Emily of New Moon
“I have heard all I wish to hear of the matter. You will do as I say,
Emily, or you will be outcast in this house until you do. No one will
talk to you--play with you--eat with you--have anything to do with you
until you have obeyed me.”
Emily shuddered. _That_ was a punishment she could not face. To be cut
off from her world--she knew it would bring her to terms before long.
She might as well yield at once--but, oh, the bitterness, the shame of
it!
“A human being should not kneel to any one but God,” said Cousin Jimmy,
unexpectedly, still staring at the ceiling.
A sudden strange change came over Elizabeth Murray’s proud, angry face.
She stood very still, looking at Cousin Jimmy--stood so long that Miss
Brownell made a motion of petulant impatience.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth in a different tone, “I was wrong--I shall
not ask you to kneel. But you must apologize to your teacher--and I
shall punish you later on.”
Emily put her hands behind her and looked straight into Miss Brownell’s
eyes again.
“I am sorry for anything I did to-day that was wrong,” she said, “and I
ask your pardon for it.”
Miss Brownell got on her feet. She felt herself cheated of a legitimate
triumph. Whatever Emily’s punishment would be she would not have the
satisfaction of seeing it. She could have shaken “simple Jimmy Murray”
with a right good will. But it would hardly do to show all she felt.
Elizabeth Murray was not a trustee but she was the heaviest ratepayer
in New Moon and had great influence with the School Board.
“I shall excuse your conduct if you behave yourself in future, Emily,”
she said coldly. “_I_ feel that I have only done my duty in putting the
matter before your aunt. No, thank you, Miss Murray, I cannot stay to
supper--I want to get home before it is too dark.”
“God speed all travellers,” said Perry cheerfully, climbing down his
ladder--this time with his clothes on.
Aunt Elizabeth ignored him--she was not going to have a scene with a
hired boy before Miss Brownell. The latter switched herself out and
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily.
“You will eat your supper alone to-night, Emily, in the pantry--you
will have bread and milk only. And you will not speak one word to
anyone until to-morrow morning.”
“But you won’t forbid me to think?” said Emily anxiously.
Aunt Elizabeth made no reply but sat haughtily down at the supper
table. Emily went into the pantry and ate her bread and milk, with the
odour of the delicious sausages the others were eating for savour.
Emily liked sausages, and New Moon sausages were the last word in
sausages. Elizabeth Burnley had brought the recipe out from the Old
Country and its secret was carefully guarded. And Emily was hungry. But
she had escaped the unbearable, and things might be worse. It suddenly
occurred to her that she would write an epic poem in imitation of _The
Lay Of The Last Minstrel_. Cousin Jimmy had read _The Lay_ to her last
Saturday. She would begin the first canto right off. When Laura Murray
came into the pantry, Emily, her bread and milk only half eaten, was
leaning her elbows on the dresser, gazing into space, with faintly
moving lips and the light that never was on land or sea in her young
eyes. Even the aroma of sausages was forgotten--was she not drinking
from a fount of Castaly?
“Emily,” said Aunt Laura, shutting the door, and looking very lovingly
upon Emily out of her kind blue eyes, “you can talk to _me_ all
you want to. I don’t like Miss Brownell and I don’t think you were
altogether in the wrong--although of course you shouldn’t be writing
poetry when you have sums to do. And there are some ginger cookies in
that box.”
“I don’t want to talk to any one, dear Aunt Laura--I’m too happy,” said
Emily dreamily. “I’m composing an epic--it is to be called _The White
Lady_, and I’ve got twenty lines of it made already--and two of them
are thrilling. The heroine wants to go into a convent and her father
warns her that if she does she will never be able to
Come back to the life you gave
With all its pleasures to the grave.
Oh, Aunt Laura, when I composed those lines the flash came to me. And
ginger cookies are nothing to me any more.”
Aunt Laura smiled again.
“Not just now perhaps, dear. But when the moment of inspiration has
passed it will do no harm to remember that the cookies in the box have
not been counted and that they are as much mine as Elizabeth’s.”
CHAPTER XVII
LIVING EPISTLES
“DEAR FATHER:
“O, I have such an exiting thing to tell you. I have been the heroin of
an adventure. One day last week Ilse asked me if I would go and stay
all night with her because her father was away and wouldn’t be home
till very late and Ilse said she wasn’t fritened but very lonesome. So
I asked Aunt Elizabeth if I could. I hardly dared hope, dear Father,
that she would let me, for she doesn’t aprove of little girls being
away from home at night but to my surprise she said I could go very
kindly. And then I heard her say in the pantry to Aunt Laura It is
a shame the way the doctor leaves that poor child so much alone at
nights. It is _wikked_ of him. And Aunt Laura said The poor man is
warped. You know he was not a bit like that before his wife--and then
just as it was getting intresting Aunt Elizabeth gave Aunt Laura a
nudge and said s-s-s-h, little pitchers have big ears. I knew she meant
me though my ears are not big, only pointed. I do wish I could find out
what Ilse’s mother did. It worrys me after I go to bed. I lie awake for
ever so long thinking about it. Ilse has no idea. Once she asked her
father and he told her (in a _voice of thunder_) never to mention _that
woman_ to him again. And there is something else that worrys me too. I
keep thinking of Silas Lee who killed his brother at the old well. How
dreadful the poor man must have felt. And what is it to be warped.
“I went over to Ilses and we played in the garret. I like playing there
because we dont have to be careful and tidy like we do in our garret.
Ilses garret is very untidy and cant have been dusted for years. The
rag room is worse than the rest. It is boarded off at one end of
the garret and it is full of old close and bags of rags and broken
furniture. I dont like the smell of it. The kitchen chimney goes up
through it and things hang round it (or did). For all this is in the
past now, dear Father.
“When we got tired playing we sat down on an old chest and talked. This
is splendid in daytime I said but it must be awful queer at night.
Mice, said Ilse,--and spiders and gosts. I dont believe in gosts I
said skornfully. There isnt any such thing. (But maybe there is for
all that, dear Father.) I believe this garret is hawnted, said Ilse.
They say garrets always are. Nonsense I said. You know dear Father it
would not do for a New Moon person to believe in gosts. But I felt
very queer. Its easy to talk said Ilse beginning to be mad (though I
wasnt trying to run down her garret) but you wouldnt stay here alone at
night. I wouldnt mind it a bit I said. Then I dare you to do it said
Ilse. I dare you to come up here at bedtime and sleep here all night.
Then I saw I was in an awful skrape Father dear. It is a foolish thing
to bost. I knew not what to do. It was dreadful to think of sleeping
alone in that garret but if I didnt Ilse would always cast it up to
me whenever we fought and worse than that she would tell Teddy and he
would think me a coward. So I said proudly Ill do it Ilse Burnley and
Im not afraid to either. (But oh I was--inside.) The mice will run over
you said Ilse. O I wouldnt be you for the world. It was mean of Ilse
to make things worse than they were. But I could feel she admired me
too and that helped me a great deal. We dragged an old feather bed out
of the rag room and Ilse gave me a pillow and half her close. It was
dark by this time and Ilse wouldnt go up into the garret again. So I
said my prayers very carefully and then I took a lamp and started up.
I am so used to candles now that the lamp made me nervus. Ilse said I
looked scared to death. My knees shook dear Father but for the honnor
of the Starrs (and the Murrays too) I went on. I had undressed in Ilses
room, so I got right into bed and blew out the lamp. But I couldnt go
to sleep for a long time. The moonlight made the garret look weerd. I
dont know exactly what weerd means but I feel the garret was it. The
bags and old close hanging from the beams looked like creatures. I
thought I need not be fritened. The angels are here. But then I felt
as if I would be as much fritened of angels as of anything else. And
I could hear rats and mice scrambling over things. I thought What if a
rat was to run over me, and then I thought that next day I would write
out a descripshon of the garret by moonlight and my feelings. At last I
heard the doctor driving in and then I heard him knocking round in the
kitchen and I felt better and before very long I went to sleep and I
dreamed a dreadful dream. I dreamed the door of the rag room opened and
a big newspaper came out and chased me all around the garret. And then
it went on fire and I could smell the smoke plain as plain and it was
just on me when I skreamed and woke up. I was sitting right up in bed
and the newspaper was gone but I could smell smoke still. I looked at
the rag room door and smoke was coming out under it and I saw firelight
through the cracks of the boards. I just yelled at the top of my voice
and tore down to Ilses room and she rushed across the hall and woke her
father. He said dam but he got right up and then all three of us kept
running up and down the garret stairs with pails of water and we made
an awful mess but we got the fire out. It was just the bags of wool
that had been hanging close to the chimney that had caught fire. When
all was over the doctor wiped the persperation from his manly brow and
said That was a close call. A few minutes later would have been too
late. I put on a fire when I came in to make a cup of tea and I suppose
those bags must have caught fire from a spark. I see theres a hole
here where the plaster has tumbled out. I must have this whole place
cleaned out. How in the world did you come to diskover the fire, Emily.
I was sleeping in the garret I said. Sleeping in the garret said the
doctor, what in--what the--_what_ were you doing there. Ilse dared me I
said. She said Id be too scared to stay there and I said I wouldnt. I
fell asleep and woke up and smelled smoke. You little devil, said the
doctor. I suppose it was a dreadful thing to be called a devil but
the doctor looked at me so admiringly that I felt as if he was paying
me a compelment. He has queer ways of talking. Ilse says the only time
he ever said a kind thing to her was once when she had a sore throat
he called her “a poor little animal” and looked as if he was sorry for
her. I feel sure Ilse feels dreadfully bad because her father doesnt
like her though she pretends she does not care. But oh dear Father
there is more to tell. Yesterday the Shrewsbury _Weekly Times_ came
and in the Blair Notes it told all about the fire at the doctors and
said it had been fortunately diskovered in time by Miss Emily Starr. I
cant tell you what I felt like when I saw my name in the paper. I felt
_famus_. And I never was called Miss in ernest before.
“Last Saturday Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura went to Shrewsbury for
the day and left Cousin Jimmy and me to keep house. We had such fun
and Cousin Jimmy let me skim all the milk pans. But after dinner
unexpekted company came and there was no cake in the house. That was
a dreadful thing. It never happened before in the annels of New Moon.
Aunt Elizabeth had toothache all day yesterday and Aunt Laura was away
at Priest Pond visiting Great Aunt Nancy, so no cake was made. I prayed