“I wonder,” thought Emily, “if anyone will remember me ninety years after I’m dead.”
“This old yard is nearly full,” reflected Cousin Jimmy. “There’s just room in yonder corner for Elizabeth and Laura — and me. None for you, Emily.”
“I don’t want to be buried here,” flashed Emily. “I think it’s splendid to have a graveyard like this in the family — but I am going to be buried in Charlottetown graveyard with Father and Mother. But there’s one thing worries me Cousin Jimmy, do you think I’m likely to die of consumption?”
Cousin Jimmy looked judicially down into her eyes.
“No,” he said, “no, Miss Puss. You’ve got enough life in you to carry you far. You aren’t meant for death.”
“I feel that, too,” said Emily, nodding. “And now, Cousin Jimmy, why is that house over there disappointed?”
“Which one? — oh, Fred Clifford’s house. Fred Clifford began to build that house thirty years ago. He was to be married and his lady picked out the plan. And when the house was just as far along as you see she jilted him, Emily — right in the face of day she jilted him. Never another nail was driven in the house. Fred went out to British Columbia. He’s living there yet — married and happy. But he won’t sell that lot to anyone — so I reckon he feels the sting yet.”
“I’m so sorry for that house. I wish it had been finished. It wants to be — even yet it wants to be.”
“Well, I reckon it never will. Fred had a bit of Shipley in him, too, you see. One of old Hugh’s girls was his grandmother. And Doctor Burnley up there in the big grey house has more than a bit.”
“Is he a relation of ours, too, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Forty-second cousin. Way back he had a cousin of Mary Shipley’s for a great-something. That was in the Old Country — his forebears came out here after we did. He’s a good doctor but an odd stick — odder by far than I am, Emily, and yet nobody ever says he’s not all there. Can you account for that? He doesn’t believe in God — and I am not such a fool as that.”
“Not in any God?”
“Not in any God. He’s an infidel, Emily. And he’s bringing his little girl up the same way, which I think is a shame, Emily,” said Cousin Jimmy confidentially.
“Doesn’t her mother teach her things?”
“Her mother is — dead,” answered Cousin Jimmy, with a little odd hesitation. “Dead these ten years,” he added in a firmer tone. “Ilse Burnley is a great girl — hair like daffodils and eyes like yellow diamonds.”
“Oh, Cousin Jimmy, you promised you’d tell me about the Lost Diamond,” cried Emily eagerly.
“To be sure — to be sure. Well, it’s there — somewhere in or about the old summer-house, Emily. Fifty years ago Edward Murray and his wife came here from Kingsport for a visit. A great lady she was, and wearing silks and diamonds like a queen, though no beauty. She had a ring on with a stone in it that cost two hundred pounds, Emily. That was a big lot of money to be wearing on one wee woman-finger, wasn’t it? It sparkled on her white hand as she held her dress going up the steps of the summer-house; but when she came down the steps it was gone.”
“And was it never found?” asked Emily breathlessly.
“Never — and for no lack of searching. Edward Murray wanted to have the house pulled down — but Uncle Archibald wouldn’t hear of it — because he had built it for his bride. The two brothers quarrelled over it and were never good friends again. Everybody in the connection has taken a spell hunting for the diamond. Most folks think it fell out of the summer-house among the flowers or shrubs. But I know better, Emily. I know Miriam Murray’s diamond is somewhere about that old house yet. On moonlit nights, Emily, I’ve seen it glinting — glinting and beckoning. But never in the same place — and when you go to it — it’s gone, and you see it laughing at you from somewhere else.”
Again there was that eerie, indefinable something in Cousin Jimmy’s voice or look that gave Emily a sudden crinkly feeling in her spine. But she loved the way he talked to her, as if she were grown-up; and she loved the beautiful land around her; and, in spite of the ache for her father and the house in the hollow which persisted all the time and hurt her so much at night that her pillow was wet with secret tears, she was beginning to be a little glad again in sunset and bird song and early white stars, in moonlit nights and singing winds. She knew life was going to be wonderful here — wonderful and interesting, what with out-door cook-houses and cream-girdled dairies and pond paths and sundials, and Lost Diamonds, and Disappointed Houses and men who didn’t believe in any God — not even Ellen Greene’s God. Emily hoped she would soon see Dr Burnley. She was very curious to see what an infidel looked like. And she had already quite made up her mind that she would find the Lost Diamond.
Trial by Fire
Aunt Elizabeth drove Emily to school the next morning. Aunt Laura had thought that, since there was only a month before vacation, it was not worth while for Emily to “start school.” But Aunt Elizabeth did not yet feel comfortable with a small niece skipping around New Moon, poking into everything insatiably, and was resolved that Emily must go to school to get her out of the way. Emily herself, always avid for new experiences, was quite keen to go, but for all that she was seething with rebellion as they drove along. Aunt Elizabeth had produced a terrible gingham apron and an equally terrible gingham sunbonnet from somewhere in the New Moon garret, and made Emily put them on. The apron was a long sack-like garment, high in the neck, with sleeves. Those sleeves were the crowning indignity. Emily had never seen any little girl wearing an apron with sleeves. She rebelled to the point of tears over wearing it, but Aunt Elizabeth was not going to have any nonsense. Emily saw the Murray look then; and when she saw it she buttoned her rebellious feeling tightly up in her soul and let Aunt Elizabeth put the apron on her.
“It was one of your mother’s aprons when she was a little girl, Emily,” said Aunt Laura comfortingly, and rather sentimentally.
“Then,” said Emily, uncomforted and unsentimental, “I don’t wonder she ran away with Father when she grew up.”
Aunt Elizabeth finished buttoning the apron and gave Emily a none too gentle push away from her.
“Put on your sunbonnet,” she ordered.
“Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, don’t make me wear that horrid thing.”
Aunt Elizabeth, wasting no further words, picked up the bonnet and tied it on Emily’s head. Emily had to yield. But from the depths of the sunbonnet issued a voice, defiant though tremulous.
“Anyway, Aunt Elizabeth, you can’t boss God,” it said.
Aunt Elizabeth was too cross to speak all the way to the schoolhouse. She introduced Emily to Miss Brownell, and drove away. School was already “in,” so Emily hung her sunbonnet on the porch nail and went to the desk Miss Brownell assigned her. She had already made up her mind that she did not like Miss Brownell and never would like her.
Miss Brownell had the reputation in Blair Water of being a fine teacher — due mainly to the fact that she was a strict disciplinarian and kept excellent “order.” She was a thin, middle-aged person with a colourless face, prominent teeth, most of which she showed when she laughed, and cold, watchful grey eyes — colder even than Aunt Ruth’s. Emily felt as if those merciless agate eyes saw clean through her to the core of her sensitive little soul. Emily could be fearless enough on occasion; but in the presence of a nature which she instinctively felt to be hostile to hers she shrank away in something that was more repulsion than fear.
She was a target for curious glances all the morning. The Blair Water school was large and there were at least twenty little girls of about her own age. Emily looked back curiously at them all and thought the way they whispered to each other behind hands and books when they looked at her very ill-mannered. She felt suddenly unhappy and homesick and lonesome — she wanted her father and her old home and the dear things she loved.
“The New Moon girl is crying,” whispered a black-eyed girl across the aisle. And then ca
me a cruel little giggle.
“What is the matter with you, Emily?” said Miss Brownell suddenly and accusingly.
Emily was silent. She could not tell Miss Brownell what was the matter with her — especially when Miss Brownell used such a tone.
“When I ask one of my pupils a question, Emily, I am accustomed to having an answer. Why are you crying?”
There was another giggle from across the aisle. Emily lifted miserable eyes and in her extremity fell back on a phrase of her father’s.
“It is a matter that concerns only myself,” she said.
A red spot suddenly appeared in Miss Brownell’s sallow cheek. Her eyes gleamed with cold fire.
“You will remain in during recess as a punishment for your impertinence,” she said — but she left Emily alone the rest of the day.
Emily did not in the least mind staying in at recess, for, acutely sensitive to her environment as she was, she realized that, for some reason she could not fathom, the atmosphere of the school was antagonistic. The glances cast at her were not only curious but ill-natured. She did not want to go out to the playground with those girls. She did not want to go to school in Blair Water. But she would not cry any more. She sat erect and kept her eyes on her book. Suddenly a soft, malignant hiss came across the aisle.
“Miss Pridey — Miss Pridey!”
Emily looked across at the girl. Large, steady, purplish-grey eyes gazed into beady, twinkling, black ones — gazed unquailingly — with something in them that cowed and compelled. The black eyes wavered and fell, their owner covering her retreat with another giggle and toss of her short braid of hair.
“I can master her,” thought Emily, with a thrill of triumph.
But there is strength in numbers and at noon hour Emily found herself standing alone on the playground facing a crowd of unfriendly faces. Children can be the most cruel creatures alive. They have the herd instinct of prejudice against any outsider, and they are merciless in its indulgence. Emily was a stranger and one of the proud Murrays — two counts against her. And there was about her, small and ginghamed and sunbonneted as she was, a certain reserve and dignity and fineness that they resented. And they resented the level way she looked at them, with that disdainful face under cloudy black hair, instead of being shy and drooping as became an interloper on probation.
“You are a proud one,” said Black-eyes. “Oh, my, you may have buttoned boots, but you are living on charity.”
Emily had not wanted to put on the buttoned boots. She wanted to go barefoot as she had always done in summer. But Aunt Elizabeth had told her that no child from New Moon had ever gone barefoot to school.
“Oh, just look at the baby apron,” laughed another girl, with a head of chestnut curls.
Now Emily flushed. This was indeed the vulnerable point in her armour. Delighted at her success in drawing blood the curled one tried again.
“Is that your grandmother’s sunbonnet?”
There was a chorus of giggles.
“Oh, she wears a sunbonnet to save her complexion,” said a bigger girl. “That’s the Murray pride. The Murrays are rotten with pride, my mother says.”
“You’re awful ugly,” said a fat, squat little miss, nearly as broad as she was long. “Your ears look like a cat’s.”
“You needn’t be so proud,” said Black-eyes. “Your kitchen ceiling isn’t plastered even.”
“And your Cousin Jimmy is an idiot,” said Chestnut-curls.
“He isn’t!” cried Emily. “He has more sense than any of you. You can say what you like about me but you are not going to insult my family. If you say one more word about them I’ll look you over with the evil eye.”
Nobody understood what this threat meant, but that made it all the more effective. It produced a brief silence. Then the baiting began again in a different form.
“Can you sing?” asked a thin, freckled girl, who yet contrived to be very pretty in spite of thinness and freckles.
“No,” said Emily.
“Can you dance?”
“No.”
“Can you sew?”
“No.”
“Can you cook?”
“No.”
“Can you knit lace?”
“No.”
“Can you crochet?”
“No.”
“Then what can you do?” said the Freckled-one in a contemptuous tone.
“I can write poetry,” said Emily, without in the least meaning to say it. But at that instant she knew she could write poetry. And with this queer unreasonable conviction came — the flash! Right there, surrounded by hostility and suspicion, fighting alone for her standing, without backing or advantage, came the wonderful moment when soul seemed to cast aside the bonds of flesh and spring upward to the stars. The rapture and delight on Emily’s face amazed and enraged her foes. They thought it a manifestation of Murray pride in an uncommon accomplishment.
“You lie,” said Black-eyes bluntly.
“A Starr does not lie,” retorted Emily. The flash was gone, but its uplift remained. She looked them all over with a cool detachment that quelled them temporarily.
“Why don’t you like me?” she asked directly.
There was no reply. Emily looked straight at Chestnut-curls and repeated her question. Chestnut-curls felt herself compelled to answer it.
“Because you ain’t a bit like us,” she muttered.
“I wouldn’t want to be,” said Emily scornfully.
“Oh, my, you are one of the Chosen People,” mocked Black-eyes.
“Of course I am,” retorted Emily.
She walked away to the schoolhouse, conqueror in that battle.
But the forces against her were not so easily cowed. There was much whispering and plotting after she had gone in, a conference with some of the boys, and a handing over of bedizened pencils and chews of gum for value received.
An agreeable sense of victory and the afterglow of the flash carried Emily through the afternoon in spite of the fact that Miss Brownell ridiculed her for her mistakes in spelling. Miss Brownell was very fond of ridiculing her pupils. All the girls in the class giggled except one who had not been there in the morning and was consequently at the tail. Emily had been wondering who she was. She was as unlike the rest of the girls as Emily herself, but in a totally different style. She was tall, oddly dressed in an overlong dress of faded, striped print, and barefooted. Her thick hair, cut short, fluffed out all around her head in a bushy wave that seemed to be of brilliant spun gold; and her glowing eyes were of a brown so light and translucent as to be almost amber. Her mouth was large, and she had a saucy, pronounced chin. Pretty she might not be called, but her face was so vivid and mobile that Emily could not drag her fascinated eyes from it. And she was the only girl in class who did not, sometime through the lesson, get a barb of sarcasm from Miss Brownell, though she made as many mistakes as the rest of them.
At recess one of the girls came up to Emily with a box in her hand. Emily knew that she was Rhoda Stuart and thought her very pretty and sweet. Rhoda had been in the crowd around her at the noon hour but she had not said anything. She was dressed in crispy pink gingham; she had smooth, lustrous braids of sugar-brown hair, big blue eyes, a rose-bud mouth, doll-like features and a sweet voice. If Miss Brownell could be said to have a favourite it was Rhoda Stuart, and she seemed generally popular in her own set and much petted by the older girls.
“Here is a present for you,” she said sweetly.
Emily took the box unsuspectingly. Rhoda’s smile would have disarmed any suspicion. For a moment Emily was happily anticipant as she removed the cover. Then with a shriek she flung the box from her, and stood pale and trembling from head to foot. There was a snake in the box — whether dead or alive she did not know and did not care. For any snake Emily had a horror and repulsion she could not overcome. The very sight of one almost paralysed her.
A chorus of giggles ran around the porch. “Who’d be so scared of an old dead snake?” scoffed B
lack-eyes.
“Can you write poetry about that?” giggled Chestnut-curls.
“I hate you — I hate you!” cried Emily. “You are mean, hateful girls!”
“Calling names isn’t ladylike,” said the Freckled-one. “I thought a Murray would be too grand for that.”
“If you come to school to-morrow, Miss Starr,” said Black-eyes deliberately, “we are going to take that snake and put it around your neck.”
“Let me see you do it!” cried a clear, ringing voice. Into their midst with a bound came the girl with amber eyes and short hair. “Just let me see you do it, Jennie Strang!”
“This isn’t any of your business, Ilse Burnley,” muttered Jennie, sullenly.
“Oh, isn’t it? Don’t you sass me, Piggy-eyes.” Ilse walked up to the retreating Jennie and shook a sunburned fist in her face. “If I catch you teasing Emily Starr to-morrow with that snake again I’ll take it by the tail and you by your tail, and slash you across the face with it. Mind that, Piggy-eyes. Now you go and pick up that precious snake of yours and throw it down on the ash pile.”
Jennie actually went and did it. Ilse faced the others.
“Clear out, all of you, and leave the New Moon girl alone after this,” she said. “If I hear of any more meddling and sneaking I’ll slit your throats, and rip out your hearts and tear your eyes out. Yes, and I’ll cut off your ears and wear them pinned on my dress!”
Cowed by these ferocious threats, or by something in Ilse’s personality, Emily’s persecutors drifted away. Ilse turned to Emily.
“Don’t mind them,” she said contemptuously. “They’re jealous of you, that’s all — jealous because you live at New Moon and ride in a fringed-top buggy and wear buttoned boots. You smack their mugs if they give you any more of their jaw.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 224
