Emily of New Moon
“I think you must be Jar--Mr. Dean Priest.” Emily flushed again with
vexation. She had come so near to making another terrible hole in her
manners.
“Yes, Jarback Priest. You needn’t mind the nickname. I’ve heard
it often enough. It’s a Priest idea of humour.” He laughed rather
unpleasantly. “The reason for it is obvious enough, isn’t it? I never
got anything else at school. How came you to slide over that cliff?”
“I wanted this,” said Emily, waving her farewell-summer.
“And you have it! Do you always get what you go after, even with death
slipping a thin wedge between? I think you’re born lucky. I see the
signs. If that big aster lured you into danger it saved you as well,
for it was through stepping over to investigate it that I saw you. Its
size and colour caught my eye. Otherwise I should have gone on and
you--what would have become of you? Whom do you belong to that you are
let risk your life on these dangerous banks? What is your name--if you
have a name! I begin to doubt you--I see you have pointed ears. Have I
been tricked into meddling with fairies, and will I discover presently
that twenty years have passed and that I am an old man long since
lost to the living world with nothing but the skeleton of my dog for
company?”
“I am Emily Byrd Starr of New Moon,” said Emily, rather coldly. She was
beginning to be sensitive about her ears. Father Cassidy had remarked
on them--and now Jarback Priest. Was there really something uncanny
about them?
And yet there was a flavour about the said Jarback that she
liked--liked decidedly. Emily never was long in doubt about any one
she met. In a few minutes she always knew whether she liked, disliked,
or was indifferent to them. She had a queer feeling that she had known
Jarback Priest for years--perhaps because it had seemed so long when
she was lying on that crumbling earth waiting for him to return. He
was not handsome but she liked that lean, clever face of his with its
magnetic green eyes.
“So you’re the young lady visitor at the Grange!” said Dean Priest,
in some astonishment. “Then my dear Aunt Nancy should look after you
better--my _very_ dear Aunt Nancy.”
“You don’t like Aunt Nancy, I see,” said Emily coolly.
“What is the use of liking a lady who won’t like me? You have probably
discovered by this time that my Lady Aunt detests me.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” said Emily. “She must have
some good opinions about you--she says you’re the only Priest who will
ever go to heaven.”
“She doesn’t mean that as a compliment, whatever you in your innocence
believe it to be. And you are Douglas Starr’s daughter? I knew your
father. We were boys together at Queen’s Academy--we drifted apart
after we left it--he went into journalism, I to McGill. But he was the
only friend I had at school--the only boy who would bother himself
about Jarback Priest, who was lame and hunchbacked and couldn’t play
football or hockey. Emily Byrd Starr--Starr should be your first name.
You look like a star--you have a radiant sort of personality shining
through you--your proper habitat should be the evening sky just after
sunset--or the morning sky just before sunrise. Yes. You’d be more at
home in the morning sky. I think I shall call you Star.”
“Do you mean that you think me pretty?” asked Emily directly.
“Why, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder whether you were pretty or
not. Do you think a star should be pretty?”
Emily reflected.
“No,” she said finally, “the word doesn’t suit a star.”
“I perceive you are an artist in words. Of course it doesn’t. Stars are
prismatic--palpitating--elusive. It is not often we find one made flesh
and blood. I think I’ll wait for you.”
“Oh, I’m ready to go now,” said Emily, standing up.
“H’m. That wasn’t what I meant. Never mind. Come along, Star--if you
don’t mind walking a bit slowly. I’ll take you back from the wilderness
at least--I don’t know that I’ll venture to Wyther Grange to-night.
I don’t want Aunt Nancy to take the edge off _you_. And so you don’t
think me handsome?”
“I didn’t say so,” cried Emily.
“Not in words. But I can read your thoughts, Star--it won’t ever do
to think anything you don’t want me to know. The gods gave me that
gift--when they kept back everything else I wanted. You don’t think me
handsome but you think me nice. Do you think you are pretty yourself?”
“A little--since Aunt Nancy lets me wear my bang,” said Emily frankly.
Jarback Priest made a grimace.
“Don’t call it by such a name. It’s a worse name even than bustle.
Bangs and bustles--they hurt me. I like that black wave breaking on
your white brows--but don’t call it a bang--ever again.”
“It _is_ a very ugly word. I never use it in my poetry, of course.”
Whereby Dean Priest discovered that Emily wrote poetry. He also
discovered pretty nearly everything else about her in that charming
walk back to Priest Pond in the fir-scented dusk, with Tweed walking
between them, his nose touching his master’s hand softly every now and
then, while the robins in the trees above them whistled blithely in the
afterlight.
With nine out of ten people Emily was secretive and reserved, but Dean
Priest was sealed of her tribe and she divined it instantly. He had a
right to the inner sanctuary and she yielded it unquestioningly. She
talked to him freely.
Besides, she felt _alive_ again--she felt the wonderful thrill of
living again, after that dreadful space when she had seemed to
hang between life and death. She felt, as she wrote to her father
afterwards, “as if a little bird was singing in my heart.” And oh, how
good the green sod felt under her feet!
She told him all about herself and her doings and beings. Only one
thing she did not tell him--her worry over Ilse’s mother. _That_ she
could not speak of to any one. Aunt Nancy need not have been frightened
that she would carry tales to New Moon.
“I wrote a whole poem yesterday when it rained and I couldn’t get out,”
she said. “It began,
I sit by the western window
That looks on Malvern Bay--”
“Am I not to hear the whole of it?” asked Dean, who knew perfectly well
that Emily was hoping that he would ask it.
Emily delightedly repeated the whole poem. When she came to the two
lines she liked best in it,
Perhaps in those wooded islands
That gem the proud bay’s breast--
she looked up sidewise at him to see if he admired them. But he was
walking with eyes cast down and an absent expression on his face. She
felt a little disappointed.
“H’m,” he said when she had finished. “You’re twelve, didn’t you say?
When you’re ten years older I shouldn’t wonder--but let’s not think of
it.”
“Father Cassidy told me to keep on,” cried Emily.
“There was no need of it. You _would_ keep on anyhow--you have the itch
for writing born in you. It’s quite incurable. What are you going to do
with it?”
“I think I shall be either a great poetess or a distinguished
novelist,” said Emily reflectively.
“Having only to choose,” remarked Dean dryly. “Better be a novelist--I
hear it pays better.”
“What worries me about writing novels,” confided Emily, “is the love
talk in them. I’m sure I’ll never be able to write it. I’ve tried,” she
concluded candidly, “and I can’t think of _anything_ to say.”
“Don’t worry about that. _I’ll_ teach you some day,” said Dean.
“Will you--will you really?” Emily was very eager. “I’ll be so obliged
if you will. I _think_ I could manage _everything_ else very nicely.”
“It’s a bargain then--don’t forget it. And don’t go looking for another
teacher, mind. What do you find to do at the Grange besides writing
poetry? Are you never lonesome with only those two old survivals?”
“No. I enjoy my own company,” said Emily gravely.
“You would. Stars are said to dwell apart, anyhow, sufficient unto
themselves--ensphered in their own light. Do you really like Aunt
Nancy?”
“Yes, indeed. She is very kind to me. She doesn’t make me wear
sunbonnets and she lets me go barefooted in the forenoons. But I have
to wear my buttoned boots in the afternoons, and I hate buttoned boots.”
“Naturally. You should be shod with sandals of moonshine and wear a
scarf of sea-mist with a few fireflies caught in it over your hair.
Star, you don’t look like your father, but you suggest him in several
ways. Do you look like your mother? I never saw her.”
All at once Emily smiled demurely. A real sense of humour was born in
her at that moment. Never again was she to feel quite so unmixedly
tragic over anything.
“No,” she said, “it’s only my eyelashes and smile that are like
Mother’s. But I’ve got Father’s forehead, and Grandma Starr’s hair
and eyes, and Great-Uncle George’s nose, and Aunt Nancy’s hands, and
Cousin Susan’s elbows, and Great-great-Grandmother Murray’s ankles, and
Grandfather Murray’s eyebrows.”
Dean Priest laughed.
“A rag-bag--as we all are,” he said. “But your soul is your own, and
fire-new, I’ll swear to that.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I like you,” said Emily impulsively. “It would be
_hateful_ to think any one I didn’t like had saved my life. I don’t
mind _your_ saving it a bit.”
“That’s good. Because you see your life belongs to me henceforth. Since
I saved it it’s mine. Never forget that.”
Emily felt an odd sensation of rebellion. She didn’t fancy the idea
of her life belonging to anybody but herself--not even to anybody she
liked as much as she liked Dean Priest. Dean, watching her, saw it and
smiled his whimsical smile that always seemed to have so much more in
it than mere smiling.
“That doesn’t quite suit you? Ah, you see one pays a penalty when one
reaches out for something beyond the ordinary. One pays for it in
bondage of some kind or other. Take your wonderful aster home and keep
it as long as you can. It has cost you your freedom.”
He was laughing--he was only joking, of course--yet Emily felt as if a
cobweb fetter had been flung round her. Yielding to a sudden impulse
she flung the big aster on the ground and set her foot on it.
Dean Priest looked on amusedly. His strange eyes were very kindly as he
met hers.
“You rare thing--you vivid thing--you starry thing! We are going to be
good friends--we _are_ good friends. I’m coming up to Wyther Grange
to-morrow to see those descriptions you’ve written of Caroline and
my venerable Aunt in your Jimmy-book. I feel sure they’re delicious.
Here’s your path--don’t go roaming again so far from civilization.
Good-night, my Star of the Morning.”
He stood at the crossroad and watched her out of sight.
“What a child!” he muttered. “I’ll never forget her eyes as she lay
there on the edge of death--the dauntless little soul--and I’ve never
seen a creature who seemed so full of sheer joy in existence. She is
Douglas Starr’s child--_he_ never called me Jarback.”
He stooped and picked up the broken aster. Emily’s heel had met it
squarely and it was badly crushed. But he put it away that night
between the leaves of an old volume of _Jane Eyre_, where he had marked
a verse--
All glorious rose upon my sight
That child of shower and gleam.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE VOW OF EMILY
In Dean Priest Emily found, for the first time since her father had
died, a companion who could fully sympathize. She was always at her
best with him, with a delightful feeling of being understood. To love
is easy and therefore common--but to _understand_--how rare it is!
They roamed wonderlands of fancy together in the magic August days
that followed upon Emily’s adventure on the bay shore, talked together
of exquisite, immortal things, and were at home with “nature’s old
felicities” of which Wordsworth so happily speaks.
Emily showed him all the poetry and “descriptions” in her “Jimmy-book”
and he read them gravely, and, exactly as Father had done, made little