[Illustration: “AND THEN IN ONE GLORIOUS, SUPREME MOMENT CAME THE
‘FLASH’”]
EMILY
OF NEW MOON
BY
L. M. MONTGOMERY
_Author of “Anne of Green Gables,” “The Story Girl,” “Rainbow Valley,”
“Rilla of Ingleside,” “Anne’s House of Dreams,” etc._
_WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR BY
M. L KIRK_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
MCMXXIII
_Copyright, 1923, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
To
MR. GEORGE BOYD MACMILLAN
ALLOA, SCOTLAND
IN RECOGNITION OF
A LONG AND STIMULATING FRIENDSHIP
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW 1
II A WATCH IN THE NIGHT 8
III A HOP OUT OF KIN 19
IV A FAMILY CONCLAVE 33
V DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND 44
VI NEW MOON 52
VII THE BOOK OF YESTERDAY 63
VIII TRIAL BY FIRE 79
IX A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE 91
X GROWING PAINS 105
XI ILSE 113
XII THE TANSY PATCH 122
XIII A DAUGHTER OF EVE 137
XIV FANCY FED 146
XV VARIOUS TRAGEDIES 153
XVI CHECK FOR MISS BROWNELL 165
XVII LIVING EPISTLES 179
XVIII FATHER CASSIDY 193
XIX FRIENDS AGAIN 211
XX BY AËRIAL POST 216
XXI “ROMANTIC BUT NOT COMFORTABLE” 227
XXII WYTHER GRANGE 238
XXIII DEALS WITH GHOSTS 247
XXIV A DIFFERENT KIND OF HAPPINESS 257
XXV “SHE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT” 264
XXVI ON THE BAY SHORE 270
XXVII THE VOW OF EMILY 282
XXVIII A WEAVER OF DREAMS 302
XXIX SACRILEGE 315
XXX WHEN THE CURTAIN LIFTED 326
XXXI EMILY’S GREAT MOMENT 340
EMILY OF NEW MOON
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE IN THE HOLLOW
The house in the hollow was “a mile from anywhere”--so Maywood people
said. It was situated in a grassy little dale, looking as if it had
never been built like other houses but had grown up there like a big,
brown mushroom. It was reached by a long, green lane and almost hidden
from view by an encircling growth of young birches. No other house
could be seen from it although the village was just over the hill.
Ellen Greene said it was the lonesomest place in the world and vowed
that she wouldn’t stay there a day if it wasn’t that she pitied the
child.
Emily didn’t know she was being pitied and didn’t know what
lonesomeness meant. She had plenty of company. There was Father--and
Mike--and Saucy Sal. The Wind Woman was always around; and there were
the trees--Adam-and-Eve, and the Rooster Pine, and all the friendly
lady-birches.
And there was “the flash,” too. She never knew when it might come, and
the possibility of it kept her a-thrill and expectant.
Emily had slipped away in the chilly twilight for a walk. She
remembered that walk very vividly all her life--perhaps because of a
certain eerie beauty that was in it--perhaps because “the flash” came
for the first time in weeks--more likely because of what happened
after she came back from it.
It had been a dull, cold day in early May, threatening to rain but
never raining. Father had lain on the sitting-room lounge all day. He
had coughed a good deal and he had not talked much to Emily, which was
a very unusual thing for him. Most of the time he lay with his hands
clasped under his head and his large, sunken, dark-blue eyes fixed
dreamily and unseeingly on the cloudy sky that was visible between the
boughs of the two big spruces in the front yard--Adam-and-Eve, they
always called those spruces, because of a whimsical resemblance Emily
had traced between their position, with reference to a small apple-tree
between them, and that of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge in
an old-fashioned picture in one of Ellen Greene’s books. The Tree of
Knowledge looked exactly like the squat little apple-tree, and Adam and
Eve stood up on either side as stiffly and rigidly as did the spruces.
Emily wondered what Father was thinking of, but she never bothered him
with questions when his cough was bad. She only wished she had somebody
to talk to. Ellen Greene wouldn’t talk that day either. She did nothing
but grunt, and grunts meant that Ellen was disturbed about something.
She had grunted last night after the doctor had whispered to her in the
kitchen, and she had grunted when she gave Emily a bedtime snack of
bread and molasses. Emily did not like bread and molasses, but she ate
it because she did not want to hurt Ellen’s feelings. It was not often
that Ellen allowed her anything to eat before going to bed, and when
she did it meant that for some reason or other she wanted to confer a
special favor.
Emily expected the grunting attack would wear off over night, as it
generally did; but it had not, so no company was to be found in Ellen.
Not that there was a great deal to be found at any time. Douglas Starr
had once, in a fit of exasperation, told Emily that “Ellen Greene was a
fat, lazy old thing of no importance,” and Emily, whenever she looked
at Ellen after that, thought the description fitted her to a hair.
So Emily had curled herself up in the ragged, comfortable old
wing-chair and read _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ all the afternoon. Emily
loved _The Pilgrim’s Progress_. Many a time had she walked the straight
and narrow path with _Christian_ and _Christiana_--although she never
liked _Christiana’s_ adventures half as well as _Christian’s_. For one
thing, there was always such a crowd with _Christiana_. She had not
half the fascination of that solitary, intrepid figure who faced all
alone the shadows of the Dark Valley and the encounter with Apollyon.
Darkness and hobgoblins were nothing when you had plenty of company.
But to be _alone_--ah, Emily shivered with the delicious horror of it!
When Ellen announced that supper was ready Douglas Starr told Emily to
go out to it.
“I don’t want anything tonight. I’ll just lie here and rest. And when
you come in again we’ll have a real talk, Elfkin.”
He smiled up at her his old, beautiful smile, with the love behind
it, that Emily always found so sweet. She ate her supper quite
happily--though it wasn’t a good supper. The bread was soggy and her
egg was underdone, but for a wonder she was allowed to have both Saucy
Sal and Mike sitting, one on each side of her, and Ellen only grunted
when Emily fed them wee bits of bread and butter.
Mike had such a cute way of sitting up on his haunches and catching the
bits in his paws, and Saucy Sal had _her_ trick of touching Emily’s
ankle with an almost human touch when her turn was too long in coming.
Emily loved them both, but Mike was her favourite. He was a handsome,
dark-grey cat with huge owl-like eyes, and he was so soft and fat and
fluffy. Sal was always thin; no amount of feeding put any flesh on her
bones. Emily liked her, but never cared to cuddle or stroke her because
of her thinness. Yet there was a sort of weird beauty about her that
appealed to Emily. She was grey-and-white--very white and very sleek,
with a long, pointed face, very long ears and very green eyes. She was
a redoubtable fighter, and strange cats were vanquished in one round.
The fearless little spitfire would even attack dogs and rout them
utterly.
Emily loved her pussies. She had brought them up herself, as she
proudly said. They had been given to her when they were kittens by her
Sunday School teacher.
“A _living_ present is so nice,” she told Ellen, “because it keeps on
getting nicer all the time.”
But she worried considerably because Saucy Sal didn’t have kittens.
“I don’t know why she doesn’t,” she complained to Ellen Greene. “Most
cats seem to have more kittens than they know what to do with.”
After supper Emily went in and found that her father had fallen
asleep. She was very glad of this; she knew he had not slept much
for two nights; but she was a little disappointed that they were not
going to have that “real talk.” “Real” talks with Father were always
such delightful things. But next best would be a walk--a lovely
all-by-your-lonesome walk through the grey evening of the young spring.
It was so long since she had had a walk.
“You put on your hood and mind you scoot back if it starts to rain,”
warned Ellen. “_You_ can’t monkey with colds the way some kids can.”
“Why can’t I?” Emily asked rather indignantly. Why must _she_ be
debarred from “monkeying with colds” if other children could? It wasn’t
fair.
But Ellen only grunted. Emily muttered under her breath for her own
satisfaction, “You are a fat old thing of no importance!” and slipped
upstairs to get her hood--rather reluctantly, for she loved to run
bareheaded. She put the faded blue hood on over her long, heavy braid
of glossy, jet-black hair, and smiled chummily at her reflection in the
little greenish glass. The smile began at the corners of her lips and
spread over her face in a slow, subtle, very wonderful way, as Douglas
Starr often thought. It was her dead mother’s smile--the thing that had
caught and held him long ago when he had first seen Juliet Murray. It
seemed to be Emily’s only physical inheritance from her mother. In all
else, he thought, she was like the Starrs--in her large, purplish-grey
eyes with their very long lashes and black brows, in her high, white
forehead--too high for beauty--in the delicate modeling of her pale
oval face and sensitive mouth, in the little ears that were pointed
just a wee bit to show that she was kin to tribes of elfland.
“I’m going for a walk with the Wind Woman, dear,” said Emily. “I wish
I could take you too. Do you _ever_ get out of that room, I wonder.
The Wind Woman is going to be out in the fields to-night. She is tall
and misty, with thin, grey, silky clothes blowing all about her--and
wings like a bat’s--only you can see through them--and shining eyes
like stars looking through her long, loose hair. She can fly--but
to-night she will walk with me all over the fields. She’s a _great_
friend of mine--the Wind Woman is. I’ve known her ever since I was six.
We’re _old, old_ friends--but not quite so old as you and I, little
Emily-in-the-glass. We’ve been friends _always_, haven’t we?”
With a blown kiss to little Emily-in-the-glass, Emily-out-of-the-glass
was off.
The Wind Woman was waiting for her outside--ruffling the little spears
of striped grass that were sticking up stiffly in the bed under the
sitting-room window--tossing the big boughs of Adam-and-Eve--whispering
among the misty green branches of the birches--teasing the “Rooster
Pine” behind the house--it really did look like an enormous,
ridiculous rooster, with a huge, bunchy tail and a head thrown back to
crow.
It was so long since Emily had been out for a walk that she was half
crazy with the joy of it. The winter had been so stormy and the snow
so deep that she was never allowed out; April had been a month of rain
and wind; so on this May evening she felt like a released prisoner.
Where should she go? Down the brook--or over the fields to the spruce
barrens? Emily chose the latter.
She loved the spruce barrens, away at the further end of the long,
sloping pasture. That was a place where magic was made. She came more
fully into her fairy birthright there than in any other place. Nobody
who saw Emily skimming over the bare field would have envied her.
She was little and pale and poorly clad; sometimes she shivered in
her thin jacket; yet a queen might have gladly given a crown for her
visions--her dreams of wonder. The brown, frosted grasses under her
feet were velvet piles. The old, mossy, gnarled half-dead spruce-tree,
under which she paused for a moment to look up into the sky, was a
marble column in a palace of the gods; the far dusky hills were the
ramparts of a city of wonder. And for companions she had all the
fairies of the countryside--for she could believe in them here--the
fairies of the white clover and satin catkins, the little green folk of
the grass, the elves of the young fir-trees, sprites of wind and wild
fern and thistledown. Anything might happen there--everything might
come true.
And the barrens were such a splendid place in which to play hide and
seek with the Wind Woman. She was so very _real_ there; if you could
just spring quickly enough around a little cluster of spruces--only
you never could--you would _see_ her as well as feel her and hear her.
There she was--that _was_ the sweep of her grey cloak--no, she was
laughing up in the very top of the taller trees--and the chase was on
again--till, all at once, it seemed as if the Wind Woman were gone--and
the evening was bathed in a wonderful silence--and there was a sudden
rift in the curdled clouds westward, and a lovely, pale, pinky-green
lake of sky with a new moon in it.
Emily stood and looked at it with clasped hands and her little black
head upturned. She must go home and write down a description of it in
the yellow account book, where the last thing written had been, “Mike’s
Biograffy.” It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down.
Then she would read it to Father. She must not forget how the tips of
the trees on the hill came out like fine black lace across the edge of
the pinky-green sky.
And then, for one glorious, supreme moment, came “the flash.”
Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn’t exactly
describe it. It couldn’t be described--not even to Father, who always
seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to any one else.
It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she
was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and
herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain
aside--but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then
it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond--only
a glimpse--and heard a note of unearthly music.
This moment came rarely--went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the
inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it--never summon
it--never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days.
It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs
against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild
note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a
greybird lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of
“Holy, holy, holy” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when
she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of
ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was
writing down a “description” of something. And always when the flash
came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of
persistent beauty.
She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering
twilight, all agog to get home and write down her “description” before
the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew
just how she would begin it--the sentence seemed to shape itself in her
mind: “The hill called to me and something in me called back to it.”
She found Ellen Greene waiting for her on the sunken front-doorstep.
Emily was so full of happiness that she loved everything at that
moment, even fat things of no importance. She flung her arms around
Ellen’s knees and hugged them. Ellen looked down gloomily into the rapt
little face, where excitement had kindled a faint wild-rose flush, and
said, with a ponderous sigh:
“Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?”