“ROMANTIC BUT NOT COMFORTABLE”
A certain thing happened at New Moon because Teddy Kent paid Ilse
Burnley a compliment one day and Emily Starr didn’t altogether like it.
Empires have been overturned for the same reason.
Teddy was skating on Blair Water and taking Ilse and Emily out in
turns for “slides.” Neither Ilse nor Emily had skates. Nobody was
sufficiently interested in Ilse to buy skates for her, and as for
Emily, Aunt Elizabeth did not approve of girls skating. New Moon girls
had never skated. Aunt Laura had a revolutionary idea that skating
would be good exercise for Emily and would, moreover, prevent her
from wearing out the soles of her boots sliding. But neither of these
arguments was sufficient to convince Aunt Elizabeth, in spite of the
thrifty streak that came to her from the Burnleys. The latter, however,
caused her to issue an edict that Emily was not to “slide.” Emily took
this very hardly. She moped about in a woe-begone fashion and she wrote
to her father, “I _hate_ Aunt Elizabeth. She is so unjust. She never
plays fair.” But one day Dr. Burnley stuck his head in at the door of
the New Moon kitchen and said gruffly, “What’s this I hear about you
not letting Emily slide, Elizabeth?”
“She wears out the soles of her boots,” said Elizabeth.
“Boots be--” the doctor remembered that ladies were present just in
time. “Let the creature slide all she wants to. She ought to be in
the open air all the time. She ought”--the doctor stared at Elizabeth
ferociously--“she ought to sleep out of doors.”
Elizabeth trembled lest the doctor should go on to insist on this
unheard-of proceeding. She knew he had absurd ideas about the proper
treatment of consumptives and those who might become such. She was glad
to appease him by letting Emily stay out-of-doors in daytime and do
what seemed good to her, if only he would say no more about staying out
all night too.
“He is much more concerned about Emily than he is about his own child,”
she said bitterly to Laura.
“Ilse is too healthy,” said Aunt Laura with a smile. “If she were a
delicate child Allan might forgive her for--for being her mother’s
daughter.”
“S--s--h,” said Aunt Elizabeth. But she “s--s--s--h’d” too late. Emily,
coming into the kitchen, had heard Aunt Laura and puzzled over what she
had said all day in school. Why had Ilse to be forgiven for being her
mother’s daughter? Everybody was her mother’s daughter, wasn’t she?
Wherein did the crime consist? Emily worried over it so much that she
was inattentive to her lessons and Miss Brownell raked her fore and aft
with sarcasm.
It is time we got back to Blair Water where Teddy was just bringing
Emily in from a glorious spin clear round the great circle of ice.
Ilse was waiting for her turn, on the bank. Her golden cloud of hair
aureoled her face and fell in a shimmering wave over her forehead
under the faded, little red tam she wore. Ilse’s clothes were always
faded. The stinging kiss of the wind had crimsoned her cheeks and her
eyes were glowing like amber pools with fire in their hearts. Teddy’s
artistic perception saw her beauty and rejoiced in it.
“Isn’t Ilse handsome?” he said.
Emily was not jealous. It never hurt her to hear Ilse praised. But
somehow she did not like this. Teddy was looking at Ilse altogether
_too_ admiringly. It was all, Emily believed, due to that shimmering
fringe on Ilse’s white brows.
“If _I_ had a bang Teddy might think me handsome too,” she thought
resentfully. “Of course, black hair isn’t as pretty as gold. But my
forehead is too high--everybody says so. And I _did_ look nice in
Teddy’s picture because he drew some curls over it.”
The matter rankled. Emily thought of it as she went home over the sheen
of the crusted snow-field slanting to the light of the winter sunset,
and she could not eat her supper because she did not have a bang. All
her long hidden yearning for a bang seemed to come to a head at once.
She knew there was no use in coaxing Aunt Elizabeth for one. But when
she was getting ready for bed that night she stood on a chair so that
she could see little Emily-in-the-glass, then lifted the curling ends
of her long braid and laid them over her forehead. The effect, in
Emily’s eyes at least, was very alluring. She suddenly thought--what if
she cut a bang herself? It would take only a minute. And once done what
could Aunt Elizabeth do? She would be very angry and doubtless inflict
some kind of punishment. But the bang would be there--at least until it
grew out long.
Emily, her lips set, went for the scissors. She unbraided her hair and
parted the front tresses. Snip--snip--went the scissors. Glistening
locks fell at her feet. In a minute Emily had her long-desired bang.
Straight across her brows fell the lustrous, softly curving fringe. It
changed the whole character of her face. It made it arch, provocative,
elusive. For one brief moment Emily gazed at her reflection in triumph.
And then--sheer terror seized her. Oh, what had she done? How angry
Aunt Elizabeth would be! Conscience suddenly awoke and added its pang
also. She had been wicked. It was wicked to cut a bang when Aunt
Elizabeth had forbidden it. Aunt Elizabeth had given her a home at New
Moon--hadn’t Rhoda Stuart that very day in school twitted her again
with “living on charity”? And she was repaying her by disobedience and
ingratitude. A Starr should not have done that. In a panic of fear
and remorse Emily snatched the scissors and cut the bang off--cut it
close against the hair line. Worse and worse! Emily beheld the result
in dismay. Any one could see that a bang _had_ been cut, so Aunt
Elizabeth’s anger was still to face. And she had made a terrible fright
of herself. Emily burst into tears, snatched up the fallen locks and
crammed them into the waste-basket, blew out her candle and sprang into
bed, just as Aunt Elizabeth came in.
Emily burrowed face downward in the pillows, and pretended to be
asleep. She was afraid Aunt Elizabeth would ask her some question and
insist on her looking up while she answered it. That was a Murray
tradition--you looked people in the face when you spoke to them. But
Aunt Elizabeth undressed in silence and came to bed. The room was in
darkness--thick darkness. Emily sighed and turned over. There was a
hot gin-jar in the bed, she knew, and her feet were cold. But she did
not think she ought to have the privilege of the gin-jar. She was too
wicked--too ungrateful.
“_Do_ stop squirming,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
Emily squirmed no more--physically at least. Mentally she continued to
squirm. She could not sleep. Her feet or her conscience--or both--kept
her awake. And fear, also. She dreaded the morning. Aunt Elizabeth
would see then what had happened. If it were only over--if the
revelation were only over. Emily forgot and squirmed.
“What makes you so restless tonight?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth, in high
displeasure. “Are you taking a cold?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then go to sleep. I can’t bear such wriggling. One might as well have
an eel in bed--O--W!”
Aunt Elizabeth, in squirming a bit herself, had put her own foot
against Emily’s icy ones.
“Goodness, child, your feet are like snow. Here, put them on the
gin-jar.”
Aunt Elizabeth pushed the gin-jar over against Emily’s feet. How lovely
and warm and comforting it was!
Emily worked her toes against it like a cat. But she suddenly knew she
could not wait for morning.
“Aunt Elizabeth, I’ve got something to confess.”
Aunt Elizabeth was tired and sleepy and did not want confessions just
then. In no very gracious tone she said,
“What have you been doing?”
“I--I cut a bang, Aunt Elizabeth.”
“A bang?”
Aunt Elizabeth sat up in bed.
“But I cut it off again,” cried Emily hurriedly. “Right off--close to
my head.”
Aunt Elizabeth got out of bed, lit a candle, and looked Emily over.
“Well you _have_ made a sight of yourself,” she said grimly. “I never
saw any one as ugly as you are this minute. And you have behaved in a
most underhanded fashion.”
This was one of the times Emily felt compelled to agree with Aunt
Elizabeth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting pleading eyes.
“You will eat your supper in the pantry for a week,” said Aunt
Elizabeth. “And you will not go to Uncle Oliver’s next week when I go.
I had promised to take you. But I shall take no one who looks as you do
anywhere with me.”
This was hard. Emily had looked forward to that visit to Uncle
Oliver’s. But on the whole she was relieved. The worst was over and her
feet were getting warm. But there was one thing yet. She might as well
unburden her heart completely while she was at it.
“There’s another thing I feel I ought to tell you.”
Aunt Elizabeth got into bed again with a grunt. Emily took it for
permission.
“Aunt Elizabeth, you remember that book I found in Dr. Burnley’s
bookcase and brought home and asked you if I could read it? It was
called ‘The History of Henry Esmond.’ You looked at it and said you had
no objections to my reading history. So I read it. But, Aunt Elizabeth,
it wasn’t history--it was a novel. And I _knew it when I brought it
home_.”
“You know that I have forbidden you to read novels, Emily Starr. They
are wicked books and have ruined many souls.”
“It was very dull,” pleaded Emily, as if dullness and wickedness were
quite incompatible. “And it made me feel unhappy. Everybody seemed
to be in love with the wrong person. I have made up my mind, Aunt
Elizabeth, that I will never fall in love. It makes too much trouble.”
“Don’t talk of things you can’t understand, and that are not fit for
children to think about. This is the result of reading novels. I shall
tell Dr. Burnley to lock his bookcase up.”
“Oh, don’t do that, Aunt Elizabeth,” exclaimed Emily. “There are no
more novels in it. But I’m reading such an interesting book over there.
It tells about everything that’s inside of you. I’ve got as far along
as the liver and its diseases. The pictures are so interesting. Please
let me finish it.”
This was worse than novels. Aunt Elizabeth was truly horrified. Things
that were inside of you were not to be read about.
“Have you no shame, Emily Starr? If you have not I am ashamed for you.
Little girls do not read books like that.”
“But, Aunt Elizabeth, why not? I _have_ a liver, haven’t I--and heart
and lungs--and stomach--and--”
“That will do, Emily. Not another word.”
Emily went to sleep unhappily. She wished she had never said a word
about ‘Esmond.’ And she knew she would never have a chance to finish
that other fascinating book. Nor had she. Dr. Burnley’s bookcase was
locked thereafter and the doctor gruffly ordered her and Ilse to keep
out of his office. He was in a very bad humour about it for he had
words with Elizabeth Murray over the matter.
Emily was not allowed to forget her bang. She was twitted and teased
in school about it and Aunt Elizabeth looked at it whenever she looked
at Emily and the contempt in her eyes burned Emily like a flame.
Nevertheless, as the mistreated hair grew out and began to curl in
soft little ringlets, Emily found consolation. The bang was tacitly
permitted, and she felt that her looks were greatly improved thereby.
Of course, as soon as it grew long enough she knew Aunt Elizabeth would
make her brush it back. But for the time being she took comfort in her
added beauty.
The bang was just about at its best when the letter came from
Great-Aunt Nancy.
It was written to Aunt Laura--Great-Aunt Nancy and Aunt Elizabeth were
not over-fond of each other--and in it Great-Aunt Nancy said, “If you
have a photograph of that child Emily send it along. I don’t want to
see _her_; she’s stupid--I know she’s stupid. But I want to see what
Juliet’s child looks like. Also the child of that fascinating young
man, Douglas Starr. He _was_ fascinating. What fools you all were
to make such a fuss about Juliet running away with him. If you and
Elizabeth had _both_ run away with somebody in your running days it
would have been better for you.”
This letter was not shown to Emily. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura had
a long secret consultation and then Emily was told that she was to be
taken to Shrewsbury to have her picture taken for Aunt Nancy. Emily
was much excited over this. She was dressed in her blue cashmere and
Aunt Laura put a point lace collar on it and hung her Venetian beads
over it. And new buttoned boots were got for the occasion.
“I’m so glad this has happened while I still have my bang,” thought
Emily happily.
But in the photographer’s dressing-room, Aunt Elizabeth grimly
proceeded to brush back her bang and pin it with hairpins.
“Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, let me have it down,” Emily begged. “Just
for the picture. After this I’ll brush it back.”
Aunt Elizabeth was inexorable. The bang was brushed back and the
photograph taken. When Aunt Elizabeth saw the finished result she was
satisfied.
“She looks sulky; but she is neat; and there is a resemblance to the
Murrays I never noticed before,” she told Aunt Laura. “That will please
Aunt Nancy. She is very clannish under all her oddness.”
Emily would have liked to throw every one of the photographs in the
fire. She hated them. They made her look hideous. Her face seemed to
be _all_ forehead. If they sent Aunt Nancy that Aunt Nancy would think
her stupider than ever. When Aunt Elizabeth did the photograph up in
cardboard and told Emily to take it to the office Emily already knew
what she meant to do. She went straight to the garret and took out of
her box the water-colour Teddy had made of her. It was just the same
size as the photograph. Emily removed the latter from its wrappings,
spurning it aside with her foot.
“That isn’t _me_,” she said. “I looked sulky because I felt sulky about
the bang. But I hardly ever look sulky, so it isn’t fair.”
She wrapped Teddy’s sketch up in the cardboard and then sat down and
wrote a letter.
“DEAR GREAT-AUNT NANCY:
“Aunt Elizabeth had my picture taken to send you but I don’t like it
because it makes me look too ugly and I am putting another picture in
instead. An _artist friend_ made it for me. It is just like me when I’m
smiling and have a bang. I am only _lending_ it to you, not _giving_
it, because I valew it very highly.
“Your obedient grand niece,
“EMILY BYRD STARR.
“P. S. I am not so stupid as you think.
“E. B. S.
“P. S. No. 2. I am not stupid _at all_.”
Emily put her letter in with the picture--thereby unconsciously
cheating the post-office--and slipped out of the house to mail it.
Once it was safely in the post-office she drew a breath of relief. She
found the walk home very enjoyable. It was a bland day in early April
and spring was looking at you round the corners. The Wind Woman was
laughing and whistling over the wet sweet fields; freebooting crows
held conferences in the tree tops; little pools of sunshine lay in the
mossy hollows; the sea was a blaze of sapphire beyond the golden dunes;
the maples in Lofty John’s bush were talking about red buds. Everything
Emily had ever read of dream and myth and legend seemed a part of the
charm of that bush. She was filled to her finger-tips with a rapture of
living.
“Oh, I smell spring!” she cried as she danced along the brook path.
Then she began to compose a poem on it. Everybody who has ever lived in
the world and could string two rhymes together has written a poem on
spring. It is the most be-rhymed subject in the world--and always will
be, because it is poetry incarnate itself. You can never be a real
poet if you haven’t made at least one poem about spring.
Emily was wondering whether she would have elves dancing on the
brookside by moonlight, or pixies sleeping in a bed of ferns in her
poem, when something confronted her at a bend in the path which was
neither elf nor pixy, but seemed odd and weird enough to belong to some
of the tribes of Little People. Was it a witch? Or an elderly fay of
evil intentions--the bad fairy of all christening tales?
“I’m the b’y’s Aunt Tom,” said the appearance, seeing that Emily was
too amazed to do anything but stand and stare.
“Oh!” Emily gasped in relief. She was no longer frightened. But what a
_very_ peculiar looking lady Perry’s Aunt Tom was. Old--so old that it
seemed quite impossible that she could ever have been young; a bright
red hood over crone-like, fluttering grey locks; a little face seamed
by a thousand fine, criss-cross wrinkles; a long nose with a knob on
the end of it; little twinkling, eager, grey eyes under bristly brows;
a ragged man’s coat covering her from neck to feet; a basket in one
hand and a black knobby stick in the other.
“Staring wasn’t thought good breeding in my time,” said Aunt Tom.
“Oh!” said Emily again. “Excuse me-- How do you do!” she added, with a
vague grasp after her manners.
“Polite--and not too proud,” said Aunt Tom, peering curiously at her.
“I’ve been up to the big house with a pair of socks for the b’y but
’twas yourself I wanted to see.”
“Me?” said Emily blankly.
“Yis. The b’y has been talking a bit of you and a plan kem into my
head. Thinks I to myself it’s no bad notion. But I’ll make sure before
I waste my bit o’ money. Emily Byrd Starr is your name and Murray is
your nature. If I give the b’y an eddication will ye marry him when ye
grow up?”
“Me!” said Emily again. It seemed to be all she could say. Was she
dreaming? She _must_ be.
“Yis--you. You’re half Murray and it’ll be a great step up f’r the b’y.
He’s smart and he’ll be a rich man some day and boss the country. But
divil a cent will I spend on him unless you promise.”
“Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t let me,” cried Emily, too frightened of this
odd old body to refuse on her own account.
“If you’ve got any Murray in you you’ll do your own choosing,” said
Aunt Tom, thrusting her face so close to Emily’s that her bushy
eyebrows tickled Emily’s nose. “Say you’ll marry the b’y and to college
he goes.”
Emily seemed to be rendered speechless. She could think of nothing to
say--oh, if she could _only_ wake up! She could not even run.
“Say it!” insisted Aunt Tom, thumping her stick sharply on a stone in
the path.
Emily was so horrified that she might have said something--anything--to
escape. But at this moment Perry bounded out of the spruce copse, his
face white with rage, and seized his Aunt Tom most disrespectfully by
the shoulder.
“You go home!” he said furiously.
“Now, b’y dear,” quavered Aunt Tom deprecatingly. “I was only trying to
do you a good turn. I was asking her to marry ye after a bit an--”
“I’ll do my own asking!” Perry was angrier than ever. “You’ve likely
spoiled everything. Go home--go home, I say!”
Aunt Tom hobbled off muttering, “Then I’ll know better than to waste me
bit o’ money. No Murray, no money, me b’y.”
When she had disappeared down the brook path Perry turned to Emily.
From white he had gone very red.
“Don’t mind her--she’s cracked,” he said. “Of course, when I grow up I
mean to ask you to marry me but--”
“I couldn’t--Aunt Elizabeth--”
“Oh, she will then. I’m going to be premier of Canada some day.”
“But I wouldn’t want--I’m sure I wouldn’t--”
“You will when you grow up. Ilse is better looking of course, and I
don’t know why I like you best but I do.”
“Don’t you ever talk to me like this again!” commanded Emily, beginning
to recover her dignity.
“Oh, I won’t--not till we grow up. I’m as ashamed of it as you are,”
said Perry with a sheepish grin. “Only I had to say something after
Aunt Tom butted in like that. I ain’t to blame for it so don’t you hold
it against me. But just you remember that I’m going to ask you some
day. And I believe Teddy Kent is too.”
Emily was walking haughtily away but she turned at this to say coolly
over her shoulder,
“If he does I’ll marry him.”
“If you do I’ll knock his head off,” shouted Perry in a prompt rage.
But Emily walked steadily on home and went to the garret to think
things over.
“It has been romantic but not comfortable,” was her conclusion. And
that particular poem on spring was never finished.