Emily of New Moon (30 page)

Emily did not like Uncle Wallace but she was very grateful to him at that moment. Whatever his motives were he was proposing the very thing she secretly yearned for.

“I would suggest,” said Uncle Wallace, “that she be sent to Queen's Academy to get a teacher's license. Teaching is a genteel, lady-like occupation.
I
will do my share in providing for the expense of it.”

A blind person might have seen that Uncle Wallace thought this very splendid of himself.

“If you do,” thought Emily, “I'll pay every cent back to you as soon as I'm able to earn it.”

But Aunt Elizabeth was adamant.

“I do not believe in girls going out into the world,” she said. “I don't mean Emily to go to Queen's. I told Mr. Carpenter so when he came to see me about her taking up the Entrance work. He was very rude—schoolteachers knew their place better in my father's time. But I made him understand, I think. I'm rather surprised at
you
, Wallace. You did not send your own daughter out to work.”

“
My
daughter had parents to provide for her,” retorted Uncle Wallace pompously. “Emily is an orphan. I imagined from what I had heard about her that she would prefer earning her own living to living on charity.”

“So I would,” cried out Emily. “So I would, Uncle Wallace. Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, please let me study for the Entrance. Please! I'll pay you back every cent you spend on it—I will indeed. I pledge you my word of honor.”

“It does not happen to be a question of money,” said Aunt Elizabeth in her stateliest manner. “I undertook to provide for you, Emily, and I will do it. When you are older I may send you to the High School in Shrewsbury for a couple of years. I am not decrying education. But you are not going to be a slave to the public—no Murray girl ever was
that
.”

Emily realizing the uselessness of pleading, went out in the same bitter disappointment she had felt after Mr. Carpenter's visit. Then Aunt Elizabeth looked at Wallace.

“Have you forgotten what came of sending Juliet to Queen's?” she asked significantly.

If Emily was not allowed to take up the Entrance classes, Perry had no one to say him nay and he went at them with the same dogged determination he showed in all other matters. Perry's status at New Moon had changed subtly and steadily. Aunt Elizabeth had ceased to refer scornfully to him as “a hired boy.” Even she recognized that though he was still indubitably a hired boy he was not going to remain one, and she no longer objected to Laura's patching up his ragged bits of clothing, or to Emily's helping him with his lessons in the kitchen after supper, nor did she growl when Cousin Jimmy began to pay him a certain small wage—though older boys than Perry were still glad to put in the winter months choring for board and lodging in some comfortable home. If a future premier was in the making at New Moon Aunt Elizabeth wanted to have some small share in the making. It was credible and commendable that a boy should have ambitions. A girl was an entirely different matter. A girl's place was at home.

Emily helped Perry work out algebra problems and heard his lessons in French and Latin. She picked up more thus than Aunt Elizabeth would have approved and more still when the Entrance pupils talked those languages in school. It was quite an easy matter for a girl who had once upon a time invented a language of her own. When George Bates, by way of showing off, asked her one day in French—
his
French, of which Mr. Carpenter had once said doubtfully that perhaps God might understand it—“Have you the ink of my grandmother and the shoebrush of my cousin and the umbrella of my aunt's husband in your desk?” Emily retorted quite as glibly and
quite
as Frenchily, “No, but I have the pen of your father and the cheese of the innkeeper and the towel of your uncle's maidservant in my basket.”

To console herself for her disappointment in regard to the Entrance class Emily wrote more poetry than ever. It was especially delightful to write poetry on a winter evening when the storm winds howled without and heaped the garden and orchard with big ghostly drifts, starred over with rabbits' candles. She also wrote several stories—desperate love affairs wherein she struggled heroically against the difficulties of affectionate dialogue; tales of bandits and pirates—Emily liked these because there was no necessity for bandits and pirates to converse lovingly; tragedies of earls and countesses whose conversation she dearly loved to pepper with scraps of French; and a dozen other subjects she didn't know anything about. She also meditated beginning a novel but decided it would be too hard to get enough paper for it. The letter-bills were all done now and the Jimmy-books were not big enough, though a new one always appeared mysteriously in her school basket when the old one was almost full. Cousin Jimmy seemed to have an uncanny prescience of the proper time—that was part of his Jimmyness.

Then one night, as she lay in her lookout bed and watched a full moon gleaming lustrously from a cloudless sky across the valley, she had a sudden dazzling idea.

She would send her latest poem to the Charlottetown
Enterprise
.

The
Enterprise
had a Poet's Corner where “original” verses were frequently printed. Privately Emily thought her own were quite as good—as probably they were, for most of the
Enterprise
“poems” were sad trash.

Emily was so excited over the idea that she could not sleep for the greater part of the night—and didn't want to. It was glorious to lie there, thrilling in the darkness and picture the whole thing out. She saw her verses in print signed E. Byrd Starr—she saw Aunt Laura's eyes shining with pride—she saw Mr. Carpenter pointing them out to strangers—“the work of a pupil of mine, by gad”—she saw all her schoolmates envying her or admiring, according to type—she saw herself with one foot at least firmly planted on the ladder of fame—one hill at least of the Alpine Path crested, with a new and glorious prospect opening therefrom.

Morning came. Emily went to school, so absent-minded because of her secret that she did badly in everything and was raged at by Mr. Carpenter. But it all slipped off her like the proverbial water off a duck's back. Her body was in Blair Water school but her spirit was in kingdoms empyreal.

As soon as school was out she betook herself to the garret with half a sheet of blue-lined notepaper. Very painstakingly she copied down the poem, being especially careful to dot every
i
and cross every
t
. She wrote it on both sides of the paper, being in blissful ignorance of any taboo thereon. Then she read it aloud delightedly, not omitting the title
Evening
Dreams
. There was one line in it she tasted two or three times:

The haunting elfin music of the air.

“I think that line is
very
good,” said Emily. “I wonder now how I happened to think of it.”

She mailed her poem the next day and lived in a delicious mystic rapture until the following Saturday. When the
Enterprise
came she opened it with tremulous eagerness and ice-cold fingers, and turned to the Poet's Corner. Now for her great moment!

There was not a sign of an Evening Dream about it!

Emily threw down the
Enterprise
and fled to the garret dormer where, face downward on the old haircloth sofa, she wept out her bitterness of disappointment. She drained the draught of failure to the very dregs. It was horribly real and tragic to her. She felt exactly as if she had been slapped in the face. She was crushed in the very dust of humiliation and was sure she could never rise again.

How thankful she was that she hadn't told Teddy anything about it—she had been so strongly tempted to, and only refrained because she didn't want to spoil the dramatic surprise of the moment when she would show him the verses with her name signed to them. She
had
told Perry, and Perry was furious when he saw her tear-stained face later on in the dairy, as they strained the milk together. Ordinarily Emily loved this, but tonight the savor had gone out of the world. Even the milky splendor of the still, mild winter evening and the purple bloom over the hillside woods that presaged a thaw could not give her the accustomed soul-thrill.

“I'm going to Charlottetown if I have to walk and I'll bust that
Enterprise
editor's head,” said Perry, with the expression which, thirty years later, warned the members of his party to scatter for cover.

“That wouldn't be any use,” said Emily drearily. “He didn't think it good enough to print—that is what hurts me so, Perry—he didn't think it any good. Busting his head wouldn't change
that
.”

It took her a week to recover from the blow. Then she wrote a story in which the editor of the
Enterprise
played the part of a dark and desperate villain who found lodging eventually behind prison bars. This got the venom out of her system and she forgot all about him in the delight of writing a poem addressed to “Sweet Lady April.” But I question if she ever really forgave him—even when she discovered eventually that you must
not
write on both sides of the paper—even when she read over
Evening
Dreams
a year later and wondered how she could ever have thought it any good.

This sort of thing was happening frequently now. Every time she read her little hoard of manuscripts over she found some of which the fairy gold had unaccountably turned to withered leaves, fit only for the burning. Emily burned them,—but it hurt her a little. Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process.

Sacrilege

There had been several clashes between Aunt Elizabeth and Emily that winter and spring. Generally Aunt Elizabeth came out victorious; there was that in her that would not be denied the satisfaction of having her own way even in trifling matters. But once in a while she came up against that curious streak of granite in Emily's composition which was unyielding and unbendable and unbreakable. Mary Murray, of a hundred years agone, had been, so family chronicle ran, a gentle and submissive creature generally; but she had that same streak in her, as her “Here I Stay” abundantly testified. When Aunt Elizabeth tried conclusions with that element in Emily she always got the worst of it. Yet she did not learn wisdom therefrom but pursued her policy of repression all the more rigorously; for it occasionally came home to her, as Laura let down tucks, that Emily was on the verge of beginning to grow up and that various breakers and reefs loomed ahead, ominously magnified in the mist of unseen years. Emily must not be allowed to get out of hand now, lest later on she make shipwreck as her mother had done—or as Elizabeth Murray firmly believed she had done. There were, in short, to be no more elopements from New Moon.

One of the things they fell out about was the fact that Emily, as Aunt Elizabeth discovered one day, was in the habit of using more of her egg money to buy paper than Aunt Elizabeth approved of. What did Emily do with so much paper? They had a fuss over this and eventually Aunt Elizabeth discovered that Emily was writing stories. Emily had been writing stories all winter under Aunt Elizabeth's very nose and Aunt Elizabeth had never suspected it. She had fondly supposed that Emily was writing school compositions. Aunt Elizabeth knew in a vague way that Emily wrote silly rhymes which she called “poetry” but this did not worry her especially. Jimmy made up a lot of similar trash. It was foolish but harmless and Emily would doubtless outgrow it. Jimmy had not outgrown it, to be sure, but then his accident—Elizabeth always went a little sick in soul when she remembered it—had made him more or less a child for life.

But writing stories was a very different thing and Aunt Elizabeth was horrified. Fiction of any kind was an abominable thing. Elizabeth Murray had been trained up in this belief in her youth and in her age she had not departed from it. She honestly thought that it was a wicked and sinful thing in anyone to play cards, dance, or go to the theatre, read or write novels, and in Emily's case there was a worse feature—it was the Starr coming out in her—Douglas Starr especially. No Murray of New Moon had ever been guilty of writing “stories” or of ever wanting to write them. It was an alien growth that must be pruned off ruthlessly. Aunt Elizabeth applied the pruning shears; and found no pliant, snippable root but that same underlying streak of granite. Emily was respectful and reasonable and above-board; she bought no more paper with egg money; but she told Aunt Elizabeth that she could not give up writing stories and she went right on writing them, on pieces of brown wrapping paper and the blank backs of circulars which agricultural machinery firms sent Cousin Jimmy.

“Don't you know that it is wicked to write novels?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth.

“Oh, I'm not writing novels—yet,” said Emily. “I can't get enough paper. These are just short stories. And it isn't wicked—Father liked novels.”

“Your father—” began Aunt Elizabeth, and stopped. She remembered that Emily had “acted up” before now when anything derogatory was said of her father. But the very fact that she felt mysteriously compelled to stop annoyed Elizabeth, who had said what seemed good to her all her life at New Moon without much regard for other people's feelings.

“You will not write any more of
this
stuff
,” Aunt Elizabeth contemptuously flourished “The Secret of the Castle” under Emily's nose. “I forbid you—remember, I forbid you.”

“Oh, I must write, Aunt Elizabeth,” said Emily gravely, folding her slender, beautiful hands on the table and looking straight into Aunt Elizabeth's angry face with the steady, unblinking gaze which Aunt Ruth called unchildlike. “You see, it's this way. It is
in
me. I can't help it. And Father said I was
always
to keep on writing. He said I would be famous some day. Wouldn't you like to have a famous niece, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“I am not going to argue the matter,” said Aunt Elizabeth.

“I'm not arguing—only explaining.” Emily was exasperatingly respectful. “I just want you to understand how it is that I
have
to go on writing stories, even though I am so very sorry you don't approve.”

“If you don't give up this—this worse than nonsense, Emily, I'll—I'll—”

Aunt Elizabeth stopped, not knowing what to say she would do. Emily was too big now to be slapped or shut up; and it was no use to say, as she was tempted to, “I'll sent you away from New Moon,” because Elizabeth Murray knew perfectly well she would not send Emily away from New Moon—
could
not send her away, indeed, though this knowledge was as yet only in her feelings and had not been translated into her intellect. She only felt that she was helpless and it angered her; but Emily was mistress of the situation and calmly went on writing stories. If Aunt Elizabeth had asked her to give up crocheting lace or making molasses tatty, or eating Aunt Laura's delicious drop cookies, Emily would have done so wholly and cheerfully; though she loved these things. But to give up writing stories—why, Aunt Elizabeth might as well have asked her to give up breathing.
Why
couldn't she understand? It seemed so simple and indisputable to Emily.

“Teddy can't help making pictures and Ilse can't help reciting and I can't help writing.
Don't
you see, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“I see that you are an ungrateful and disobedient child,” said Aunt Elizabeth.

This hurt Emily horribly, but she could not give in; and there continued to be a sense of soreness and disapproval between her and Aunt Elizabeth in all the little details of daily life that poisoned existence more or less for the child, who was so keenly sensitive to her environment and to the feelings with which her kindred regarded her. Emily felt it all the time—except when she was writing her stories.
Then
she forgot everything, roaming in some enchanted country between the sun and moon, where she saw wonderful beings whom she tried to describe and wonderful deeds which she tried to record, coming back to the candle-lit kitchen with a somewhat dazed sense of having been years in No-Man's Land.

She did not even have Aunt Laura to back her up in the matter. Aunt Laura thought Emily ought to yield in such an unimportant matter and please Aunt Elizabeth.

“But it's not unimportant,” said Emily despairingly. “It's the most important thing in the world to me, Aunt Laura. Oh, I thought
you
would understand.”

“I understand that you like to do it, dear, and I think it's a harmless enough amusement. But it seems to annoy Elizabeth some way and I do think you might give it up on that account. It is not as if it was anything that mattered much—it is really a waste of time.”

“No—no,” said distressed Emily. “Why, some day, Aunt Laura, I'll write real books—and make lots of money,” she added, sensing that the businesslike Murrays measured the nature of most things on a cash basis.

Aunt Laura smiled indulgently.

“I'm afraid you'll never grow rich that way, dear. It would be wiser to employ your time preparing yourself for some useful work.”

It was maddening to be condescended to like this—maddening that nobody could see that she
had
to write—maddening to have Aunt Laura so sweet and loving and stupid about it.

“Oh,” thought Emily bitterly, “if that hateful
Enterprise
editor had printed my piece they'd have believed
then
.”

“At any rate,” advised Aunt Laura, “don't let Elizabeth see you writing them.”

But somehow Emily could not take this prudent advice. There
had
been occasions when she had connived with Aunt Laura to hoodwink Aunt Elizabeth on some little matter, but she found she could not do it in this.
This
had to be open and above-board. She
must
write stories—and Aunt Elizabeth
must
know it—that was the way it had to be. She could not be false to herself in this—she could not
pretend
to be false.

She wrote her father all about it—poured out her bitterness and perplexity to him in what, though she did not suspect it at the time, was the last letter she was to write him. There was a great bundle of letters by now on the old sofa shelf in the garret—for Emily had written many letters to her father besides those which have been chronicled in this history. There were a great many paragraphs about Aunt Elizabeth in them, most of them very uncomplimentary and some of them, as Emily herself would have owned when her first bitterness was past, overdrawn and exaggerated. They had been written in moments when her hurt and angry soul demanded some outlet for its emotion and barbed her pen with venom. Emily was mistress of a subtly malicious style when she chose to be. After she had written them the hurt had ceased and she thought no more about them. But they remained.

And one spring day, Aunt Elizabeth, housecleaning in the garret while Emily played happily with Teddy at the Tansy Patch, found the bundle of letters on the sofa shelf, sat down, and read them all.

Elizabeth Murray would never have read any writing belonging to a grown person. But it never occurred to her that there was anything dishonorable in reading the letters wherein Emily, lonely and—sometimes—misunderstood, had poured out her heart to the father she had loved and been loved by, so passionately and understandingly. Aunt Elizabeth thought she had a right to know everything that this pensioner on her bounty did, said, or thought. She read the letters and she found out what Emily thought of her—of her, Elizabeth Murray, autocrat unchallenged, to whom no one had ever dared to say anything uncomplimentary. Such an experience is no pleasanter at sixty than at sixteen. As Elizabeth Murray folded up the last letter her hands trembled—with anger, and something underneath it that was not anger.

“Emily, your Aunt Elizabeth wants to see you in the parlor,” said Aunt Laura, when Emily returned from the Tansy Patch, driven home by the thin gray rain that had begun to drift over the greening fields. Her tone—her sorrowful look—warned Emily that mischief was in the wind. Emily had no idea what mischief—she could not recall anything she had done recently that should bring her up before the tribunal Aunt Elizabeth occasionally held in the parlor. It must be serious when it was in the parlor. For reasons best known to herself Aunt Elizabeth held super-serious interviews like this in the parlor. Possibly it was because she felt obscurely that the photographs of the Murrays on the walls gave her a backing she needed when dealing with this hop-out-of-kin; for the same reason Emily detested a trial in the parlor. She always felt on such occasions like a very small mouse surrounded by a circle of grim cats.

Emily skipped across the big hall, pausing, in spite of her alarm, to glance at the charming red world through the crimson glass; then pushed open the parlor door. The room was dim, for only one of the slat blinds was partially raised. Aunt Elizabeth was sitting bolt upright in Grandfather Murray's black horsehair-chair. Emily looked at her stern, angry face first—and then at her lap.

Emily understood.

The first thing she did was to retrieve her precious letters. With the quickness of light she sprang to Aunt Elizabeth, snatched up the bundle and retreated to the door; there she faced Aunt Elizabeth, her face blazing with indignation and outrage. Sacrilege had been committed—the most sacred shrine of her soul had been profaned.

“How dare you?” she said. “How dare you touch
my
private
papers
, Aunt Elizabeth?”

Aunt Elizabeth had not expected
this
. She had looked for confusion—dismay—shame—fear—for anything but this righteous indignation, as if
she
, forsooth, were the guilty one. She rose.

“Give me those letters, Emily.”

“No, I will not,” said Emily, white with anger, as she clasped her hands around the bundle. “They are mine and Father's—not yours. You had no right to touch them. I will
never
forgive you!”

This was turning the tables with a vengeance. Aunt Elizabeth was so dumbfounded that she hardly knew what to say or do. Worst of all, a most unpleasant doubt of her own conduct suddenly assailed her—driven home perhaps by the intensity and earnestness of Emily's accusation. For the first time in her life it occurred to Elizabeth Murray to wonder if she had done rightly. For the first time in her life she felt ashamed; and the shame made her furious. It was intolerable that
she
should be made to feel ashamed.

For the moment they faced each other, not as aunt and niece, not as child and adult, but as two human beings each with hatred for the other in her heart—Elizabeth Murray, tall and austere and thin-lipped; Emily Starr, white of face, her eyes pools of black flame, her trembling arms hugging her letters.

“So
this
is your gratitude,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “You were a penniless orphan—I took you to my home—I have given you shelter and food and education and kindness—and
this
is my thanks.”

As yet Emily's tempest of anger and resentment prevented her from feeling the sting of this.

“You did not
want
to take me,” she said. “You made me draw lots and you took me because the lot fell to you. You knew some of you had to take me because you were the proud Murrays and couldn't let a relation go to an orphan asylum. Aunt Laura loves me now but you don't. So why should I love you?”