Emily Climbs (13 page)

“Did you look in your mirror before you came to class, Miss Starr?”

“No,” said Emily resentfully, sensing something fearfully wrong somewhere.

“I – think – I would look – now – if I were – you.” Mr. Scoville seemed to be speaking with difficulty.

Emily got up and went back to the girls’ dressing-room. She met Principal Hardy in the Hall and Principal Hardy stared at her. Why Principal Hardy stared – why the Preps had laughed – Emily understood when she confronted the dressing-room looking-glass.

Drawn skilfully and blackly across her upper lip and her cheeks was a moustache – a flamboyant, very black moustache,
with fantastically curled ends. For a moment Emily gaped at her self in blank horror – why – what –
who
had done it?

She whirled furiously about. Evelyn Blake had just entered the room.

“
You
– you did this!” panted Emily.

Evelyn stared for a moment – then went off into a peal of laughter.

“Emily Starr! You look like a nightmare. Do you mean to tell me you went into class with
that
on your face?”

Emily clenched her hands.

“
You
did it,” she said again.

Evelyn drew herself up very haughtily.

“Really, Miss Starr, I hope you don’t think I’d
stoop
to such a trick. I suppose your dear friend Ilse thought she’d play a joke on you – she was chuckling over something when she came in a few minutes ago.”

“Ilse never did it,” cried Emily.

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders.

“I’d wash it off first and find out who did it afterward,” she said with a twitching face as she went out.

Emily, trembling from head to foot with anger, shame and the most intense humiliation she had ever suffered, washed the moustache off her face. Her first impulse was to go home – she could not face that roomful of Preps again. Then she set her teeth and went back, holding her black head very high as she walked down the aisle to her desk. Her face was burning and her spirit was aflame. In the corner she saw Ilse’s yellow bead bent over her paper. The others were smiling and tittering. Mr. Scoville was insultingly grave. Emily took up her pen but her hand shook over her paper.

If she could have had a good cry there and then her shame and anger would have found a saving vent. But that was
impossible. She would
not
cry. She would not let them see the depths of her humiliation. If Emily could have laughed off the malicious joke it would have been better for her. Being Emily – and being one of the proud Murrays – she could not. She resented the indignity to the very core of her passionate soul.

As far as the English paper was concerned she might almost as well have gone home. She had lost twenty minutes already. It was ten minutes more before she could steady her hand sufficiently to write. Her thoughts she could not command at all. The paper was a difficult one, as Mr. Travers’ papers always were. Her mind seemed a chaos of jostling ideas spinning around a fixed point of torturing shame. When she handed in her paper and left the classroom she knew she had lost her star. That paper would be no more than a pass, if it were that. But in her turmoil of feeling she did not care. She hurried home to her unfriendly room, thankful that Aunt Ruth was out, threw herself on the bed and wept. She felt sore, beaten, bruised – and under all her pain was a horrible, teasing little doubt.

Did Ilse do it – no, she
didn’t
– she
couldn’t
have. Who then? Mary? The idea was absurd. It must have been Evelyn – Evelyn had come back and played that cruel trick on her out of spite and pique. Yet she had denied it, with seemingly insulted indignation, and eyes that were perhaps a shade too innocent.
What
had Ilse said – “You are getting positively smug – something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic.” Had Ilse taken that abominable way of curing her?

“No – no – no!” Emily sobbed fiercely into her pillow. But the doubt persisted.

Aunt Ruth had no doubt. Aunt Ruth was calling on her friend, Mrs. Ball, and her friend, Mrs. Ball, had a daughter who was a Prep. Anita Ball came home with the tale that had
been well laughed over in Prep and Junior and Senior classes, and Anita Ball said that Evelyn Blake had said Ilse Burnley had done the deed.

“Well,” said Aunt Ruth, invading Emily’s room on her return home, “I hear Ilse Burnley decorated you beautifully today. I hope you realise what she is now.”

“Ilse didn’t do it,” said Emily.

“Have you asked her?”

“No. I wouldn’t insult her with such a question.”

“Well, I believe she did do it. And she is not to come here again. Understand that.”

“Aunt Ruth –”

“You’ve heard what I said, Em’ly. Ilse Burnley is no fit associate for you. I’ve heard too many tales about her lately. But this is unpardonable.”

“Aunt Ruth, if I ask Ilse if she did it and she says she did not, won’t you believe her?”

“No, I wouldn’t believe any girl brought up as Ilse Burnley was. It’s my belief she’d do anything and say anything. Don’t let me see her in my house again.”

Emily stood up and tried to summon the Murray look into a face distorted by weeping.

“Of course, Aunt Ruth,” she said coldly, “I won’t bring Ilse here if she is not welcome. But I shall go to see her. And if you forbid me – I’ll – I’ll go home to New Moon. I feel as if I wanted to go anyhow now. Only – I
won’t
let Evelyn Blake drive me away.”

Aunt Ruth knew quite well that the New Moon folks would not agree to a complete divorce between Emily and Ilse. They were too good friends with the doctor for that. Mrs. Dutton had never liked Dr. Burnley. She had to be content with the excuse for keeping Ilse away from her house, for which
she had long hankered. Her own annoyance over the matter was not born out of any sympathy with Emily but solely from anger at a Murray being made ridiculous.

“I would have thought you’d had enough of going to see Ilse. As for Evelyn Blake, she is too clever and sensible a girl to have played a silly trick like that. I know the Blakes. They are an excellent family and Evelyn’s father is well-to-do. Now, stop crying. A pretty face you’ve got. What sense is there in crying?”

“None at all,” agreed Emily drearily, “only I can’t help it. I can’t
bear
to be made ridiculous. I can endure anything but that. Oh, Aunt Ruth,
please
leave me alone. I can’t eat any supper.”

“You’ve got yourself all worked up – Starr-like. We Murrays conceal our feelings.”

“I don’t believe you’ve any to conceal – some of you,” thought Emily rebelliously.

“Keep away from Ilse Burnley after this, and you’ll not be so likely to be publicly disgraced,” was Aunt Ruth’s parting advice.

Emily, after a sleepless night – during which it seemed to her that if she couldn’t push that ceiling farther from her face she would surely smother – went to see Ilse the next day and reluctantly told her what Aunt Ruth had said. Ilse was furious – but Emily noted with a pang that she did not assert any innocence of the crayon trick.

“Ilse, you – you didn’t really do that?” she faltered. She
knew
Ilse hadn’t – she was
sure
of it – but she wanted to hear her say so. To her surprise, a sudden blush swept over Ilse’s face.

“Is thy servant a dog?” she said, rather confusedly. It was very unlike straightforward, outspoken Ilse to be so confused. She turned her face away and began fumbling aimlessly with her book-bag. “You don’t suppose I’d do anything like that to you, Emily?”

“No, of course not,” said Emily, slowly The subject was dropped. But the little doubt and distrust at the bottom of Emily’s mind came out of its lurking-place and declared itself Even yet she couldn’t believe Ilse could do such a thing – and lie about it afterward. But why was she so confused and shamefaced? Would not an innocent Ilse have stormed about according to form, berated Emily, roundly, for mere suspicion, and aired the subject generally until all the venom had been blown out of it?

It was not referred to again. But the shadow was there and spoiled, to a certain extent, the Christmas holidays at New Moon. Outwardly, the girls were the friends they had always been, but Emily was acutely conscious of a sudden rift between them. Strive as she would she could not bridge it. The seeming unconsciousness of any such severance on Ilse’s part served to deepen it. Hadn’t Ilse cared enough for her and her friendship to
feel
the chill that had come over it? Could she be so shallow and indifferent as not to perceive it? Emily brooded and grew morbid over it. A thing like that – a dim, poisonous thing that lurked in shadow and dared not come into the open – always played havoc with her sensitive and passionate temperament. No open quarrel with Ilse could have affected her like this – she had quarrelled with Ilse scores of times and made up the next minute with no bitterness or backward glance.
This
was different. The more Emily brooded over it the more monstrous it grew. She was unhappy, absent, restless. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy noticed it but attributed it to her disappointment over the star pin. She had told them she was sure she would not win. But Emily had ceased to care about the star pin.

To be sure, she had a bad time of it, when she went back to High School and the examination results were announced.
She was not one of the envied four who flaunted star pins and Aunt Ruth rubbed it in for weeks. Aunt Ruth felt that she had lost family prestige in Emily’s failure and she was very bitter about it. Altogether Emily felt that the New Year had come in very inauspiciously for her. The first month of it was a time she never liked to recall. She was very lonely. Ilse could not come to see her, and though she made herself go to see Ilse the subtle little rift between them was slowly widening. Ilse still gave no sign of feeling it; but then, somehow, she was seldom alone with Ilse now. The room was always filled with girls, and there was a good deal of noise and laughter and jokes and school gossip – all very harmless and even jolly, but very different from the old intimacy and understanding comradeship with Ilse. Formerly it used to be a chummy jest between them that they could walk or sit for hours together and say no word and yet feel that they had had a splendid time. There were no such silences now: when they did happen to be alone together they both chattered gaily and shallowly, as if each were secretly afraid that there might come a moment for the silence that betrays.

Emily’s heart ached over their lost friendship: every night her pillow was wet with tears. Yet there was nothing she could do: she could not, try as she would, banish the doubt that possessed her. She made many an honest effort to do so. She told herself every day that Ilse Burnley could never have played that trick – that she was constitutionally incapable of it – and went straightway to Ilse with the firm determination to be just what she had always been to her. With the result that she was unnaturally cordial and friendly – even gushing – and no more like her real self than she was like Evelyn Blake. Ilse was just as cordial and friendly – and the rift was wider still.

“Ilse never goes into a tantrum with me now,” Emily reflected sadly.

It was quite true. Ilse was always good-tempered with Emily, presenting a baffling front of politeness unbroken by a single flash of her old wild spirit. Emily felt that nothing could have been more welcome than one of Ilse’s stormy rages. It might break the ice that was forming so relentlessly between them, and release the pent-up flood of old affection.

One of the keenest stings in the situation was that Evelyn Blake was quite well aware of the state of affairs between Ilse and Emily. The mockery of her long brown eyes and the hidden sneer in her casual sentences betrayed her knowledge and her enjoyment of it. This was gall and wormwood to Emily, who felt that she had no defence against it. Evelyn was a girl whom intimacies between other girls annoyed, and the friendship between Ilse and Emily had annoyed her especially. It had been so complete – so absorbing. There had been no place in it for any one else. And Evelyn did not like to feel that she was barred out – that there was some garden enclosed, into which she might not enter. She was therefore hugely delighted to think that this vexingly beautiful friendship between two girls she secretly hated was at an end.

E
mily came downstairs laggingly, feeling that all the colour and music had somehow gone out of life, and that it stretched before her in unbroken greyness. Ten minutes later she was encompassed by rainbows and the desert of her future had blossomed like the rose.

The cause of this miracle of transformation was a thin letter which Aunt Ruth handed to her with an Aunt Ruthian sniff. There was a magazine, too, but Emily did not at first regard it. She saw the address of a floral firm on the corner of the envelope, and sensed at touch the promising thinness of it – so different from the plump letters full of rejected verses.

Her heart beat violently as she tore it open and glanced over the typewritten sheet.

Emily dropped the letter and seized upon the magazine with trembling fingers. She grew dizzy – the letters danced before her eyes – she felt a curious sensation of choking – for there on the front page, in a fine border of curlicues, was her poem –
Owl’s Laughter
, by Emily Byrd Starr.

It was the first sweet bubble on the cup of success and we must not think her silly if it intoxicated her. She carried the letter and magazine off to her room to gloat over it, blissfully unconscious that Aunt Ruth was doing an extra deal of sniffing. Aunt Ruth felt very suspicious of suddenly crimsoned cheek and glowing eye and general air of rapture and detachment from earth.

In her room Emily sat down and read her poem as if she had never seen it before. There was, to be sure, a printer’s error in it that made the flesh creep on her bones – it was awful to have
hunter’s moon
come out as
hunter’s moan
– but it was her
poem –
hers
– accepted by and printed in a
real
magazine.

And
paid
for! To be sure a check would have been more acceptable – two dollars all her own, earned by her own pen, would have seemed like riches to Emily. But what fun she and Cousin Jimmy would have selecting the seeds! She could see in imagination that beautiful flower-bed next summer in the New Moon garden – a glory of crimson and purple and blue and gold.

And what was it the letter said?

“
Your verses have the true ring and we shall be glad to see more of your work
.”

Oh, bliss – oh, rapture! The world was hers – the
Alpine Path
was as good as climbed – what signified a few more scrambles to the summit?

Emily could not remain in that dark little room with its oppressive ceiling and unfriendly furniture. Lord Byron’s funereal expression was an insult to her happiness. She threw on her wraps and hurried out to the Land of Uprightness.

As she went through the kitchen, Aunt Ruth, naturally more suspicious than ever, inquired with markedly bland sarcasm,

“Is the house on fire? Or the harbour?”

“Neither. It’s my soul that’s on fire,” said Emily with an inscrutable smile. She shut the door behind her and at once forgot Aunt Ruth and every other disagreeable thing and person. How beautiful life was – how wonderful the Land of Uprightness was! The young firs along the narrow path were lightly powdered with snow, as if, thought Emily, a veil of aerial lace had been tricksily flung over austere young Druid priestesses forsworn to all such frivolities of vain adornment. Emily decided she would write that sentence down in her Jimmy-book when she went back. On and on she flitted to the
crest of the hill. She felt as if she were flying – her feet
couldn’t
really be touching the earth. On the hill she paused and stood, a rapt, ecstatic figure with clasped hands and eyes of dream. It was just after sunset. Out, over the ice-bound harbour, great clouds piled themselves up in dazzling, iridescent masses. Beyond were gleaming white hills with early stars over them. Between the dark trunks of the old fir trees to her right, far away through the crystal evening air, rose a great, round, full moon.

“‘It has the true ring,’” murmured Emily, tasting the incredible words anew. “They want to see more of my work! Oh, if only Father could see my verses in print!”

Years before, in the old house at Maywood, her Father, bending over her as she slept had said, “She will love deeply – suffer terribly – she will have glorious moments to compensate.”

This was one of her glorious moments. She felt a wonderful lightness of spirit – a soul-stirring joy in mere existence. The creative faculty, dormant through the wretched month just passed, suddenly burned in her soul again like a purifying flame. It swept away all morbid, poisonous, rankling things. All at once Emily
knew
that Ilse had never done
that
. She laughed joyously – amusedly.

“What a little fool I’ve been! Oh,
such
a little fool! Of course, Ilse never did it. There’s nothing between us now – it’s gone – gone – gone. I’ll go right to her and tell her so.”

Emily hurried back adown her little path. The Land of Uprightness lay all about her, mysterious in the moonlight, wrapped in the exquisite reticence of winter woods. She seemed one with its beauty and charm and mystery. With a sudden sigh of the Wind Woman through the shadowy aisles came “the flash” and Emily went dancing to Ilse with the afterglow of it in her soul.

She found Ilse alone – threw her arms around her – hugged her fiercely.

“Ilse, do forgive me,” she cried. “I shouldn’t have doubted you – I
did
doubt you – but now I know – I
know
. You
will
forgive me?”

“You young goat,” said Ilse.

Emily loved to be called a young goat. This was the old Ilse –
her
Ilse.

“Oh, Ilse, I’ve been so unhappy.”

“Well, don’t bawl over it,” said Ilse. “I haven’t been very hilarious myself. Look here, Emily, I’ve got something to tell you. Shut up and listen. That day I met Evelyn at the Shoppe and we went back for some book she wanted and we found you sound asleep – so sound asleep that you never stirred when I pinched your cheek. Then, just for devilment I picked up a black crayon and said, ‘I’m going to draw a moustache on her’ – shut up! Evelyn pulled a long face and said, ‘Oh, no! that would be
mean
, don’t you think?’ I hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing it – I’d only spoken in fun – but that shrimp Evelyn’s ungodly affectation of righteousness made me so mad that I decided I would do it – shut
up!
– I meant to wake you right up and hold a glass before you, that was all. But before I could do it Kate Errol came in and wanted us to go along with her and I threw down the chalk and went out. That’s all, Emily, honest to Caesar. But it made me feel ashamed and silly later on – I’d say a bit conscience-stricken if I had such a thing as a conscience, because I felt that
I
must have put the idea into the head of whoever did do it, and so was responsible in a way. And then I saw you distrusted me – and that made me mad – not tempery-mad, you see, but a nasty, cold,
inside
sort of madness. I thought you had no business even to suspect that I could have done such a thing as to
let you go to class like that. And I thought, since you did, you could go on doing it –
I
wouldn’t say one word to put matters straight. Golly, but I’m glad you’re through with seein’ things.”

“Do you think Evelyn Blake did it?”

“No. Oh, she’s quite capable of it, of course, but I don’t see how it could have been she. She went to the Shoppe with Kate and me and we left her there. She was in class fifteen minutes later, so I don’t think she’d have had time to go back and do it. I really think it was that little devil of a May Hilson. She’d do anything and she was in the hall when I was flourishing the crayon. She’d ‘take the suggestion as a cat laps milk.’ But it couldn’t have been Evelyn.”

Emily retained her belief that it could have been and was. But the only thing that mattered now was the fact that Aunt Ruth still believed Ilse guilty and would continue so to believe.

“Well, that’s a rotten shame,” said Ilse. “We can’t have any real chum-talks here – Mary always has such a mob in and E.B. pervades the place.”

“I’ll find out who did it yet,” said Emily darkly, “and
make
Aunt Ruth give in.”

On the next afternoon Evelyn Blake found Ilse and Emily in a beautiful row. At least Ilse was rowing while Emily sat with her legs crossed and a bored, haughty expression in her insolently half-shut eyes. It should have been a welcome sight to a girl who disliked the intimacies of other girls. But Evelyn Blake was not rejoiced. Ilse was quarrelling with Emily again –
ergo
, Ilse and Emily were on good terms once more.

“I’m so glad to see you’ve forgiven Ilse for that mean trick,” she said sweetly to Emily the next day. “Of course, it was just pure thoughtlessness on her part – I’ve always insisted on
that
– she never stopped to think what ridicule she was letting you in for. Poor Ilse is like that. You know I tried to
stop her – I didn’t tell you this before, of course –
I
didn’t want to make any more trouble than there was – but I
told
her it was a horribly mean thing to do to a friend. I thought I
had
put her off. It’s sweet of you to forgive her, Emily dear. You
are
better-hearted than I am. I’m afraid I could
never
pardon any one who had made me such a laughing stock.”

“Why didn’t you slay her in her tracks?” said Ilse when she heard of it from Emily.

“I simply half-shut my eyes and looked at her like a Murray,” said Emily, “and that was more bitter than death.”