Emily of New Moon
want to sleep with Emily any more than Emily wanted to sleep with
her. But she considered it quite impossible that the child should
be put off by herself in one of the big, lonely New Moon rooms; and
Laura was a poor sleeper, easily disturbed; children always kicked,
Elizabeth Murray had heard. So there was nothing to do but take Emily
in with her; and when she had sacrificed comfort and inclination to
do her unwelcome duty this ungrateful and unsatisfactory child was not
contented.
“I asked you what you were crying for, Emily?” she repeated.
“I’m--homesick, I guess,” sobbed Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth was annoyed.
“A nice home you had to be homesick for,” she said sharply.
“It--it wasn’t as elegant--as New Moon,” sobbed Emily, “but--_Father_
was there. I guess I’m Father-sick, Aunt Elizabeth. Didn’t you feel
awfully lonely when _your_ father died?”
Elizabeth Murray involuntarily remembered the ashamed, smothered
feeling of relief when old Archibald Murray had died--the handsome,
intolerant, autocratic old man who had ruled his family with a rod
of iron all his life and had made existence at New Moon miserable
with the petulant tyranny of the five years of invalidism that had
closed his career. The surviving Murrays had behaved impeccably, and
wept decorously, and printed a long and flattering obituary. But had
one genuine feeling of regret followed Archibald Murray to his tomb?
Elizabeth did not like the memory and was angry with Emily for evoking
it.
“I was resigned to the will of Providence,” she said coldly. “Emily,
you must understand right now that you are to be grateful and obedient
and show your appreciation of what is being done for you. I won’t have
tears and repining. What would you have done if you had no friends to
take you in? Answer me that.”
“I suppose I would have starved to death,” admitted Emily--instantly
beholding a dramatic vision of herself lying dead, looking exactly like
the pictures she had seen in one of Ellen Greene’s missionary magazines
depicting the victims of an Indian famine.
“Not exactly--but you would have been sent to some orphanage where you
would have been half-starved, probably. You little know what you have
escaped. You have come to a good home where you will be cared for and
educated properly.”
Emily did not altogether like the sound of being “educated properly.”
But she said humbly,
“I know it was very good of you to bring me to New Moon, Aunt
Elizabeth. And I won’t bother you long, you know. I’ll soon be grown-up
and able to earn my own living. What do you think is the earliest age a
person can be called grown-up, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“You needn’t think about that,” said Aunt Elizabeth shortly. “The
Murray women have never been under any necessity for earning their own
living. All we require of you is to be a good and contented child and
to conduct yourself with becoming prudence and modesty.”
This sounded terribly hard.
“I _will_ be,” said Emily, suddenly determining to be heroic, like the
girl in the stories she had read. “Perhaps it won’t be so very hard
after all, Aunt Elizabeth,”--Emily happened at this point to recall
a speech she had heard her father use once, and thought this a good
opportunity to work it in--“because, you know, God is good and the
devil might be worse.”
Poor Aunt Elizabeth! To have a speech like that fired at her in the
darkness of the night from that unwelcome little interloper into her
orderly life and peaceful bed! Was it any wonder that for a moment
or so she was too paralyzed to reply! Then she exclaimed in tones of
horror,
“Emily, _never_ say that again.”
“All right,” said Emily meekly. “But,” she added defiantly under her
breath, “I’ll go on thinking it.”
“And now,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “I want to say that I am not in the
habit of talking all night if you are. I tell you to go to sleep, and I
_expect_ you to obey me. Good-night.”
The tone of Aunt Elizabeth’s good-night would have spoiled the best
night in the world. But Emily lay very still and sobbed no more, though
the noiseless tears trickled down her cheeks in the darkness for some
time. She lay so still that Aunt Elizabeth imagined she was asleep and
went to sleep herself.
“I wonder if anybody in the world is awake but me,” thought Emily,
feeling a sickening loneliness. “If I only had Saucy Sal here! She
isn’t so cuddly as Mike but she’d be better than nothing. I wonder
where she is. I wonder if they gave her any supper.”
Aunt Elizabeth had handed Sal’s basket to Cousin Jimmy with an
impatient, “Here--look to this cat,” and Jimmy had carried it off.
Where had he put it? Perhaps Saucy Sal would get out and go home--Emily
had heard cats always went back home. She wished _she_ could get out
and go home--she pictured herself and her cat running eagerly along
the dark, starlit roads to the little house in the hollow--back to the
birches and Adam-and-Eve and Mike, and the old wing-chair and her dear
little cot and the open window where the Wind Woman sang to her and at
dawn one could see the blue of the mist on the homeland hills.
“Will it ever be morning?” thought Emily. “Perhaps things won’t be so
bad in the morning.”
And then--she heard the Wind Woman at the window--she heard the little,
low, whispering murmur of the June night breeze--cooing, friendly,
lovesome.
“Oh, you’re out there, are you, dearest one?” she whispered, stretching
out her arms. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear you. You’re such company, Wind
Woman. I’m not lonesome any more. And the flash came, too! I was afraid
it might never come at New Moon.”
Her soul suddenly escaped from the bondage of Aunt Elizabeth’s stuffy
feather-bed and gloomy canopy and sealed windows. She was out in the
open with the Wind Woman and the other gipsies of the night--the
fireflies, the moths, the brooks, the clouds. Far and wide she
wandered in enchanted reverie until she coasted the shore of dreams and
fell soundly asleep on the fat, hard pillow, while the Wind Woman sang
softly and luringly in the vines that clustered over New Moon.
CHAPTER VII
THE BOOK OF YESTERDAY
That first Saturday and Sunday at New Moon always stood out in Emily’s
memory as a very wonderful time, so crowded was it with new and
generally delightful impressions. If it be true that we “count time
by heart throbs” Emily lived two years in it instead of two days.
Everything was fascinating from the moment she came down the long,
polished staircase into the square hall that was filled with a soft,
rosy light coming through the red glass panes of the front door. Emily
gazed through the panes delightedly. What a strange, fascinating, red
world she beheld, with a weird red sky that looked, she thought, as if
it belonged to the Day of Judgment.
There was a certain charm about the old house which Emily felt keenly
and responded to, although she was too young to understand it. It was a
house which aforetime had had vivid brides and mothers and wives, and
the atmosphere of their loves and lives still hung around it, not yet
banished by the old-maidishness of the régime of Elizabeth and Laura.
“Why--I’m going to _love_ New Moon,” thought Emily, quite amazed at the
idea.
Aunt Laura was setting the breakfast table in the kitchen, which seemed
quite bright and jolly in the glow of morning sunshine. Even the
black hole in the ceiling had ceased to be spookish and become only
a commonplace entrance to the kitchen loft. And on the red-sandstone
doorstep Saucy Sal was sitting, preening her fur as contentedly as
if she had lived at New Moon all her life. Emily did not know it,
but Sal had already drunk deep the delight of battle with her peers
that morning and taught the barn cats their place once and for all.
Cousin Jimmy’s big yellow Tom had got a fearful drubbing, and was
minus several bits of his anatomy, while a stuck-up, black lady-cat,
who fancied herself considerably, had made up her mind that if that
grey-and-white, narrow-faced interloper from goodness knew where was
going to stay at New Moon, _she_ was not.
Emily gathered Sal up in her arms and kissed her joyously, to the
horror of Aunt Elizabeth, who was coming across the platform from the
cook-house with a plate of sizzling bacon in her hands.
“Don’t ever let me see you kissing a cat again,” she ordered.
“Oh, all right,” agreed Emily cheerfully. “I’ll only kiss her when you
don’t see me after this.”
“I don’t want any of your pertness, miss. You are not to kiss cats at
all.”
“But, Aunt Elizabeth, I didn’t kiss her on her mouth, _of course_. I
just kissed her between her ears. It’s nice--won’t you just try it for
once and see for yourself?”
“That will do, Emily. You have said quite enough.” And Aunt Elizabeth
sailed on into the kitchen majestically, leaving Emily momentarily
wretched. She felt that she had offended Aunt Elizabeth, and she hadn’t
the least notion why or how.
But the scene before her was too interesting to worry long over Aunt
Elizabeth. Delicious smells were coming from the cook-house--a little,
slant-roofed building at the corner where the big cooking-stove was
placed in summer. It was thickly overgrown with hop vines, as most of
the New Moon buildings were. To the right was the “new” orchard, very
wonderful now in blossom, but a rather commonplace spot after all,
since Cousin Jimmy cultivated it in most up-to-date fashion and had
grain growing in the wide spaces between the straight rows of trees
that looked all alike. But on the other side of the barn lane, just
behind the well, was the “old orchard,” where Cousin Jimmy said the
columbines grew and which seemed to be a delightful place where trees
had come up at their own sweet will, and grown into individual shapes
and sizes, where blue-eyed ivy twined about their roots and wild-briar
roses rioted over the grey paling fence. Straight ahead, closing the
vista between the orchards, was a little slope covered with huge white
birches, among which were the big New Moon barns, and beyond the new
orchard a little, lovable red road looped lightly up and up, over a
hill, until it seemed to touch the vivid blue of the sky.
Cousin Jimmy came down from the barns, carrying brimming pails of
milk, and Emily ran with him to the dairy behind the cook-house. Such
a delightful spot she had never seen or imagined. It was a snow-white
little building in a clump of tall balm-of-gileads. Its grey roof was
dotted over with cushions of moss like fat green-velvet mice. You went
down six sandstone steps, with ferns crowding about them, and opened a
white door with a glass panel in it, and went down three more steps.
And then you were in a clean, earthy-smelling, damp, cool place with
an earthen floor and windows screened by the delicate emerald of young
hop-vines, and broad wooden shelves all around, whereon stood wide,
shallow pans of glossy brown ware, full of milk coated over with cream
so rich that it was positively yellow.
Aunt Laura was waiting for them and she strained the milk into empty
pans and then skimmed some of the full ones. Emily thought skimming was
a lovely occupation and longed to try her hand at it. She also longed
to sit right down and write a description of that dear dairy; but
alas, there was no account book; still, she could write it in her head.
She squatted down on a little three-legged stool in a dim corner and
proceeded to do it, sitting so still that Jimmy and Laura forgot her
and went away and later had to hunt for her a quarter of an hour. This
delayed breakfast and made Aunt Elizabeth very cross. But Emily had
found just the right sentence to define the clear yet dim green light
that filled the dairy and was so happy over it that she didn’t mind
Aunt Elizabeth’s black looks a bit.
After breakfast Aunt Elizabeth informed Emily that henceforth it would