Emily of New Moon Page 8

  Cousin Jimmy kept his promise while the aunts were away at church. It had been decided in family conclave that Emily was not to go to church that day.

  "She has nothing suitable to wear," said Aunt Elizabeth. "By next Sunday we will have her white dress ready."

  Emily was disappointed that she was not to go to church. She had always found church very interesting on the rare occasions when she got there. It had been too far at Maywood for her father to walk but sometimes Ellen Greene's brother had taken her and Ellen.

  "Do you think, Aunt Elizabeth," she said wistfully, "that God would be much offended if I wore my black dress to church? Of course it's cheap--I think Ellen Greene paid for it herself--but it covers me all up."

  "Little girls who do not understand things should hold their tongues," said Aunt Elizabeth. "I do not choose that Blair Water people should see my niece in such a dress as that wretched black merino. And if Ellen Greene paid for it we must repay her. You should have told us that before we came away from Maywood. No, you are not going to church today. You can wear the black dress to school tomorrow. We can cover it up with an apron."

  Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home; but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday for her.

  "Why are all the Murrays buried here?" asked Emily. "Is it really because they are too good to be buried with common people?"

  "No--no, pussy. We don't carry our pride as far as that. When old Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That's why the old Murrays were buried here--and later on we kept it up because we wanted to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair Water."

  "That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy," said Emily.

  "So it is--out of one of my poems."

  "I kind of like the idea of a 'sclusive burying-ground like this," said Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept graves.

  Cousin Jimmy chuckled.

  "And yet they say you ain't a Murray," he said. "Murray and Byrd and Starr--and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much mistaken."

  "Shipley?"

  "Yes--Hugh Murray's wife--your great-great-grandmother--was a Shipley--an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New Moon?"

  "No."

  "They were bound for Quebec--hadn't any notion of coming to P. E. I. They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of the New Moon put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died of seasickness coming out--never seemed to get her sea-legs--so the captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she went and when she got to shore she said, 'Here I stay.' And stay she did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh--he was young Hugh then, of course--coaxed and stormed and raged and argued--and even cried, I've been told--but Mary wouldn't be moved. In the end he gave in and had his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came to P. E. Island."

  "I'm glad it happened like that," said Emily.

  "So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily--it rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is over there in the corner--that one with the flat red stone. Go you and look at what he had put on it."

  Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, "Here I stay."

  "That's how he got even with her," said Cousin Jimmy. "He was a good husband to her--and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family--and he never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it had to come out."

  Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather terrifying.

  "I'm glad I'm only half Murray," she said to herself. Aloud--"Father told me it was a Murray tradition not to carry spite past the grave."

  "So 'tis now--but it took its rise from this very thing. His family were so horrified at it, you see. It made considerable of a scandal. Some folks twisted it round to mean that old Hugh didn't believe in the resurrection, and there was talk of the session taking it up, but after a while the talk died away."

  Emily skipped over to another lichen-grown stone.

  "Elizabeth Burnley--who was she, Cousin Jimmy?"

  "Old William Murray's wife. He was Hugh's brother, and came out here five years after Hugh did. His wife was a great beauty and had been a belle in the Old Country. She didn't like the P. E. Island woods. She was homesick, Emily--scandalous homesick. For weeks after she came here she wouldn't take off her bonnet--just walked the floor in it, demanding to be taken back home."

  "Didn't she take it off when she went to bed?" asked Emily.

  "Dunno if she did go to bed. Anyway, William wouldn't take her back home so in time she took off her bonnet and resigned herself. Her daughter married Hugh's son, so Elizabeth was just great-great-grandmother."

  Emily looked down at the sunken green grave and wondered if any homesick dreams haunted Elizabeth Burnley's slumber of a hundred years.

  "It's dreadful to be homesick--I know," she thought sympathetically.

  "Little Stephen Murray is buried over there," said Cousin Jimmy. "His was the first marble stone in the burying-ground. He was your grandfather's brother--died when he was twelve. He has," said Cousin Jimmy solemnly, "become a Murray tradition."

  "Why?"

  "He was so beautiful and clever and good. He hadn't a fault--so of course he couldn't live. They say there never was such a handsome child in the connection. And lovable--everybody loved him. He has been dead for ninety years--not a Murray living today ever saw him--and yet we talk about him at family gatherings--he's more real than lots of living people. So you see, Emily, he must have been an extraordinary child--but it ended in that--" Cousin Jimmy waved his hand towards the grassy grave and the white, prim headstone.

  "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 gray 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 d
id. 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 quarreled 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 outdoor 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.

  CHAPTER 8

  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 feelings 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 colorless face, prominent teeth, most of which she showed when she laughed, and cold, watchful gray 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 came 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-gray 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 pr
oud 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 armor. 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.