THE TANSY PATCH
Emily and Ilse had a splendid fortnight of fun before their first
fight. It was really quite a terrible fight, arising out of a simple
argument as to whether they would or would not have a parlour in the
playhouse they were building in Lofty John’s bush. Emily wanted a
parlour and Ilse didn’t. Ilse lost her temper at once, and went into
a true Burnley tantrum. She was very fluent in her rages and the
volley of abusive “dictionary words” which she hurled at Emily would
have staggered most of the Blair Water girls. But Emily was too much
at home with words to be floored so easily; she grew angry too, but
in the cool, dignified, Murray way which was more exasperating than
violence. When Ilse had to pause for breath in her diatribes, Emily,
sitting on a big stone with her knees crossed, her eyes black and her
cheeks crimson, interjected little sarcastic retorts that infuriated
Ilse still further. Ilse was crimson, too, and her eyes were pools of
scintillating, tawny fire. They were both so pretty in their fury that
it was almost a pity they couldn’t have been angry all the time.
“You needn’t suppose, you little puling, snivelling chit, that you are
going to boss _me_, just because you live at New Moon,” shrieked Ilse,
as an ultimatum, stamping her foot.
“I’m not going to boss you--I’m not going to associate with you ever
again,” retorted Emily, disdainfully.
“I’m glad to be rid of you--you proud, stuck-up, conceited, top-lofty
_biped_,” cried Ilse. “Never you speak to me again. And don’t you go
about Blair Water saying things about me, either.”
This was unbearable to a girl who _never_ “said things” about her
friends or once-friends.
“I’m not going to _say_ things about you,” said Emily deliberately. “I
am just going to _think_ them.”
This was far more aggravating than speech and Emily knew it. Ilse was
driven quite frantic by it. Who knew what unearthly things Emily might
be thinking about her any time she took the notion to? Ilse had already
discovered what a fertile invention Emily had.
“Do you suppose I care what you think, you insignificant serpent? Why,
you haven’t _any_ sense.”
“I’ve got something then that’s far better,” said Emily, with a
maddening superior smile. “Something that _you_ can _never_ have, Ilse
Burnley.”
Ilse doubled her fists as if she would like to demolish Emily by
physical force.
“If I couldn’t write better poetry than you, I’d hang myself,” she
derided.
“I’ll lend you a dime to buy a rope,” said Emily.
Ilse glared at her, vanquished.
“You go to the devil!” she said.
Emily got up and went, not to the devil, but back to New Moon. Ilse
relieved _her_ feelings by knocking the boards of their china closet
down, and kicking their “moss gardens” to pieces, and departed also.
Emily felt exceedingly badly. Here was another friendship destroyed--a
friendship, too, that had been very delightful and satisfying. Ilse
_had_ been a splendid chum--there was no doubt about that. After Emily
had cooled down she went to the dormer window and cried.
“Wretched, wretched me!” she sobbed, dramatically, but very sincerely.
Yet the bitterness of her break with Rhoda was not present. _This_
quarrel was fair and open and above-board. She had not been stabbed in
the back. But of course she and Ilse would never be chums again. You
couldn’t be chums with a person who called you a chit and a biped, and
a serpent, and told you to go to the devil. The thing was impossible.
And besides, Ilse could _never_ forgive _her_--for Emily was honest
enough to admit to herself that she had been very aggravating, too.
Yet, when Emily went to the playhouse next morning, bent on retrieving
her share of broken dishes and boards, there was Ilse, skipping around,
hard at work, with all the shelves back in place, the moss garden
re-made, and a beautiful parlour laid out and connected with the
living-room by a spruce arch.
“Hello, you. Here’s your parlour and I hope you’ll be satisfied now,”
she said gaily. “What’s kept you so long? I thought you were never
coming.”
This rather posed Emily after her tragic night, wherein she had buried
her second friendship and wept over its grave. She was not prepared for
so speedy a resurrection. As far as Ilse was concerned it seemed as if
no quarrel had ever taken place.
“Why, that was _yesterday_,” she said in amazement, when Emily, rather
distantly, referred to it. Yesterday and to-day were two entirely
different things in Ilse’s philosophy. Emily accepted it--she found she
had to. Ilse, it transpired, could no more help flying into tantrums
now and then than she could help being jolly and affectionate between
them. What amazed Emily, in whom things were bound to rankle for a
time, was the way in which Ilse appeared to forget a quarrel the
moment it was over. To be called a serpent and a crocodile one minute
and hugged and darling-ed the next was somewhat disconcerting until
time and experience took the edge off it.
“Aren’t I nice enough between times to make up for it?” demanded Ilse.
“Dot Payne never flies into tempers, but would you like _her_ for a
chum?”
“No, she’s too stupid,” admitted Emily.
“And Rhoda Stuart is never out of temper, but you got enough of _her_.
Do you think I’d ever treat you as she did?”
No, Emily had no doubt on this point. Whatever Ilse was or was not, she
was loyal and true.
And certainly Rhoda Stuart and Dot Payne compared to Ilse were “as
moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine”--or would have been if
Emily had as yet known anything more of her Tennyson than the _Bugle
Song_.
“You can’t have everything,” said Ilse. “I’ve got Dad’s temper and
that’s all there is to it. Wait till you see _him_ in one of his rages.”
Emily had not seen this so far. She had often been down in the
Burnley’s house but on the few occasions when Dr. Burnley had been
home he had ignored her save for a curt nod. He was a busy man, for,
whatever his shortcomings were, his skill was unquestioned and the
bounds of his practice extended far. By the sickbed he was as gentle
and sympathetic as he was brusque and sarcastic away from it. As long
as you were ill there was nothing Dr. Burnley would not do for you;
once you were well he had apparently no further use for you. He had
been absorbed all through July trying to save Teddy Kent’s life up at
the Tansy Patch. Teddy was out of danger now and able to be up, but
his improvement was not speedy enough to satisfy Dr. Burnley. One day
he held up Emily and Ilse, who were heading through the lawn to the
pond, with fishing-hooks and a can of fat, abominable worms--the latter
manipulated solely by Ilse--and ordered them to betake themselves up to
the Tansy Patch and play with Teddy Kent.
“He’s lonesome and moping. Go and cheer him up,” said the doctor.
Ilse was rather loth to go. She liked Teddy, but it seemed she did not
like his mother. Emily was secretly not averse. She had seen Teddy Kent
but once, at Sunday School the day before he was taken seriously ill,
and she had liked his looks. It had seemed that he liked hers, too, for
she caught him staring shyly at her over the intervening pews several
times. He was very handsome, Emily decided. She liked his thick,
dark-brown hair and his black-browed blue eyes, and for the first time
it occurred to her that it might be rather nice to have a boy playmate,
too. Not a “beau” of course. Emily hated the school jargon that called
a boy your “beau” if he happened to give you a pencil or an apple and
picked you out frequently for his partner in the games.
“Teddy’s nice but his mother is queer,” Ilse told her on their way to
the Tansy Patch. “She never goes out anywhere--not even to church--but
I guess it’s because of the scar on her face. They’re not Blair Water
people--they’ve only been living at the Tansy Patch since last fall.
They’re poor and proud and not many people visit them. But Teddy is
awfully nice, so if his mother gives us some black looks we needn’t
mind.”
Mrs. Kent gave them no black looks, though her reception was rather
distant. Perhaps she, too, had received some orders from the doctor.
She was a tiny creature, with enormous masses of dull, soft, silky,
fawn hair, dark, mournful eyes, and a broad scar running slantwise
across her pale face. Without the scar she must have been pretty, and
she had a voice as soft and uncertain as the wind in the tansy. Emily,
with her instinctive faculty of sizing up people she met, felt that
Mrs. Kent was not a happy woman.
The Tansy Patch was east of the Disappointed House, between the Blair
Water and the sand-dunes. Most people considered it a bare, lonely,
neglected place, but Emily thought it was fascinating. The little
clap-boarded house topped a small hill, over which tansy grew in a
hard, flaunting, aromatic luxuriance, rising steeply and abruptly
from a main road. A straggling rail fence, almost smothered in wild
rosebushes, bounded the domain, and a sagging, ill-used little gate
gave ingress from the road. Stones were let into the side of the hill
for steps up to the front door. Behind the house was a tumble-down
little barn, and a field of flowering buckwheat, creamy green, sloping
down to the Blair Water. In front was a crazy veranda around which a
brilliant band of red poppies held up their enchanted cups.
Teddy was unfeignedly glad to see them, and they had a happy afternoon
together. There was some colour in Teddy’s clear olive skin when it
ended and his dark-blue eyes were brighter. Mrs. Kent took in these
signs greedily and asked the girls to come back, with an eagerness that
was yet not cordiality. But they had found the Tansy Patch a charming
place and were glad to go again. For the rest of the vacation there was
hardly a day when they did not go up to it--preferably in the long,
smoky, delicious August evenings when the white moths sailed over the
tansy plantation and the golden twilight faded into dusk and purple
over the green slopes beyond and fireflies lighted their goblin torches
by the pond. Sometimes they played games in the tansy patch, when Teddy
and Emily somehow generally found themselves on the same side and then
no more than a match for agile, quick-witted Ilse; sometimes Teddy
took them to the barn loft and showed them his little collection of
drawings. Both girls thought them very wonderful without knowing in
the least how wonderful they really were. It seemed like magic to see
Teddy take a pencil and bit of paper and with a few quick strokes of
his slim brown fingers bring out a sketch of Ilse or Emily or Smoke or
Buttercup, that looked ready to speak--or meow.
Smoke and Buttercup were the Tansy Patch cats. Buttercup was a chubby,
yellow, delightful creature hardly out of kittenhood. Smoke was a big
Maltese and an aristocrat from the tip of his nose to the tip of his
tail. There was no doubt whatever that he belonged to the cat caste of
Vere de Vere. He had emerald eyes and a coat of plush. The only white
thing about him was an adorable dicky.
Emily thought of all the pleasant hours spent at the Tansy Patch the
pleasantest were those, when, tired with play, they all three sat
on the crazy veranda steps in the mystery and enchantment of the
borderland ’tween light and dark when the little clump of spruce behind
the barn looked like beautiful, dark, phantom trees. The clouds of the
west faded into grey and a great round yellow moon rose over the fields
to be reflected brokenly in the pond, where the Wind Woman was making
wonderful, woven lights and shadows.
Mrs. Kent never joined them, though Emily had a creepy conviction
that she was watching them stealthily from behind the kitchen blind.
Teddy and Ilse sang school ditties, and Ilse recited, and Emily told
stories; or they sat in happy silence, each anchored in some secret
port of dreams, while the cats chased each other madly over the hill
and through the tansy, tearing round and round the house like possessed
creatures. They would spring up at the children with sudden pounces and
spring as suddenly away. Their eyes gleamed like jewels, their tails
swayed like plumes. They were palpitating with nervous, stealthy life.
“Oh, isn’t it good to be alive--like this?” Emily said once. “Wouldn’t
it be dreadful if one had never lived?”
Still, existence was not wholly unclouded--Aunt Elizabeth took care of
that. Aunt Elizabeth only permitted the visits to the Tansy Patch under
protest, and because Dr. Burnley had ordered them.
“Aunt Elizabeth does not aprove of Teddy,” Emily wrote in one of her
letters to her father--which epistles were steadily mutiplying on the
old garret sofa shelf. “The first time I asked her if I might go and
play with Teddy she looked at me _severely_ and said, Who is this Teddy
person. We do not know anything about these Kents. Remember, Emily,
the Murrays do not assosiate with every one. I said I am a Starr--I am
not a Murray, you said so yourself. Dear Father I did not mean to be
impertnent but Aunt Elizabeth said I was and would not speak to me the
rest of the day. She seemed to think that was a very bad punishment
but I did not mind it much only it is rather unpleasant to have your
own family preserve a disdaneful silence towards you. But since then
she lets me go to the Tansy Patch because Dr. Burnley came and told
her to. Dr. Burnley has a _strange inflewence_ over Aunt Elizabeth. I
do not understand it. Rhoda said once that Aunt Elizabeth hoped Dr.
Burnley and Aunt Laura would make a match of it--which, you know means
get married--but that is not so. Mrs. Thomas Anderson was here one
afternoon to tea. (Mrs. Thomas Anderson is a big fat woman and her
grandmother was a Murray and there is nothing else to say about _her_.)
She asked Aunt Elizabeth if she thought Dr. Burnley would marry again
and Aunt Elizabeth said no, he would not and she did not think it right
for people to marry a second time. Mrs. Anderson said Sometimes I have
thought he would take Laura. Aunt Elizabeth just swept her a hawty
glance. There is no use in denying it, there are times when I am very
proud of Aunt Elizabeth, even if I do not like her.
“Teddy is a very nice boy, Father. I think you would aprove of him.
Should there be two p’s in aprove? He can make splendid pictures
and he is going to be a famus artist some day, and then he is going
to paint my portrate. He keeps his pictures in the barn loft because
his mother doesn’t like to see them. He can whistle just like a bird.
The Tansy Patch is a _very quante_ place--espesially at night. I love
the twilight there. We always have such fun in the twilight. The Wind
Woman makes herself small in the tansy just like a tiny, tiny fairy and
the cats are so queer and creepy and delightful then. They belong to
Mrs. Kent and Teddy is afraid to pet them much for fear she will drown
them. She drowned a kitten once because she thought he liked it better
than her. But he didn’t because Teddy is _very much attatched_ to his
mother. He washes the dishes for her and helps her in all the house
work. Ilse says the boys in school call him sissy for that but I think
it is noble and manley of him. Teddy wishes she would let him have a
dog but she wont. I have thought Aunt Elizabeth was tirannical but
Mrs. Kent is far worse in some ways. But then she loves Teddy and Aunt
Elizabeth does not love me.
“But Mrs. Kent doesn’t like Ilse or me. She never says so but we _feel_
it. She never asks us to stay to tea--and we’ve always been so polite
to her. I believe she is jellus of us because Teddy likes us. Teddy
gave me the sweetest picture of the Blair Water he had painted on a big
white cowhawk shell but he said I mustn’t let his mother know about it
because she would cry. Mrs. Kent is a very misterious person, very like
some people you read of in books. I like misterious people but not too
close. Her eyes always look hungry though she has plenty to eat. She
never goes anywhere because she has a scar on her face where she was
burned with a lamp exploding. It made my blood run cold, dear Father.
How thankful I am that Aunt Elizabeth only burns candles. Some of the
Murray tradishuns are very sensible. Mrs. Kent is very relijus--what
she calls relijus. She prays even in the middle of the day. Teddy says
that before he was born into this world he lived in another one where
there were two suns, one red and one blue. The days were red and the
nights blue. I don’t know where he got the idea but it sounds atractive
to me. And he says the brooks run honey instead of water. But what did
you do when you were thirsty, I said. Oh, we were never thirsty there.
But I think I would _like_ to be thirsty because then cold water tastes
so good. _I_ would like to live in the moon. It must be such a nice
silvery place.
“Ilse says Teddy ought to like her best because there is more fun in
her than in me but that is not true. There is just as much fun in me
when my conshence doesn’t bother me. I guess Ilse wants Teddy to like
her best but she is not a jellus girl.
“I am glad to say that Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura both aprove of my
friendship with Ilse. It is so seldom they aprove of the same thing.
I am getting used to fighting with Ilse now and don’t mind it much.
Besides I can fight pretty well myself when my blood is up. We fight
about once a week but we make up right away and Ilse says things would
be dull if there was never a row. I would like it better without rows
but you can never tell what will make Ilse mad. She never gets mad
twice over the same thing. She calls me dreadful names. Yesterday she
called me a lousy lizard and a toothless viper. But somehow I didn’t
mind it much because I knew I wasn’t lousy or toothless and she knew
it too. I don’t call names because that is unladylike but I smile and
that makes Ilse far madder than if I skowled and stamped as she does,
and that is why I do it. Aunt Laura says I must be careful not to pick
up the words Ilse uses and try to set her a good example because the
poor child has no one to look after her propperly. I wish I could use
some of her words because they are so striking. She gets them from her
father. I think my aunts are too perticular. One night when the Rev.
Mr. Dare was here to tea I used the word bull in my conversashun. I
said Ilse and I were afraid to go through Mr. James Lee’s pasture where
the old well was because he had a cross bull there. After Mr. Dare
had gone Aunt Elizabeth gave me an awful skolding and told me I was
never to use _that word_ again. But she had been talking of tigers at
tea--in connexshun with missionaries--and I can’t understand why it is
more disgraceful to talk about bulls than tigers. Of course bulls are
feroshus animals but so are tigers. But Aunt Elizabeth says I am always
disgracing them when they have company. When Mrs. Lockwood was here
from Shrewsbury last week they were talking about Mrs. Foster Beck, who
is a bride, and I said Dr. Burnley thought she was devilishly pretty.
Aunt Elizabeth said EMILY in an awful tone. She was pale with rath.
Dr. Burnley said it, I cryed, I am only kwoting. And Dr. Burnley did
say it the day I stayed to dinner with Ilse and Dr. Jameson was there
from Shrewsbury. I saw Dr. Burnley in one of his rages that afternoon
over something Mrs. Simms had done in his office. It was a groosome
sight. His big yellow eyes blazed and he tore about and kicked over a
chair and threw a mat at the wall and fired a vase out of the window
and said _terrible things_. I sat on the sofa and stared at him like
one fassinated. It was so interesting I was sorry when he cooled down
which he soon did because he is like Ilse and never stays mad long. He
never gets mad at Ilse though. Ilse says she wishes he would--it would
be better than being taken no notis of. She is as much of an orfan as
I am, poor child. Last Sunday she went to church with her old faded
blue dress on. There was a tare right in front of it. Aunt Laura wepped
when she came home and then spoke to Mrs. Simms about it because she
did not dare speak to Dr. Burnley. Mrs. Simms was cross and said it
was not her place to look after Ilses close but she said she had got
Dr. Burnley to get Ilse a nice sprigged muslin dress and Ilse had got
egg stane on it, and when Mrs. Simms skolded her for being so careless
Ilse flew into a rage and went upstairs and tore the muslin dress to
pieces, and Mrs. Simms said she wasn’t going to bother her head again
about a child like that and there was nothing for her to ware but her
old blue but Mrs. Simms didn’t know it was tore. So I sneaked Ilses
dress over to New Moon and Aunt Laura mended it neetly and hid the tare
with a pocket. Ilse said she tore up her muslin dress one of the days
she didn’t believe in God and didn’t care what she did. Ilse found
a mouse in her bed one night and she just shook it out and jumped
in. Oh, how brave. I could never be as brave as that. It is not true
that Dr. Burnley never smiles. I have seen him do it but not often.
He just smiles with his lips but not his eyes and it makes me feel
uncomfortable. Mostly he laughs in a horrid sarkastic way like _Jolly
Jim’s_ uncle.
“We had barley soup for dinner that day--very watery.
“Aunt Laura is giving me five cents a week for washing the dishes. I
can only spend one cent of it and the other four have to be put in
the toad bank in the sitting-room on the mantel. The toad is made of
brass and sits on top of the bank and you put the cents in his mouth
one at a time. He swallows them and they drop into the bank. It’s very
fassinating (I should not write fassinating again because you told me
I must not use the same word too often but I cant think of any other
that deskribes my feelings so well). The toad bank is Aunt Laura’s but
she said I could use it. I just hugged her. Of course I never hug Aunt
Elizabeth. She is too rijid and bony. She does not aprove of Aunt Laura
paying me for washing dishes. I tremble to think what she would say if
she knew Cousin Jimmy gave me a whole dollar on the sly last week.
“I wish he had not given me so much. It worrys me. It is an awful
responsibility. It will be so diffikult to spend it wisely also
without Aunt Elizabeth finding out about it. I hope I shall never
have a million dollars. I am sure it would crush me utterly. I keep
my dollar hid on the shelf with my letters and I put it in an old
envelope and wrote on it Cousin Jimmy Murray gave me this so that if I
died suddenly and Aunt Elizabeth found it she would know I came by it
honestly.
“Now that the days are getting cool Aunt Elizabeth makes me wear my
thick flannel petticoat. I hate it. It makes me so bunchy. But Aunt
Elizabeth says I must wear it because you died of consumption. I wish
close could be both graceful and helthy. I read the story of Red Riding
Hood to-day. I think the wolf was the most intresting caracter in it.
Red Riding Hood was a stupid little thing so easily fooled.
“I wrote two poems yesterday. One was short and entitelled Lines
Adressed to a blue-eyed-grass flower gathered in the Old Orchard. Here
it is.
Sweet little flower thy modest face
Is ever lifted tords the sky
And a reflexshun of its face
Is caught within thine own blue eye.
The meadow queens are tall and fair
The columbines are lovely too
But the poor talent I possess
Shall laurel thee my flower of blue.
“The other poem was long and I wrote it on a letter-bill. It is called
The Monark of the Forest. The Monark is the big birch in Lofty John’s
bush. I love that bush so much it hurts. Do you understand that kind
of hurting. Ilse likes it too and we play there most of the time when
we are not at the Tansy Patch. We have three paths in it. We call them
the To-day Road, the Yesterday Road and the To-morrow Road. The To-day
Road is by the brook and we call it that because it is lovely now. The
Yesterday Road is out in the stumps where Lofty John cut some trees
down and we call it that because it used to be lovely. The To-morrow
Road is just a tiny path in the maple clearing and we call it that
because it is going to be lovely some day, when the maples grow bigger.
But oh Father dear I haven’t forgotten the dear old trees down home.
I always think of them after I go to bed. But I am happy here. It
isn’t wrong to be happy, is it Father. Aunt Elizabeth says I got over
being homesick very quick but I am often homesick _inside_. I have got
akwanted with Lofty John. Ilse is a great friend of his and often goes
there to watch him working in his carpenter shop. He says he has made
enough ladders to get to heaven without the priest but that is just his
joke. He is really a very devowt Catholic and goes to the chapel at
White Cross every Sunday. I go with Ilse though perhaps I ought not to
when he is an enemy of my family. He is of stately baring and refined
manners--very sivil to me but I don’t always like him. When I ask him
a serius question he always winks over my head when he ansers. That
is insulting. Of course I never ask any questions on relijus subjects
but Ilse does. She likes him but she says he would burn us all at the
stake if he had the power. She asked him right out if he wouldn’t
and he winked at me and said Oh, we wouldn’t burn nice pretty little
Protestants like you. We would only burn the old ugly ones. That was a
frivellus reply. Mrs. Lofty John is a nice woman and not at all proud.
She looks just like a little rosy rinkled apple.
“On rainy days we play at Ilse’s. We can slide down the bannisters and
do what we like. Nobody cares only when the doctor is home we have to
be quiet because he cant bear any noise in the house except what he
makes himself. The roof is flat and we can get out on it through a door
in the garret ceiling. It is very exiting to be up on the roof of a
house. We had a yelling contest there the other night to see which
could yell the loudest. To my surprise I found I could. You never can
tell what you can do till you try. But too many people heard us and
Aunt Elizabeth was very angry. She asked me what made me do such a
thing. That is an okward question because often I cant tell what makes
me do things. Sometimes I do them just to find out what I feel like
doing them. And sometimes I do them because I want to have some exiting
things to tell my grandchildren. Is it impropper to talk about haveing
grandchildren. I have discovered that it is impropper to talk about
haveing children. One evening when people were here Aunt Laura said to
me quite kindly What are you thinking so ernestly about, Emily, and I
said I am picking names for my children. I mean to have ten. And after
the company had gone Aunt Elizabeth said to Aunt Laura _icilly_ I think
it will be better in the future Laura if you do _not_ ask that child
what she is thinking of. If Aunt Laura doesnt I shall be sorry because
when I have an intresting thought I like to tell it.
“School begins again next week. Ilse is going to ask Miss Brownell if
I can sit with her. I intend to act as if Rhoda was not there at all.
Teddy is going too. Dr. Burnley says he is well enough to go though his
mother doesnt like the idea. Teddy says she never likes to have him go
to school but she is glad that he hates Miss Brownell. Aunt Laura says
the right way to end a letter to a dear friend is yours affeckshunately.
“So I am yours very affeckshunately.
“_Emily Byrd Starr._
“P. S. Because _you_ are my _very dearest friend still_, Father. Ilse
says she loves me best of anything in the world and her red leather
boots that Mrs. Simms gave her next.”