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
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 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-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 paralyzed her.
A chorus of giggles ran around the porch.
“Before I’d be so scared of an old dead snake!” scoffed Black-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.”
Ilse vaulted the fence and tore off into the maple bush without another
glance at Emily. Only Rhoda Stuart remained.
“Emily, I’m awful sorry,” she said, rolling her big blue eyes
appealingly. “I didn’t know there was a snake in that box, cross my
heart I didn’t. The girls just told me it was a present for you. You’re
not mad at me, are you? Because I like you.”
Emily had been “mad” and hurt and outraged. But this little bit of
friendliness melted her instantly. In a moment she and Rhoda had their
arms around each other, parading across the playground.
“I’m going to ask Miss Brownell to let you sit with me,” said Rhoda. “I
used to sit with Annie Gregg but she’s moved away. You’d like to sit
with me, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d love it,” said Emily warmly. She was as happy as she had been
miserable. Here was the friend of her dreams. Already she worshipped
Rhoda.
“We _ought_ to sit together,” said Rhoda importantly. “We belong to the
two best families in Blair Water. Do you know that if my father had his
rights he would be on the throne of England?”
“England!” said Emily, too amazed to be anything but an echo.
“Yes. We are descended from the kings of Scotland,” said Rhoda. “So of
course we don’t ’sociate with everybody. My father keeps store and I’m
taking music lessons. Is your Aunt Elizabeth going to give you music
lessons?”
“I don’t know.”
“She ought to. She is very rich, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” said Emily again. She wished Rhoda would not ask such
questions. Emily thought it was hardly good manners. But surely a
descendant of the Stuart kings ought to know the rules of breeding, if
anybody did.
“She’s got an awful temper, hasn’t she?” asked Rhoda.
“No, she hasn’t!” cried Emily.
“Well, she nearly killed your Cousin Jimmy in one of her rages,” said
Rhoda. “That’s true--Mother told me. Why doesn’t your Aunt Laura get
married? Has she got a beau? What wages does your Aunt Elizabeth pay
your Cousin Jimmy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” said Rhoda, rather disappointedly. “I suppose you haven’t
been at New Moon long enough to find things out. But it must be very
different from what you’ve been used to, I guess. Your father was as
poor as a church mouse, wasn’t he?”
“My father was a very, _very_ rich man,” said Emily deliberately.
Rhoda stared.
“I thought he hadn’t a cent.”
“Neither he had. But people can be rich without money.”
“I don’t see how. But anyhow, _you’ll_ be rich some day--your Aunt
Elizabeth will likely leave you all her money, Mother says. So I don’t
care if you _are_ living on charity--I love you and I’m going to stick
up for you. Have you got a beau, Emily?”
“No,” cried Emily, blushing violently and quite scandalized at the
idea. “Why, I’m only eleven.”
“Oh, everybody in our class has a beau. Mine is Teddy Kent. I shook
hands with him after I’d counted nine stars for nine nights without
missing a night. If you do that the first boy you shake hands with
afterwards is to be your beau. But it’s awful hard to do. It took me
all winter. Teddy wasn’t in school to-day--he’s been sick all June.
He’s the best-looking boy in Blair Water. You’ll have to have a beau,
too, Emily.”
“I won’t,” declared Emily angrily. “I don’t know a thing about beaux
and I won’t have one.”
Rhoda tossed her head.
“Oh, I s’pose you think there’s nobody good enough for you, living at
New Moon. Well, you won’t be able to play Clap-in-and-clap-out if you
haven’t a beau.”
Emily knew nothing of the mysteries of Clap-in-and-clap-out, and didn’t
care. Anyway, she wasn’t going to have a beau and she repeated this in
such decided tones that Rhoda deemed it wise to drop the subject.
Emily was rather glad when the bell rang. Miss Brownell granted Rhoda’s
request quite graciously and Emily transferred her goods and chattels
to Rhoda’s seat. Rhoda whispered a good deal during the last hour and
Emily got scolded for it but did not mind.
“I’m going to have a birthday party the first week in July, and I’m
going to invite you, if your aunts will let you come. I’m not going to
have Ilse Burnley though.”
“Don’t you like her?”
“No. She’s an awful tomboy. And then her father is an infidel. And so’s
she. She always spells ‘God’ with a little ‘g’ in her dictation. Miss
Brownell scolds her for it but she does it right along. Miss Brownell
won’t whip _her_ because she’s setting her cap for Dr. Burnley. But Ma
says she won’t get him because he hates women. _I_ don’t think it’s
proper to ’sociate with such people. Ilse is an awful wild queer girl
and has an awful temper. So has her father. She doesn’t chum with
anybody. Isn’t it ridic’lus the way she wears her hair? _You_ ought to
have a bang, Emily. They’re all the rage and you’d look well with one
because you’ve such a high forehead. It would make a real beauty of
you. My, but you have lovely hair, and your hands are just lovely. All
the Murrays have pretty hands. And you have the _sweetest_ eyes, Emily.”
Emily had never received so many compliments in her life. Rhoda laid
flattery on with a trowel. Her head was quite turned and she went home
from school determined to ask Aunt Elizabeth to cut her hair in a bang.
If it would make a beauty of her it must be compassed somehow. And she
would also ask Aunt Elizabeth if she might wear her Venetian beads to
school next day.
“The other girls may _respect_ me more then,” she thought.
She was alone from the crossroads, where she had parted company with
Rhoda, and she reviewed the events of the day with a feeling that,
after all, she had kept the Starr flag flying, except for a temporary
reverse in the matter of the snake. School was very different from
what she had expected it to be, but that was the way in life, she had
heard Ellen Greene say, and you just had to make the best of it. Rhoda
was a darling; and there was something about Ilse Burnley that one
liked; and as for the rest of the girls Emily got square with them
by pretending she saw them all being hanged in a row for frightening
her to death with a snake, and felt no more resentment towards them,
although some of the things that had been said to her rankled bitterly
in her heart for many a day. She had no father to tell them to, and no
account book to write them out in, so she could not exorcise them.
She had no speedy chance to ask for a bang, for there was company at
New Moon and her aunts were busy getting ready an elaborate supper. But
when the preserves were brought on Emily snatched the opportunity of a
lull in the older conversation.
“Aunt Elizabeth,” she said, “can I have a bang?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked her disdain.
“No,” she said, “I do not approve of bangs. Of all the silly fashions
that have come in now-a-days, bangs are the silliest.”
“Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, _do_ let me have a bang. It would make a beauty of
me,--Rhoda says so.”
“It would take a good deal more than a bang to do that, Emily. We will
not have bangs at New Moon--except on the Molly cows. _They_ are the
only creatures that should wear bangs.”
Aunt Elizabeth smiled triumphantly around the table--Aunt Elizabeth
_did_ smile sometimes when she thought she had silenced some small
person by exquisite ridicule. Emily understood that it was no use to
hope for bangs. Loveliness did not lie that way for her. It was mean of
Aunt Elizabeth--mean. She heaved a sigh of disappointment and dismissed
the idea for the present. There was something else she wanted to know.
“Why doesn’t Ilse Burnley’s father believe in God?” she asked.
“’Cause of the trick her mother played him,” said Mr. Slade, with
a chuckle. Mr. Slade was a fat, jolly-looking old man with bushy
hair and whiskers. He had already said some things Emily could not
understand and which had seemed greatly to embarrass his very lady-like
wife.
“What trick did Ilse’s mother play?” asked Emily, all agog with
interest.
Now Aunt Laura looked at Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Elizabeth looked at
Aunt Laura. Then the latter said:
“Run out and feed the chickens, Emily.”
Emily rose with dignity.
“You might just as well tell me that Ilse’s mother isn’t to be talked
about and I would obey you. I understand _perfectly_ what you mean,”
she said as she left the table.