Emily Climbs (4 page)

“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. Probable 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 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 patronises me. I prefer Aunt Ruth’s snubs because I don’t have to look as if I like 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 coalscuttle. It infuriates me when any one 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 like him. She never asked me how I liked any one
before – my likings were not important enough. I suppose she is beginning to realise 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 today 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 any one a thing like that. It was true but it was not tactful.

“I hope Ilse will have forgiven me by tomorrow. 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 today 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 today 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 any one is living in it now. And if Ad am-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 any one 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.”

S
ome 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 realisation 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 northwest, 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 realised 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 any one 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,

“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 tomorrow. 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 Greens 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 safekeeping 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 realised 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.