Emily of New Moon
suddenly become real to her. It thrilled her to think that her mother
had probably crocheted the lace cover on the round pincushion on the
table. And that fat, black jar of pot-pourri on the mantel--her mother
must have compounded it. When Emily lifted the lid a faint spicy odour
floated out. The souls of all the roses that had bloomed through many
olden summers at New Moon seemed to be prisoned there in a sort of
flower purgatory. Something in the haunting, mystical, elusive odour
gave Emily _the flash_--and her room had received its consecration.
There was a picture of her mother hanging over the mantel--a large
daguerreotype taken when she was a little girl. Emily looked at it
lovingly. She had the picture of her mother which her father had left,
taken after their marriage. But when Aunt Elizabeth had brought that
from Maywood to New Moon she had hung it in the parlour where Emily
seldom saw it. This picture, in her bedroom, of the golden-haired,
rose-cheeked girl, was all her own. She could look at it--talk to it at
will.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, “what did you think of when you were a little
girl here like me? I wish I could have known you _then_. And to think
nobody has ever slept here since that last night you did before you
ran away with Father. Aunt Elizabeth says you were wicked to do it but
_I_ don’t think you were. It wasn’t as if you were running away with
a _stranger_. Anyway, I’m glad you _did_, because if you hadn’t there
wouldn’t have been any _me_.”
Emily, very glad that there was an Emily, opened her lookout window as
high as it would go, got into bed and drifted off to sleep, feeling a
happiness that was so deep as to be almost pain as she listened to the
sonorous sweep of the night wind among the great trees in Lofty John’s
bush. When she wrote to her father a few days later she began the
letter “Dear Father and Mother.”
“And I’ll always write the letter to _you_ as well as Father after
this, Mother. I’m sorry I left you out so long. But you didn’t seem
_real_ till that night I came home. I made the bed beautifully next
morning--Aunt Elizabeth didn’t find a bit of fault with it--and I
dusted _everything_--and when I went out I knelt down and kissed the
doorstep. I didn’t think Aunt Elizabeth saw me but she did and said had
I gone crazy. Why does Aunt Elizabeth think any one is crazy who does
something she never does? I said ‘No, it’s only because I love my room
so much’ and she sniffed and said ‘You’d better love your God.’ But so
I do, dear Father--and Mother--and I love Him better than ever since
I have my dear room. I can see all over the garden from it and into
Lofty John’s bush and one little bit of the Blair Water through the gap
in the trees where the Yesterday Road runs. I like to go to bed early
now. I love to lie all alone in my own room and make poetry and think
out descriptions of things while I look through the open window at the
stars and the nice, big, kind, quiet trees in Lofty John’s bush.
“Oh, Father dear and Mother, we are going to have a new teacher. Miss
Brownell is not coming back. She is going to be married and Ilse says
that when her father heard it he said ‘God help the man.’ And the new
teacher is a Mr. Carpenter. Ilse saw him when he came to see her father
about the school--because Dr. Burnley is a trustee this year--and she
says he has bushy grey hair and whiskers. He is married, too, and is
going to live in that little old house down in the hollow below the
school. It seems so funny to think of a teacher having a wife and
whiskers.
“I am glad to be home. But I miss Dean and the gazing-ball. Aunt
Elizabeth looked very cross when she saw my bang but didn’t say
anything. Aunt Laura says just to keep quiet and go on wearing it.
But I don’t feel comfortable going against Aunt Elizabeth so I have
combed it all back except a _little_ fringe. I don’t feel _quite_
comfortable about it even yet, but I have to put up with being a little
uncomfortable for the sake of my looks. Aunt Laura says bustles are
going out of style so I’ll never be able to have one but I don’t care
because I think they’re ugly. Rhoda Stuart will be cross because she
was just longing to be old enough to wear a bustle. I hope I’ll be able
to have a gin-jar all to myself when the weather gets cold. There is a
row of gin-jars on the high shelf in the cook-house.
“Teddy and I had the nicest _adventure_ yesterday evening. We are going
to keep it a secret from everybody--partly because it was so nice, and
partly because we think we’d get a fearful scolding for one thing we
did.
“We went up to the Disappointed House, and we found one of the boards
on the windows loose. So we pried it off and crawled in and went all
over the house. It is lathed but not plastered, and the shavings are
lying all over the floors just as the carpenters left them years
ago. It seemed more disappointed than ever. I just felt like crying.
There was a dear little fireplace in one room so we went to work and
kindled a fire in it with shavings and pieces of boards (this is the
thing we would be scolded for, likely) and then sat before it on an
old carpenter’s bench and talked. We decided that when we grew up we
would buy the Disappointed House and live here together. Teddy said he
supposed we’d have to get married, but I thought maybe we could find
a way to manage without going to all that bother. Teddy will paint
pictures and I will write poetry and we will have toast and bacon and
marmalade _every morning_ for breakfast--just like Wyther Grange--but
_never_ porridge. And we’ll always have lots of nice things to eat in
the pantry and I’ll make lots of jam and Teddy is always going to help
me wash the dishes and we’ll hang the gazing-ball from the middle of
the ceiling in the fireplace room--because likely Aunt Nancy will be
dead by then.
“When the fire burned out we jammed the board into place in the window
and came away. Every now and then to-day Teddy would say to me “Toast
and bacon and marmalade” in the _most mysterious_ tones and Ilse and
Perry are wild because they can’t find out what he means.
“Cousin Jimmy has got Jimmy Joe Belle to help with the harvest. Jimmy
Joe Belle comes from over Derry Pond way. There are a great many French
there and when a French girl marries they call her mostly by her
husband’s first name instead of Mrs. like the English do. If a girl
named Mary marries a man named Leon she will always be called Mary Leon
after that. But in Jimmy Joe Belle’s case, it is the other way and he
is called by his wife’s name. I asked Cousin Jimmy why, and he said it
was because Jimmy Joe was a poor stick of a creature and Belle wore
the britches. But still I don’t understand. Jimmy Joe wears britches
himself--that means trousers--and why should he be called Jimmy Joe
Belle instead of her being called Belle Jimmy Joe just because she
wears them too! I won’t rest till I find out.
“Cousin Jimmy’s garden is splendid now. The tiger lilies are out. I am
trying to love them because nobody seems to like them at all but deep
down in my heart I know I love the late roses best. You just can’t help
loving the roses best.
“Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard to-day for a four-leaved
clover and couldn’t find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover
by the dairy steps to-night when I was straining the milk and never
thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always
comes, and it is no use to look for it.
“It is lovely to be with Ilse again. We have only fought twice since I
came home. I am going to try not to fight with Ilse any more because
I don’t think it is dignified, although quite interesting. But it is
hard not to because even when I keep quiet and don’t say a word Ilse
thinks that’s a way of fighting and gets madder and says worse things
than ever. Aunt Elizabeth says it always takes two to make a quarrel
but she doesn’t know Ilse as I do. Ilse called me a sneaking albatross
to-day. I wonder how many animals are left to call me. She never
repeats the same one twice. I wish she wouldn’t clapper-claw Perry so
much. (Clapper-claw is a word I learned from Aunt Nancy. Very striking,
I think.) It seems as if she couldn’t bear him. He dared Teddy to jump
from the henhouse roof across to the pighouse roof. Teddy wouldn’t. He
said he would try it if it had to be done or would do anybody any good
but he wasn’t going to do it just to show off. Perry did it and landed
safe. If he hadn’t he might have broken his neck. Then he bragged about
it and said Teddy was afraid and Ilse turned red as a beet and told
him to shut up or she would bite his snout off. She can’t bear to have
anything said against Teddy, but I guess he can take care of himself.
“Ilse can’t study for the Entrance either. Her father won’t let her.
But she says she doesn’t care. She says she’s going to run away when
she gets a little older and study for the stage. That sounds wicked,
but interesting.
“I felt very queer and guilty when I saw Ilse first, because I knew
about her mother. I don’t know why I felt guilty because I had nothing
to do with it. The feeling is wearing away a little now but I am so
unhappy by spells over it. I wish I could either forget it altogether
or find out the rights of it. Because I am sure nobody knows them.
“I had a letter from Dean to-day. He writes lovely letters--just as
if I was grown up. He sent me a little poem he had cut out of a paper
called _The Fringed Gentian_. He said it made him think of me. It is
all lovely but I like the last verse best of all. This is it:
Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep
How I may upward climb
The Alpine Path, so hard, so steep,
That leads to heights sublime.
How I may reach that far-off goal
Of true and honored fame
And write upon its shining scroll
A woman’s humble name.
“When I read that _the flash_ came, and I took a sheet of paper--I
forgot to tell you Cousin Jimmy gave me a little box of paper and
envelopes--_on the sly_--and I wrote on it:
I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb
the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.
“Then I put it in the envelope and sealed it up and wrote on it _The
Vow of Emily Byrd Starr, aged 12 years and 3 months_, and put it away
on the sofa shelf in the garret.
“I am writing a murder story now and I am trying to feel how a man
would feel who was a murderer. It is creepy, but thrilling. I almost
feel as if I _had_ murdered somebody.
“Good night, dear Father and Mother.
“Your lovingest daughter,
“_Emily_.
“P. S. I have been wondering how I’ll sign my name when I grow up and
print my pieces. I don’t know which would be best--Emily Byrd Starr in
full or Emily B. Starr, or E. B. Starr, or E. Byrd Starr. Sometimes
I think I’ll have a _nom-de-plume_--that is, another name you pick
for yourself. It’s in my dictionary among the “French phrases” at the
back. If I did that then I could hear people talking of my pieces right
before me, never suspecting, and say just what they really thought of
them. That would be interesting but perhaps not always comfortable. I
think I’ll be,
“_E. Byrd Starr_.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
A WEAVER OF DREAMS
It took Emily several weeks to make up her mind whether she liked Mr.
Carpenter or not. She knew she did not _dis_like him, not even though
his first greeting, shot at her on the opening day of school in a gruff
voice, accompanied by a startling lift of his spiky grey brows was, “So
you’re the girl that writes poetry, eh? Better stick to your needle and
duster. Too many fools in the world trying to write poetry and failing.
I tried it myself once. Got better sense now.”