Emily of New Moon
once you were well he had apparently no further use for you. He had
been absorbed all through July trying to save Teddy Kent’s life up at
the Tansy Patch. Teddy was out of danger now and able to be up, but
his improvement was not speedy enough to satisfy Dr. Burnley. One day
he held up Emily and Ilse, who were heading through the lawn to the
pond, with fishing-hooks and a can of fat, abominable worms--the latter
manipulated solely by Ilse--and ordered them to betake themselves up to
the Tansy Patch and play with Teddy Kent.
“He’s lonesome and moping. Go and cheer him up,” said the doctor.
Ilse was rather loth to go. She liked Teddy, but it seemed she did not
like his mother. Emily was secretly not averse. She had seen Teddy Kent
but once, at Sunday School the day before he was taken seriously ill,
and she had liked his looks. It had seemed that he liked hers, too, for
she caught him staring shyly at her over the intervening pews several
times. He was very handsome, Emily decided. She liked his thick,
dark-brown hair and his black-browed blue eyes, and for the first time
it occurred to her that it might be rather nice to have a boy playmate,
too. Not a “beau” of course. Emily hated the school jargon that called
a boy your “beau” if he happened to give you a pencil or an apple and
picked you out frequently for his partner in the games.
“Teddy’s nice but his mother is queer,” Ilse told her on their way to
the Tansy Patch. “She never goes out anywhere--not even to church--but
I guess it’s because of the scar on her face. They’re not Blair Water
people--they’ve only been living at the Tansy Patch since last fall.
They’re poor and proud and not many people visit them. But Teddy is
awfully nice, so if his mother gives us some black looks we needn’t
mind.”
Mrs. Kent gave them no black looks, though her reception was rather
distant. Perhaps she, too, had received some orders from the doctor.
She was a tiny creature, with enormous masses of dull, soft, silky,
fawn hair, dark, mournful eyes, and a broad scar running slantwise
across her pale face. Without the scar she must have been pretty, and
she had a voice as soft and uncertain as the wind in the tansy. Emily,
with her instinctive faculty of sizing up people she met, felt that
Mrs. Kent was not a happy woman.
The Tansy Patch was east of the Disappointed House, between the Blair
Water and the sand-dunes. Most people considered it a bare, lonely,
neglected place, but Emily thought it was fascinating. The little
clap-boarded house topped a small hill, over which tansy grew in a
hard, flaunting, aromatic luxuriance, rising steeply and abruptly
from a main road. A straggling rail fence, almost smothered in wild
rosebushes, bounded the domain, and a sagging, ill-used little gate
gave ingress from the road. Stones were let into the side of the hill
for steps up to the front door. Behind the house was a tumble-down
little barn, and a field of flowering buckwheat, creamy green, sloping
down to the Blair Water. In front was a crazy veranda around which a
brilliant band of red poppies held up their enchanted cups.
Teddy was unfeignedly glad to see them, and they had a happy afternoon
together. There was some colour in Teddy’s clear olive skin when it
ended and his dark-blue eyes were brighter. Mrs. Kent took in these
signs greedily and asked the girls to come back, with an eagerness that
was yet not cordiality. But they had found the Tansy Patch a charming
place and were glad to go again. For the rest of the vacation there was
hardly a day when they did not go up to it--preferably in the long,
smoky, delicious August evenings when the white moths sailed over the
tansy plantation and the golden twilight faded into dusk and purple
over the green slopes beyond and fireflies lighted their goblin torches
by the pond. Sometimes they played games in the tansy patch, when Teddy
and Emily somehow generally found themselves on the same side and then
no more than a match for agile, quick-witted Ilse; sometimes Teddy
took them to the barn loft and showed them his little collection of
drawings. Both girls thought them very wonderful without knowing in
the least how wonderful they really were. It seemed like magic to see
Teddy take a pencil and bit of paper and with a few quick strokes of
his slim brown fingers bring out a sketch of Ilse or Emily or Smoke or
Buttercup, that looked ready to speak--or meow.
Smoke and Buttercup were the Tansy Patch cats. Buttercup was a chubby,
yellow, delightful creature hardly out of kittenhood. Smoke was a big
Maltese and an aristocrat from the tip of his nose to the tip of his
tail. There was no doubt whatever that he belonged to the cat caste of
Vere de Vere. He had emerald eyes and a coat of plush. The only white
thing about him was an adorable dicky.
Emily thought of all the pleasant hours spent at the Tansy Patch the
pleasantest were those, when, tired with play, they all three sat
on the crazy veranda steps in the mystery and enchantment of the
borderland ’tween light and dark when the little clump of spruce behind
the barn looked like beautiful, dark, phantom trees. The clouds of the
west faded into grey and a great round yellow moon rose over the fields
to be reflected brokenly in the pond, where the Wind Woman was making
wonderful, woven lights and shadows.
Mrs. Kent never joined them, though Emily had a creepy conviction
that she was watching them stealthily from behind the kitchen blind.
Teddy and Ilse sang school ditties, and Ilse recited, and Emily told
stories; or they sat in happy silence, each anchored in some secret
port of dreams, while the cats chased each other madly over the hill
and through the tansy, tearing round and round the house like possessed
creatures. They would spring up at the children with sudden pounces and
spring as suddenly away. Their eyes gleamed like jewels, their tails
swayed like plumes. They were palpitating with nervous, stealthy life.
“Oh, isn’t it good to be alive--like this?” Emily said once. “Wouldn’t
it be dreadful if one had never lived?”
Still, existence was not wholly unclouded--Aunt Elizabeth took care of
that. Aunt Elizabeth only permitted the visits to the Tansy Patch under
protest, and because Dr. Burnley had ordered them.
“Aunt Elizabeth does not aprove of Teddy,” Emily wrote in one of her
letters to her father--which epistles were steadily mutiplying on the
old garret sofa shelf. “The first time I asked her if I might go and
play with Teddy she looked at me _severely_ and said, Who is this Teddy
person. We do not know anything about these Kents. Remember, Emily,
the Murrays do not assosiate with every one. I said I am a Starr--I am
not a Murray, you said so yourself. Dear Father I did not mean to be
impertnent but Aunt Elizabeth said I was and would not speak to me the
rest of the day. She seemed to think that was a very bad punishment
but I did not mind it much only it is rather unpleasant to have your
own family preserve a disdaneful silence towards you. But since then
she lets me go to the Tansy Patch because Dr. Burnley came and told
her to. Dr. Burnley has a _strange inflewence_ over Aunt Elizabeth. I
do not understand it. Rhoda said once that Aunt Elizabeth hoped Dr.
Burnley and Aunt Laura would make a match of it--which, you know means
get married--but that is not so. Mrs. Thomas Anderson was here one
afternoon to tea. (Mrs. Thomas Anderson is a big fat woman and her
grandmother was a Murray and there is nothing else to say about _her_.)
She asked Aunt Elizabeth if she thought Dr. Burnley would marry again
and Aunt Elizabeth said no, he would not and she did not think it right
for people to marry a second time. Mrs. Anderson said Sometimes I have
thought he would take Laura. Aunt Elizabeth just swept her a hawty
glance. There is no use in denying it, there are times when I am very
proud of Aunt Elizabeth, even if I do not like her.
“Teddy is a very nice boy, Father. I think you would aprove of him.
Should there be two p’s in aprove? He can make splendid pictures
and he is going to be a famus artist some day, and then he is going
to paint my portrate. He keeps his pictures in the barn loft because
his mother doesn’t like to see them. He can whistle just like a bird.
The Tansy Patch is a _very quante_ place--espesially at night. I love
the twilight there. We always have such fun in the twilight. The Wind
Woman makes herself small in the tansy just like a tiny, tiny fairy and
the cats are so queer and creepy and delightful then. They belong to
Mrs. Kent and Teddy is afraid to pet them much for fear she will drown
them. She drowned a kitten once because she thought he liked it better
than her. But he didn’t because Teddy is _very much attatched_ to his
mother. He washes the dishes for her and helps her in all the house
work. Ilse says the boys in school call him sissy for that but I think
it is noble and manley of him. Teddy wishes she would let him have a
dog but she wont. I have thought Aunt Elizabeth was tirannical but
Mrs. Kent is far worse in some ways. But then she loves Teddy and Aunt
Elizabeth does not love me.
“But Mrs. Kent doesn’t like Ilse or me. She never says so but we _feel_
it. She never asks us to stay to tea--and we’ve always been so polite
to her. I believe she is jellus of us because Teddy likes us. Teddy
gave me the sweetest picture of the Blair Water he had painted on a big
white cowhawk shell but he said I mustn’t let his mother know about it
because she would cry. Mrs. Kent is a very misterious person, very like
some people you read of in books. I like misterious people but not too
close. Her eyes always look hungry though she has plenty to eat. She
never goes anywhere because she has a scar on her face where she was
burned with a lamp exploding. It made my blood run cold, dear Father.
How thankful I am that Aunt Elizabeth only burns candles. Some of the
Murray tradishuns are very sensible. Mrs. Kent is very relijus--what
she calls relijus. She prays even in the middle of the day. Teddy says
that before he was born into this world he lived in another one where
there were two suns, one red and one blue. The days were red and the
nights blue. I don’t know where he got the idea but it sounds atractive
to me. And he says the brooks run honey instead of water. But what did
you do when you were thirsty, I said. Oh, we were never thirsty there.
But I think I would _like_ to be thirsty because then cold water tastes
so good. _I_ would like to live in the moon. It must be such a nice
silvery place.
“Ilse says Teddy ought to like her best because there is more fun in
her than in me but that is not true. There is just as much fun in me
when my conshence doesn’t bother me. I guess Ilse wants Teddy to like
her best but she is not a jellus girl.
“I am glad to say that Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura both aprove of my
friendship with Ilse. It is so seldom they aprove of the same thing.
I am getting used to fighting with Ilse now and don’t mind it much.
Besides I can fight pretty well myself when my blood is up. We fight
about once a week but we make up right away and Ilse says things would
be dull if there was never a row. I would like it better without rows
but you can never tell what will make Ilse mad. She never gets mad
twice over the same thing. She calls me dreadful names. Yesterday she
called me a lousy lizard and a toothless viper. But somehow I didn’t
mind it much because I knew I wasn’t lousy or toothless and she knew
it too. I don’t call names because that is unladylike but I smile and
that makes Ilse far madder than if I skowled and stamped as she does,
and that is why I do it. Aunt Laura says I must be careful not to pick
up the words Ilse uses and try to set her a good example because the