Emily of New Moon (32 page)

She fell back on her pillow, moaned, and tossed the hands which Laura Murray had loosened in her surprise.

The two ladies of New Moon looked at each other across her bed in dismay—and something like terror.

“Who did you see, Emily?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.

“Ilse's mother—of course. I always knew she didn't do that dreadful thing. She fell into the old well—she's there now—go—go and get her out, Aunt Laura.
Please
.”

“Yes—yes, of course we'll get her out, darling,” said Aunt Laura, soothingly.

Emily sat up in bed and looked at Aunt Laura again. This time she did not look through her—she looked into her. Laura Murray felt that those burning eyes read her soul.

“You are lying to me,” cried Emily. “You don't mean to try to get her out. You are only saying it to put me off. Aunt Elizabeth,” she suddenly turned and caught Aunt Elizabeth's hand, “you'll do it for me, won't you? You'll go and get her out of the old well, won't you?”

Elizabeth remembered that Dr. Burnley had said that Emily's whims must be humored. She was terrified by the child's condition.

“Yes, I'll get her out if she is in there,” she said.

Emily released her hand and sank down. The wild glare left her eyes. A great sudden calm fell over her anguished little face.

“I know
you'll
keep your word,” she said. “You are very hard—but
you
never lie, Aunt Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth Murray went back to her own room and dressed herself with her shaking fingers. A little later, when Emily had fallen into a quiet sleep, Laura went down stairs and heard Elizabeth giving Cousin Jimmy some orders in the kitchen.

“Elizabeth, you don't really mean to have that old well searched?”

“I do,” said Elizabeth resolutely. “I know it's nonsense as well as you do. But I had to promise it to quiet her down—and I'll keep my promise. You heard what she said—she believed I wouldn't lie to her. Nor will I. Jimmy, you will go over to James Lee's after breakfast and ask him to come here.”

“How has she heard the story?” said Laura.

“I don't know—oh, someone has told her, of course—perhaps that old demon of a Nancy Priest. It doesn't matter who. She
has
heard it and the thing is to keep her quiet. It isn't so much of a job to put ladders in the well and get someone to go down it. The thing that matters is the absurdity of it.”

“We'll be laughed at for a pair of fools,” protested Laura, whose share of Murray pride was in hot revolt. “And besides, it will open up all the old scandal again.”

“No matter. I'll keep my word to the child,” said Elizabeth stubbornly.

Allan Burnley came to New Moon at sunset, on his way home from town. He was tired, for he had been going night and day for over a week; he was more worried than he had admitted over Emily; he looked old and rather desolate as he stepped into the New Moon kitchen.

Only Cousin Jimmy was there. Cousin Jimmy did not seem to have much to do, although it was a good hay-day and Jimmy Joe Belle and Perry were hauling in the great fragrant, sun-dried loads. He sat by the western window with a strange expression on his face.

“Hello, Jimmy, where are the girls? And how is Emily?”

“Emily is better,” said Cousin Jimmy. “The rash is out and her fever has gone down. I think she's asleep.”

“Good. We couldn't afford to lose that little girl, could we, Jimmy?”

“No,” said Jimmy. But he did not seem to want to talk about it. “Laura and Elizabeth are in the sitting-room. They want to see you.” He paused a minute and then added in an eerie way, “There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.”

It occurred to Allan Burnley that Jimmy was acting mysteriously. And if Laura and Elizabeth wanted to see him why didn't they come out? It wasn't like them to stand on ceremony in this fashion. He pushed open the sitting-room door impatiently.

Laura Murray was sitting on the sofa, leaning her head on its arm. He could not see her face but he felt that she was crying, Elizabeth was sitting bolt upright on a chair. She wore her second-best black silk and her second-best lace cap. And she, too, had been crying. Dr. Burnley never attached much importance to Laura's tears, easy as those of most women, but that Elizabeth Murray should cry—had he ever seen her cry before?

The thought of Ilse flashed into his mind—his little neglected daughter. Had anything happened to Ilse? In one dreadful moment Allan Burnley paid the price of his treatment of his child.

“What is wrong?” he exclaimed in his gruffest manner.

“Oh, Allan,” said Elizabeth Murray. “God forgive us—God forgive us all!”

“It—is—Ilse,” said Dr. Burnley, dully.

“No—no—not Ilse.”

Then she told him—she told him what had been found at the bottom of the old Lee well—she told him what had been the real fate of the lovely, laughing young wife whose name for twelve bitter years had never crossed his lips.

It was not until the next evening that Emily saw the doctor. She was lying in bed, weak and limp, red as a beet with the measles rash, but quite herself again. Allan Burnley stood by the bed and looked down at her.

“Emily—dear little child—do you know what you have done for me? God knows how you did it.”

“I thought you didn't believe in God,” said Emily, wonderingly.

“You have given me back my faith in Him, Emily.”

“Why, what have I done?”

Dr. Burnley saw that she had no remembrance of her delirium. Laura had told him that she had slept long and soundly after Elizabeth's promise and had awakened with fever gone and the eruption fast coming out. She had asked nothing and they had said nothing.

“When you are better we will tell you all,” he said, smiling down at her. There was something very sorrowful in the smile—and yet something very sweet.

“He is smiling with his eyes as well as his mouth now,” thought Emily.

“How—how did she know?” whispered Laura Murray to him when he went down. “I—can't understand it, Allan.”

“Nor I. These things are beyond us, Laura,” he answered gravely. “I only know this child has given Beatrice back to me, stainless and beloved. It can be explained rationally enough perhaps. Emily has evidently been told about Beatrice and worried over it—her repeated ‘she couldn't have done it' shows that. And the tales of the old Lee well naturally made a deep impression on the mind of a sensitive child keenly alive to dramatic values. In her delirium she mixed this all up with the well-known fact of Jimmy's tumble into the New Moon well—and the rest was coincidence. I would have explained it all so myself once—but now—now, Laura, I only say humbly, ‘A little child shall lead them.'”

“Our stepmother's mother was a Highland Scotchwoman. They said she had the second sight,” said Elizabeth. “I never believed in it—before.”

The excitement of Blair Water had died away before Emily was deemed strong enough to hear the story. That which had been found in the old Lee well had been buried in the Mitchell plot at Shrewsbury and a white marble shaft, “Sacred to the memory of Beatrice Burnley, beloved wife of Allan Burnley,” had been erected. The sensation caused by Dr. Burnley's presence every Sunday in the old Burnley pew had died away. On the first evening that Emily was allowed to sit up Aunt Laura told her the whole story. Her manner of telling stripped it forever of the taint and innuendo left by Aunt Nancy.

“I
knew
Ilse's mother couldn't have done it,” said Emily triumphantly.

“We blame ourselves now for our lack of faith,” said Aunt Laura. “We should have known too—but it
did
seem black against her at the time, Emily. She was a bright, beautiful, merry creature—we thought her close friendship with her cousin natural and harmless. We know now it was so—but all these years since her disappearance we have believed differently. Mr. James Lee remembers clearly that the well was open the night of Beatrice's disappearance. His hired man had taken the old rotten planks off it that evening, intending to put the new ones on at once. Then Robert Greerson's house caught fire and he ran with everybody else to help save it. By the time it was out it was too dark to finish with the well, and the man said nothing about it until the morning. Mr. Lee was angry with him—he said it was a scandalous thing to leave a well uncovered like that. He went right down and put the new planks in place himself. He did not look down in the well—had he looked he could have seen nothing, for the ferns growing out from the sides screened the depths. It was just after harvest. No one was in the field again before the next spring. He never connected Beatrice's disappearance with the open well—he wonders now that he didn't. But you see—dear—there had been much malicious gossip—and Beatrice was
known
to have gone on board
The
Lady
of
Winds
. It was taken for granted she never came off again. But she did—and went to her death in the old Lee field. It was a dreadful ending to her bright young life—but not so dreadful, after all, as what we believed. For twelve years we have wronged the dead. But—Emily—how could you
know
?”

“I—don't—know. When the doctor came in that day I couldn't remember anything—but now it seems to me that I remember something—just as if I'd dreamed it—of
seeing
Ilse's mother coming over the fields, singing. It was dark—and yet I could see the ace of hearts—oh, Aunty, I don't know—I don't like to think of it, some way.”

“We won't talk of it again,” said Aunt Laura gently. “It is one of the things best not talked of—one of God's secrets.”

“And Ilse—does her father love her now?” asked Emily eagerly.

“Love her! He can't love her enough. It seems as if he were pouring out on her at once all the shut-up love of those twelve years.”

“He'll likely spoil her now as much with indulgence as he did before with neglect,” said Elizabeth, coming in with Emily's supper in time to hear Laura's reply.

“It will take a lot of love to spoil Ilse,” laughed Laura. “She's drinking it up like a thirsty sponge. And she loves him wildly in return. There isn't a trace of grudge in her over his long neglect.”

“All the same,” said Elizabeth grimly, tucking pillows behind Emily's back with a very gentle hand, oddly in contrast with her severe expression, “he won't get off so easily. Ilse has run wild for twelve years. He won't find it so easy to make her behave properly now—if he ever does.”

“Love will do wonders,” said Aunt Laura softly. “Of course, Ilse is dying to come and see you, Emily. But she must wait until there is no danger of infection. I told her she might write—but when she found I would have to read it because of your eyes she said she'd wait till you could read it yourself. Evidently”—Laura laughed again—“evidently Ilse has much of importance to tell you.”

“I didn't know anybody could be as happy as I am now,” said Emily. “And oh, Aunt Elizabeth, it is so nice to feel hungry again and to have something to
chew
.”

Emily's Great Moment

Emily's convalescence was rather slow. Physically she recovered with normal celerity but a certain spiritual and emotional languor persisted for a time. One cannot go down to the depths of hidden things and escape the penalty. Aunt Elizabeth said she “moped.” But Emily was too happy and contented to mope. It was just that life seemed to have lost its savor for a time, as if some spring of vital energy had been drained out of it and refilled slowly.

She had, just then, no one to play with. Perry, Ilse and Teddy had all come down with measles the same day. Mrs. Kent at first declared bitterly that Teddy had caught them at New Moon, but all three had contracted them at a Sunday School picnic where Derry Pond children had been. That picnic infected all Blair Water. There was a perfect orgy of measles. Teddy and Ilse were only moderately ill, but Perry, who had insisted on going home to Aunt Tom at the first symptoms, nearly died. Emily was not allowed to know his danger until it had passed, lest it worry her too much. Even Aunt Elizabeth worried over it. She was surprised to discover how much they missed Perry round the place.

It was fortunate for Emily that Dean Priest was in Blair Water during this forlorn time. His companionship was just what she needed and helped her wonderfully on the road to complete recovery. They went for long walks together all over Blair Water, with Tweed woofing around them, and explored places and roads Emily had never seen before. They watched a young moon grow old, night by night; they talked in dim scented chambers of twilight over long red roads of mystery; they followed the lure of hill winds; they saw the stars rise and Dean told her all about them—the great constellations of the old myths. It was a wonderful month; but on the first day of Teddy's convalescence Emily was off to the Tansy Patch for the afternoon and Jarback Priest walked—if he walked at all—alone.

Aunt Elizabeth was extremely polite to him, though she did not like the Priests of Priest Pond overmuch, and never felt quite comfortable under the mocking gleam of “Jarback's” green eyes and the faint derision of his smile, which seemed to make Murray pride and Murray traditions seem much less important than they really were.

“He has the Priest flavor,” she told Laura, “though it isn't as strong in him as in most of them. And he's certainly helping Emily—she has begun to spunk up since he came.”

Emily continued to “spunk up” and by December, when the measles epidemic was spent and Dean Priest had gone on one of his sudden swoops over to Europe for the autumn, she was ready for school again—a little taller, a little thinner, a little less childlike, with great gray shadowy eyes that had looked into death and read the riddle of a buried thing, and henceforth would hold in them some haunting, elusive remembrance of that world behind the veil. Dean Priest had seen it—Mr. Carpenter saw it when she smiled at him across her desk at school.

“She's left the childhood of her soul behind, though she is still a child in body,” he muttered.

One afternoon amid the golden days and hazes of October he asked her gruffly to let him see some of her verses.

“I never meant to encourage you in it,” he said. “I don't mean to now. Probably you can't write a line of real poetry and never will. But let me see your stuff. If it's hopelessly bad I'll tell you so. I won't have you wasting years striving for the unattainable—at least I won't have it on my conscience if you do. If there's any promise in it, I'll tell you so just as honestly. And bring some of your stories, too—
they're
trash yet, that's certain, but I'll see if they show just and sufficient cause for going on.”

Emily spent a very solemn hour that evening, weighing, choosing, rejecting. To the little bundle of verse she added one of her Jimmy-books which contained, as she thought, her best stories. She went to school next day, so secret and mysterious that Ilse took offense, started in to call her names—and then stopped. Ilse had promised her father that she would try to break herself of the habit of calling names. She was making fairly good headway and her conversation, if less vivid, was beginning to approximate to New Moon standards.

Emily made a sad mess of her lessons that day. She was nervous and frightened. She had a tremendous respect for Mr. Carpenter's opinion. Father Cassidy had told her to keep on—Dean Priest had told her that some day she might really write—but perhaps they were only trying to be encouraging because they liked her and didn't want to hurt her feelings. Emily knew Mr. Carpenter would not do this. No matter if he did like her he would nip her aspirations mercilessly if he thought the root of the matter was not in her. If, on the contrary, he bade her God-speed, she would rest content with that against the world and never lose heart in the face of any future criticism. No wonder the day seemed fraught with tremendous issues to Emily.

When school was out Mr. Carpenter asked her to remain. She was so white and tense that the other pupils thought she must have been found out by Mr. Carpenter in some especially dreadful behavior and knew she was going to “catch it.” Rhoda Stuart flung her a significantly malicious smile from the porch—which Emily never even saw. She was, indeed, at a momentous bar, with Mr. Carpenter as supreme judge, and her whole future career—so she believed—hanging on his verdict.

The pupils disappeared and a mellow sunshiny stillness settled over the old schoolroom. Mr. Carpenter took the little packet she had given him in the morning out of his desk, came down the aisle and sat in the seat before her, facing her. Very deliberately he settled his glasses astride his hooked nose, took out her manuscripts and began to read—or rather to glance over them, flinging scraps of comments, mingled with grunts, sniffs and hoots, at her as he glanced. Emily folded her cold hands on her desk and braced her feet against the legs of it to keep her knees from trembling. This was a very terrible experience. She wished she had never given her verses to Mr. Carpenter. They were no good—of course they were no good. Remember the editor of the
Enterprise
.

“Humph!” said Mr. Carpenter. “Sunset—Lord, how many poems have been written on ‘Sunset'—

‘The clouds are massed in splendid state

At heaven's unbarred western gate

Where troops of star-eyed spirits wait'—

By gad, what does that mean?”

“I—I—don't know,” faltered startled Emily, whose wits had been scattered by the sudden swoop of his spiked glance.

Mr. Carpenter snorted.

“For heaven's sake, girl, don't write what you can't understand yourself. And this—
To
Lif
e—‘Life, as thy gift I ask no rainbow joy'—is that sincere? Is it, girl. Stop and think.
Do
you ask ‘no rainbow joy' of life?”

He transfixed her with another stare. But Emily was beginning to pick herself up a bit. Nevertheless, she suddenly felt oddly ashamed of the very elevated and unselfish desires expressed in that sonnet.

“No-o,” she answered reluctantly. “I
do
want rainbow joy—lots of it.”

“Of course you do. We all do. We don't get it—you won't get it—but don't be hypocrite enough to pretend you don't want it, even in a sonnet.
Lines
to
a
Mountain
Cascade
—‘On its dark rocks like the whiteness of a veil around a bride'—Where did you see a mountain cascade in Prince Edward Island?”

“Nowhere—there's a picture of one in Dr. Burnley's library.”

“
A
Wood
Stream
—

‘The threading sunbeams quiver,

The bending bushes shiver,

O'er the little shadowy river'—

There's only one more rhyme that occurs to me and that's ‘liver.' Why did you leave it out?”

Emily writhed.

“
Wind
Song
—

‘I have shaken the dew in the meadows

From the clover's creamy gown'—

Pretty, but weak.
June
—June, for heaven's sake, girl, don't write poetry on June. It's the sickliest subject in the world. It's been written to death.”

“No, June is immortal,” cried Emily suddenly, a mutinous sparkle replacing the strained look in her eyes. She was not going to let Mr. Carpenter have it all his own way.

But Mr. Carpenter had tossed
June
aside without reading a line of it.

“‘I weary of the hungry world'—what do you know of the hungry world?—you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids—but it
is
hungry.
Ode
to
Winter
—the seasons are a sort of disease all young poets must have, it seems—ha! ‘Spring will not forget'—
that's
a good line—the only good line in it. H'm'm—
Wanderings
—

‘I've learned the secret of the rune

That the somber pines on the hillside croon'—

Have you—
have
you learned that secret?”

“I think I've always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and gone.

“
Aim
and
Endeavor
—too didactic—too didactic. You've no right to try to teach until you're old—and then you won't want to—

‘Her face was like a star all pale and fair'—

Were you looking in the glass when you composed that line?”

“No—” indignantly.

“‘When the morning light is shaken like a banner on the hill'—a good line—a good line—

‘Oh, on such a golden morning

To be living is delight'—

Too much like a faint echo of Wordsworth.
The
Sea
in
September
—‘blue and austerely bright'—‘austerely bright'—child, how can you marry the right adjectives like that?
Morning
—‘all the secret fears that haunt the night'—what do
you
know of the fears that haunt the night?”

“I know something,” said Emily decidedly, remembering her first night at Wyther Grange.

“
To
a
Dead
Day
—

‘With the chilly calm on her brow

That only the dead may wear'—

Have you ever
seen
the chilly calm on the brow of the dead, Emily?”

“Yes,” said Emily softly, recalling that gray dawn in the old house in the hollow.

“I thought so—otherwise you couldn't have written
that
—and even as it is—how old are you, jade?”

“Thirteen, last May.”

“Humph!
Lines
to
Mrs. George Irving's Infant Son
—you should study the art of titles, Emily—there's a fashion in them as in everything else. Your titles are as out of date as the candles of New Moon—

‘Soundly he sleeps with his red lips pressed

Like a beautiful blossom close to her breast'—

The rest isn't worth reading.
September
—is there a month you've missed?—‘Windy meadows harvest-deep'—good line.
Blair
Water
by
Moonlight
—gossamer, Emily, nothing but gossamer.
The
Garden
of
New
Moon
—

‘Beguiling laughter and old song

Of merry maids and men'—

Good line—I suppose New Moon
is
full of ghosts. ‘Death's fell minion well fulfilled its part'—that might have passed in Addison's day but not now—not now, Emily—

‘Your azure dimples are the graves

Where million buried sunbeams play'—

Atrocious, girl—atrocious. Graves aren't playgrounds. How much would
you
play if you were buried?”

Emily writhed and blushed again.
Why
couldn't she have seen that herself?
Any
goose could have seen it.

“‘Sail onward, ships—white wings, sail on,

Till past the horizon's purple bar

You drift from sight.—In flush of dawn

Sail on, and 'neath the evening star'—

Trash—trash—and yet there's a picture in it—

‘Lap softly, purple waves. I dream,

And dreams are sweet—I'll wake no more'—

Ah, but you'll have to wake if you want to accomplish anything. Girl, you've used
purple
twice in the same poem.

‘Buttercups in a golden frenzy'—

‘a golden frenzy'—girl, I
see
the wind shaking the buttercups.

‘From the purple gates of the west I come'—

You're too fond of purple, Emily.”

“It's such a lovely word,” said Emily.

“‘Dreams that seem too bright to die'—

Seem
but never
are
, Emily—

‘The luring voice of the echo, fame'—

So you've heard it, too? It
is
a lure and for most of us only an echo. And that's the last of the lot.”

Mr. Carpenter swept the little sheets aside, folded his arms on the desk, and looked over his glasses at Emily.

Emily looked back at him mutely, nervelessly. All the life seemed to have been drained out of her body and concentrated in her eyes.

“Ten good lines out of four hundred, Emily—comparatively good, that is—and all the rest balderdash—balderdash, Emily.”

“I—suppose so,” said Emily faintly.

Her eyes brimmed with tears—her lips quivered. She could not help it. Pride was hopelessly submerged in the bitterness of her disappointment. She felt exactly like a candle that somebody had blown out.