Emily of New Moon
grey shadowy eyes that had looked into death and read the riddle of a
buried thing, and henceforth would hold in them some haunting, elusive
remembrance of that world behind the veil. Dean Priest had seen it--Mr.
Carpenter saw it when she smiled at him across her desk at school.
“She’s left the childhood of her soul behind, though she is still a
child in body,” he muttered.
One afternoon amid the golden days and hazes of October he asked her
gruffly to let him see some of her verses.
“I never meant to encourage you in it,” he said. “I don’t mean it
now. Probably you can’t write a line of real poetry and never will.
But let me see your stuff. If it’s hopelessly bad I’ll tell you so. I
won’t have you wasting years striving for the unattainable--at least
I won’t have it on my conscience if you do. If there’s any promise in
it, I’ll tell you so just as honestly. And bring some of your stories,
too--_they’re_ trash yet, that’s certain, but I’ll see if they show
just and sufficient cause for going on.”
Emily spent a very solemn hour that evening, weighing, choosing,
rejecting. To the little bundle of verse she added one of her
Jimmy-books which contained, as she thought, her best stories. She went
to school next day, so secret and mysterious that Ilse took offense,
started in to call her names--and then stopped. Ilse had promised her
father that she would try to break herself of the habit of calling
names. She was making fairly good headway and her conversation, if less
vivid, was beginning to approximate to New Moon standards.
Emily made a sad mess of her lessons that day. She was nervous and
frightened. She had a tremendous respect for Mr. Carpenter’s opinion.
Father Cassidy had told her to keep on--Dean Priest had told her that
some day she might really write--but perhaps they were only trying
to be encouraging because they liked her and didn’t want to hurt her
feelings. Emily knew Mr. Carpenter would not do this. No matter if he
did like her he would nip her aspirations mercilessly if he thought
the root of the matter was not in her. If, on the contrary, he bade
her God-speed, she would rest content with that against the world and
never lose heart in the face of any future criticism. No wonder the day
seemed fraught with tremendous issues to Emily.
When school was out Mr. Carpenter asked her to remain. She was so
white and tense that the other pupils thought she must have been found
out by Mr. Carpenter in some especially dreadful behaviour and knew
she was going to “catch it.” Rhoda Stuart flung her a significantly
malicious smile from the porch--which Emily never even saw. She was,
indeed, at a momentous bar, with Mr. Carpenter as supreme judge, and
her whole future career--so she believed--hanging on his verdict.
The pupils disappeared and a mellow sunshiny stillness settled over
the old schoolroom. Mr. Carpenter took the little packet she had given
him in the morning out of his desk, came down the aisle and sat in the
seat before her, facing her. Very deliberately he settled his glasses
astride his hooked nose, took out her manuscripts and began to read--or
rather to glance over them, flinging scraps of comments, mingled with
grunts, sniffs and hoots, at her as he glanced. Emily folded her cold
hands on her desk and braced her feet against the legs of it to keep
her knees from trembling. This was a very terrible experience. She
wished she had never given her verses to Mr. Carpenter. They were
no good--of course they were no good. Remember the editor of the
_Enterprise_.
“Humph!” said Mr. Carpenter. “_Sunset_--Lord, how many poems have been
written on ‘Sunset’--
‘The clouds are massed in splendid state
At heaven’s unbarred western gate
Where troops of star-eyed spirits wait’--
By gad, what does that mean?”
“I--I--don’t know,” faltered startled Emily, whose wits had been
scattered by the sudden swoop of his spiked glance.
Mr. Carpenter snorted.
“For heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write what you can’t understand
yourself. And this--_To Life_--‘Life, as thy gift I ask no rainbow
joy’--is that sincere? Is it, girl. Stop and think. _Do_ you ask ‘no
rainbow joy’ of life?”
He transfixed her with another glare. But Emily was beginning to pick
herself up a bit. Nevertheless, she suddenly felt oddly ashamed of the
very elevated and unselfish desires expressed in that sonnet.
“No--o,” she answered reluctantly. “I _do_ want rainbow joy--lots of
it.”
“Of course you do. We all do. We don’t get it--you won’t get it--but
don’t be hypocrite enough to pretend you don’t want it, even in a
sonnet. _Lines to a Mountain Cascade_-- ‘On its dark rocks like the
whiteness of a veil around a bride’--Where did you see a mountain
cascade in Prince Edward Island?”
“Nowhere--there’s a picture of one in Dr. Burnley’s library.”
“_A Wood Stream_--
‘The threading sunbeams quiver,
The bending bushes shiver,
O’er the little shadowy river’--
There’s only one more rhyme that occurs to me and that’s ‘liver.’ Why
did you leave it out?”
Emily writhed.
“_Wind Song_--
‘I have shaken the dew in the meadows
From the clover’s creamy gown’--
Pretty, but weak. _June_--June, for heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write
poetry on June. It’s the sickliest subject in the world. It’s been
written to death.”
“No, June is immortal,” cried Emily suddenly, a mutinous sparkle
replacing the strained look in her eyes. She was not going to let Mr.
Carpenter have it all his own way.
But Mr. Carpenter had tossed _June_ aside without reading a line of it.
“‘I weary of the hungry world’--what do you know of the hungry
world?--you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids--but
it _is_ hungry. _Ode to Winter_--the seasons are a sort of disease all
young poets must have, it seems--ha! ‘Spring will not forget’--_that’s_
a good line--the only good line in it. H’m’m--_Wanderings_--
‘I’ve learned the secret of the rune
That the somber pines on the hillside croon’--
Have you--_have_ you learned that secret?”
“I think I’ve always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of
unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and
gone.
“_Aim and Endeavour_--too didactic--too didactic. You’ve no right to
try to teach until you’re old--and then you won’t want to--
‘Her face was like a star all pale and fair’--
Were you looking in the glass when you composed that line?”
“No--” indignantly.
“‘When the morning light is shaken like a banner on the hill’--a good
line--a good line--
‘Oh, on such a golden morning
To be living is delight’--
Too much like a faint echo of Wordsworth. _The Sea in September_--‘blue
and austerely bright’--‘austerely bright’--child, how can you marry the
right adjectives like that? _Morning_--‘all the secret fears that haunt
the night’--what do _you_ know of the fears that haunt the night?”
“I know something,” said Emily decidedly, remembering her first night
at Wyther Grange.
“_To a Dead Day_--
‘With the chilly calm on her brow
That only the dead may wear’--
Have you ever _seen_ the chilly calm on the brow of the dead, Emily?”
“Yes,” said Emily softly, recalling that grey dawn in the old house in
the hollow.
“I thought so--otherwise you couldn’t have written _that_--and even as
it is--how old are you, jade?”
“Thirteen, last May.”
“Humph! _Lines to Mrs. George Irving’s Infant Son_--you should study
the art of titles, Emily--there’s a fashion in them as in everything
else. Your titles are as out of date as the candles of New Moon--
‘Soundly he sleeps with his red lips pressed
Like a beautiful blossom close to her breast’--
The rest isn’t worth reading. _September_--is there a month you’ve
missed?--‘Windy meadows harvest-deep’--good line. _Blair Water by
Moonlight_--gossamer, Emily, nothing but gossamer. _The Garden of New
Moon_--
‘Beguiling laughter and old song
Of merry maids and men’--
Good line--I suppose New Moon _is_ full of ghosts. ‘Death’s fell minion
well fulfilled its part’--that might have passed in Addison’s day but
not now--not now, Emily--
‘Your azure dimples are the graves
Where million buried sunbeams play’--
Atrocious, girl--atrocious. Graves aren’t playgrounds. How much would
_you_ play if you were buried?”
Emily writhed and blushed again. _Why_ couldn’t she have seen that
herself? _Any_ goose could have seen it.
“‘Sail onward, ships--white wings, sail on,
Till past the horizon’s purple bar
You drift from sight.--In flush of dawn
Sail on, and ’neath the evening star’--
Trash--trash--and yet there’s a picture in it--
‘Lap softly, purple waves. I dream,
And dreams are sweet--I’ll wake no more’--
Ah, but you’ll have to wake if you want to accomplish anything. Girl,
you’ve used _purple_ twice in the same poem.
‘Buttercups in a golden frenzy’--
‘a golden frenzy’--girl, I _see_ the wind shaking the buttercups.
‘From the purple gates of the west I come’--
You’re too fond of purple, Emily.”
“It’s such a lovely word,” said Emily.
“‘Dreams that seem too bright to die’--
_Seem_ but never _are_, Emily--
‘The luring voice of the echo, fame’--
So you’ve heard it, too? It _is_ a lure and for most of us only an
echo. And that’s the last of the lot.”
Mr. Carpenter swept the little sheets aside, folded his arms on the
desk, and looked over his glasses at Emily.
Emily looked back at him mutely, nervelessly. All the life seemed to
have been drained out of her body and concentrated in her eyes.
“Ten good lines out of four hundred, Emily--comparatively good, that
is--and all the rest balderdash--balderdash, Emily.”
“I--suppose so,” said Emily faintly.
Her eyes brimmed with tears--her lips quivered. She could not help it.
Pride was hopelessly submerged in the bitterness of her disappointment.
She felt exactly like a candle that somebody had blown out.
“What are you crying for?” demanded Mr. Carpenter.
Emily blinked away the tears and tried to laugh.
“I--I’m sorry--you think it’s no good--” she said.
Mr. Carpenter gave the desk a mighty thump.
“No good! Didn’t I tell you there were ten good lines? Jade, for ten
righteous men Sodom had been spared.”
“Do you mean--that--after all--” The candle was being relighted again.
“Of course, I mean. If at thirteen you can write ten good lines, at
twenty you’ll write ten times ten--if the gods are kind. Stop messing
over months, though--and don’t imagine you’re a genius either, if you
_have_ written ten decent lines. I think there’s _something_ trying to
speak through you--but you’ll have to make yourself a fit instrument
for it. You’ve got to work hard and sacrifice--by gad, girl, you’ve
chosen a jealous goddess. And she never lets her votaries go--not even
when she shuts her ears forever to their plea. What have you there?”
Emily, her heart thrilling, handed him her Jimmy-book. She was so happy
that it shone through her whole being with a positive radiance. She
saw her future, wonderful, brilliant--oh, her goddess would listen to
_her_--“Emily B. Starr, the distinguished poet”--“E. Byrd Starr, the
rising young novelist”--
She was recalled from her enchanting reverie by a chuckle from Mr.
Carpenter. Emily wondered a little uneasily what he was laughing at.
She didn’t think there was anything funny in _that_ book. It contained
only three or four of her latest stories--_The Butterfly Queen_, a
little fairy tale; _The Disappointed House_, wherein she had woven a
pretty dream of hopes come true after long years; _The Secret of the
Glen_, which, in spite of its title, was a fanciful little dialogue
between the Spirit of the Snow, the Spirit of the Grey Rain, the