Emily of New Moon
sloping pasture. That was a place where magic was made. She came more
fully into her fairy birthright there than in any other place. Nobody
who saw Emily skimming over the bare field would have envied her.
She was little and pale and poorly clad; sometimes she shivered in
her thin jacket; yet a queen might have gladly given a crown for her
visions--her dreams of wonder. The brown, frosted grasses under her
feet were velvet piles. The old, mossy, gnarled half-dead spruce-tree,
under which she paused for a moment to look up into the sky, was a
marble column in a palace of the gods; the far dusky hills were the
ramparts of a city of wonder. And for companions she had all the
fairies of the countryside--for she could believe in them here--the
fairies of the white clover and satin catkins, the little green folk of
the grass, the elves of the young fir-trees, sprites of wind and wild
fern and thistledown. Anything might happen there--everything might
come true.
And the barrens were such a splendid place in which to play hide and
seek with the Wind Woman. She was so very _real_ there; if you could
just spring quickly enough around a little cluster of spruces--only
you never could--you would _see_ her as well as feel her and hear her.
There she was--that _was_ the sweep of her grey cloak--no, she was
laughing up in the very top of the taller trees--and the chase was on
again--till, all at once, it seemed as if the Wind Woman were gone--and
the evening was bathed in a wonderful silence--and there was a sudden
rift in the curdled clouds westward, and a lovely, pale, pinky-green
lake of sky with a new moon in it.
Emily stood and looked at it with clasped hands and her little black
head upturned. She must go home and write down a description of it in
the yellow account book, where the last thing written had been, “Mike’s
Biograffy.” It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down.
Then she would read it to Father. She must not forget how the tips of
the trees on the hill came out like fine black lace across the edge of
the pinky-green sky.
And then, for one glorious, supreme moment, came “the flash.”
Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn’t exactly
describe it. It couldn’t be described--not even to Father, who always
seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to any one else.
It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she
was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and
herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain
aside--but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then
it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond--only
a glimpse--and heard a note of unearthly music.
This moment came rarely--went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the
inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it--never summon
it--never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days.
It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs
against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild
note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a
greybird lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of
“Holy, holy, holy” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when
she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of
ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was
writing down a “description” of something. And always when the flash
came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of
persistent beauty.
She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering
twilight, all agog to get home and write down her “description” before
the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew
just how she would begin it--the sentence seemed to shape itself in her
mind: “The hill called to me and something in me called back to it.”
She found Ellen Greene waiting for her on the sunken front-doorstep.
Emily was so full of happiness that she loved everything at that
moment, even fat things of no importance. She flung her arms around
Ellen’s knees and hugged them. Ellen looked down gloomily into the rapt
little face, where excitement had kindled a faint wild-rose flush, and
said, with a ponderous sigh:
“Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?”
CHAPTER II
A WATCH IN THE NIGHT
Emily stood quite still and looked up at Ellen’s broad, red face--as
still as if she had been suddenly turned to stone. She felt as if she
had. She was as stunned as if Ellen had struck her a physical blow. The
colour faded out of her little face and her pupils dilated until they
swallowed up the irides and turned her eyes into pools of blackness.
The effect was so startling that even Ellen Greene felt uncomfortable.
“I’m telling you this because I think it’s high time you was told,”
she said. “I’ve been at your pa for months to tell you, but he’s kept
putting it off and off. I says to him, says I, ‘You know how hard she
takes things, and if you drop off suddent some day it’ll most kill
her if she hasn’t been prepared. It’s your duty to prepare her,’ and
he says, says he, ‘There’s time enough yet, Ellen.’ But he’s never
said a word, and when the doctor told me last night that the end might
come any time now, I just made up my mind that _I_’d do what was right
and drop a hint to prepare you. Laws-a-massy, child, don’t look like
that! You’ll be looked after. Your ma’s people will see to that--on
account of the Murray pride, if for no other reason. They won’t let
one of their own blood starve or go to strangers--even if they have
always hated your pa like p’isen. You’ll have a good home--better’n
you’ve ever had here. You needn’t worry a mite. As for your pa, you
ought to be thankful to see him at rest. He’s been dying by inches
for the last five years. He’s kept it from you, but he’s been a great
sufferer. Folks say his heart broke when your ma died--it came on him
so suddent-like--she was only sick three days. That’s why I want you to
know what’s coming, so’s you won’t be all upset when it happens. For
mercy’s sake, Emily Byrd Starr, don’t stand there staring like that!
You give me the creeps! You ain’t the first child that’s been left an
orphan and you won’t be the last. Try and be sensible. And don’t go
pestering your pa about what I’ve told you, mind that. Come you in now,
out of the damp, and I’ll give you a cooky ’fore you go to bed.”
Ellen stepped down as if to take the child’s hand. The power of motion
returned to Emily--she must scream if Ellen even touched her _now_.
With one sudden, sharp, bitter little cry she avoided Ellen’s hand,
darted through the door and fled up the dark staircase.
Ellen shook her head and waddled back to her kitchen.
“Anyhow, I’ve done _my_ duty,” she reflected. “He’d have just kept
saying ‘time enough’ and put it off till he was dead and then there’d
have been no managing her. She’ll have time now to get used to it,
and she’ll brace up in a day or two. I will say for her she’s got
spunk--which is lucky, from all I’ve heard of the Murrays. They won’t
find it easy to overcrow _her_. She’s got a streak of their pride, too,
and that’ll help her through. I wish I dared send some of the Murrays
word that he’s dying, but I don’t dast go that far. There’s no telling
what _he_’d do. Well, I’ve stuck on here to the last and I ain’t sorry.
Not many women would ’a’ done it, living as they do here. It’s a shame
the way that child’s been brought up--never even sent to school. Well,
I’ve told him often enough what I’ve thought of it--it ain’t on _my_
conscience, that’s one comfort. Here, you Sal-thing, you git out!
Where’s Mike, too?”
Ellen could not find Mike for the very good reason that he was upstairs
with Emily, held tightly in her arms, as she sat in the darkness on
her little cot bed. Amid her agony and desolation there was a certain
comfort in the feel of his soft fur and round velvety head.
Emily was not crying; she stared straight into the darkness, trying
to face the awful thing Ellen had told her. She did not doubt
it--something told her it was true. Why couldn’t she die, too? She
couldn’t go on living without Father.
“If I was God I wouldn’t let things like this happen,” she said.
She felt it was very wicked of her to say such a thing--Ellen had told
her once that it was the wickedest thing any one could do to find fault
with God. But she didn’t care. Perhaps if she were wicked enough God
would strike her dead and then she and Father could keep on being
together.
But nothing happened--only Mike got tired of being held so tightly
and squirmed away. She was all alone now, with this terrible burning
pain that seemed all over her and yet was not of the body. She could
never get rid of it. She couldn’t help it by writing about it in the
old yellow account book. She had written there about her Sunday School
teacher going away, and of being hungry when she went to bed, and Ellen
telling her she must be half crazy to talk of Wind Women and flashes;
and after she had written down all about them these things hadn’t hurt
her any more. But this couldn’t be written about. She could not even
go to Father for comfort, as she had gone when she burned her hand so
badly, picking up the red-hot poker by mistake. Father had held her in
his arms all that night and told her stories and helped her to bear the
pain. But Father, so Ellen had said, was going to die in a week or two.
Emily felt as if Ellen had told her this years and years ago. It surely
couldn’t be less than an hour since she had been playing with the Wind
Woman in the barrens and looking at the new moon in the pinky-green sky.
“The flash will never come again--it can’t,” she thought.
But Emily had inherited certain things from her fine old ancestors--the
power to fight--to suffer--to pity--to love very deeply--to rejoice--to
endure. These things were all in her and looked out at you through her
purplish-grey eyes. Her heritage of endurance came to her aid now and
bore her up. She must not let Father know what Ellen had told her--it
might hurt him. She must keep it all to herself and _love_ Father, oh,
so much, in the little while she could yet have him.
She heard him cough in the room below: she must be in bed when he came
up; she undressed as swiftly as her cold fingers permitted and crept
into the little cot bed which stood across the open window. The voices
of the gentle spring night called to her all unheeded--unheard the Wind
Woman whistled by the eaves. For the fairies dwell only in the kingdom
of Happiness; having no souls they cannot enter the kingdom of Sorrow.
She lay there cold and tearless and motionless when her father came
into the room. How very slowly he walked--how very slowly he took off
his clothes. How was it she had never noticed these things before? But
he was not coughing at all. Oh, what if Ellen were mistaken?--what
if--a wild hope shot through her aching heart. She gave a little gasp.
Douglas Starr came over to her bed. She felt his dear nearness as
he sat down on the chair beside her, in his old red dressing-gown.
Oh, how she loved him! There was no other Father like him in all the
world--there never could have been--so tender, so understanding, so
wonderful! They had always been such chums--they had loved each other
so much--it couldn’t be that they were to be separated.
“Winkums, are you asleep?”
“No,” whispered Emily.
“Are you sleepy, small dear?”
“No--no--not sleepy.”
Douglas Starr took her hand and held it tightly.
“Then we’ll have our talk, honey. I can’t sleep either. I want to tell
you something.”
“Oh--I know it--I know it!” burst out Emily. “Oh, Father, I know it!
Ellen told me.”