair--just one
pair--of silk stockings. Ilse has three. Her father gives her
everything she wants, now that he has learned to love her. But
Aunt Elizabeth says silk stockings are IMMORAL. I wonder why--any
more than silk dresses.
"Speaking of silk dresses, Aunt Janey Milburn, at Derry Pond--she
isn't any relation really, but everybody calls her that--has made a
vow that she will never wear a silk dress until the whole heathen
world is converted to Christianity. That is very fine. I wish _I_
could be as good as that, but I couldn't--I love silk too much. It
is so rich and sheeny. I would like to dress in it all the time,
and if I could afford to I would--though I suppose every time I
thought of dear old Aunt Janey and the unconverted heathen I would
feel conscience-stricken. However, it will be years, if ever,
before I can afford to buy even one silk dress, and meanwhile I
give some of my egg money every month to missions. (I have five
hens of my own now, all descended from the gray pullet Perry gave
me on my twelfth birthday.) If ever I can buy that one silk dress
I know what it is going to be like. Not black or brown or navy
blue--sensible, serviceable colours, such as New Moon Murrays
always wear--oh, dear, no! It is to be of shot silk, blue in one
light, silver in others, like a twilight sky, glimpsed through a
frosted window-pane--with a bit of lace-foam here and there, like
those little feathers of snow clinging to my window-pane. Teddy
says he will paint me in it and call it 'The Ice Maiden,' and Aunt
Laura smiles and says, sweetly and condescendingly, in a way I hate
even in dear Aunt Laura,
"'What use would such a dress be to you, Emily?'
"It mightn't be of any use, but I would feel in it as if it were a
part of me--that it GREW on me and wasn't just bought and put on.
I want ONE dress like that in my life-time. And a silk petticoat
underneath it--and silk stockings!
"Ilse has a silk dress now--a bright pink one. Aunt Elizabeth says
Dr. Burnley dresses Ilse far too old and rich for a child. But he
wants to make up for all the years he didn't dress her at all. (I
don't mean she went naked, but she might have as far as Dr. Burnley
was concerned. Other people had to see to her clothes.) He does
everything she wants him to do now, and gives her her own way in
everything. Aunt Elizabeth says it is very bad for her, but there
are times when I envy Ilse a little. I know it is wicked, but I
cannot help it.
"Dr. Burnley is going to send Ilse to Shrewsbury High School next
fall, and after that to Montreal to study elocution. That is why I
envy her--not because of the silk dress. I wish Aunt Elizabeth
would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She
feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped.
But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my
mind that I will never marry. I shall be WEDDED TO MY ART.
"Teddy wants to go to Shrewsbury next fall, but his mother won't
let him go, either. Not that she is afraid of his eloping, but
because she loves him so much she can't part with him. Teddy wants
to be an artist, and Mr. Carpenter says he has genius and should
have his chance, but everybody is afraid to say anything to Mrs.
Kent. She is a little bit of a woman--no taller than I am, really,
quiet and shy--and yet every one is afraid of her. _I_ am--
dreadfully afraid. I've always known she didn't like me--ever
since those days long ago when Ilse and I first went up to the
Tansy Patch, to play with Teddy. But now she hates me--I feel sure
of it--just because Teddy likes me. She can't bear to have him
like anybody or anything but her. She is even jealous of his
pictures. So there is not much chance of his getting to
Shrewsbury. Perry is going. He hasn't a cent, but he is going to
work his way through. That is why he thinks he will go to
Shrewsbury in place of Queen's Academy. He thinks it will be
easier to get work to do in Shrewsbury, and board is cheaper there.
"'My old beast of an Aunt Tom has a little money,' he told me, 'but
she won't give me any of it--unless--unless--'
"Then he looked at me SIGNIFICANTLY.
"I blushed because I couldn't help it, and then I was furious with
myself for blushing, and with Perry--because he referred to
something I didn't want to hear about--that time ever so long ago
when his Aunt Tom met me in Lofty John's bush and nearly frightened
me to death by demanding that I promise to MARRY PERRY WHEN WE GREW
UP, in which case she would educate him. I never told anybody
about it--being ashamed--except Ilse, and she said,
"'The idea of old Aunt Tom aspiring to a Murray for Perry!'
"But then, Ilse is awfully hard on Perry and quarrels with him half
the time, over things _I_ only smile at. Perry never likes to be
outdone by anyone in anything. When we were at Amy Moore's party
last week, her uncle told us a story of some remarkable freak calf
he had seen, with three legs, and Perry said,
"'Oh, THAT'S nothing to a duck I saw once in Norway.'
"(Perry really was in Norway. He used to sail everywhere with his
father when he was little. But I don't believe one word about that
duck. He wasn't LYING--he was just ROMANCING. Dear Mr. Carpenter,
I CAN'T get along without italics.)
"Perry's duck had four legs, according to him--two where a proper
duck's legs should be, and two sprouting from its back. And when
it got tired of walking on its ordinary pair it flopped over on its
back and walked on the other pair!
"Perry told this yarn with a sober face, and everybody laughed, and
Amy's uncle said, 'Go up head, Perry.' But Ilse was furious and
wouldn't speak to him all the way home. She said he had made a
fool of himself, trying to 'show off' with a silly story like that,
and that NO GENTLEMAN would act so.
"Perry said: 'I'm no gentleman, yet, only a hired boy, but some
day, Miss Ilse, I'll be a finer gentleman than anyone YOU know.'
"'Gentlemen,' said Ilse in a nasty voice, 'have to be BORN. They
can't be MADE, you know.'
"Ilse has almost given up calling names, as she used to do when she
quarrelled with Perry or me, and taken to saying cruel, cutting
things. They hurt far worse than the names used to, but I don't
really mind them--much--or long--because I know Ilse doesn't mean
them and really loves me as much as I love her. But Perry says
they stick in his crop. They didn't speak to each other the rest
of the way home, but next day Ilse was at him again about using bad
grammar and not standing up when a lady enters the room.
"'Of course you couldn't be expected to know THAT,' she said in her
nastiest voice, 'but I am sure Mr. Carpenter has done his best to
teach you grammar.'
"Perry didn't say one word to Ilse, but he turned to me.
"'Will YOU tell me my faults?' he said. 'I don't mind YOU doing
it--it will be YOU that will have to put up with me when we're
grown up, not Ilse.'
"He said that to make Ilse angry, but it made me angrier still, for
it was an allusion to a FORBIDDEN TOPIC. So we neither of us spoke
to him for two days and he said it was a good rest from Ilse's
slams anyway.
"Perry is not the only one who gets into disgrace at New Moon. I
said something silly yesterday evening which makes me blush to
recall it. The Ladies' Aid met here and Aunt Elizabeth gave them a
supper and the husbands of the Aid came to it. Ilse and I waited
on the table, which was set in the kitchen because the dining-room
table wasn't long enough. It was exciting at first and then, when
every one was served, it was a little dull and I began to compose
some poetry in my mind as I stood by the window looking out on the
garden. It was so interesting that I soon forgot everything else
until suddenly I heard Aunt Elizabeth say, 'Emily,' very sharply,
and then she looked significantly at Mr. Johnson, our new minister.
I was confused and I snatched up the teapot and exclaimed,
"'Oh, Mr. CUP, will you have your JOHNSON filled?'
"Everybody roared and Aunt Elizabeth looked disgusted and Aunt
Laura ashamed, and I felt as if I would sink through the floor. I
couldn't sleep half the night for thinking over it. The strange
thing was that I do believe I felt worse and more ashamed than I
would have felt if I had done something really wrong. This is the
'Murray pride' of course, and I suppose it is very wicked.
Sometimes I am afraid Aunt Ruth Dutton is right in her opinion of
me after all.
"No, she isn't!
"But it is a tradition of New Moon that its women should be equal
to any situation and always be graceful and dignified. Now, there
was nothing graceful or dignified in asking such a question of the
new minister. I am sure he will never see me again without
thinking of it and I will always writhe when I catch his eye upon
me.
"But now that I have written it out in my diary I don't feel so
badly over it. NOTHING ever seems as big or as terrible--oh, nor
as beautiful and grand, either, alas!--when it is written out, as
it does when you are thinking or feeling about it. It seems to
SHRINK directly you put it into words. Even the line of poetry I
had made just before I asked that absurd question won't seem half
as fine when I write it down:
"Where the velvet feet of darkness softly go.
"It DOESN'T. Some bloom seems gone from it. And yet, while I was
standing there, behind all those chattering, eating people, and SAW
darkness stealing so softly over the garden and the hills, like a
beautiful woman robed in shadows, with stars for eyes, the FLASH
came and I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of
the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came
into my mind it didn't seem to me that _I_ composed it at all--it
seemed as if Something Else were trying to speak through me--and it
was that Something Else that made the line seem wonderful--and now
when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I
tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.
"Oh, if I could only put things into words as I SEE them! Mr.
Carpenter says, 'Strive--strive--keep on--words are your medium--
make them your slaves--until they will say for you what you want
them to say.' That is true--and I do try--but it seems to me there
is something BEYOND words--any words--all words--something that
always escapes you when you try to grasp it--and yet leaves
something in your hand which you wouldn't have had if you hadn't
reached for it.
"I remember one day last fall when Dean and I walked over the
Delectable Mountain to the woods beyond it--fir woods mostly, but
with one corner of splendid old pines. We sat under them and Dean
read Peveril of the Peak and some of Scott's poems to me; and then
he looked up into the big, plumy boughs and said,
"'The gods are talking in the pines--gods of the old northland--of
the viking sagas. Star, do you know Emerson's lines?'
"And then he quoted them--I've remembered and loved them ever
since.
"The gods talk in the breath of the wold,
They talk in the shaken pine,
And they fill the reach of the old seashore
With dialogue divine;
And the poet who overhears
One random word they say
Is the fated man of men
Whom the ages must obey.
"Oh, that 'random word'--that is the Something that escapes me.
I'm always listening for it--I know I can never hear it--my ear
isn't attuned to it--but I am sure I hear at times a little, faint,
far-off echo of it--and it makes me feel a delight that is like
pain and a despair of ever being able to translate its beauty into
any words I know.
"Still, it IS a pity I made such a goose of myself immediately
after that wonderful experience.
"If I had just floated up behind Mr. Johnson, as velvet-footedly as
darkness herself, and poured his tea gracefully from Great-
grandmother Murray's silver teapot, like my shadow-woman pouring
night into the white cup of Blair Valley, Aunt Elizabeth would be
far better pleased with me than if I could write the most wonderful
poem in the world.
"Cousin Jimmy is so different. I recited my poem to him this
evening after we had finished with the catalogue and he thought it
was beautiful. (HE couldn't know how far it fell short of what I
had seen in my mind.) Cousin Jimmy composes poetry himself. He is
very clever in spots. And in other spots, where his brain was hurt
when Aunt Elizabeth pushed him into our New Moon well, he isn't
ANYTHING. There's just BLANKNESS there. So people call him
simple, and Aunt Ruth dares to say he hasn't sense enough to shoo a
cat from cream. And yet if you put all his clever spots together
there isn't anybody in Blair Water has half as much real cleverness
as he has--not even Mr. Carpenter. The trouble is you can't put
his clever spots together--there are always those gaps between.
But I love Cousin Jimmy and I'm never in the least afraid of him
when his queer spells come on him. Everybody else is--even Aunt
Elizabeth, though perhaps it is remorse with her, instead of fear--
except Perry. Perry always brags that he is never afraid of
anything--doesn't know what fear is. I think that is very
wonderful. I wish I could be so fearless. Mr. Carpenter says fear
is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and
hatred of the world.
"'Cast it out, Jade,' he says--'cast it out of your heart. Fear is
a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or
you think it is, else you wouldn't be afraid of it. Remember your
Emerson--"always do what you are afraid to do."'
"But that is a counsel of perfection, as Dean says, and I don't
believe I'll ever be able to attain to it. To be honest, I am
afraid of a good many THINGS, but there are only two people in the
world I'm truly afraid of. One is Mrs. Kent, and the other is Mad
Mr. Morrison. I'm terribly afraid of him and I think almost every
one is. His home is in Derry Pond, but he hardly ever stays there--
he roams over the country looking for his lost bride. He was
married only a few weeks when his young wife died, many years ago,
and he has never been right in his mind since. He insists she is
not dead, only lost, and that he will find her some time. He has
grown old and bent, looking for her, but to him she is still young
and fair.
"He was here one day last summer, but would not come in--just
peered into the kitchen wistfully and said, 'Is Annie here?' He
was quite gentle that day, but sometimes he is very wild and
violent. He declares he always hears Annie calling to him--that
her voice flits on before him--always before him, like my random
word. His face is wrinkled and shrivelled and he looks like an
old, old monkey. But the thing I hate most about him is his right
hand--it is a deep blood-red all over--birth-marked. I can't tell
why, but that hand fills me with horror. I could not bear to touch
it. And sometimes he laughs to himself very horribly. The only
living thing he seems to care for is his old black dog that always
is with him. They say he will never ask for a bite of food for
himself. If people do not offer it to him he goes hungry, but he
will beg for his dog.
"Oh, I am terribly afraid of him, and I was so glad he didn't come
into the house that day. Aunt Elizabeth looked after him, as he
went away with his long, gray hair streaming in the wind, and said,
"'Fairfax Morrison was once a fine, clever, young man, with
excellent prospects. Well, God's ways are very mysterious.'
"'That is why they are interesting,' I said.
"But Aunt Elizabeth frowned and told me not to be irreverent, as
she always does when I say anything about God. I wonder why. She
won't let Perry and me talk about Him, either, though Perry is
really very much interested in Him and wants to find out all about
Him. Aunt Elizabeth overheard me telling Perry one Sunday
afternoon what I thought God was like, and she said it was
scandalous.
"It wasn't! The trouble is, Aunt Elizabeth and I have different
Gods, that is all. Everybody has a different God, I think. Aunt
Ruth's, for instance, is one that punishes her enemies--sends
'judgments' on them. That seems to me to be about all the use He
really is to her. Jim Cosgrain uses his to swear by. But Aunt
Janey Milburn walks in the light of her God's countenance, every
day, and shines with it.
"I have written myself out for to-night, and am going to bed. I
know I have 'wasted words' in this diary--another of my literary
faults, according to Mr. Carpenter.
"'You waste words, Jade--you spill them about too lavishly.
Economy and restraint--that's what you need.
"He's right, of course, and in my essays and stories I try to
practise what he preaches. But in my diary, which nobody sees but
myself, or ever will see until after I'm dead, I like just to let
myself go."
* * * * * * * *
Emily looked at her candle--it, too, was almost burned out. She
knew she could not have another that night--Aunt Elizabeth's rules
were as those of Mede and Persian: she put away her diary in the
little right-hand cupboard above the mantel, covered her dying
fire, undressed and blew out her candle. The room slowly filled
with the faint, ghostly snow-light of a night when a full moon is
behind the driving storm-clouds. And just as Emily was ready to
slip into her high black bedstead a sudden inspiration came--a
splendid new idea for a story. For a minute she shivered
reluctantly: the room was getting cold. But the idea would not be
denied. Emily slipped her hand between the feather tick of her bed
and the chaff mattress and produced a half-burned candle, secreted
there for just such an emergency.
It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never
pretended, nor ever will pretend, that Emily was a proper child.
Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull
nobody would read them.
She lighted her candle, put on her stockings and a heavy coat, got
out another half-filled Jimmy-book, and began to write by the
single, uncertain candle which made a pale oasis of light in the
shadows of the room. In that oasis Emily wrote, her black head
bent over her book, as the hours of night crept away and the other
occupants of New Moon slumbered soundly; she grew chill and
cramped, but she was quite unconscious of it. Her eyes burned--her
cheeks glowed--words came like troops of obedient genii to the call
of her pen. When at last her candle went out with a splutter and a
hiss in its little pool of melted tallow, she came back to reality
with a sigh and a shiver. It was two, by the clock, and she was
very tired and very cold; but she had finished her story and it was
the best she had ever written. She crept into her cold nest with a
sense of completion and victory, born of the working out of her
creative impulse, and fell asleep to the lullaby of the waning
storm.
SALAD DAYS
This book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of
extracts from Emily's diary; but, by way of linking up matters
unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary
for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am
going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material
ready to hand, why not use it? Emily's "diary," with all its
youthful crudities and italics, really gives a better interpretation
of her and of her imaginative and introspective mind, in that, her
fourteenth spring, than any biographer, however sympathetic, could
do. So let us take another peep into the yellowed pages of that old
"Jimmy-book," written long ago in the "look-out" of New Moon.
* * * * * * * *
"February 15, 19--
"I have decided that I will write down, in this journal, every day,
all my good deeds and all my bad ones. I got the idea out of a
book, and it appeals to me. I mean to be as honest about it as I
can. It will be easy, of course, to write down the good deeds, but
not so easy to record the bad ones.
"I did only one bad thing to-day--only one thing I think bad, that
is. I was impertinent to Aunt Elizabeth. She thought I took too
long washing the dishes. I didn't suppose there was any hurry and
I was composing a story called The Secret of the Mill. Aunt
Elizabeth looked at me and then at the clock, and said in her most
disagreeable way,
"'Is the snail your sister, Emily?'
"'No! Snails are no relation to ME,' I said HAUGHTILY.
"It was not what I said, but the way I said it that was impertinent.
AND I MEANT IT TO BE. I was very angry--sarcastic speeches always
aggravate me. Afterwards I was very sorry that I had been in a
temper--but I was sorry because it was FOOLISH and UNDIGNIFIED,
not because it was WICKED. So I suppose that was not true
repentance.
"As for my good deeds, I did two to-day. I saved two little lives.
Saucy Sal had caught a poor snowbird and I took it from her. It
flew off quite briskly, and I am sure it felt wonderfully happy.
Later on I went down to the cellar cupboard and found a mouse
caught in a trap by its foot. The poor thing lay there, almost
exhausted from struggling, with SUCH a look in its black eyes. I
COULDN'T endure it so I set it free, and it managed to get away
quite smartly in spite of its foot. I do not feel SURE about THIS
deed. I know it was a good one from the mouse's point of view, but
what about Aunt Elizabeth's?
"This evening Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth read and burned a
boxful of old letters. They read them aloud and commented on them,
while I sat in a corner and knitted my stockings. The letters were
very interesting and I learned a great deal about the Murrays I had
never known before. I feel that it is quite wonderful to belong to
a family like this. No wonder the Blair Water folks call us 'the
Chosen People'--though THEY don't mean it as a compliment. I feel
that I must live up to the traditions of my family.
"I had a long letter from Dean Priest to-day. He is spending the
winter in Algiers. He says he is coming home in April and is going
to take rooms with his sister, Mrs. Fred Evans, for the summer. I
am so glad. It will be splendid to have him in Blair Water all
summer. Nobody ever talks to me as Dean does. He is the nicest
and most interesting old person I know. Aunt Elizabeth says he is
selfish, as all the Priests are. But then she does not like the
Priests. And she always calls him Jarback, which somehow sets my
teeth on edge. One of Dean's shoulders IS a little higher than the
other, but that is not his fault. I told Aunt Elizabeth once that
I wished she would not call my friend that, but she only said,
"'_I_ did not nickname YOUR FRIEND, Emily. His own clan have
always called him Jarback. The Priests are not noted for
delicacy!'
"Teddy had a letter from Dean, too, and a book--The Lives of Great
Artists--Michael Angelo, Raphael, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian. He
says he dare not let his mother see him reading it--she would burn
it. I am sure if Teddy could only have his chance he would be as
great an artist as any of them.
* * * * * * * *
"February 18, 19--
"I had a lovely time with myself this evening, after school,
walking on the brook road in Lofty John's bush. The sun was low
and creamy and the snow so white and the shadows so slender and
blue. I think there is nothing so beautiful as tree shadows. And
when I came out into the garden my own shadow looked so funny--so
long that it stretched right across the garden. I immediately made
a poem of which two lines were,
"If we were as tall as our shadows
How tall our shadows would be.
"I think there is a good deal of PHILOSOPHY in that.
"To-night I wrote a story and Aunt Elizabeth knew what I was doing
and was very much annoyed. She scolded me for wasting time. But
it WASN'T wasted time. I GREW in it--I know I did. And there was
something about some of the sentences I liked. 'I am afraid of the
grey wood'--that pleased me very much. And--'white and stately she
walked the dark wood like a moonbeam.' I think that is rather
fine. Yet Mr. Carpenter tells me that whenever I think a thing
especially fine I am to cut it out. But oh, I CAN'T cut that out--
not yet, at least. The strange part is that about three months
after Mr. Carpenter tells me to cut a thing out I come round to his
point of view and feel ashamed of it. Mr. Carpenter was quite
merciless over my essay to-day. Nothing about it suited him.
"'Three ALAS'S in one paragraph, Emily. One would have been too
many in this year of grace!' 'MORE IRRESISTIBLE--Emily, for
heaven's sake, write English! That is unpardonable.'
"It WAS, too. I saw it for myself and I felt shame going all over
me from head to foot like a red wave. Then, after Mr. Carpenter
had blue-pencilled almost every sentence and sneered at all my fine
phrases and found fault with most of my constructions and told me I
was too fond of putting 'cleverisms' into everything I wrote, he
flung my exercise book down, tore at his hair and said,
"'You write! Jade, get a spoon and learn to cook!'
"Then he strode off, muttering maledictions 'not loud but deep.'
I picked up my poor essay and didn't feel very badly. I CAN cook
already, and I have learned a thing or two about Mr. Carpenter.
The better my essays are the more he rages over them. This one
must have been quite good. But it makes him so angry and impatient
to see where I might have made it STILL BETTER and didn't--through
carelessness or laziness or indifference--as he thinks. And he
can't tolerate a person who COULD do better and doesn't. And he
wouldn't bother with me at all if he didn't think I may amount to
something by and by.
"Aunt Elizabeth does not approve of Mr. Johnson. She thinks his
theology is not sound. He said in his sermon last Sunday that
there was some good in Buddhism.
"'He will be saying that there is some good in Popery next,' said
Aunt Elizabeth indignantly at the dinner-table.
"There MAY be some good in Buddhism. I must ask Dean about it when
he comes home.
* * * * * * * *
"March 2, 19--
"We were all at a funeral to-day--old Mrs. Sarah Paul. I have
always liked going to funerals. When I said that, Aunt Elizabeth
looked shocked and Aunt Laura said, 'Oh, Emily DEAR!' I rather
like to shock Aunt Elizabeth, but I never feel comfortable if I
worry Aunt Laura--she's SUCH a darling--so I explained--or tried
to. It is sometimes very hard to explain things to Aunt Elizabeth.
"'Funerals are interesting,' I said. 'And humorous, too.'
"I think I only made matters worse by saying THAT. And yet Aunt
Elizabeth knew as well as I did that it was funny to see some of
those relatives of Mrs. Paul, who have fought with and hated her
for years--she WASN'T amiable, if she is dead!--sitting there,
holding their handkerchiefs to their faces and pretending to cry.
I knew quite well what each and every one was thinking in his
heart. Jake Paul was wondering if the old harridan had by any
chance left him anything in her will--and Alice Paul, who knew SHE
wouldn't get anything, was hoping Jake Paul wouldn't either. That
would satisfy HER. And Mrs. Charles Paul was wondering how soon it
would be decent to do the house over the way she had always wanted
it and Mrs. Paul HADN'T. And Aunty Min was worrying for fear there
wouldn't be enough baked meats for such a mob of fourth cousins
that they'd never expected and didn't want, and Lisette Paul was
counting the people and feeling vexed because there wasn't as large
an attendance as there was at Mrs. Henry Lister's funeral last
week. When I told Aunt Laura this, she said gravely,
"'All this may be true, Emily'--(she knew it was!)--'but somehow it
doesn't seem quite right for so young a girl as you, to--to--to be
able to see these things, in short.'
"However, I can't help seeing them. Darling Aunt Laura is always
so sorry for people that she can't see their humorous side. But I
saw other things too. I saw that little Zack Fritz, whom Mrs. Paul
adopted and was very kind to, was almost broken-hearted, and I saw
that Martha Paul was feeling sorry and ashamed to think of her
bitter old quarrel with Mrs. Paul--and I saw that Mrs. Paul's face,
that looked so discontented and thwarted in life, looked peaceful
and majestic and even beautiful--as if Death had SATISFIED her at
last.
"Yes, funerals ARE interesting.
* * * * * * * *
"March 5, 19--
"It is snowing a little to-night. I love to see the snow coming
down in slanting lines against the dark trees.
"I THINK I did a good deed to-day. Jason Merrowby was here helping
Cousin Jimmy saw wood--and I SAW HIM SNEAK INTO THE PIGHOUSE, AND
TAKE A SWIG FROM A WHISKY BOTTLE. But I did not say one word about
it to anyone--that is my good deed.
"Perhaps I OUGHT to tell Aunt Elizabeth, but if I did she would
never have him again, and he needs all the work he can get, for his
poor wife's and children's sakes. I find it is not always easy to
be sure whether your deeds are good or bad.
* * * * * * * *
"March 20, 19--
"Yesterday Aunt Elizabeth was very angry because I would not write
an 'obituary poem' for old Peter DeGeer who died last week. Mrs.
DeGeer came here and asked me to do it. I wouldn't--I felt very
indignant at such a request. I felt it would be A DESECRATION OF
MY ART to do such a thing--though of course I didn't say that to
Mrs. DeGeer. For one thing it would have hurt her feelings, and
for another she wouldn't have had the faintest idea what I meant.
Even Aunt Elizabeth hadn't when I told her my reasons for refusing,
after Mrs. DeGeer had gone.
"'You are always writing yards of trash that nobody wants,' she
said. 'I think you might write something that IS wanted. It would
have pleased poor old Mary DeGeer. "Desecration of your art"
indeed. If you MUST talk, Emily, why not talk sense?'
"I proceeded to talk sense.
"'Aunt Elizabeth,' I said seriously, 'how could I write that
obituary poem for her? I couldn't write an UNTRUTHFUL one to
please anybody. And you know yourself that nothing good AND
truthful could be said about old Peter DeGeer!'
"Aunt Elizabeth did know it, and it posed her, but she was all the
more displeased with me for that. She vexed me so much that I came
up to my room and wrote an 'obituary poem' about Peter, just for my
own satisfaction. It is certainly great fun to write a TRUTHFUL
obituary of some one you don't like. Not that I DISLIKED Peter
DeGeer; I just despised him as everybody did. But Aunt Elizabeth
had annoyed me, and when I am annoyed I can write very sarcastically.
And again I felt that Something was writing through me--but a very
different Something from the usual one--a malicious, mocking
Something that ENJOYED making fun of poor, lazy, shiftless, lying,
silly, hypocritical, old Peter DeGeer. Ideas--words--rhymes--all
seemed to drop into place while that Something chuckled.
"I thought the poem was so clever that I couldn't resist the
temptation to take it to school to-day and show it to Mr Carpenter.
I thought he would enjoy it--and I think he DID, too, in a way, but
after he had read it he laid it down and looked at me.
"'I suppose there IS a pleasure in satirizing a failure,' he said.
'Poor old Peter was a failure--and he is dead--and His Maker may be
merciful to him, but his fellow creatures will not. When _I_ am
dead, Emily, will you write like this about me? You have the
power--oh, yes, it's all here--this IS very clever. You can paint
the weakness and foolishness and wickedness of a character in a way
that is positively uncanny, in a girl of your age. But--is it
worth while, Emily?'
"'No--no,' I said. I was so ashamed and sorry that I wanted to get
away and cry. It was terrible to think Mr. Carpenter imagined I
would ever write so about HIM, after all he has done for me.
"'It isn't,' said Mr. Carpenter. 'There is a place for satire--
there are gangrenes that can only be burned out--but leave the
burning to the great geniuses. It's better to heal than hurt. We
failures know that.'
"'Oh, Mr. Carpenter!' I began. I wanted to say HE wasn't a
failure--I wanted to say a hundred things--but he wouldn't let me.
"'There--there, we won't talk of it, Emily. When _I_ am dead say,
"He was a failure, and none knew it more truly or felt it more
bitterly than himself." Be merciful to the failures, Emily.
Satirize wickedness if you must--but pity weakness.'
"He stalked off then, and called school in. I've felt wretched
ever since and I won't sleep to-night. But here and now I record
this vow, most solemnly, in my diary, MY PEN SHALL HEAL, NOT HURT.
And I write it in italics, Early Victorian or not, because I am
tremendously in earnest.
"I didn't tear that poem up, though--I couldn't--it really WAS too
good to destroy. I put it away in my literary cupboard to read
over once in a while for my own enjoyment, but I will never show it
to anybody.
"Oh, how I wish I hadn't hurt Mr. Carpenter!
* * * * * * * *
"April 1, 19--
"Something I heard a visitor in Blair Water say today annoyed me
very much. Mr. and Mrs. Alec Sawyer, who live in Charlottetown,
were in the post office when I was there. Mrs. Sawyer is very
handsome and fashionable and condescending. I heard her say to her
husband, 'HOW do the natives of this sleepy place continue to live
here year in and year out? _I_ should go mad. NOTHING ever
happens here.'
"I would dearly have liked to tell her a few things about Blair
Water. I could have been sarcastic with a vengeance. But, of
course, New Moon people DO NOT MAKE SCENES IN PUBLIC. So I
contented myself with bowing VERY COLDLY when she spoke to me and
SWEEPING PAST her. I heard Mr. Sawyer say, 'Who is that girl?' and
Mrs. Sawyer said, 'She must be that Starr puss--she has the Murray
trick of holding her head, all right.'
"The idea of saying 'nothing ever happens here'! Why, things are
happening right along--THRILLING things. I think life here is
EXTREMELY wonderful. We have always so much to laugh and cry and
talk about.
"Look at all the things that have happened in Blair Water in just
the last three weeks--comedy and tragedy all mixed up together.
James Baxter has suddenly stopped speaking to his wife and NOBODY
KNOWS WHY. SHE doesn't, poor soul, and she is breaking her heart
about it. Old Adam Gillian, who hated pretence of any sort, died
two weeks ago and his last words were, 'See that there isn't any
howling and sniffling at my funeral.' So nobody howled or
sniffled. Nobody wanted to, and since he had forbidden it nobody
pretended to. There never was such a cheerful funeral in Blair
Water. I've seen weddings that were more melancholy--Ella Brice's,
for instance. What cast a cloud over hers was that she forgot to
put on her white slippers when she dressed, and went down to the
parlour in a pair of old, faded, bedroom shoes with holes in the
toes. Really, people couldn't have talked more about it if she had
gone down without ANYTHING on. Poor Ella cried all through the
wedding-supper about it.
"Old Robert Scobie and his half-sister have quarrelled, after
living together for thirty years without a fuss, although she is
said to be a very aggravating woman. Nothing she did or said ever
provoked Robert into an outburst, but it seems that there was just
one doughnut left from supper one evening recently, and Robert is
very fond of doughnuts. He put it away in the pantry for a bedtime
snack, and when he went to get it he found that Matilda had eaten
it. He went into a terrible rage, pulled her nose, called her a
SHE-DEVILESS, and ordered her out of his house. She has gone to
live with her sister at Derry Pond, and Robert is going to bach it.
Neither of them will ever forgive the other, Scobie-like, and
neither will ever be happy or contented again.
"George Lake was walking home from Derry Pond one moonlit evening
two weeks ago, and ALL AT ONCE he saw another VERY BLACK shadow
going along beside his, on the moonlit snow.
"AND THERE WAS NOTHING TO CAST THAT SHADOW.
"He rushed to the nearest house, nearly dead with fright, and they
say he will never be the same man again.
"This is the most DRAMATIC thing that has happened. It makes me
shiver as I write of it. Of course George MUST have been mistaken.
But he is a truthful man, and he doesn't drink. I don't know what
to think of it.
"Arminius Scobie is a VERY MEAN MAN and always buys his wife's hats
for her, lest she pay too much for them. They know this in the
Shrewsbury stores, and laugh at him. One day last week he was in
Jones and McCallum's, buying her a hat, and Mr. Jones told him that
if he would WEAR THE HAT from the store to the station he would let
him have it for nothing. Arminius did. It was a quarter of a mile
to the station and all the small boys in Shrewsbury ran after him
and hooted him. But Arminus didn't care. He had saved three
dollars and forty-nine cents.
"AND, one evening, right here at New Moon, I dropped a soft-boiled
egg on Aunt Elizabeth's second-best cashmere dress. That WAS a
happening. A kingdom might have been upset in Europe, and it
wouldn't have made such a commotion at New Moon.
"So, Mistress Sawyer, you are vastly mistaken. Besides, apart from
all happenings, the folks here are interesting in themselves. I
don't LIKE every one but I find every one interesting--Miss Matty
Small, who is forty and wears OUTRAGEOUS colours--she wore an old-
rose dress and a scarlet hat to church all last summer--old Uncle
Reuben Bascom, who is so lazy that he held an umbrella over himself
all one rainy night in bed, when the roof began to leak, rather
than get out and move the bed--Elder McCloskey, who thought it
wouldn't do to say 'pants' in a story he was telling about a
missionary, at prayer-meeting, so always said politely 'the clothes
of his lower parts'--Amasa Derry, who carried off four prizes at
the Exhibition last fall, with vegetables he stole from Ronnie
Bascom's field, while Ronnie didn't get one prize--Jimmy Joe Belle,
who came here from Derry Pond yesterday to get some lumber 'to
beeld a henhouse for my leetle dog'--old Luke Elliott, who is such
a systematic fiend that he even draws up a schedule of the year on
New Year's day, and charts down all the days he means to get drunk
on--AND STICKS TO IT:--they're all interesting and amusing and
delightful.
"There, I've proved Mrs. Alex Sawyer to be so completely wrong that
I feel quite kindly towards her, even though she did call me a
puss.
"Why don't I like being called a puss, when cats are such nice
things? And I like being called PUSSY.
* * * * * * * *
"April 28, 19--
"Two weeks ago I sent my very best poem, Wind Song, to a magazine
in New York, and to-day it came back with just a little PRINTED
SLIP saying, 'We regret we cannot use this contribution.'
"I feel dreadfully. I suppose I can't really write anything that
is any good.
"I CAN. That magazine will be GLAD to print my pieces some day!
"I didn't tell Mr. Carpenter I sent it. I wouldn't get any
sympathy from him. HE says that five years from now will be time
enough to begin pestering editors. But I KNOW that some poems I've
read in that very magazine were not a bit better than Wind Song.
"I feel more like writing poetry in spring than at any other time.
Mr. Carpenter tells me to fight against the impulse. He says
spring has been responsible for more trash than anything else in
the universe of God.
"Mr. Carpenter's way of talking has a TANG to it.
* * * * * * * *
"May 1, 19--
"Dean is home. He came to his sister's yesterday and this evening
he was here and we walked in the garden, up and down the sundial
walk, and talked. It was splendid to have him back, with his
mysterious green eyes and his nice mouth.
"We had a long conversation. We talked of Algiers and the
transmigration of souls and of being cremated and of profiles--Dean
says I have a good profile--'pure Greek.' I always like Dean's
compliments.
"'Star o' Morning, how you have grown!' he said. 'I left a child
last autumn--and I find a woman!'
"(I will be fourteen in three weeks, and I am tall for my age.
Dean seems to be glad of this--quite unlike Aunt Laura who always
sighs when she lengthens my dresses, and thinks children grow up
too fast.)
"'So goes time by,' I said, quoting the motto on the sundial, and
feeling QUITE SOPHISTICATED.
"'You are almost as tall as I am,' he said; and then added
BITTERLY, 'to be sure Jarback Priest is of no very stately height.'
"I have always shrunk from referring to his shoulder in any way,
but now I said,
"'Dean, please don't sneer at yourself like that--not with me, at
least. I NEVER think of you as Jarback.'
"Dean took my hand and looked right into my eyes as if he were
trying to READ MY VERY SOUL.
"'Are you sure of that, Emily? Don't you often wish that I wasn't
lame--and crooked?'
"'For your sake I do,' I answered, 'but as far as I am concerned it
doesn't make a bit of difference--and never will.'
"'And never will!' Dean repeated the words emphatically. 'If I
were sure of that, Emily--if I were only sure of that.'
"'You CAN be sure of it,' I declared quite warmly. I was vexed
because he seemed to doubt it--and yet something in his expression
made me feel a little uncomfortable. It suddenly made me think of
the time he rescued me from the cliff on Malvern Bay and told me my
life belonged to him since he had saved it. I don't like the
thought of my life belonging to any one but myself--not ANY ONE,
even Dean, much as I like him. And IN SOME WAYS I like Dean better
than any one in the world.
"When it got darker the stars came out and we studied them through
Dean's splendid new field-glasses. It was very fascinating. Dean
knows all about the stars--it seems to me he knows all about
everything. But when I said so, he said,
"'There is one secret I do not know--I would give everything else I
DO know for it--one secret--perhaps I shall never know it. The way
to win--the way to win--'
"'What?' I asked curiously.
"'My heart's desire,' said Dean dreamily, looking at a shimmering
star that seemed to be hung on the very tip of one of the Three
Princesses. 'It seems now as desirable and unobtainable as that
gem-like star, Emily. But--who knows?'
"I wonder what it is Dean wants so much.
* * * * * * * *
"May 4, 19--
"Dean brought me a lovely portfolio from Paris, and I have copied
my favourite verse from The Fringed Gentian on the inside of the
cover. I will read it over every day and remember my vow to 'climb
the Alpine Path.' I begin to see that I will have to do a good bit
of scrambling, though I once expected, I think, to soar right up to
'that far-off goal' on shining wings. Mr. Carpenter has banished
that fond dream.
"'Dig in your toes and hang on with your teeth--that's the only
way,' he says.
"Last night in bed I thought out some lovely titles for the books
I'm going to write in the future--A Lady of High Degree, True to
Faith and Vow, Oh, Rare Pale Margaret (I got that from Tennyson),
The Caste of Vere de Vere (ditto) and A Kingdom by the Sea.
"Now, if I can only get ideas to match the titles!
"I am writing a story called The House Among the Rowans--also a
very good title, I think. But the love talk still bothers me.
Everything of the kind I write seems so stiff and silly the minute
I write it down that it infuriates me. I asked Dean if he could
teach me how to write it properly because he promised long ago that
he would, but he said I was too young yet--said it in that
mysterious way of his which always seems to convey the idea that
there is so much more in his words than the mere sound of them
expresses. I wish I could speak so SIGNIFICANTLY, because it makes
you VERY INTERESTING.
"This evening after school Dean and I began to read The Alhambra
over again, sitting on the stone bench in the garden. That book
always makes me feel as if I had opened a little door and stepped
straight into fairyland.
"'How I would love to see the Alhambra!' I said.
"'We will go to see it sometime--together,' said Dean.
"'Oh, that would be LOVELY,' I cried. 'Do you think we can ever
manage it, Dean?'
"Before Dean could answer I heard Teddy's whistle in Lofty John's
bush--the dear little whistle of two short high notes and one long
low one, that is OUR SIGNAL.
"'Excuse me--I must go--Teddy's calling me,' I said.
"'Must you always go when Teddy calls?' asked Dean.
"I nodded and explained,
"'He only calls like that when he wants me ESPECIALLY and I have
promised I will always go if I possibly can.'
"'_I_ want you ESPECIALLY!' said Dean. 'I came up this evening on
purpose to read The Alhambra with you.'
"Suddenly I felt very unhappy. I wanted to stay with Dean
dreadfully, and yet I felt as if I must go to Teddy. Dean looked
at me piercingly. Then he shut up The Alhambra.
"'Go,' he said.
"I went--but things seemed spoiled, somehow.
* * * * * * * *
"May 10, 19--
"I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was
like a rose garden--very pleasant, but just a little too sweet.
And one was like a pine wood on a mountain--full of balsam and
tang--I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despair. It
was written so beautifully--I can NEVER write like that, I feel
sure. And one--it was just like a pigsty. Dean gave me that one
by mistake. He was very angry with himself when he found it out--
angry and distressed.
"'Star--Star--I would NEVER have given you a book like that--my
confounded carelessness--forgive me. That book is a faithful
picture of one world--but not your world, thank God--nor any world
you will ever be a citizen of. Star, promise me you will forget
that book.'
"'I'll forget it if I can,' I said.
"But I don't know if I can. It was so ugly. I have not been so
happy since I read it. I feel as if my hands were soiled somehow
and I couldn't wash them clean. And I have another queer feeling,
as if SOME GATE HAD BEEN SHUT BEHIND ME, shutting me into a new
world I don't quite understand or like, but through which I must
travel.
"To-night I tried to write a description of Dean in my Jimmy-book
of character sketches. But I didn't succeed. What I wrote seemed
like a photograph--not a portrait. There is something in Dean that
is beyond me.
"Dean took a picture of me the other day with his new camera, but
he wasn't pleased with it.
"'It doesn't look like you,' he said, 'but of course one can never
photograph starlight.'
"Then he added, quite sharply, I thought,
"'Tell that young imp of a Teddy Kent to keep your face out of his
pictures. He has no business to put YOU into every one he draws.'
"'He doesn't!' I cried. 'Why, Teddy never made but the one picture
of me--the one Aunt Nancy STOLE.'
"I said it quite viciously and unashamed, for I've never forgiven
Aunt Nancy for keeping that picture.
"'He's got SOMETHING of you in every picture,' said Dean
stubbornly--'your eyes--the curve of your neck--the tilt of your
head--your personality. That's the worst--I don't mind your eyes
and curves so much, but I won't have that cub putting a bit of your
soul into everything he draws. Probably he doesn't know he's doing
it--which makes it all the worse.'
"'I don't understand you,' I said, QUITE HAUGHTILY. 'But Teddy is
WONDERFUL--Mr. Carpenter says so.'
"'And Emily of New Moon echoes it! Oh, the kid has talent--he'll
do something some day if his morbid mother doesn't ruin his life.
But let him keep his pencil and brush off MY property.'
"Dean laughed as he said it. But I held my head high. I am not
anybody's 'property,' not even in fun. And I NEVER will be.
* * * * * * * *
"May 12, 19--
"Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wallace and Uncle Oliver were all here this
afternoon. I like Uncle Oliver, but I am not much fonder of Aunt
Ruth and Uncle Wallace than I ever was. They held some kind of
family conclave in the parlour with Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura.
Cousin Jimmy was allowed in but I was excluded, although I feel
perfectly certain that it had something to do with me. I think
Aunt Ruth didn't get her own way, either, for she snubbed me
continually all through supper, and said I was growing weedy! Aunt
Ruth generally snubs me and Uncle Wallace patronizes me. I prefer
Aunt Ruth's snubs because I don't have to look as if I liked them.
I endured them to a certain point, and then the lid flew off. Aunt
Ruth said to me,
"'Em'ly, don't contradict,' just as she might have spoken to a MERE
CHILD. I looked her right in the eyes and said COLDLY,
"'Aunt Ruth, I think I am too old to be spoken to in that fashion
now.'
"'You are not too old to be very rude and impertinent,' said Aunt
Ruth, with a sniff, 'and if _I_ were in Elizabeth's place I would
give you a sound box on the ear, Miss.'
"I hate to be Em'ly'd and Miss'd and sniffed at! It seems to me
that Aunt Ruth has ALL the Murray faults, and NONE of their
virtues.
"Uncle Oliver's son Andrew came with him and is going to stay for a
week. He is four years older than I am.
* * * * * * * *
"May 19, 19--
"This is my birthday. I am fourteen years old today. I wrote a
letter 'From myself at fourteen to myself at twenty-four,' sealed
it up and put it away in my cupboard, to be opened on my twenty-
fourth birthday. I made some predictions in it. I wonder if they
will have come to pass when I open it.
"Aunt Elizabeth gave me back all Father's books today. I was so
glad. It seems to me that a part of Father is in those books. His
name is in each one in his own handwriting, and the notes he made
on the margins. They seem like little bits of letters from him. I
have been looking over them all the evening, and Father seems so
NEAR to me again, and I feel both happy and sad.
"One thing spoiled the day for me. In school, when I went up to
the blackboard to work a problem, everybody suddenly began to
titter. I could not imagine why. Then I discovered that some one
had pinned a sheet of foolscap to my back, on which was printed in
big, black letters: 'Emily Byrd Starr, Authoress of The Four-
Legged Duck.' They laughed more than ever when I snatched it off
and threw it in the coal-scuttle. It infuriates me when anyone
ridicules my ambitions like that. I came home angry and sore. But
when I had sat on the steps of the summer-house and looked at one
of Cousin Jimmy's big purple pansies for five minutes all my anger
went away. Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the
heart of a pansy for a little while.
"Besides, THE TIME WILL COME WHEN THEY WILL NOT LAUGH AT ME!
"Andrew went home yesterday. Aunt Elizabeth asked me how I liked
him. She never asked me how I liked anyone before--my likings were
not important enough. I suppose she is beginning to realize that I
am no LONGER A CHILD.
"I said I thought he was good and kind and stupid and
uninteresting.
"Aunt Elizabeth was so annoyed she would not speak to me the whole
evening. Why? I had to tell the truth. And Andrew IS.
* * * * * * * *
"May 21, 19--
"Old Kelly was here to-day for the first time this spring, with a
load of shining new tins. He brought me a bag of candies as usual--
and teased me about getting married, also as usual. But he seemed
to have something on his mind, and when I went to the dairy to get
him the drink of milk he had asked for, he followed me.
"'Gurrl dear,' he said mysteriously. 'I met Jarback Praste in the
lane. Does he be coming here much?'
"I cocked my head at the Murray angle.
"'If you mean Mr. Dean Priest,' I said, 'he comes often. He is a
particular friend of mine.'
"Old Kelly shook his head.
"'Gurrl dear--I warned ye--niver be after saying I didn't warn ye.
I towld ye the day I took ye to Praste Pond niver to marry a
Praste. Didn't I now?'
"'Mr. Kelly, you're too ridiculous,' I said--angry and yet feeling
it was absurd to be angry with Old Jock Kelly. 'I'm not going to
marry anybody. Mr. Priest is old enough to be my father, and I am
just a little girl he helps in her studies.'
"Old Kelly gave his head another shake.
"'I know the Prastes, gurrl dear--and when they do be after setting
their minds on a thing ye might as well try to turn the wind. This
Jarback now--they tell me he's had his eye on ye iver since he
fished ye up from the Malvern rocks--he's just biding his time till
ye get old enough for coorting. They tell me he's an infidel, and
it's well known that whin he was being christened he rached up and
clawed the spectacles off av the minister. So what wud ye ixpect?
I nadn't be telling ye he's lame and crooked--ye can see that for
yerself. Take foolish Ould Kelly's advice and cut loose while
there's time. Now, don't be looking at me like the Murrays, gurrl
dear. Shure, and it's for your own good I do be spaking.'
"I walked off and left him. One COULDN'T argue with him over such
a thing. I WISH people wouldn't put such ideas into my mind. They
stick there like burrs. I won't feel as comfortable with Dean for
weeks now, though I know perfectly well every word Old Kelly said
was nonsense.
"After Old Kelly went away I came up to my room and wrote a full
description of him in a Jimmy-book.
"Ilse has got a new hat trimmed with clouds of blue tulle, and red
cherries, with big blue tulle bows under the chin. I did not like
it and told her so. She was furious and said I was jealous and
hasn't spoken to me for two days. I thought it all over. I knew I
was not jealous, but I concluded I had made a mistake. I will
never again tell anyone a thing like that. It was true but it was
not tactful.
"I hope Ilse will have forgiven me by to-morrow. I miss her
horribly when she is offended with me. She's such a dear thing and
so jolly, and splendid, when she isn't vexed.
"Teddy is a little squiffy with me, too, just now. I THINK it is
because Geoff North walked home with me from prayer-meeting last
Wednesday night. I HOPE that is the reason. I like to feel that I
HAVE THAT MUCH POWER over Teddy.
"I wonder if I ought to have written that down. But it's TRUE.
"If Teddy only knew it, I have been very unhappy and ashamed over
that affair. At first, when Geoff singled me out from all the
girls, I was quite proud of it. It was the very first time I had
had an ESCORT HOME, and Geoff is a town boy, VERY HANDSOME AND
POLISHED, and all the older girls in Blair Water are quite foolish
about him. So I sailed away from the church door with him, feeling
as if I had grown up all at once. But we hadn't gone far before I
was hating him. He was so CONDESCENDING. He seemed to think I was
a simple little country girl who must be quite overwhelmed with the
HONOUR of his company.
"And that was true at first! THAT was what stung me. To think I
had been such a little fool!
"He kept saying, 'Really, you surprise me,' in an affected,
drawling kind of way, whenever I made a remark. And he BORED me.
He couldn't talk sensibly about anything. Or else he wouldn't try
to with me. I was quite savage by the time we got to New Moon.
And then THAT INSUFFERABLE CREATURE asked me to kiss him!
"I drew myself up--oh, I was Murray clear through at that moment,
all right. I FELT I was looking exactly like Aunt Elizabeth.
"'I do not kiss young men,' I said disdainfully.
"Geoff laughed and caught my hand.
"'Why, you little goose, what do you suppose I came home with you
for?' he said.
"I pulled my hand away from him, and walked into the house. But
before I did that, I did something else.
"I SLAPPED HIS FACE!
"Then I came up to my room and cried with shame over being
insulted, and having been so undignified in resenting it. Dignity
is a tradition of New Moon, and I felt that I had been false to it.
"But I think I 'surprised' Geoff North in right good earnest!
* * * * * * * *
"May 24, 19--
"Jennie Strang told me to-day that Geoff North told her brother
that I was 'a regular spitfire' and he had had enough of me.
"Aunt Elizabeth has found out that Geoff came home with me, and
told me to-day that I would not be 'trusted' to go alone to prayer-
meeting again.
* * * * * * * *
"May 25, 19--
"I am sitting here in my room at twilight. The window is open and
the frogs are singing of something that happened very long ago.
All along the middle garden walk the Gay Folk are holding up great
fluted cups of ruby and gold and pearl. It is not raining now, but
it rained all day--a rain scented with lilacs. I like all kinds of
weather and I like rainy days--soft, misty, rainy days when the
Wind Woman just shakes the tops of the spruces gently; and wild,
tempestuous, streaming rainy days. I like being shut in by the
rain--I like to hear it thudding on the roof, and beating on the
panes and pouring off the eaves, while the Wind Woman skirls like a
mad old witch in the woods, and through the garden.
"Still, if it rains when I want to go anywhere I growl just as much
as anybody!
"An evening like this always makes me think of that spring Father
died, three years ago, and that dear little, old house down at
Maywood. I've never been back since. I wonder if anyone is living
in it now. And if Adam-and-Eve and the Rooster Pine and the
Praying Tree are just the same. And who is sleeping in my old room
there, and if anyone is loving the little birches and playing with
the Wind Woman in the spruce barrens. Just as I wrote the words
'spruce barrens' an old memory came back to me. One spring
evening, when I was eight years old, I was running about the
barrens playing hide-and-seek with the Wind Woman, and I found a
little hollow between two spruces that was just carpeted with tiny,
bright-green leaves, when everything else was still brown and
faded. They were so beautiful that THE FLASH came as I looked at
them--it was the very first time it ever came to me. I suppose
that is why I remember those little green leaves so distinctly. No
one else remembers them--perhaps no one else ever saw them. I have
forgotten other leaves, but I remember them every spring and with
each remembrance I feel again the wonder-moment they gave me."
IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
Some of us can recall the exact time in which we reached certain
milestones on life's road--the wonderful hour when we passed from
childhood to girlhood--the enchanted, beautiful--or perhaps the
shattering and horrible--hour when girlhood was suddenly womanhood--
the chilling hour when we faced the fact that youth was definitely
behind us--the peaceful, sorrowful hour of the realization of age.
Emily Starr never forgot the night when she passed the first
milestone, and left childhood behind her for ever.
Every experience enriches life and the deeper such an experience,
the greater the richness it brings. That night of horror and
mystery and strange delight ripened her mind and heart like the
passage of years.
It was a night early in July. The day had been one of intense
heat. Aunt Elizabeth had suffered so much from it that she decided
she would not go to prayer-meeting. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy
and Emily went. Before leaving Emily asked and obtained Aunt
Elizabeth's permission to go home with Ilse Burnley after meeting,
and spend the night. This was a rare treat. Aunt Elizabeth did
not approve of all-night absences as a general thing.
But Dr. Burnley had to be away, and his housekeeper was temporarily
laid up with a broken ankle. Ilse had asked Emily to come over for
the night, and Emily was to be permitted to go. Ilse did not know
this--hardly hoped for it, in fact--but was to be informed at
prayer-meeting. If Ilse had not been late Emily would have told
her before meeting "went in," and the mischances of the night would
probably have been averted; but Ilse, as usual, WAS late, and
everything else followed in course.
Emily sat in the Murray pew, near the top of the church by the
window that looked out into the grove of fir and maple that
surrounded the little white church. This prayer-meeting was not
the ordinary weekly sprinkling of a faithful few. It was a
"special meeting," held in view of the approaching communion
Sunday, and the speaker was not young, earnest Mr. Johnson, to whom
Emily always liked to listen, in spite of her blunder at the
Ladies' Aid Supper but an itinerant evangelist lent by Shrewsbury
for one night. His fame brought out a churchful of people, but
most of the audience declared afterwards that they would much
rather have heard their own Mr. Johnson. Emily looked at him with
her level, critical gaze, and decided that he was oily and
unspiritual. She heard him through a prayer, and thought,
"Giving God good advice, and abusing the devil isn't praying."
She listened to his discourse for a few minutes and made up her
mind that he was blatant and illogical and sensational, and then
proceeded, coolly, to shut mind and ears to him and disappear into
dreamland--something which she could generally do at will when
anxious to escape from discordant realities.
Outside, moonlight was still sifting in a rain of silver through
the firs and maples, though an ominous bank of cloud was making up
in the north-west, and repeated rumblings of thunder came on the
silent air of the hot summer night--a windless night for the most
part, though occasionally a sudden breath that seemed more like a
sigh than a breeze brushed through the trees, and set their shadows
dancing in weird companies. There was something strange about the
night in its mingling of placid, accustomed beauty with the omens
of rising storm, that intrigued Emily, and she spent half the time
of the evangelist's address in composing a mental description of it
for her Jimmy-book. The rest of the time she studied such of the
audience as were within her range of vision.
This was something that Emily never wearied of, in public
assemblages, and the older she grew the more she liked it. It was
fascinating to study those varied faces, and speculate on the
histories written in mysterious hieroglyphics over them. They had
all their inner, secret lives, those men and women, known to no one
but themselves and God. Others could only guess at them, and Emily
loved this game of guessing. At times it seemed veritably to her
that it was more than guessing--that in some intense moments she
could pass into their souls and read therein hidden motives and
passions that were, perhaps, a mystery even to their possessors.
It was never easy for Emily to resist the temptation to do this
when the power came, although she never yielded to it without an
uneasy feeling that she was committing trespass. It was quite a
different thing from soaring on the wings of fancy into an ideal
world of creation--quite different from the exquisite, unearthly
beauty of "the flash;" neither of these gave her any moments of
pause or doubt. But to slip on tiptoe through some momentarily
unlatched door, as it were, and catch a glimpse of masked,
unuttered, unutterable things in the hearts and souls of others,
was something that always brought, along with its sense of power, a
sense of the forbidden--a sense even of sacrilege. Yet Emily did
not know if she would ever be able to resist the allure of it--she
had always peered through the door and seen the things before she
realized that she was doing it. They were nearly always terrible
things. Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not often
hidden--only ugliness and deformity.
"Elder Forsyth would have been a persecutor in old times," she
thought. "He has the face of one. This very minute he is loving
the preacher because he is describing hell, and Elder Forsyth
thinks all his enemies will go there. Yes, that is why he is
looking pleased. I think Mrs. Bowes flies off on a broomstick o'
nights. She LOOKS it. Four hundred years ago she would have been
a witch, and Elder Forsyth would have burned her at the stake. She
hates everybody--it must be terrible to hate everybody--to have
your soul full of hatred. I must try to describe such a person in
my Jimmy-book. I wonder if hate has driven ALL love out of her
soul, or if there is a little bit left in it for any one or any
thing. If there is it might save her. That would be a good idea
for a story. I must jot it down before I go to bed--I'll borrow a
bit of paper from Ilse. No--here's a bit in my hymn-book. I'll
write it now.
"I wonder what all these people would say if they were suddenly
asked what they wanted most, and HAD to answer truthfully. I
wonder how many of these husbands and wives would like a change?
Chris Farrar and Mrs. Chris would--everybody knows that. I can't
think why I feel so sure that James Beatty and HIS wife would, too.
They SEEM to be quite contented with each other--but once I saw her
look at him when she did not know anyone was watching--oh, it
seemed to me I saw right into her soul, through her eyes, and she
hated him--and feared him. She is sitting there now, beside him,
little and thin and dowdy, and her face is grey and her hair is
faded--but she, herself, is one red flame of rebellion. What SHE
wants most is to be free from him--or just to STRIKE BACK ONCE.
That would satisfy her.
"There's Dean--I wonder what brought him to prayer-meeting? His
face is very solemn, but his eyes are mocking Mr. Sampson--what's
that Mr. Sampson's saying?--oh, something about the wise virgins.
I hate the wise virgins--I think they were horribly selfish. They
MIGHT have given the poor foolish ones a little oil. I don't
believe Jesus meant to praise them any more than He meant to praise
the unjust steward--I think he was just trying to warn foolish
people that they must not BE careless, and foolish, because if they
were, prudent, selfish folks would never help them out. I wonder
if it's very wicked to feel that I'd rather be outside with the
foolish ones trying to help and comfort them, than inside feasting
with the wise ones. It would be MORE INTERESTING, too.
"There's Mrs. Kent and Teddy. Oh, SHE wants something terribly--I
don't know what it is but it's something she can never get, and the
hunger for it goads her night and day. That is why she holds Teddy
so closely--I know. But I don't know what it is that makes her so
different from other women. I can never get a peep into HER soul--
she shuts every one out--the door is never unlatched.
"What do _I_ want most? It is to climb the Alpine Path to the very
top,
"And write upon its shining scroll
A woman's humble name.
"We're all hungry. We all want some bread of life--but Mr. Sampson
can't give it to us. I wonder what HE wants most? His soul is so
muggy I can't see into it. He has a lot of sordid wants--he
doesn't want ANYTHING enough to dominate him. Mr. Johnson wants to
help people and preach truth--he really does. And Aunt Janey wants
most of all to see the whole heathen world Christianized. Her soul
hasn't any dark wishes in it. I know what Mr. Carpenter wants--his
one lost chance again. Katherine Morris wants her youth back--she
hates us younger girls BECAUSE we are young. Old Malcolm Strang
just wants to live--just one more year--always just one more year--
just to live--just not to die. It must be horrible to have nothing
to live for except just to escape dying. Yet he believes in
heaven--he thinks he will go there. If he could see my flash just
once he wouldn't hate the thought of dying so, poor old man. And
Mary Strang wants to die--before something terrible she is afraid
of tortures her to death. They say it's cancer. There's Mad Mr.
Morrison up in the gallery--we all know what HE wants--to find his
Annie. Tom Sibley wants the moon, I think--and knows he can never
get it--that's why people say he's not all there. Amy Crabbe wants
Max Terry to come back to her--nothing else matters to her.
"I must write all these things down in my Jimmy-book to-morrow.
They are fascinating--but, after all, I like writing of beautiful
things better. Only--these things have a TANG beautiful things
don't have some way. Those woods out there--how wonderful they are
in their silver and shadow. The moonlight is doing strange things
to the tombstones--it makes even the ugly ones beautiful. But it's
terribly hot--it is smothering here--and those thunder-growls are
coming nearer. I hope Ilse and I will get home before the storm
breaks. Oh, Mr. Sampson, Mr. Sampson, God isn't an angry God--you
don't know anything about Him if you say that--He's sorrowful, I'm
sure, when we're foolish and wicked, but He doesn't fly into
tantrums. Your God and Ellen Greene's God are exactly alike. I'd
like to get up and tell you so, but it isn't a Murray tradition to
sass back in church. You make God ugly--and He's beautiful. I
hate you for making God ugly, you fat little man."
Whereupon Mr. Sampson, who had several times noted Emily's intent,
probing gaze, and thought he was impressing her tremendously with a
sense of her unsaved condition, finished with a final urgent whoop
of entreaty, and sat down. The audience in the close, oppressive
atmosphere of the crowded, lamplit church gave an audible sigh of
relief, and scarcely waited for the hymn and benediction before
crowding out to purer air. Emily, caught in the current, and
parted from Aunt Laura, was swept out by way of the choir door to
the left of the pulpit. It was some time before she could
disentangle herself from the throng and hurry around to the front
where she expected to meet Ilse. Here was another dense, though
rapidly thinning crowd, in which she found no trace of Ilse.
Suddenly Emily noticed that she did not have her hymn-book.
Hastily she dashed back to the choir door. She must have left her
hymn-book in the pew--and it would never do to leave it there. In
it she had placed for safe-keeping a slip of paper on which she had
furtively jotted down some fragmentary notes during the last hymn--
a rather biting description of scrawny Miss Potter in the choir--a
couple of satiric sentences regarding Mr. Sampson himself--and a
few random fancies which she desired most of all to hide because
there was in them something of dream and vision which would have
made the reading of them by alien eyes a sacrilege.
Old Jacob Banks, the sexton, a little blind and more than a little
deaf, was turning out the lamps as she went in. He had reached the
two on the wall behind the pulpit. Emily caught her hymn-book from
the rack--her slip of paper was not in it. By the faint gleam of
light, as Jacob Banks turned out the last lamp, she saw it on the
floor, under the seat of the pew in front. She kneeled down and
reached after it. As she did so Jacob went out and locked the
choir door. Emily did not notice his going--the church was still
faintly illuminated by the moon that as yet outrode the rapidly
climbing thunder-heads. That was not the right slip of paper after
all--WHERE could it be?--oh, here, at last. She caught it up and
ran to the door which would not open.
For the first time Emily realized that Jacob Banks had gone--that
she was alone in the church. She wasted time trying to open the
door--then in calling Mr. Banks. Finally she ran down the aisle
into the front porch. As she did so she heard the last buggy turn
gridingly at the gate and drive away: at the same time the moon was
suddenly swallowed up by the black clouds and the church was
engulfed in darkness--close, hot, smothering, almost tangible
darkness. Emily screamed in sudden panic--beat on the door--
frantically twisted the handle--screamed again. Oh, everybody
could not have gone--surely somebody would hear her! "Aunt Laura"--
"Cousin Jimmy"--"Ilse"--then finally in a wail of despair--"Oh,
Teddy--Teddy!"
A blue-white stream of lightning swept the porch, followed by a
crash of thunder. One of the worst storms in Blair Water annals
had begun--and Emily Starr was locked alone in the dark church in
the maple woods--she, who had always been afraid of thunderstorms
with a reasonless, instinctive fear which she could never banish
and only partially control.
She sank, quivering, on a step of the gallery stairs, and huddled
there in a heap. Surely some one would come back when it was
discovered she was missing. But WOULD it be discovered? Who would
miss her? Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy would suppose she was with
Ilse, as had been arranged. Ilse, who had evidently gone,
believing that Emily was not coming with her, would suppose she had
gone home to New Moon. Nobody knew where she was--nobody would
come back for her. She must stay here in this horrible, lonely,
black, echoing place--for now the church she knew so well and loved
for its old associations of Sunday-school and song and homely faces
of dear friends had become a ghostly, alien place full of haunting
terrors. There was no escape. The windows could not be opened.
The church was ventilated by transom-like panes near the top of
them, which were opened and shut by pulling a wire. She could not
get up to them, and she could not have got through them if she had.
She cowered down on the step, shuddering from head to foot. By now
the thunder and lightning were almost incessant: rain blew against
the windows, not in drops but sheets, and intermittent volleys of
hail bombarded them. The wind had risen suddenly with the storm
and shrieked around the church. It was not her old dear friend of
childhood, the bat-winged, misty "Wind Woman," but a legion of
yelling witches. "The Prince of the Power of the Air rules the
wind," she had heard Mad Mr. Morrison say once. Why should she
think of Mad Mr. Morrison now? How the windows rattled as if demon
riders of the storm were shaking them! She had heard a wild tale
of some one hearing the organ play in the empty church one night
several years ago. SUPPOSE IT BEGAN PLAYING NOW! No fancy seemed
too grotesque or horrible to come true. Didn't the stairs creak?
The blackness between the lightnings was so intense that it looked
THICK. Emily was frightened of it touching her and buried her face
in her lap.
Presently, however, she got a grip on herself and began to reflect
that she was not living up to Murray traditions. Murrays were not
supposed to go to pieces like this. Murrays were not foolishly
panicky in thunder-storms. Those old Murrays sleeping in the
private graveyard across the pond would have scorned her as a
degenerate descendant. Aunt Elizabeth would have said that it was
the Starr coming out in her. She must be brave: after all, she had
lived through worse hours than this--the night she had eaten of
Lofty John's poisoned apple*--the afternoon she had fallen over the
rocks of Malvern Bay. This had come so suddenly on her that she
had been in the throes of terror before she could brace herself
against it. She MUST pick up. Nothing dreadful was going to
happen to her--nothing worse than staying all night in the church.
In the morning she could attract the attention of some one passing.
She had been here over an hour now, and nothing had happened to
her--unless indeed her hair had turned white, as she understood
hair sometimes did. There had been such a funny, crinkly, crawly
feeling at the roots of it at times. Emily held out her long
braid, ready for the next flash. When it came she saw that her
hair was still black. She sighed with relief and began to chirk
up. The storm was passing. The thunder-peals were growing fainter
and fewer, though the rain continued to fall and the wind to drive
and shriek around the church, whining through the big keyhole
eerily.
* See Emily of New Moon.
Emily straightened her shoulders and cautiously let down her feet
to a lower step. She thought she had better try to get back into
the church. If another cloud came up, the steeple might be struck--
steeples were always getting struck, she remembered: it might come
crashing down on the, porch right over her. She would go in and
sit down in the Murray pew: she would be cool and sensible and
collected: she was ashamed of her panic--but it HAD been terrible.
All around her now was a soft, heavy darkness, still with that same
eerie sensation of something you could touch, born perhaps of the
heat and humidity of the July night. The porch was so small and
narrow--she would not feel so smothered and oppressed in the
church.
She put out her hand to grasp a stair rail and pull herself to her
cramped feet. Her hand touched--not the stair rail--merciful
heavens, what was it?--something HAIRY--Emily's shriek of horror
froze on her lips--padding footsteps passed down the steps beside
her; a flash of lightning came and at the bottom of the steps was a
huge black dog, which had turned and was looking up at her before
he was blotted out in the returning darkness. Even then for a
moment she saw his eyes blazing redly at her, like a fiend's.
Emily's hair roots began to crawl and crinkle again--a very large,
very cold caterpillar began to creep slowly up her spine. She
could not have moved a muscle had life depended on it. She could
not even cry out. The only thing she could think of at first was
the horrible demon hound of the Manx Castle in Peveril of the Peak.
For a few minutes her terror was so great that it turned her
physically sick. Then, with an effort which was unchild-like in
its determination--I think it was at that moment Emily wholly
ceased to be a child--she recovered her self-control. She WOULD
NOT yield to fear--she set her teeth and clenched her trembling
hands; she WOULD be brave--sensible. That was only a commonplace
Blair Water dog which had followed its owner--some rapscallion boy--
into the gallery, and got itself left behind. The thing had
happened before. A flash of lightning showed her that the porch
was empty. Evidently the dog had gone into the church. Emily
decided that she would stay where she was. She had recovered from
her panic, but she did not want to feel the sudden touch of a cold
nose or a hairy flank in the darkness. She could never forget the
awfulness of the moment when she HAD touched the creature.
It must be all of twelve o'clock now--it had been ten when the
meeting came out. The noise of the storm had for the most part
died away. The drive and shriek of the wind came occasionally,
but between its gusts there was a silence, broken only by the
diminishing raindrops. Thunder still muttered faintly and
lightning came at frequent intervals, but of a paler, gentler
flame--not the rending glare that had seemed to wrap the very
building in intolerable blue radiance, and scorch her eye.
Gradually her heart began to beat normally. The power of rational
thought returned. She did not like her predicament, but she began
to find dramatic possibilities in it. Oh, what a chapter for her
diary--or her Jimmy-book--and, beyond it, for that novel she would
write some day! It was a situation expressly shaped for the
heroine--who must, of course, be rescued by the hero. Emily began
constructing the scene--adding to it--intensifying it--hunting for
words to express it. This was rather--interesting--after all.
Only she wished she knew just where the dog was. How weirdly the
pale lightning gleamed on the gravestones which she could see
through the porch window opposite her! How strange the familiar
valley beyond looked in the recurrent illuminations! How the wind
moaned and sighed and complained--but it was her own Wind Woman
again. The Wind Woman was one of her childish fancies that she had
carried over into maturity, and it comforted her now, with a sense
of ancient companionship. The wild riders of the storm were gone--
her fairy friend had come back. Emily gave a sigh that was almost
of contentment. The worst was over--and really, hadn't she behaved
pretty well? She began to feel quite self-respecting again.
All at once Emily knew she was not alone!
How she knew it she could not have told. She had heard nothing--
seen nothing--felt nothing: and yet she knew, beyond all doubt or
dispute, that there was a Presence in the darkness above her on the
stairs.
She turned and looked up. It was horrible to look, but it was less
horrible to feel that--Something--was in front of you than that it
was behind you. She stared with wildly dilated eyes into the
darkness, but she could see nothing. Then--she heard a low laugh
above her--a laugh that almost made her heart stop beating--the
very dreadful, inhuman laughter of the unsound in mind. She did
not need the lightning flash that came then to tell her that Mad
Mr. Morrison was somewhere on the stairs above her. But it came--
she saw him--she felt as if she were sinking in some icy gulf of
coldness--she could not even scream.
The picture of him, etched on her brain by the lightning, never
left her. He was crouched five steps above her, with his gray head
thrust forward. She saw the frenzied gleam of his eyes--the fang-
like yellow teeth exposed in a horrible smile--the long, thin,
blood-red hand outstretched towards her, almost touching her
shoulder.
Sheer panic shattered Emily's trance. She bounded to her feet with
a piercing scream of terror.
"Teddy! Teddy! Save me!" she shrieked madly.
She did not know why she called for Teddy--she did not even realize
that she HAD called him--she only remembered it afterwards, as one
might recall the waking shriek in a nightmare--she only knew that
she MUST have help--that she would die if that awful hand touched
her. IT MUST NOT TOUCH HER.
She made a mad spring down the steps, rushed into the church, and
up the aisle. She must hide before the next flash came--but not in
the Murray pew. He might look for her there. She dived into one
of the middle pews and crouched down in its corner on the floor.
Her body was bathed in an ice-cold perspiration. She was wholly in
the grip of uncontrollable terror. All she could think of was that
it must not touch her--that blood-red hand of the mad old man.
Moments passed that seemed like years. Presently she heard
footsteps--footsteps that came and went yet seemed to approach her
slowly. Suddenly she knew what he was doing. He was going into
every pew, not waiting for the lightning, to feel about for her.
He WAS looking for her, then--she had heard that sometimes he
followed young girls, thinking they were Annie. If he caught them
he held them with one hand and stroked their hair and faces fondly
with the other, mumbling foolish, senile endearments. He had never
harmed anyone, but he had never let anyone go until she was rescued
by some other person. It was said that Mary Paxton of Derry Pond
had never been quite the same again; her nerves never recovered
from the shock.
Emily knew that it was only a question of time before he would
reach the pew where she crouched--feeling about with those hands!
All that kept her senses in her frozen body was the thought that if
she lost consciousness those hands would touch her--hold her--
caress her. The next lightning flash showed him entering the
adjoining pew. Emily sprang up and out and rushed to the other
side of the church. She hid again: he would search her out, but
she could again elude him: this might go on all night: a madman's
strength would outlast hers: at last she might fall exhausted and
he would pounce on her.
For what seemed hours to Emily, this mad game of hide-and-seek
lasted. It was in reality about half an hour. She was hardly a
rational creature at all, any more than her demented pursuer. She
was merely a crouching, springing, shrieking thing of horror. Time
after time he hunted her out with his cunning, implacable patience.
The last time she was near one of the porch doors, and in
desperation she sprang through it and slammed it in his face. With
the last ounce of her strength she tried to hold the knob from
turning in his grasp. And as she strove she heard--was she
dreaming?--Teddy's voice calling to her from the steps outside the
outer door.
"Emily--Emily--are you there?"
She did not know how he had come--she did not wonder--she only knew
he WAS there!
"Teddy, I'm locked in the church!" she shrieked--"and Mad Mr.
Morrison is here--oh--quick--quick--save me--save me!"
"The key of the door is hanging up in there on a nail at the right
side!" shouted Teddy. "Can you get it and unlock the door? If you
can't I'll smash the porch window."
The clouds broke at that moment and the porch was filled with
moonlight. In it she saw plainly the big key, hanging high on the
wall beside the front door. She dashed at it and caught it as Mad
Mr. Morrison wrenched upon the door and sprang into the porch, his
dog behind him. Emily unlocked the outer door and stumbled out
into Teddy's arms just in time to elude that outstretched, blood-
red hand. She heard Mad Mr. Morrison give a wild, eerie shriek of
despair as she escaped him.
Sobbing, shaking, she clung to Teddy.
"Oh, Teddy, take me away--take me quick--oh, don't let him touch
me, Teddy--don't let him touch me!"
Teddy swung her behind him and faced Mad Mr. Morrison on the stone
step.
"How dare you frighten her so?" he demanded angrily.
Mad Mr. Morrison smiled deprecatingly in the moonlight. All at
once he was not wild or violent--only a heart-broken old man who
sought his own.
"I want Annie," he mumbled. "Where is Annie? I thought I had
found her in there. I only wanted to find my beautiful Annie."
"Annie isn't here," said Teddy, tightening his hold on Emily's cold
little hand.
"Can you tell me where Annie is?" entreated Mad Mr. Morrison,
wistfully. "Can you tell me where my dark-haired Annie is?"
Teddy was furious with Mad Mr. Morrison for frightening Emily, but
the old man's piteous entreaty touched him--and the artist in him
responded to the values of the picture presented against the
background of the white, moonlit church. He thought he would like
to paint Mad Mr. Morrison as he stood there, tall and gaunt, in his
gray "duster" coat, with his long white hair and beard, and the
ageless quest in his hollow, sunken eyes.
"No--no--I don't know where she is," he said gently, "but I think
you will find her sometime."
Mad Mr. Morrison sighed.
"Oh, yes. Sometime I will overtake her. Come, my dog, we will
seek her."
Followed by his old black dog he went down the steps, across the
green and down the long, wet, tree-shadowed road. So going, he
passed out of Emily's life. She never saw Mad Mr. Morrison again.
But she looked after him understandingly, and forgave him. To
himself he was not the repulsive old man he seemed to her; he was a
gallant young lover seeking his lost and lovely bride. The pitiful
beauty of his quest intrigued her, even in the shaking reaction
from her hour of agony.
"Poor Mr. Morrison," she sobbed, as Teddy half led, half carried
her to one of the old flat gravestones at the side of the church.
They sat there until Emily recovered composure and managed to tell
her tale--or the outlines of it. She felt she could never tell--
perhaps not even write in a Jimmy-book--the whole of its racking
horror. THAT was beyond words.
"And to think," she sobbed, "that the key was there all the time.
I never knew it."
"Old Jacob Banks always locks the front door with its big key on
the inside, and then hangs it up on that nail," said Teddy. "He
locks the choir door with a little key, which he takes home. He
has always done that since the time, three years ago, when he lost
the big key and was weeks before he found it."
Suddenly Emily awoke to the strangeness of Teddy's coming.
"How did you happen to come, Teddy?"
"Why, I heard you call me," he said. "You did call me, didn't
you?"
"Yes," said Emily, slowly, "I called for you when I saw Mad Mr.
Morrison first. But, Teddy, you couldn't have heard me--you
COULDN'T. The Tansy Patch is a mile from here."
"I DID hear you," said Teddy, stubbornly. "I was asleep and it
woke me up. You called 'Teddy, Teddy, save me'--it was your voice
as plain as I ever heard it in my life. I got right up and hurried
on my clothes and came here as fast as I could."
"How did you know I was here?"
"Why--I don't know," said Teddy confusedly. "I didn't stop to
think--I just seemed to KNOW you were in the church when I heard
you calling me, and I must get here as quick as I could. It's--
it's all--funny," he concluded lamely.
"It's--it's--it frightens me a little." Emily shivered. "Aunt
Elizabeth says I have second sight--you remember Ilse's mother?
Mr. Carpenter says I'm psychic--I don't know just what that means,
but think I'd rather not be it."
She shivered again. Teddy thought she was cold and, having nothing
else to put around her, put his arm--somewhat tentatively, since
Murray pride and Murray dignity might be outraged. Emily was not
cold in body, but a little chill had blown over her soul.
Something supernatural--some mystery she could not understand--had
brushed too near her in that strange summoning. Involuntarily she
nestled a little closer to Teddy, acutely conscious of the boyish
tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his boyish shyness.
Suddenly she knew that she liked Teddy better than anybody--better
even than Aunt Laura or Ilse or Dean.
Teddy's arm tightened a little.
"Anyhow, I'm glad I got here in time," he said. "If I hadn't that
crazy old man might have frightened you to death."
They sat so for a few minutes in silence. Everything seemed very
wonderful and beautiful--and a little unreal. Emily thought she
must be in a dream, or in one of her own wonder tales. The storm
had passed, and the moon was shining clearly once more. The cool
fresh air was threaded with beguiling voices--the fitful voice of
raindrops falling from the shaken boughs of the maple woods behind
them--the freakish voice of the Wind Woman around the white church--
the far-off, intriguing voice of the sea--and, still finer and
rarer, the little, remote, detached voices of the night. Emily
heard them all, more with the ears of her soul than of her body, it
seemed, as she had never heard them before. Beyond were fields and
groves and roads, pleasantly suggestive and elusive, as if brooding
over elfish secrets in the moonlight. Silver-white daisies were
nodding and swaying all over the graveyard above graves remembered
and graves forgotten. An owl laughed delightfully to itself in the
old pine. At the magical sound Emily's mystic flash swept over
her, swaying her like a strong wind. She felt as if she and Teddy
were all alone in a wonderful new world, created for themselves
only out of youth and mystery and delight. They seemed,
themselves, to be part of the faint, cool fragrance of the night,
of the owl's laughter, of the daisies blowing in the shadowy air.
As for Teddy, he was thinking that Emily looked very sweet in the
pale moonshine, with her fringed, mysterious eyes and the little
dark love-curls clinging to her ivory neck. He tightened his arm a
little more--and still Murray pride and Murray dignity made not a
particle of protest.
"Emily," whispered Teddy, "you're the sweetest girl in the world."
The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so
many millions of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters.
But when you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of
your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had
just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and
however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you
heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great
moment of your life. Emily thrilled, from the crown of her head to
the toes of her slippered feet, with a sensation of hitherto
unknown and almost terrifying sweetness--a sensation that was to
sense what her "flash" was to spirit. It is quite conceivable and
not totally reprehensible that the next thing that happened might
have been a kiss. Emily thought Teddy was going to kiss her: Teddy
knew he was: and the odds are that he wouldn't have had his face
slapped as Geoff North had had.
But it was not to be. A shadow that had slipped in at the gate and
drifted across the wet grass, halted beside them, and touched
Teddy's shoulder, just as he bent his glossy black head. He looked
up, startled. Emily looked up. Mrs. Kent was standing there,
bareheaded, her scarred face clear in the moonlight, looking at
them tragically.
Emily and Teddy both stood up so suddenly that they seemed
veritably to have been jerked to their feet. Emily's fairy world
vanished like a dissolving bubble. She was in a different world
altogether--an absurd, ridiculous one. Yes, ridiculous.
Everything had suddenly become ridiculous. COULD anything be more
ridiculous than to be caught here with Teddy, BY HIS MOTHER, at two
o'clock at night--what was that horrid word she had lately heard
for the first time?--oh, yes, SPOONING--that was it--spooning on
George Horton's eighty-year-old tombstone? That was how other
people would look at it. How could a thing be so beautiful one
moment and so absurd the next? She was one horrible scorch of
shame from head to feet. And Teddy--she knew Teddy was feeling
like a fool.
To Mrs. Kent it was not ridiculous--it was dreadful. To her
abnormal jealousy the incident had the most sinister significance.
She looked at Emily with her hollow, hungry eyes.
"So you are trying to steal my son from me," she said. "He is all
I have and you are trying to steal him."
"Oh, Mother, for goodness' sake, be sensible!" muttered Teddy.
"He--he tells me to be sensible," Mrs. Kent echoed tragically to
the moon. "Sensible!"
"Yes, sensible," said Teddy angrily. "There's nothing to make such
a fuss about. Emily was locked in the church by accident and Mad
Mr. Morrison was there, too, and nearly frightened her to death. I
came to let her out and we were sitting here for a few minutes
until she got over her fright and was able to walk home. That's
all."
"How did you know she was here?" demanded Mrs. Kent.
How indeed! This was a hard question to answer. The truth sounded
like a silly, stupid invention. Nevertheless, Teddy told it.
"She called me," he said bluntly.
"And you heard her--a mile away. Do you expect me to believe
that?" said Mrs. Kent, laughing wildly.
Emily had by this time recovered her poise. At no time in her life
was Emily Byrd Starr ever disconcerted for long. She drew herself
up proudly and in the dim light, in spite of her Starr features,
she looked much as Elizabeth Murray must have looked thirty years
before.
"Whether you believe it or not it is true, Mrs. Kent," she said
haughtily. "I am not stealing your son--I do not want him--he can
go."
"I'm going to take you home first, Emily," said Teddy. He folded
his arms and threw back his head and tried to look as stately as
Emily. He felt that he was a dismal failure at it, but it imposed
on Mrs. Kent. She began to cry.
"Go--go," she said. "Go to her--desert me."
Emily was thoroughly angry now. If this irrational woman persisted
in making a scene, very well: a scene she should have.
"I won't let him take me home," she said, freezingly. "Teddy, go
with your mother."
"Oh, you command him, do you? He must do as you tell him, must
he?" cried Mrs. Kent, who now seemed to lose all control of
herself. Her tiny form was shaken with violent sobs. She wrung
her hands.
"He shall choose for himself," she cried. "He shall go with you--
or come with me. Choose, Teddy, for yourself. You shall not do
her bidding. Choose!"
She was fiercely dramatic again, as she lifted her hand and pointed
it at poor Teddy.
Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male
creature does when two women are quarrelling about him in his
presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away. What a mess to
be in--and to be made ridiculous like this before Emily! Why on
earth couldn't his mother behave like other boys' mothers? Why
must she be so intense and exacting? He knew Blair Water gossip
said she was "a little touched." He did not believe that. But--
but--well, in short here WAS a mess. You came back to that every
time. What on earth was he to do? If he took Emily home he knew
his mother would cry and pray for days. On the other hand to
desert Emily after her dreadful experience in the church, and leave
her to traverse that lonely road alone was unthinkable. But Emily
now dominated the situation. She was very angry, with the icy
anger of old Hugh Murray that did not dissipate itself in idle
bluster, but went straight to the point.
"You are a foolish, selfish woman," she said, "and you will make
your son hate you."
"Selfish! You call me selfish," sobbed Mrs. Kent. "I live only
for Teddy--he is all I have to live for."
"You ARE selfish." Emily was standing straight: her eyes had gone
black: her voice was cutting: "the Murray look" was on her face,
and in the pale moonlight it was a rather fearsome thing. She
wondered, as she spoke, how she knew certain things. But she DID
know them. "You think you love him--it is only yourself you love.
You are determined to spoil his life. You won't let him go to
Shrewsbury because it will hurt you to let him go away from you.
You have let your jealousy of everything he cares for eat your
heart out, and master you. You won't bear a little pain for his
sake. You are not a mother at all. Teddy has a great talent--
every one says so. You ought to be proud of him--you ought to give
him his chance. But you won't--and some day he will hate you for
it--yes, he will."
"Oh, no, no," moaned Mrs. Kent. She held up her hands as if to
ward off a blow and shrank back against Teddy. "Oh, you are cruel--
cruel. You don't know what I've suffered--you don't know what
ache is always at my heart. He is all I have--all. I have nothing
else--not even a memory. You don't understand. I can't--I can't
give him up."
"If you let your jealousy ruin his life you will lose him," said
Emily inexorably. She had always been afraid of Mrs. Kent. Now
she was suddenly no longer afraid of her--she knew she would never
be afraid of her again. "You hate everything he cares for--you
hate his friends and his dog and his drawing. You know you do.
But you can't keep him that way, Mrs. Kent. And you will find out
when it is too late. Good night, Teddy. Thank you again for
coming to my rescue. Good night, Mrs. Kent."
Emily's good night was very final. She turned and stalked across
the green without another glance, holding her head high. Down the
wet road she marched--at first very angry--then, as anger ebbed,
very tired--oh, horribly tired. She discovered that she was fairly
shaking with weariness. The emotions of the night had exhausted
her, and now--what to do? She did not like the idea of going home
to New Moon. Emily felt that she could never face outraged Aunt
Elizabeth if the various scandalous doings of this night should be
discovered. She turned in at the gate of Dr. Burnley's house. His
doors were never locked. Emily slipped into the front hall as the
dawn began to whiten in the sky and curled up on the lounge behind
the staircase. There was no use in waking Ilse. She would tell
her the whole story in the morning and bind her to secrecy--all, at
least, except one thing Teddy had said, and the episode of Mrs.
Kent. One was too beautiful, and the other too disagreeable to be
talked about. Of course, Mrs. Kent wasn't like other women and
there was no use in feeling too badly about it. Nevertheless, she
had wrecked and spoiled a frail, beautiful something--she had
blotched with absurdity a moment that should have been eternally
lovely. And she had, of course, made poor Teddy feel like an ass.
THAT, in the last analysis, was what Emily really could not
forgive.
As she drifted off to sleep she recalled drowsily the events of
that bewildering night--her imprisonment in the lonely church--the
horror of touching the dog--the worse horror of Mad Mr. Morrison's
pursuit--her rapture of relief at Teddy's voice--the brief little
moonlit idyll in the graveyard--of all places for an idyll!--the
tragi-comic advent of poor morbid, jealous Mrs. Kent.
"I hope I wasn't too hard on her," thought Emily as she drifted
into slumber. "If I was I'm sorry. I'll have to write it down as
a bad deed in my diary. I feel somehow as if I'd grown up all at
once tonight--yesterday seems years away. But what a chapter it
will make for my diary. I'll write it all down--all but Teddy's
saying I was the sweetest girl in the world. THAT'S too--dear--to
write. I'll--just--REMEMBER it."
"AS ITHERS SEE US"
Emily had finished mopping up the kitchen floor at New Moon and was
absorbed in sanding it in the beautiful and complicated "herring-
bone pattern" which was one of the New Moon traditions, having been
invented, so it was said, by great-great-grandmother of "Here I
stay" fame. Aunt Laura had taught Emily how to do it and Emily was
proud of her skill. Even Aunt Elizabeth had condescended to say
that Emily sanded the famous pattern very well, and when Aunt
Elizabeth praised, further comment was superfluous. New Moon was
the only place in Blair Water where the old custom of sanding the
floor was kept up; other housewives had long ago begun to use "new-
fangled" devices and patent cleaners for making their floors white.
But Dame Elizabeth Murray would none of such; as long as she
reigned at New Moon so long should candles burn and sanded floors
gleam whitely. Aunt Elizabeth had exasperated Emily somewhat by
insisting that the latter should put on Aunt Laura's old "Mother
Hubbard" while she was scrubbing the floor. A "Mother Hubbard," it
may be necessary to explain to those of this generation, was a
loose and shapeless garment which served principally as a sort of
morning gown and was liked in its day because it was cool and
easily put on. Aunt Elizabeth, it is quite unnecessary to say,
disapproved entirely of Mother Hubbards. She considered them the
last word in slovenliness, and Laura was never permitted to have
another one. But the old one, though its original pretty lilac
tint had faded to a dingy white, was still too "good" to be
banished to the rag bag; and it was this which Emily had been told
to put on.
Emily detested Mother Hubbards as heartily as Aunt Elizabeth
herself did. They were worse, she considered, even than the hated
"baby aprons" of her first summer at New Moon. She knew she looked
ridiculous in Aunt Laura's Mother Hubbard, which came to her feet,
and hung in loose, unbeautiful lines from her thin young shoulders;
and Emily had a horror of being "ridiculous." She had once shocked
Aunt Elizabeth by coolly telling her that she would "rather be bad
than ridiculous." Emily had scrubbed and sanded with one eye on
the door, ready to run if any stranger loomed up while she had on
that hideous wrapper.
It was not, as Emily very well knew, a Murray tradition to "run."
At New Moon you stood your ground, no matter what you had on--the
presupposition being that you were always neatly and properly
habited for the occupation of the moment. Emily recognized the
propriety of this, yet was, nevertheless, foolish and young enough
to feel that she would die of shame if seen by anyone in Aunt
Laura's Mother Hubbard. It was neat--it was clean--but it was
"ridiculous." There you were!
Just as Emily finished sanding and turned to place her can of sand
in the niche under the kitchen mantel, where it had been kept from
time immemorial, she heard strange voices in the kitchen yard. A
hasty glimpse through the window revealed to her the owners of the
voices--Miss Beulah Potter, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla Potter, calling,
no doubt, in regard to the projected Ladies' Aid Social. They were
coming to the back door as was the Blair Water custom when running
in to see your neighbours, informally or on business; they were
already past the gay platoons of hollyhocks with which Cousin Jimmy
had flanked the stone path to the dairy, and of all the people in
Blair Water and out of it they were the two whom Emily would least
want to see her in any ridiculous plight whatever. Without
stopping to think, she darted into the boot closet and shut the
door.
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla knocked twice at the kitchen door, but Emily did
not budge. She knew Aunt Laura was weaving in the garret--she
could hear the dull thud of the treadles overhead--but she thought
Aunt Elizabeth was concocting pies in the cook-house and would see
or hear the callers. She would take them into the sitting-room and
then Emily could make her escape. And on one thing she was
determined--they should not see her in that Mother Hubbard. Miss
Potter was a thin, venomous, acidulated gossip who seemed to
dislike everybody in general and Emily in particular; and Mrs. Ann
Cyrilla was a plump, pretty, smooth, amiable gossip who, by very
reason of her smoothness and amiability, did more real harm in a
week than Miss Potter did in a year. Emily distrusted her even
while she could not help liking her. She had so often heard Mrs.
Ann Cyrilla make smiling fun of people, to whose "faces" she had
been very sweet and charming, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had been
one of the "dressy Wallaces" from Derry Pond, was especially fond
of laughing over the peculiarities of other people's clothes.
Again the knock came--Miss Potter's this time, as Emily knew by the
staccato raps. They were getting impatient. Well, they might
knock there till the cows come home, vowed Emily. She would not go
to the door in the Mother Hubbard. Then she heard Perry's voice
outside explaining that Miss Elizabeth was away in the stumps
behind the barn picking raspberries, but that he would go and get
her if they would walk in and make themselves at home. To Emily's
despair, this was just what they did. Miss Potter sat down with a
creak and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla with a puff, and Perry's retreating
footsteps died away in the yard. Emily realized that she was by
way of being in a plight. It was very hot and stuffy in the tiny
boot closet--where Cousin Jimmy's working clothes were kept as well
as boots. She hoped earnestly that Perry would not be long in
finding Aunt Elizabeth.
"My, but it's awful hot," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, with a large
groan.
Poor Emily--no, no, we must not call her poor Emily; she does not
deserve pity--she has been very silly and is served exactly right;
Emily, then, already violently perspiring in her close quarters,
agreed wholly with her.
"_I_ don't feel the heat as fat people do," said Miss Potter. "I
hope Elizabeth won't keep us waiting long. Laura's weaving--I hear
the loom going in the garret. But there would be no use in seeing
her--Elizabeth would override anything Laura might promise, just
because it wasn't HER arrangement. I see somebody has just
finished sanding the floor. Look at those worn boards, will you?
You'd think Elizabeth Murray would have a new floor laid down; but
she is too mean, of course. Look at that row of candles on the
chimney-piece--all that trouble and poor light because of the
little extra coal-oil would cost. Well, she can't take her money
with her--she'll have to leave it all behind at the golden gate
even if she IS a Murray."
Emily experienced a shock. She realized that not only was she
being half suffocated in the boot closet, but that she was an
eavesdropper--something she had never been since the evening at
Maywood when she had hidden under the table to hear her aunts and
uncles discussing her fate. To be sure, that had been voluntary,
while this was compulsory--at least, the Mother Hubbard had made it
compulsory. But that would not make Miss Potter's comments any
pleasanter to hear. What business had she to call Aunt Elizabeth
mean? Aunt Elizabeth WASN'T mean. Emily was suddenly very angry
with Miss Potter. She, herself, often criticized Aunt Elizabeth in
secret, but it was intolerable that an outsider should do it. And
that little sneer at the Murrays! Emily could imagine the shrewish
glint in Miss Potter's eye as she uttered it. As for the candles--
"The Murrays can see farther by candle-light than YOU can by
sunlight, Miss Potter," thought Emily disdainfully--or at least
as disdainfully as it is possible to think when a river of
perspiration is running down your back, and you have nothing to
breathe but the aroma of old leather.
"I suppose it's because of the expense that she won't send Emily to
school any longer than this year," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "Most
folks think she ought to give her a year at Shrewsbury, anyhow--
you'd think she would for pride's sake, if nothing else. But I am
told she has decided against it."
Emily's heart sank. She hadn't been quite sure till now that Aunt
Elizabeth wouldn't send her to Shrewsbury. The tears sprang to her
eyes--burning, stinging tears of disappointment.
"Emily ought to be taught something to earn a living by," said Miss
Potter. "Her father left nothing."
"He left ME," said Emily below her breath, clenching her fists.
Anger dried up her tears.
"Oh," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, laughing with tolerant derision, "I
hear that Emily is going to make a living by writing stories--not
only a living but a fortune, I believe."
She laughed again. The idea was so exquisitely ridiculous. Mrs.
Ann Cyrilla hadn't heard anything so funny for a long time.
"They say she wastes half her time scribbling trash," agreed Miss
Potter. "If I was her Aunt Elizabeth I would soon cure her of that
nonsense."
"You mightn't find it so easy. I understand she has always been a
difficult girl to manage--so very pig-headed, Murray-like. The
whole clamjamfry of them are as stubborn as mules."
(Emily, wrathfully: "What a disrespectful way to speak of us! Oh,
if I only hadn't on this Mother Hubbard I'd fling this door open
and confront them.")
"She needs a tight rein, if _I_ know anything of human nature,"
said Miss Potter. "She's going to be a flirt--anyone can see that.
She'll be Juliet over again. You'll see. She makes eyes at every
one and her only fourteen!"
(Emily, sarcastically: "I do NOT! And Mother wasn't a flirt. She
COULD have been, but she wasn't. YOU couldn't flirt, even if you
wanted to--you respectable old female!")
"She isn't pretty as poor Juliet was, and she's very sly--sly and
deep. Mrs. Dutton says she's the slyest child she ever saw. But
still there are things I like about poor Emily."
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla's tone was very patronizing. "Poor" Emily writhed
among the boots.
"The thing _I_ don't like in her is that she is always trying to be
smart," said Miss Potter decidedly. "She says clever things she
has read in books and passes them off as her own--"
(Emily, outraged: "I don't!")
"And she's very sarcastic and touchy, and of course as proud as
Lucifer," concluded Miss Potter.
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla laughed pleasantly and tolerantly again.
"Oh, that goes without saying in a Murray. But their worst fault
is that they think nobody can do anything right but themselves, and
Emily is full of it. Why, she even thinks she can preach better
than Mr. Johnson."
(Emily: "That is because I said he contradicted himself in one of
his sermons--and he DID. And I've heard YOU criticize dozens of
sermons, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.")
"She's jealous, too," continued Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "She can't bear
to be beaten--she wants to be first in everything. I understand
she actually shed tears of mortification the night of the concert
because Ilse Burnley carried off the honours in the dialogue.
Emily did very poorly--she was a perfect STICK. And she
contradicts older people continually. It would be funny if it
weren't so ill-bred."
"It's odd Elizabeth doesn't cure her of THAT. The Murrays think
their breeding is a little above the common," said Miss Potter.
(Emily, wrathfully, to the boots: "It IS, too.")
"Of course," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, "I think a great many of
Emily's faults come from her intimacy with Ilse Burnley. She
shouldn't be allowed to run about with Ilse as she does. Why, they
say Ilse is as much an infidel as her father. I have always
understood she doesn't believe in God at all--or the Devil either."
(Emily: "Which is a far worse thing in YOUR eyes.")
"Oh, the doctor's training her a little better now since he found
out his precious wife didn't elope with Leo Mitchell," sniffed Miss
Potter. "He makes her go to Sunday-school. But she's no fit
associate for Emily. She swears like a trooper, I'm told. Mrs.
Mark Burns was in the doctor's office one day and heard Ilse in the
parlour say distinctly 'out, damned Spot!' probably to the dog."
"Dear, dear," moaned Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.
"Do you know what _I_ saw her do one day last week--saw her with my
own eyes!" Miss Potter was very emphatic over this. Ann Cyrilla
need not suppose that she had been using any other person's eyes.
"You couldn't surprise me," gurgled Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "Why, they
say she was at the charivari at Johnson's last Tuesday night,
dressed as a boy."
"Quite likely. But this happened in my own front yard. She was
there with Jen Strang, who had come to get a root of my Persian
rose-bush for her mother. I asked Ilse if she could sew and bake
and a few other things that I thought she ought to be reminded of.
Ilse said 'No' to them all, quite brazenly, and then SHE said--WHAT
do you think that girl said?"
"Oh, what?" breathed Mrs. Ann Cyrilla eagerly.
"She said, 'Can YOU stand on one foot and lift your other to a
level with your eyes, Miss Potter? I can.' And"--Miss Potter
hushed her tone to the proper pitch of horror--"SHE DID IT!"
The listener in the closet stifled a spasm of laughter in Cousin
Jimmy's grey juniper. How madcap Ilse did love to shock Miss
Potter!
"Good gracious, were there any men around?" entreated Mrs. Ann
Cyrilla.
"No--fortunately. But it's my belief she would have done it just
the same no matter who was there. We were close to the road--
ANYBODY might have been passing. I felt so ashamed. In MY time a
young girl would have DIED before she would have done a thing like
that."
"It's no worse than her and Emily bathing by moonlight up on the
sands WITHOUT A STITCH ON," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "THAT was the
most scandalous thing. Did you hear about it?"
"Oh, yes, that story's all over Blair Water. Everybody's heard it
but Elizabeth and Laura. I can't find out how it started. Were
they SEEN?"
"Oh, dear no, not so bad as that. Ilse told it herself. She
seemed to think it was quite a matter of course. _I_ think some
one ought to tell Laura and Elizabeth."
"Tell them yourself," suggested Miss Potter.
"Oh, no, _I_ don't want to get in wrong with my neighbours. _I_ am
not responsible for Emily Starr's training, thank goodness. If I
were I wouldn't let her have so much to do with Jarback Priest,
either. He's the queerest of all those queer Priests. I'm sure he
must have a bad influence over her. Those green eyes of his
positively give me the creeps. I can't find out that he believes
in ANYTHING."
(Emily, sarcastically again: "Not even the Devil?")
"There's a queer story going around about him and Emily," said Miss
Potter. "I can't make head or tail of it. They were seen on the
big hill last Wednesday evening at sunset, behaving in a most
extraordinary fashion. They would walk along with their eyes fixed
on the sky--then suddenly stop--grasp each other by the arm and
point upward. They did it time and again. Mrs. Price was watching
them from the window and she can't imagine what they were up it.
It was too early for stars, and SHE couldn't see a solitary thing
in the sky. She laid awake all night wondering about it."
"Well, it all comes to this--Emily Starr needs looking after," said
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "I sometimes feel that it would be wiser to stop
Muriel and Gladys from going about so much with her."
(Emily, devoutly: "I wish you WOULD. They are so stupid and silly
and they just stick around Ilse and me all the time.")
"When all is said and done, I pity her," said Miss Potter. "She's
so foolish and high-minded that she'll get in wrong with every one,
and no decent, sensible man will ever be bothered with her. Geoff
North says he went home with her once and that was enough for HIM."
(Emily, emphatically: "I believe you! Geoff showed almost human
intelligence in THAT remark.")
"But then she probably won't live through her teens. She looks
very consumptive. Really, Ann Cyrilla, I DO feel sorry for the
poor thing."
This was the proverbial last straw for Emily. SHE, whole Starr and
half Murray to be pitied by Beulah Potter! Mother Hubbard or no
Mother Hubbard, it could not be borne! The closet door suddenly
opened wide and Emily stood revealed, Mother Hubbard and all,
against a background of boots and jumpers. Her cheeks were
crimson, her eyes black. The mouths of Mrs. Ann Cyrilla and Miss
Beulah Potter fell open and stayed open; their faces turned dull
red; they were dumb.
Emily looked at them steadily for a minute of scornful, eloquent
silence. Then, with the air of a queen, she swept across the
kitchen and vanished through the sitting-room door, just as Aunt
Elizabeth came up the sandstone steps with dignified apologies for
keeping them waiting. Miss Potter and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla were so
dumbfounded that they were hardly able to talk about the Ladies'
Aid, and got themselves confusedly away after a few jerky questions
and answers. Aunt Elizabeth did not know what to make of them and
thought they must have been unreasonably offended over having to
wait. Then she dismissed the matter from her mind. A Murray did
not care what Potters thought or did. The open closet door told no
tales, and she did not know that up in the lookout chamber Emily
was lying face downward across the bed crying passionately for
shame and anger and humiliation. She felt degraded and hurt. It
had all been the outcome of her own silly vanity in the beginning--
she acknowledged that--but her punishment had been TOO severe.
She did not mind so much what Miss Potter had said, but Mrs. Ann
Cyrilla's tiny barbs of malice DID sting. She had liked pretty,
pleasant Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had always seemed kind and friendly
and had paid her many compliments. She had thought Mrs. Ann
Cyrilla had really liked her. And now to find out that she would
talk about her like this!
"Couldn't they have said ONE good thing of me?" she sobbed. "Oh, I
feel SOILED, somehow--between my own silliness and their malice--
and all dirty and messed-up mentally. Will I ever feel CLEAN
again?"
She did not feel "clean" until she had written it all out in her
diary. Then she took a less distorted view of it and summoned
philosophy to her aid.
"Mr. Carpenter says we should make every experience teach us
something," she wrote. "He says every experience, no matter
whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, has something for us if we
are able to view it dispassionately. 'That,'