Emily of New Moon
be much offended if I wore my black dress to church? Of course it’s
cheap--I think Ellen Greene paid for it herself--but it covers me all
up.”
“Little girls who do not understand things should hold their tongues,”
said Aunt Elizabeth. “I do not choose that Blair Water people should
see my niece in such a dress as that wretched black merino. And if
Ellen Greene paid for it we must repay her. You should have told us
that before we came away from Maywood. No, you are not going to church
to-day. You can wear the black dress to school to-morrow. We can cover
it up with an apron.”
Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home;
but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to
the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday for
her.
“Why are all the Murrays buried here?” asked Emily. “Is it really
because they are too good to be buried with common people?”
“No--no, pussy. We don’t carry our pride as far as _that_. When old
Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for
miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That’s why the old
Murrays were buried here--and later on we kept it up because we wanted
to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair
Water.”
“That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy,” said Emily.
“So it is--out of one of my poems.”
“I kind of like the idea of a ’sclusive burying-ground like this,” said
Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass
sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept
graves.
Cousin Jimmy chuckled.
“And yet they say you ain’t a Murray,” he said. “Murray and Byrd and
Starr--and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much
mistaken.”
“Shipley?”
“Yes--Hugh Murray’s wife--your great-great-grandmother--was a
Shipley--an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New
Moon?”
“No.”
“They were bound for Quebec--hadn’t any notion of coming to P. E. I.
They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of
the _New Moon_ put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died
of sea-sickness coming out--never seemed to get her sea-legs--so the
captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the
men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she
went and when she got to shore she said, ‘Here I stay.’ And stay she
did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh--he was young Hugh then, of
course--coaxed and stormed and raged and argued--and even cried, I’ve
been told--but Mary wouldn’t be moved. In the end he gave in and had
his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came
to P. E. Island.”
“I’m glad it happened like that,” said Emily.
“So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily--it
rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is
over there in the corner--that one with the flat red stone. Go you and
look at what he had put on it.”
Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of
the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph
was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of
age and lichen, ran the line, “Here I stay.”
“_That’s_ how he got even with her,” said Cousin Jimmy. “He was a good
husband to her--and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family--and
he never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it
had to come out.”
Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor
with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather
terrifying.
“I’m glad I’m only _half_ Murray,” she said to herself. Aloud--“Father
told me it was a Murray tradition not to carry spite past the grave.”
“So ’tis now--but it took its rise from this very thing. His family
were so horrified at it, you see. It made considerable of a scandal.
Some folks twisted it round to mean that old Hugh didn’t believe in the
resurrection, and there was talk of the session taking it up, but after
a while the talk died away.”
Emily skipped over to another lichen-grown stone.
“Elizabeth Burnley--who was she, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Old William Murray’s wife. He was Hugh’s brother, and came out here
five years after Hugh did. His wife was a great beauty and had been a
belle in the Old Country. She didn’t like the P. E. Island woods. She
was homesick, Emily--scandalous homesick. For weeks after she came
here she wouldn’t take off her bonnet--just walked the floor in it,
demanding to be taken back home.”
“Didn’t she take it off when she went to bed?” asked Emily.
“Dunno if she did go to bed. Anyway, William wouldn’t take
her back home so in time she took off her bonnet and resigned
herself. Her daughter married Hugh’s son, so Elizabeth was your
great-great-grandmother.”
Emily looked down at the sunken green grave and wondered if any
homesick dreams haunted Elizabeth Burnley’s slumber of a hundred years.
“It’s dreadful to be homesick--_I_ know,” she thought sympathetically.
“Little Stephen Murray is buried over there,” said Cousin Jimmy.
“His was the first marble stone in the burying-ground. He was your
grandfather’s brother--died when he was twelve. He has,” said Cousin
Jimmy solemnly, “become a Murray tradition.”
“Why?”
“He was so beautiful and clever and good. He hadn’t a fault--so of
course he couldn’t live. They say there never was such a handsome child
in the connection. And lovable--everybody loved him. He has been dead
for ninety years--not a Murray living to-day ever saw him--and yet
we talk about him at family gatherings--he’s more real than lots of
living people. So you see, Emily, he must have been an extraordinary
child--but it ended in that--” Cousin Jimmy waved his hand towards the
grassy grave and the white, prim headstone.
“I wonder,” thought Emily, “if any one will remember _me_ ninety years
after I’m dead.”
“This old yard is nearly full,” reflected Cousin Jimmy. “There’s just
room in yonder corner for Elizabeth and Laura--and me. None for you,
Emily.”
“I don’t want to be buried here,” flashed Emily. “I think it’s splendid
to have a graveyard like this in the family--but _I_ am going to be
buried in Charlottetown graveyard with Father and Mother. But there’s
one thing worries me Cousin Jimmy, do _you_ think I’m likely to die of
consumption?”
Cousin Jimmy looked judicially down into her eyes.
“No,” he said, “no, Miss Puss. You’ve got enough life in _you_ to carry
you far. You aren’t meant for death.”
“I feel that, too,” said Emily, nodding. “And now, Cousin Jimmy, _why_
is that house over there disappointed?”
“Which one?--oh, Fred Clifford’s house. Fred Clifford began to build
that house thirty years ago. He was to be married and his lady picked
out the plan. And when the house was just as far along as you see
she jilted him, Emily--right in the face of day she jilted him.
Never another nail was driven in the house. Fred went out to British
Columbia. He’s living there yet--married and happy. But he won’t sell
that lot to any one--so I reckon he feels the sting yet.”
“I’m so sorry for that house. I _wish_ it had been finished. It _wants_
to be--even yet it _wants_ to be.”
“Well, I reckon it never will. Fred had a bit of Shipley in him, too,
you see. One of old Hugh’s girls was his grandmother. And Doctor
Burnley up there in the big grey house has more than a bit.”
“Is he a relation of ours, too, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Forty-second cousin. Way back he had a cousin of Mary Shipley’s for a
great-something. That was in the Old Country--his forebears came out
here after we did. He’s a good doctor but an odd stick--odder by far
than I am, Emily, and yet nobody ever says he’s not all there. Can you
account for that? _He_ doesn’t believe in God--and _I_ am not such a
fool as that.”
“Not in _any_ God?”
“Not in any God. He’s an infidel, Emily. And he’s bringing his little
girl up the same way, which _I_ think is a shame, Emily,” said Cousin
Jimmy confidentially.
“Doesn’t her mother teach her things?”
“Her mother is--dead,” answered Cousin Jimmy, with a little odd
hesitation. “Dead these ten years,” he added in a firmer tone. “Ilse
Burnley is a great girl--hair like daffodils and eyes like yellow
diamonds.”
“Oh, Cousin Jimmy, you promised you’d tell me about the Lost Diamond,”
cried Emily eagerly.
“To be sure--to be sure. Well, it’s there--somewhere in or about the
old summer-house, Emily. Fifty years ago Edward Murray and his wife
came here from Kingsport for a visit. A great lady she was, and wearing
silks and diamonds like a queen, though no beauty. She had a ring on
with a stone in it that cost two hundred pounds, Emily. That was a
big lot of money to be wearing on one wee woman-finger, wasn’t it? It
sparkled on her white hand as she held her dress going up the steps of
the summer house; but when she came down the steps it was gone.”
“And was it _never_ found?” asked Emily breathlessly.
“Never--and for no lack of searching. Edward Murray wanted to have the
house pulled down--but Uncle Archibald wouldn’t hear of it--because he
had built it for his bride. The two brothers quarrelled over it and
were never good friends again. Everybody in the connection has taken
a spell hunting for the diamond. Most folks think it fell out of the
summer house among the flowers or shrubs. But I know better, Emily. I
know Miriam Murray’s diamond is somewhere about that old house yet. On
moonlit nights, Emily, I’ve seen it glinting--glinting and beckoning.
But never in the same place--and when you go to it--it’s gone, and you
see it laughing at you from somewhere else.”
Again there was that eerie, indefinable something in Cousin Jimmy’s
voice or look that gave Emily a sudden crinkly feeling in her spine.
But she loved the way he talked to her, as if she were grown-up; and
she loved the beautiful land around her; and, in spite of the ache for
her father and the house in the hollow which persisted all the time and
hurt her so much at night that her pillow was wet with secret tears,
she was beginning to be a little glad again in sunset and bird song
and early white stars, in moonlit nights and singing winds. She knew
life was going to be wonderful here--wonderful and interesting, what
with out-door cook-houses and cream-girdled dairies and pond paths
and sun-dials, and Lost Diamonds, and Disappointed Houses and men who
didn’t believe in _any_ God--not even Ellen Greene’s God. Emily hoped
she would soon see Dr. Burnley. She was very curious to see what an
infidel looked like. And she had already quite made up her mind that
she would find the Lost Diamond.
CHAPTER VIII
TRIAL BY FIRE
Aunt Elizabeth drove Emily to school the next morning. Aunt Laura had
thought that, since there was only a month before vacation, it was not
worth while for Emily to “start school.” But Aunt Elizabeth did not yet
feel comfortable with a small niece skipping around New Moon, poking
into everything insatiably, and was resolved that Emily must go to
school to get her out of the way. Emily herself, always avid for new
experiences, was quite keen to go, but for all that she was seething
with rebellion as they drove along. Aunt Elizabeth had produced a
terrible gingham apron and an equally terrible gingham sunbonnet from
somewhere in the New Moon garret, and made Emily put them on. The apron
was a long sack-like garment, high in the neck, with _sleeves_. Those
sleeves were the crowning indignity. Emily had never seen any little
girl wearing an apron with sleeves. She rebelled to the point of tears
over wearing it, but Aunt Elizabeth was not going to have any nonsense.
Emily saw the Murray look then; and when she saw it she buttoned her