THE VOW OF EMILY
In Dean Priest Emily found, for the first time since her father had
died, a companion who could fully sympathize. She was always at her
best with him, with a delightful feeling of being understood. To love
is easy and therefore common--but to _understand_--how rare it is!
They roamed wonderlands of fancy together in the magic August days
that followed upon Emily’s adventure on the bay shore, talked together
of exquisite, immortal things, and were at home with “nature’s old
felicities” of which Wordsworth so happily speaks.
Emily showed him all the poetry and “descriptions” in her “Jimmy-book”
and he read them gravely, and, exactly as Father had done, made little
criticisms that did not hurt her because she knew they were just. As
for Dean Priest, a certain secret well-spring of fancy that had long
seemed dry bubbled up in him sparklingly again.
“You make me believe in fairies, whether I will or no,” he told her,
“and that means youth. As long as you believe in fairies you can’t grow
old.”
“But I can’t believe in fairies myself,” protested Emily sorrowfully.
“I wish I could.”
“But _you_ are a fairy yourself--or you wouldn’t be able to find
fairyland. You can’t buy a ticket there, you know. Either the fairies
themselves give you your passport at your christening--or they don’t.
That is all there is to it.”
“Isn’t ‘Fairyland’ the _loveliest_ word?” said Emily dreamily.
“Because it means everything the human heart desires,” said Dean.
When he talked to her Emily felt as if she were looking into some
enchanted mirror where her own dreams and secret hopes were reflected
back to her with added charm. If Dean Priest were a cynic he showed no
cynicism to Emily. But in her company he was not a cynic; he had shed
his years and became a boy again with a boy’s untainted visions. She
loved him for the world he opened to her view.
There was such fun in him, too,--such sly, surprising fun. He told her
jokes--he made her laugh. He told her strange old tales of forgotten
gods who were very beautiful--of court festivals and the bridals of
kings. He seemed to have the history of the whole world at his fingers’
ends. He described things to her in unforgettable phrases as they
walked by the bay shore or sat in the overgrown, shadowy old garden
of Wyther Grange. When he spoke of Athens as “the City of the Violet
Crown” Emily realized afresh what magic is made when the right words
are wedded; and she loved to think of Rome as “the City of the Seven
Hills.” Dean had been in Rome and Athens--and almost everywhere else.
“I didn’t know any one ever talked as you do except in books,” she told
him.
Dean laughed--with a little note of bitterness that was so often
present in his laughter--though less often with Emily than with other
people. It was really his laughter that had won Dean his reputation for
cynicism. People so often felt that he was laughing _at_ them instead
of _with_ them.
“I’ve had only books for companions most of my life,” he said. “Is it
any wonder I talk like them?”
“I’m sure I’ll like studying history after this,” said Emily; “except
Canadian History. I’ll never like _it_--it’s so dull. Not just at the
first, when we belonged to France and there was plenty of fighting, but
after that it’s nothing but politics.”
“The happiest countries, like the happiest women, have no history,”
said Dean.
“I hope _I’ll_ have a history,” cried Emily. “I want a _thrilling_
career.”
“We all do, foolish one. Do you know what makes history? Pain--and
shame--and rebellion--and bloodshed and heartache. Star, ask yourself
how many hearts ached--and broke--to make those crimson and purple
pages in history that you find so enthralling. I told you the story of
Leonidas and his Spartans the other day. They had mothers, sisters and
sweethearts. If they could have fought a bloodless battle at the polls
wouldn’t it have been better--if not so dramatic.”
“I--can’t--_feel_--that way,” said Emily confusedly. She was not old
enough to think or say, as she would say ten years later, “The heroes
of Thermopylæ have been an inspiration to humanity for centuries. What
squabble around a ballot-box will ever be that?”
“And, like all female creatures, you form your opinions by your
feelings. Well, hope for your thrilling career--but remember that if
there is to be drama in your life _somebody_ must pay the piper in the
coin of suffering. If not you--then some one else.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t like _that_.”
“Then be content with fewer thrills. What about your tumble over the
bank down there? That came near being a tragedy. What if I hadn’t found
you?”
“But you _did_ find me,” cried Emily. “I like near escapes--after
they’re over,” she added. “If everybody had always been happy there’d
be nothing to read about.”
Tweed made a third in their rambles and Emily grew very fond of him,
without losing any of her loyalty to the pussy folk.
“I like cats with one part of my mind and dogs with another part,” she
said.
“I like cats but I never keep one,” Dean said. “They’re too
exacting--they ask too much. Dogs want only love but cats demand
worship. They have never got over the Bubastis habit of godship.”
Emily understood this--he had told her all about old Egypt and the
goddess Pasht--but she did not quite agree with him.
“Kittens don’t want to be worshipped,” she said. “They just want to be
cuddled.”
“By their priestesses--yes. If you had been born on the banks of the
Nile five thousand years ago, Emily, you would have been a priestess of
Pasht--an adorable, slim, brown creature with a fillet of gold around
your black hair and bands of silver on those ankles Aunt Nancy admires,
with dozens of sacred little godlings frisking around you under the
palms of the temple courts.”
“Oh,” gasped Emily rapturously, “that gave me _the flash_. And,” she
added wonderingly, “just for a moment it made me _homesick_, too. Why?”
“Why? Because I haven’t a doubt you _were_ just such a priestess in
a former incarnation and my words reminded your soul of it. Do you
believe in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, Star? But of
course not--brought up by the true-blue Calvinists of New Moon.”
“What does it mean?” asked Emily, and when Dean explained it to her she
thought it a very delightful belief but was quite sure Aunt Elizabeth
would not approve of it.
“So I won’t believe it--yet,” she said gravely.
Then it all came to an end quite suddenly. It had been taken for
granted by all concerned that Emily was to stay at Wyther Grange until
the end of August. But in mid-August Aunt Nancy said suddenly to her
one day,
“Go home, Emily. I’m tired of you. I like you very well--you’re not
stupid and you’re passably pretty and you’ve behaved exceedingly
well--tell Elizabeth you do the Murrays credit--but I’m tired of you.
Go home.”
Emily’s feelings were mixed. It hurt her to be told Aunt Nancy was
tired of her--it would hurt any one. It rankled in her for several days
until she thought of a sharp answer she might have made Aunt Nancy and
wrote it down in her Jimmy-book. She felt quite as relieved then as if
she had really said it.
And she was sorry to leave Wyther Grange; she had grown to love the
old beautiful house, with its flavour of hidden secrets--a flavour
that was wholly a trick of its architecture, for there had never been
anything in it but the simple tale of births and deaths and marriages
and everyday living that most houses have. She was sorry to leave the
bay shore and the quaint garden and the gazing-ball and the chessy-cat
and the Pink Room bed of freedom; and most of all she was sorry to
leave Dean Priest. But on the other hand it was delightful to think
of going back to New Moon and all the loved ones there--Teddy and his
dear whistle, Ilse and her stimulating comradeship, Perry with his
determined reaching up for higher things, Saucy Sal and the new kitten
that must be needing proper training now, and the fairy world of the
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Cousin Jimmy’s garden would be in its prime
of splendour, the August apples would be ripe. Suddenly, Emily was very
ready to go. She packed her little black box jubilantly and found it an
excellent chance to work in neatly a certain line from a poem Dean had
recently read to her which had captured her fancy.
“‘Good-bye, proud world, I’m going home,’” she declaimed feelingly,
standing at the top of the long, dark, shining staircase and
apostrophizing the row of grim Priest photographs hanging on the wall.
But she was much annoyed over one thing. Aunt Nancy would not give her
back the picture Teddy had painted.
“I’m going to keep it,” Aunt Nancy said, grinning and shaking her gold
tassels. “Some day that picture will be worth something as the early
effort of a famous artist.”
“I only lent it to you--I told you I only lent it to you,” said Emily
indignantly.
“I’m an unscrupulous old demon,” said Aunt Nancy coolly. “That is
what the Priests all call me behind my back. Don’t they, Caroline?
May as well have the game as the name. I happen to have a fancy for
that picture, that’s all. I’m going to frame it and hang it here in my
parlour. But I’ll leave it to you in my will--that and the chessy-cat
and the gazing-ball and my gold earrings. Nothing else--I’m not going
to leave you a cent of my money--never count on that.”
“I don’t want it,” said Emily loftily. “I’m going to earn heaps of
money for myself. But it isn’t fair of you to keep my picture. It was
given to me.”
“I never was fair,” said Aunt Nancy. “Was I, Caroline?”
“No,” said Caroline shrewishly.
“You see. Now don’t make a fuss, Emily. You’ve been a very good child
but I feel that I’ve done my duty by you for this year. Go back to New
Moon and when Elizabeth won’t let you do things tell her _I_ always let
you. I don’t know if it will do any good but try it. Elizabeth, like
every one else related to me, is always wondering what I’m going to do
with my money.”
Cousin Jimmy came over for Emily. How glad she was to see his kind face
with its gentle, elfish eyes and forked beard again! But she felt very
badly when she turned to Dean.
“If you like I’ll kiss you good-bye,” she said chokily.
Emily did not like kissing people. She did not really want to kiss
Dean but she liked him so much she thought she ought to extend all the
courtesies to him.
Dean looked down smiling into her face, so young, so pure, so softly
curved.
“No, I don’t want you to kiss me--yet. And our first kiss mustn’t have
the flavour of good-bye. It would be a bad omen. Star O’ Morning, I’m
sorry you’re going. But I’ll see you again before long. My oldest
sister lives in Blair Water, you know, and I feel a sudden access of
brotherly affection towards her. I seem to see myself visiting her very
often henceforth. In the meantime remember you have promised to write
me every week. And I’ll write you.”
“Nice fat letters,” coaxed Emily. “I love fat letters.”
“Fat! They’ll be positively corpulent, Star. Now, I’m not even going to
_say_ good-bye. Let’s make a pact, Star. We’ll never _say_ good-bye to
each other. We’ll just smile and go.”
Emily made a gallant effort--smiled--and went. Aunt Nancy and Caroline
returned to the back parlour and their cribbage. Dean Priest whistled
for Tweed and went to the bay shore. He was so lonely that he laughed
at himself.
Emily and Cousin Jimmy had so much to talk of that the drive home
seemed very short.
New Moon was white in the evening sunshine which also lay with
exceeding mellowness on the grey old barns. The Three Princesses,
shooting up against the silvery sky, were as remote and princessly as
ever. The old gulf was singing away down over the fields.
Aunt Laura came running out to meet them, her lovely blue eyes shining
with pleasure. Aunt Elizabeth was in the cook-house preparing supper
and only shook hands with Emily, but looked a trifle less grim and
stately than usual, and she had made Emily’s favourite cream-puffs for
supper. Perry was hanging about, barefooted and sunburned, to tell
her all the gossip of kittens and calves and little pigs and the new
foal. Ilse came swooping over, and Emily discovered she had forgotten
how vivid Ilse was--how brilliant her amber eyes, how golden her mane
of spun-silk hair, looking more golden than ever under the bright
blue silk tam Mrs. Simms had bought her in Shrewsbury. As an article
of dress, that loud tam made Laura Murray’s eyes and sensibilities
ache, but its colour certainly did set off Ilse’s wonderful hair. She
engulfed Emily in a rapturous embrace and quarrelled bitterly with her
ten minutes later over the fact that Emily refused to give her Saucy
Sal’s sole surviving kitten.
“I ought to have it, you doddering hyena,” stormed Ilse. “It’s as much
mine as yours, pig! Our old barn cat is its father.”
“Such talk is not decent,” said Aunt Elizabeth, pale with horror. “And
if you two children are going to quarrel over that kitten I’ll have it
drowned--remember that.”
Ilse was finally appeased by Emily’s offering to let her name the
kitten and have a half interest in it. Ilse named it Daffodil. Emily
did not think this suitable, since, from the fact of Cousin Jimmy
referring to it as Little Tommy, she suspected it was of the sterner
sex. But rather than again provoke Aunt Elizabeth’s wrath by discussing
tabooed subjects, she agreed.
“I can call it Daff,” she thought. “That sounds more _masculine_.”
The kitten was a delicate bit of striped greyness that reminded Emily
of her dear lost Mikes. And it smelled so nice--of warmth and clean
furriness, with whiffs of the clover hay where Saucy Sal had made her
mother-nest.
After supper she heard Teddy’s whistle in the old orchard--the same
enchanting call. Emily flew out to greet him--after all, there was
nobody just like Teddy in the world. They had an ecstatic scamper up to
the Tansy Patch to see a new puppy that Dr. Burnley had given Teddy.
Mrs. Kent did not seem very glad to see Emily--she was colder and more
remote than ever, and she sat and watched the two children playing with
the chubby little pup with a smouldering fire in her dark eyes that
made Emily vaguely uncomfortable whenever she happened to glance up and
encounter it. Never before had she sensed Mrs. Kent’s dislike for her
so keenly as that night.
“Why doesn’t your mother like me?” she asked Teddy bluntly, when they
carried little Leo to the barn for the night.
“Because _I_ do,” said Teddy briefly. “She doesn’t like _anything_ I
like. I’m afraid she’ll poison Leo very soon. I--I wish she wasn’t
so fond of me,” he burst out, in the beginning of a revolt against
this abnormal jealousy of love, which he felt rather than understood
to be a fetter that was becoming galling. “She says she won’t let me
take up Latin and Algebra this year--you know Miss Brownell said I
might--because I’m not to go to college. She says she can’t bear to
part from me--ever. I don’t care about the Latin and stuff--but I want
to learn to be an artist--I want to go away some day to the schools
where they teach that. She won’t let me--she hates my pictures now
because she thinks I like them better than her. I _don’t_--I love
Mother--she’s awful sweet and good to me every other way. But she
thinks I do--and she’s burned some of them. I know she has. They’re
missing from the barn wall and I can’t find them anywhere. If she does
anything to Leo--I’ll--I’ll _hate_ her.”
“Tell her that,” said Emily coolly, with some of the Murray shrewdness
coming uppermost in her. “She doesn’t know that _you_ know she poisoned
Smoke and Buttercup. Tell her you do know it and that if she does
anything to Leo you won’t love her any more. She’ll be so frightened
of your _not_ loving her that she won’t meddle with Leo--I _know_.
Tell her gently--don’t hurt her feelings--but _tell_ her. It will,”
concluded Emily, with a killing imitation of Aunt Elizabeth delivering
an ultimatum, “be better for all concerned.”
“I believe I will,” said Teddy, much impressed. “I _can’t_ have Leo
disappear like my cats did--he’s the only dog I’ve ever had and I’ve
always wanted a dog. Oh, Emily, I’m glad you’re back!”
It was very nice to be told this--especially by Teddy. Emily went home
to New Moon happily. In the old kitchen the candles were lighted and
their flames were dancing in the winds of the August night blowing
through door and window.
“I suppose you’ll not like candles very well, Emily, after being used
to lamps at Wyther Grange,” said Aunt Laura with a little sigh. It was
one of the bitter, small things in Laura Murray’s life that Elizabeth’s
tyranny extended to candles.
Emily looked around her thoughtfully. One candle sputtered and bobbed
at her as if greeting her. One, with a long wick, glowed and smouldered
like a sulky little demon. One had a tiny flame--a sly, meditative
candle. One swayed with a queer fiery grace in the draught from the
door. One burned with a steady upright flame like a faithful soul.
“I--don’t know--Aunt Laura,” she answered slowly. “You can
be--friends--with candles. I believe I like the candles best after all.”
Aunt Elizabeth, coming in from the cook-house, heard her. Something
like pleasure gleamed in her gulf-blue eyes.
“You have some sense in you,” she said.
“That’s the second compliment she has paid me,” thought Emily.
“I think Emily has grown taller since she went to Wyther Grange,” Aunt
Laura said, looking at her rather wistfully.
Aunt Elizabeth, snuffing the candles, glanced sharply over her glasses.
“I can’t see it,” she said. “Her dress is just the same length on her.”
“I’m sure she has,” persisted Laura.
Cousin Jimmy, to settle the dispute, measured Emily by the sitting-room
door. She just touched the former mark.
“You see,” said Aunt Elizabeth triumphantly, liking to be right even in
this small matter.
“She looks--different,” said Laura with a sigh.
Laura, after all, was right. Emily _had_ grown, taller and older, in
soul, if not in body. It was this change which Laura felt, as close
and tender affection swiftly feels. The Emily who returned from Wyther
Grange was not the Emily who had gone there. She was no longer wholly
the child. Aunt Nancy’s family histories over which she had pondered,
her enduring anguish over the story of Ilse’s mother, that terrible
hour when she had lain cheek by jowl with death on the cliffs of the
bay shore, her association with Dean Priest, all had combined to mature
her intelligence and her emotions. When she went to the garret next
morning and pulled out her precious little bundle of manuscripts to
read them lovingly over she was amazed and rather grieved to find that
they were not half so good as she had believed they were. Some of them
were positively silly, she thought; she was ashamed of them--so ashamed
that she smuggled them down to the cook-house stove and burned them,
much to Aunt Elizabeth’s annoyance when she came to prepare dinner and
found the fire-box all choked up with charred paper.
Emily no longer wondered that Miss Brownell had made fun of
them--though this did not mellow her bitterness of remembrance in
regard to that lady in any degree. The rest she put back on the sofa
shelf, including “The Child of the Sea,” which still impressed her as
fairly good, though not just the wonderful composition she had once
deemed it. She felt that many passages could be re-written to their
advantage. Then she immediately began writing a new poem, “On Returning
Home After Weeks’ Absence.” As everything and everybody connected with
New Moon had to be mentioned in this poem it promised to be quite long
and to furnish agreeable occupation for spare minutes in many weeks to
come. It was very good to be home again.
“There is no place just like dear New Moon,” thought Emily.
One thing that marked her return--one of those little household
“epochs” that make a keener impression on the memory and imagination
than perhaps their real importance warrants--was the fact that she was
given a room of her own. Aunt Elizabeth had found her unshared slumber
too sweet a thing to be again surrendered. She decided that she could
not put up any longer with a squirming bedfellow who asked unearthly
questions at any hour of the night she took it into her head to do so.
So, after a long conference with Laura, it was settled that Emily was
to have her mother’s room--the “lookout” as it was called, though
it was not really a lookout. But it occupied the place in New Moon,
looking over the front door to the garden, that the real lookouts did
in other Blair Water houses, so it went by that name. It had been
prepared for Emily’s occupancy in her absence and when bedtime came on
the first evening of her return Aunt Elizabeth curtly told her that
henceforth she was to have her mother’s room.
“All to myself?” exclaimed Emily.
“Yes. We will expect you to take care of it yourself and keep it very
tidy.”
“It has never been slept in since the night before your mother--went
away,” said Aunt Laura, with a queer sound in her voice--a sound of
which Aunt Elizabeth disapproved.
“Your mother,” she said, looking coldly at Emily over the flame of the
candle--an attitude that gave a rather gruesome effect to her acquiline
features--“_ran_ away--flouted her family and broke her father’s heart.
She was a silly, ungrateful, disobedient girl. I hope _you_ will never
disgrace your family by such conduct.”
“Oh, Aunt Elizabeth,” said Emily breathlessly, “when you hold the
candle down like that it makes your face look just like a corpse! Oh,
it’s so interesting.”
Aunt Elizabeth turned and led the way upstairs in grim silence. There
was no use in wasting perfectly good admonitions on a child like this.
Left alone in her lookout, lighted dimly by the one small candle, Emily
gazed about her with keen and thrilling interest. She could not get
into bed until she had explored every bit of it. The room was very
old-fashioned, like all the New Moon rooms. The walls were papered with
a design of slender gilt diamonds enclosing golden stars and hung with
worked woollen mottoes and pictures that had been “supplements” in the
girlhood of her aunts. One of them, hanging over the head of the bed,
represented two guardian angels. In its day this had been much admired
but Emily looked at it with distaste.
“I don’t like feather wings on angels,” she said decidedly. “Angels
should have rainbowy wings.”
On the floor was a pretty homespun carpet and round braided rugs. There
was a high black bedstead with carved posts, a fat feather-bed, and an
Irish chain quilt, but, as Emily was glad to see, no curtains. A little
table, with funny claw-feet and brass-knobbed drawers, stood by the
window, which was curtained with muslin frills; one of the window-panes
contorted the landscape funnily, making a hill where no hill was. Emily
liked this--she couldn’t have told why, but it was really because
it gave the pane an individuality of its own. An oval mirror in a
tarnished gilt frame hung above the table; Emily was delighted to
find she could see herself in it--“all but my boots”--without craning
or tipping it. “And it doesn’t twist my face or turn my complexion
green,” she thought happily. Two high-backed, black chairs with
horsehair seats, a little washstand with a blue basin and pitcher, and
a faded ottoman with woollen roses cross-stitched on it, completed the
furnishing. On the little mantel were vases full of dried and coloured
grasses and a fascinating pot-bellied bottle filled with West Indian
shells. On either side were lovable little cupboards with leaded-glass
doors like those in the sitting-room. Underneath was a small fireplace.
“I wonder if Aunt Elizabeth will ever let me have a little fire here,”
thought Emily.
The room was full of that indefinable charm found in all rooms where
the pieces of furniture, whether old or new, are well acquainted with
each other and the walls and floors are on good terms. Emily felt it
all over her as she flitted about examining everything. This was her
room--she loved it already--she felt perfectly at home.
“I belong here,” she breathed happily.
She felt deliciously _near_ to her mother--as if Juliet Starr had
suddenly become real to her. It thrilled her to think that her mother
had probably crocheted the lace cover on the round pincushion on the
table. And that fat, black jar of pot-pourri on the mantel--her mother
must have compounded it. When Emily lifted the lid a faint spicy odour
floated out. The souls of all the roses that had bloomed through many
olden summers at New Moon seemed to be prisoned there in a sort of
flower purgatory. Something in the haunting, mystical, elusive odour
gave Emily _the flash_--and her room had received its consecration.
There was a picture of her mother hanging over the mantel--a large
daguerreotype taken when she was a little girl. Emily looked at it
lovingly. She had the picture of her mother which her father had left,
taken after their marriage. But when Aunt Elizabeth had brought that
from Maywood to New Moon she had hung it in the parlour where Emily
seldom saw it. This picture, in her bedroom, of the golden-haired,
rose-cheeked girl, was all her own. She could look at it--talk to it at
will.
“Oh, Mother,” she said, “what did you think of when you were a little
girl here like me? I wish I could have known you _then_. And to think
nobody has ever slept here since that last night you did before you
ran away with Father. Aunt Elizabeth says you were wicked to do it but
_I_ don’t think you were. It wasn’t as if you were running away with
a _stranger_. Anyway, I’m glad you _did_, because if you hadn’t there
wouldn’t have been any _me_.”
Emily, very glad that there was an Emily, opened her lookout window as
high as it would go, got into bed and drifted off to sleep, feeling a
happiness that was so deep as to be almost pain as she listened to the
sonorous sweep of the night wind among the great trees in Lofty John’s
bush. When she wrote to her father a few days later she began the
letter “Dear Father and Mother.”
“And I’ll always write the letter to _you_ as well as Father after
this, Mother. I’m sorry I left you out so long. But you didn’t seem
_real_ till that night I came home. I made the bed beautifully next
morning--Aunt Elizabeth didn’t find a bit of fault with it--and I
dusted _everything_--and when I went out I knelt down and kissed the
doorstep. I didn’t think Aunt Elizabeth saw me but she did and said had
I gone crazy. Why does Aunt Elizabeth think any one is crazy who does
something she never does? I said ‘No, it’s only because I love my room
so much’ and she sniffed and said ‘You’d better love your God.’ But so
I do, dear Father--and Mother--and I love Him better than ever since
I have my dear room. I can see all over the garden from it and into
Lofty John’s bush and one little bit of the Blair Water through the gap
in the trees where the Yesterday Road runs. I like to go to bed early
now. I love to lie all alone in my own room and make poetry and think
out descriptions of things while I look through the open window at the
stars and the nice, big, kind, quiet trees in Lofty John’s bush.
“Oh, Father dear and Mother, we are going to have a new teacher. Miss
Brownell is not coming back. She is going to be married and Ilse says
that when her father heard it he said ‘God help the man.’ And the new
teacher is a Mr. Carpenter. Ilse saw him when he came to see her father
about the school--because Dr. Burnley is a trustee this year--and she
says he has bushy grey hair and whiskers. He is married, too, and is
going to live in that little old house down in the hollow below the
school. It seems so funny to think of a teacher having a wife and
whiskers.
“I am glad to be home. But I miss Dean and the gazing-ball. Aunt
Elizabeth looked very cross when she saw my bang but didn’t say
anything. Aunt Laura says just to keep quiet and go on wearing it.
But I don’t feel comfortable going against Aunt Elizabeth so I have
combed it all back except a _little_ fringe. I don’t feel _quite_
comfortable about it even yet, but I have to put up with being a little
uncomfortable for the sake of my looks. Aunt Laura says bustles are
going out of style so I’ll never be able to have one but I don’t care
because I think they’re ugly. Rhoda Stuart will be cross because she
was just longing to be old enough to wear a bustle. I hope I’ll be able
to have a gin-jar all to myself when the weather gets cold. There is a
row of gin-jars on the high shelf in the cook-house.
“Teddy and I had the nicest _adventure_ yesterday evening. We are going
to keep it a secret from everybody--partly because it was so nice, and
partly because we think we’d get a fearful scolding for one thing we
did.
“We went up to the Disappointed House, and we found one of the boards
on the windows loose. So we pried it off and crawled in and went all
over the house. It is lathed but not plastered, and the shavings are
lying all over the floors just as the carpenters left them years
ago. It seemed more disappointed than ever. I just felt like crying.
There was a dear little fireplace in one room so we went to work and
kindled a fire in it with shavings and pieces of boards (this is the
thing we would be scolded for, likely) and then sat before it on an
old carpenter’s bench and talked. We decided that when we grew up we
would buy the Disappointed House and live here together. Teddy said he
supposed we’d have to get married, but I thought maybe we could find
a way to manage without going to all that bother. Teddy will paint
pictures and I will write poetry and we will have toast and bacon and
marmalade _every morning_ for breakfast--just like Wyther Grange--but
_never_ porridge. And we’ll always have lots of nice things to eat in
the pantry and I’ll make lots of jam and Teddy is always going to help
me wash the dishes and we’ll hang the gazing-ball from the middle of
the ceiling in the fireplace room--because likely Aunt Nancy will be
dead by then.
“When the fire burned out we jammed the board into place in the window
and came away. Every now and then to-day Teddy would say to me “Toast
and bacon and marmalade” in the _most mysterious_ tones and Ilse and
Perry are wild because they can’t find out what he means.
“Cousin Jimmy has got Jimmy Joe Belle to help with the harvest. Jimmy
Joe Belle comes from over Derry Pond way. There are a great many French
there and when a French girl marries they call her mostly by her
husband’s first name instead of Mrs. like the English do. If a girl
named Mary marries a man named Leon she will always be called Mary Leon
after that. But in Jimmy Joe Belle’s case, it is the other way and he
is called by his wife’s name. I asked Cousin Jimmy why, and he said it
was because Jimmy Joe was a poor stick of a creature and Belle wore
the britches. But still I don’t understand. Jimmy Joe wears britches
himself--that means trousers--and why should he be called Jimmy Joe
Belle instead of her being called Belle Jimmy Joe just because she
wears them too! I won’t rest till I find out.
“Cousin Jimmy’s garden is splendid now. The tiger lilies are out. I am
trying to love them because nobody seems to like them at all but deep
down in my heart I know I love the late roses best. You just can’t help
loving the roses best.
“Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard to-day for a four-leaved
clover and couldn’t find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover
by the dairy steps to-night when I was straining the milk and never
thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always
comes, and it is no use to look for it.
“It is lovely to be with Ilse again. We have only fought twice since I
came home. I am going to try not to fight with Ilse any more because
I don’t think it is dignified, although quite interesting. But it is
hard not to because even when I keep quiet and don’t say a word Ilse
thinks that’s a way of fighting and gets madder and says worse things
than ever. Aunt Elizabeth says it always takes two to make a quarrel
but she doesn’t know Ilse as I do. Ilse called me a sneaking albatross
to-day. I wonder how many animals are left to call me. She never
repeats the same one twice. I wish she wouldn’t clapper-claw Perry so
much. (Clapper-claw is a word I learned from Aunt Nancy. Very striking,
I think.) It seems as if she couldn’t bear him. He dared Teddy to jump
from the henhouse roof across to the pighouse roof. Teddy wouldn’t. He
said he would try it if it had to be done or would do anybody any good
but he wasn’t going to do it just to show off. Perry did it and landed
safe. If he hadn’t he might have broken his neck. Then he bragged about
it and said Teddy was afraid and Ilse turned red as a beet and told
him to shut up or she would bite his snout off. She can’t bear to have
anything said against Teddy, but I guess he can take care of himself.
“Ilse can’t study for the Entrance either. Her father won’t let her.
But she says she doesn’t care. She says she’s going to run away when
she gets a little older and study for the stage. That sounds wicked,
but interesting.
“I felt very queer and guilty when I saw Ilse first, because I knew
about her mother. I don’t know why I felt guilty because I had nothing
to do with it. The feeling is wearing away a little now but I am so
unhappy by spells over it. I wish I could either forget it altogether
or find out the rights of it. Because I am sure nobody knows them.
“I had a letter from Dean to-day. He writes lovely letters--just as
if I was grown up. He sent me a little poem he had cut out of a paper
called _The Fringed Gentian_. He said it made him think of me. It is
all lovely but I like the last verse best of all. This is it:
Then whisper, blossom, in thy sleep
How I may upward climb
The Alpine Path, so hard, so steep,
That leads to heights sublime.
How I may reach that far-off goal
Of true and honored fame
And write upon its shining scroll
A woman’s humble name.
“When I read that _the flash_ came, and I took a sheet of paper--I
forgot to tell you Cousin Jimmy gave me a little box of paper and
envelopes--_on the sly_--and I wrote on it:
I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb
the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.
“Then I put it in the envelope and sealed it up and wrote on it _The
Vow of Emily Byrd Starr, aged 12 years and 3 months_, and put it away
on the sofa shelf in the garret.
“I am writing a murder story now and I am trying to feel how a man
would feel who was a murderer. It is creepy, but thrilling. I almost
feel as if I _had_ murdered somebody.
“Good night, dear Father and Mother.
“Your lovingest daughter,
“_Emily_.
“P. S. I have been wondering how I’ll sign my name when I grow up and
print my pieces. I don’t know which would be best--Emily Byrd Starr in
full or Emily B. Starr, or E. B. Starr, or E. Byrd Starr. Sometimes
I think I’ll have a _nom-de-plume_--that is, another name you pick
for yourself. It’s in my dictionary among the “French phrases” at the
back. If I did that then I could hear people talking of my pieces right
before me, never suspecting, and say just what they really thought of
them. That would be interesting but perhaps not always comfortable. I
think I’ll be,
“_E. Byrd Starr_.”