Emily of New Moon
One day, instead of candy, he produced a plump grey kitten from the
back drawer of his wagon and told her it was for her. Emily received
the gift rapturously, but after Old Kelly had rattled and clattered
away Aunt Elizabeth told her they did not want any more cats at New
Moon.
“Oh, please let me keep it, Aunt Elizabeth,” Emily begged. “It won’t
be a bit of bother to you. _I_ have had experience in bringing up
cats. And I’m so lonesome for a kitten. Saucy Sal is getting so wild
running with the barn cats that I can’t ’sociate with her like I used
to do--and she never was nice to cuddle. _Please_, Aunt Elizabeth.”
Aunt Elizabeth would not and did not please. She was in a very bad
humour that day, anyhow,--nobody knew just why. In such a mood she
was entirely unreasonable. She would not listen to anybody--Laura and
Cousin Jimmy had to hold their tongues, and Cousin Jimmy was bidden to
take the grey kitten down to the Blair Water and drown it. Emily burst
into tears over this cruel command, and this aggravated Aunt Elizabeth
still further. She was so cross that Cousin Jimmy dared not smuggle the
kitten up to the barn as he had at first planned to do.
“Take that beast down to the pond and throw it in and come back
and tell me you’ve done it,” said Elizabeth angrily. “I mean to be
obeyed--New Moon is not going to be made a dumping-ground for Old Jock
Kelly’s superfluous cats.”
Cousin Jimmy did as he was told and Emily would not eat any dinner.
After dinner she stole mournfully away through the old orchard down
the pasture to the pond. Just why she went she could not have told,
but she felt that go she must. When she reached the bank of the little
creek where Lofty John’s brook ran into Blair Water, she heard piteous
shrieks; and there, marooned on a tiny islet of sere marsh grass in the
creek, was an unhappy little beast, its soaking fur plastered against
its sides, shivering and trembling in the wind of the sharp autumnal
day. The old oat-bag in which Cousin Jimmy had imprisoned it was
floating out into the pond.
Emily did not stop to think, or look for a board, or count the
consequences. She plunged in the creek up to her knees, she waded out
to the clump of grass and caught the kitten up. She was so hot with
indignation that she did not feel the cold of the water or the chill
of the wind as she ran back to New Moon. A suffering or tortured
animal always filled her with such a surge of sympathy that it lifted
her clean out of herself. She burst into the cook-house where Aunt
Elizabeth was frying doughnuts.
“Aunt Elizabeth,” she cried, “the kitten wasn’t drowned after all--and
I _am_ going to keep it.”
“You’re not,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
Emily looked her aunt in the face. Again she felt that odd sensation
that had come when Aunt Elizabeth brought the scissors to cut her hair.
“Aunt Elizabeth, this poor little kitten is cold and starving, and
oh, so miserable. It has been suffering for hours. It shall _not_ be
drowned again.”
Archibald Murray’s look was on her face and Archibald Murray’s tone
was in her voice. This happened only when the deeps of her being were
stirred by some peculiarly poignant emotion. Just now she was in an
agony of pity and anger.
When Elizabeth Murray saw her father looking at her out of Emily’s
little white face, she surrendered without a struggle, rage at herself
as she might afterwards for her weakness. It was her one vulnerable
point. The thing might not have been so uncanny if Emily had resembled
the Murrays. But to see the Murray look suddenly superimposed like a
mask over alien features, was such a shock to her nerves that she could
not stand up against it. A ghost from the grave could not have cowed
her more speedily.
She turned her back on Emily in silence but Emily knew that she had
won her second victory. The grey kitten stayed at New Moon and waxed
fat and lovable, and Aunt Elizabeth never took the slightest notice
of its existence, save to sweep it out of the house when Emily was not
about. But it was weeks before Emily was really forgiven and she felt
uncomfortable enough over it. Aunt Elizabeth could be a not ungenerous
conqueror but she was very disagreeable in defeat. It was really just
as well that Emily could not summon the Murray look at will.
CHAPTER XV
VARIOUS TRAGEDIES
Emily, obedient to Aunt Elizabeth’s command, had eliminated the word
“bull” from her vocabulary. But to ignore the existence of bulls was
not to do away with them--and specifically with Mr. James Lee’s English
bull, who inhabited the big windy pasture west of Blair Water and
who bore a dreadful reputation. He was certainly an awesome looking
creature and Emily sometimes had fearful dreams of being chased by him
and being unable to move. And one sharp November day these dreams came
true.
There was a certain well at the far end of the pasture concerning
which Emily felt a curiosity, because Cousin Jimmy had told her a
dreadful tale about it. The well had been dug sixty years ago by two
brothers who lived in a little house which was built down near the
shore. It was a very deep well, which was considered a curious thing
in that low-lying land near pond and sea; the brothers had gone ninety
feet before they found a spring. Then the sides of the well had been
stoned up--but the work never went further. Thomas and Silas Lee had
quarrelled over some trivial difference of opinion as to what kind of
a hood should be put over it; and in the heat of his anger Silas had
struck Thomas on the head with his hammer and killed him.
The well-house was never built. Silas Lee was sent to prison for
manslaughter and died there. The farm passed to another brother--Mr.
James Lee’s father--who moved the house to the other end of it and
planked the well over. Cousin Jimmy added that Tom Lee’s ghost was
supposed to haunt the scene of his tragic death but he couldn’t vouch
for that, though he had written a poem on it. A very eerie poem it was,
too, and made Emily’s blood run cold with a fearful joy when he recited
it to her one misty night by the big potato pot. Ever since she had
wanted to see the old well.
Her chance came one Saturday when she was prowling alone in the old
graveyard. Beyond it lay the Lee pasture and there was apparently not a
sign of a bull in or about it. Emily decided to pay a visit to the old
well and went skimming down the field against the sweep of the north
wind racing across the gulf. The Wind Woman was a giantess that day and
a mighty swirl she was stirring up along the shore; but as Emily drew
near the big sand-dunes they made a little harbour of calmness around
the old well.
Emily coolly lifted up one of the planks, knelt on the others and
peered down. Fortunately the planks were strong and comparatively
new--otherwise the small maiden of New Moon might have explored the
well more thoroughly than she desired to do. As it was, she could see
little of it; huge ferns grew thickly out of the crevices among the
stones of its sides and reached across it, shutting out the view of
its gloomy depths. Rather disappointed, Emily replaced the plank and
started homeward. She had not gone ten steps before she stopped. Mr.
James Lee’s bull was coming straight towards her and was less than
twenty yards away.
The shore fence was not far behind Emily, and she might possibly have
reached it in time had she run. But she was incapable of running; as
she wrote that night in her letter to her father she was “parralised”
with terror and could no more move than she could in her dreams of this
very occurrence. It is quite conceivable that a dreadful thing might
have happened then and there had not a certain boy been sitting on the
shore fence. He had been sitting there unnoticed all the time Emily had
been peering into the well; now he sprang down.
Emily saw, or sensed, a sturdy body dashing past her. The owner thereof
ran to within ten feet of the bull, hurled a stone squarely into the
monster’s hairy face, then sped off at right angles towards the side
fence. The bull, thus insulted, turned with a menacing rumble and
lumbered off after this intruder.
“Run now!” screamed the boy over his shoulder to Emily.
Emily did not run. Terrified as she was, there was something in her
that would not let her run until she saw whether her gallant rescuer
made good his escape. He reached his fence in the nick of time. Then
and not till then Emily ran too, and scrambled over the shore fence
just as the bull started back across the pasture, evidently determined
to catch somebody. Trembling, she made her way through the spiky grass
of the sand-hills and met the boy at the corner. They stood and looked
at each other for a moment.
The boy was a stranger to Emily. He had a cheery, impudent, clean-cut
face, with keen, grey eyes and plenty of tawny curls. He wore as few
clothes as decency permitted and had only the pretence of a hat. Emily
liked him; there was nothing of Teddy’s subtle charm in him but he had
a certain forceful attraction of his own and he had just saved her from
a terrible death.
“Thank you,” said Emily shyly, looking up at him with great grey eyes
that looked blue under her long lashes. It was a very effective look
which lost nothing of effectiveness from being wholly unconscious.
Nobody had as yet told Emily how very winsome that shy, sudden,
up-glance of hers was.
“Isn’t he a rip-snorter?” said the boy easily. He thrust his hands into
his ragged pockets and stared at Emily so fixedly that she dropped her
eyes in confusion--thereby doing further damage with those demure lids
and silken fringes.
“He’s dreadful,” she said with a shudder. “And I was so scared.”
“Were you now? And me thinking you were full of grit to be standing
there like that looking at him cool as a cucumber. What’s it like to be
afraid?”
“Weren’t _you_ ever afraid?” asked Emily.
“No--don’t know what it’s like,” said the boy carelessly, and a bit
boastfully. “What’s your name?”
“Emily Byrd Starr.”
“Live round here?”
“I live at New Moon.”
“Where Simple Jimmy Murray lives?”
“He _isn’t_ simple,” cried Emily indignantly.
“Oh, all right. I don’t know him. But I’m going to. I’m going to hire
with him for chore boy for the winter.”
“I didn’t know,” said Emily, surprised. “Are you really?”
“Yep. I didn’t know it myself till just this minute. He was asking Aunt
Tom about me last week but I didn’t mean to hire out then. Now I guess
I will. Want to know my name?”
“Of course.”
“Perry Miller. I live with my old beast of an Aunt Tom down at
Stovepipe Town. Dad was a sea-captain and I uster sail with him when he
was alive--sailed everywhere. Go to school?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t--never did. Aunt Tom lives so far away. Anyhow, I didn’t
think I’d like it. Guess I’ll go now, though.”
“Can’t you read?” asked Emily wonderingly.
“Yes--some--and figger. Dad learned me some when he was alive. I hain’t
bothered with it since--I’d ruther be down round the harbour. Great
fun there. But if I make up my mind to go to school I’ll learn like
thunder. I s’pose you’re awful clever.”
“No--not very. Father said I was a genius, but Aunt Elizabeth says I’m
just queer.”
“What’s a genius?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes it’s a person who writes poetry. _I_ write
poetry.”
Perry stared at her.
“Golly. I’ll write poetry too, then.”
“I don’t believe _you_ could write poetry,” said Emily--a little
disdainfully, it must be admitted. “Teddy can’t--and he’s _very_
clever.”
“Who’s Teddy?”
“A friend of mine.” There was just a trace of stiffness in Emily’s
voice.
“Then,” said Perry, folding his arms across his breast and scowling,
“I’m going to punch this friend of yours’ head for him.”
“You’re not,” cried Emily. She was very indignant and quite forgot for