Emily of New Moon
After dinner Aunt Elizabeth announced to Aunt Laura that they would do
some shopping.
“We must get some things for the child,” she said.
“Oh, please don’t call me ‘the child,’” exclaimed Emily. “It makes
me feel as if I didn’t belong anywhere. Don’t you like my name, Aunt
Elizabeth? Mother thought it so pretty. And I don’t need any ‘things.’
I have two whole sets of underclothes--only one is patched.----”
“S-s-sh!” said Cousin Jimmy, gently kicking Emily’s shins under the
table.
Cousin Jimmy only meant that she would better let Aunt Elizabeth buy
“things” for her when she was in the humour for it; but Emily thought
he was rebuking her for mentioning such matters as underclothes and
subsided in scarlet conviction. Aunt Elizabeth went on talking to Laura
as if she had not heard.
“She must not wear that cheap black dress in Blair Water. You could
sift oatmeal through it. It is nonsense expecting a child of ten to
wear black at all. I shall get her a nice white dress with black sash
for good, and some black-and-white-check gingham for school. Jimmy,
we’ll leave the child with you. Look after her.”
Cousin Jimmy’s method of looking after her was to take her to a
restaurant down street and fill her up with ice-cream. Emily had never
had many chances at ice-cream and she needed no urging, even with
lack of appetite, to eat two saucerfuls. Cousin Jimmy eyed her with
satisfaction.
“No use my getting anything for you that Elizabeth could see,” he said.
“But she can’t see what is inside of you. Make the most of your chance,
for goodness alone knows when you’ll get any more.”
“Do you never have ice-cream at New Moon?”
Cousin Jimmy shook his head.
“Your Aunt Elizabeth doesn’t like new-fangled things. In the house, we
belong to fifty years ago, but on the farm she has to give way. In the
house--candles; in the dairy, her grandmother’s big pans to set the
milk in. But, pussy, New Moon is a pretty good place after all. You’ll
like it some day.”
“Are there any fairies there?” asked Emily, wistfully.
“The woods are full of ’em,” said Cousin Jimmy. “And so are the
columbines in the old orchard. We grow columbines there on purpose for
the fairies.”
Emily sighed. Since she was eight she had known there were no fairies
anywhere nowadays; yet she hadn’t quite given up the hope that one or
two might linger in old-fashioned, out-of-the-way spots. And where so
likely as at New Moon?
“Really-truly fairies?” she questioned.
“Why, you know, if a fairy was really-truly it wouldn’t _be_ a fairy,”
said Uncle Jimmy seriously. “Could it, now?”
Before Emily could think this out the aunts returned and soon they were
all on the road again. It was sunset when they came to Blair Water--a
rosy sunset that flooded the long, sandy sea-coast with colour and
brought red road and fir-darkened hill out in fleeting clearness of
outline. Emily looked about her on her new environment and found it
good. She saw a big house peering whitely through a veil of tall old
trees--no mushroom growth of yesterday’s birches but trees that had
loved and been loved by three generations--a glimpse of silver water
glistening through the dark spruces--that was the Blair Water itself,
she knew--and a tall, golden-white church spire shooting up above
the maple woods in the valley below. But it was none of these that
brought her the flash--_that_ came with the sudden glimpse of the dear,
friendly, little dormer window peeping through vines on the roof--and
right over it, in the opalescent sky, a real new moon, golden and
slender. Emily was tingling all over with it as Cousin Jimmy lifted her
from the buggy and carried her into the kitchen.
She sat on a long wooden bench that was satin-smooth with age and
scrubbing, and watched Aunt Elizabeth lighting candles here and there,
in great, shining, brass candlesticks--on the shelf between the
windows, on the high dresser where the row of blue and white plates
began to wink her a friendly welcome, on the long table in the corner.
And as she lighted them, elvish “rabbits’ candles” flashed up amid the
trees outside the windows.
Emily had never seen a kitchen like this before. It had dark wooden
walls and low ceiling, with black rafters crossing it, from which hung
hams and sides of bacon and bunches of herbs and new socks and mittens,
and many other things, the names and uses of which Emily could not
imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been
scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all
over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged,
making a queer, shallow little hollow. In one corner of the ceiling was
a large square hole which looked black and spookish in the candlelight,
and made her feel creepy. _Something_ might pop down out of a hole
like that if one hadn’t behaved just right, you know. And candles cast
such queer wavering shadows. Emily didn’t know whether she liked the
New Moon kitchen or not. It was an interesting place--and she rather
thought she would like to describe it in the old account book, if it
hadn’t been burned--but Emily suddenly found herself trembling on the
verge of tears.
“Cold?” said Aunt Laura kindly. “These June evenings are chilly yet.
Come into the sitting-room--Jimmy has kindled a fire in the stove
there.”
Emily, fighting desperately for self-control, went into the
sitting-room. It was much more cheerful than the kitchen. The floor
was covered with gay-striped homespun, the table had a bright crimson
cloth, the walls were hung with pretty, diamond-patterned paper, the
curtains were of wonderful pale-red damask with a design of white
ferns scattered all over them. They looked very rich and imposing
and Murray-like. Emily had never seen such curtains before. But best
of all were the friendly gleams and flickers from the jolly hardwood
fire in the open stove that mellowed the ghostly candlelight with
something warm and rosy-golden. Emily toasted her toes before it and
felt reviving interest in her surroundings. What lovely little leaded
glass doors closed the china closets on either side of the high,
black, polished mantel! What a funny, delightful shadow the carved
ornament on the sideboard cast on the wall behind it--just like a
negro’s side-face, Emily decided. What mysteries might lurk behind the
chintz-lined glass doors of the bookcase! Books were Emily’s friends
wherever she found them. She flew over to the bookcase and opened the
door. But before she could see more than the backs of rather ponderous
volumes, Aunt Elizabeth came in, with a mug of milk and a plate whereon
lay two little oatmeal cakes.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, “shut that door. Remember that
after this you are not to meddle with things that don’t belong to you.”
“I thought books belonged to everybody,” said Emily.
“Ours don’t,” said Aunt Elizabeth, contriving to convey the impression
that New Moon books were in a class by themselves. “Here is your
supper, Emily. We are all so tired that we are just having a lunch. Eat
it and then we will go to bed.”
Emily drank the milk and worried down the oat-cakes, still gazing about
her. How pretty the wallpaper was, with the garland of roses inside
the gilt diamond! Emily wondered if she could “see it in the air.” She
tried--yes, she could--there it hung, a yard from her eyes, a little
fairy pattern, suspended in mid-air like a screen. Emily had discovered
that she possessed this odd knack when she was six. By a certain
movement of the muscles of her eyes, which she could never describe,
she could produce a tiny replica of the wallpaper in the air before
her--could hold it there and look at it as long as she liked--could
shift it back and forth, to any distance she chose, making it larger
or smaller as it went farther away or came nearer. It was one of her
secret joys when she went into a new room anywhere to “see the paper in
the air.” And this New Moon paper made the prettiest fairy paper she
had ever seen.
“What are you staring at nothing in that queer way for?” demanded Aunt
Elizabeth, suddenly returning.
Emily shrank into herself. She couldn’t explain to Aunt Elizabeth--Aunt
Elizabeth would be like Ellen Greene and say she was “crazy.”
“I--I wasn’t staring at nothing.”
“Don’t contradict. I say you were,” retorted Aunt Elizabeth. “Don’t do
it again. It gives your face an unnatural expression. Come now--we will
go upstairs. You are to sleep with me.”
Emily gave a gasp of dismay. She had hoped it might be with Aunt
Laura. Sleeping with Aunt Elizabeth seemed a very formidable thing.
But she dared not protest. They went up to Aunt Elizabeth’s big,
sombre bedroom where there was dark, grim wallpaper that could never
be transformed into a fairy curtain, a high black bureau, topped
with a tiny swing-mirror, so far above her that there could be no
Emily-in-the-glass, tightly closed windows with dark-green curtains,
a high bedstead with a dark-green canopy, and a huge, fat, smothering
feather-bed, with high, hard pillows.
Emily stood still, gazing about her.
“Why don’t you get undressed?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
“I--I don’t like to undress before you,” faltered Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily through her cold, spectacled eyes.
“Take off your clothes, _at once_,” she said.
Emily obeyed, tingling with anger and shame. It was abominable--taking
off her clothes while Aunt Elizabeth stood and watched her. The outrage
of it was unspeakable. It was even harder to say her prayers before
Aunt Elizabeth. Emily felt that it was not much good to pray under such
circumstances. Father’s God seemed very far away and she suspected that
Aunt Elizabeth’s was too much like Ellen Greene’s.
“Get into bed,” said Aunt Elizabeth, turning down the clothes.
Emily glanced at the shrouded window.
“Aren’t you going to open the window, Aunt Elizabeth?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily as if the latter had suggested removing
the roof.
“Open the window--and let in the night air!” she exclaimed. “Certainly
not!”
“Father and I always had our window open,” cried Emily.
“No wonder he died of consumption,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Night air is
poison.”
“What air is there at night but night air?” asked Emily.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth icily, “get--into--bed.”
Emily got in.
But it was utterly impossible to sleep, lying there in that engulfing
bed that seemed to swallow her up, with that cloud of blackness above
her and not a gleam of light anywhere--and Aunt Elizabeth lying beside
her, long and stiff and bony.
“I feel as if I was in bed with a griffin,” thought Emily.
“Oh--oh--oh--I’m going to cry--I know I am.”
Desperately and vainly she strove to keep the tears back--they _would_
come. She felt utterly alone and lonely--there in that darkness, with
an alien, hostile world all around her--for it seemed hostile now. And
there was such a strange, mysterious, mournful sound in the air--far
away, yet clear. It was the murmur of the sea, but Emily did not know
that and it frightened her. Oh, for her little bed at home--oh, for
Father’s soft breathing in the room--oh, for the dancing friendliness
of well-known stars shining down through her open window! She _must_ go
back--she couldn’t stay here--she would never be happy here! But there
wasn’t any “back” to go to--no home--no father--. A great sob burst
from her--another followed and then another. It was no use to clench
her hands and set her teeth--and chew the inside of her cheeks--nature
conquered pride and determination and had her way.
“What are you crying for?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
To tell the truth Aunt Elizabeth felt quite as uncomfortable and
disjointed as Emily did. She was not used to a bedfellow; she didn’t