Emily Climbs (17 page)

“Sometimes I think it really isn’t worth while to try to write anything when everything is already so well expressed in the Bible. That verse I’ve just quoted for instance – it makes me feel like a pigmy in the presence of a giant. Only twelve simple words – yet a dozen pages couldn’t have better expressed the feeling one has in spring.

“This afternoon Cousin Jimmy and I sowed our aster bed. The seeds came promptly. Evidently the firm has not gone bankrupt yet. But Aunt Elizabeth thinks they are old stock and won’t grow.

“Dean is home; he was down to see me last night – dear old Dean. He hasn’t changed a bit. His green eyes are as green as ever and his nice mouth as nice as ever and his interesting face as interesting as ever. He took both my hands and looked earnestly at me.

“‘
You
have changed, Star,’ he said. ‘You look more like spring than ever. But don’t grow any taller,’ he went on. ‘I don’t want to have you looking down on me.’

“I don’t want to, either. I’d hate to be taller than Dean. It wouldn’t seem right at all.

“Teddy is an inch taller than I am. Dean says he has improved greatly in his drawing this past year. Mrs. Kent still hates me. I met her tonight, when I was out for a walk with myself in the spring twilight, and she would not even stop to speak to me – just slipped by me like a shadow in the twilight. She looked at me for a second as she passed me, and her eyes were pools of hatred. I think she grows more unhappy every year.

“In my walk I went and said good-evening to the Disappointed House. I am always so sorry for it – it is a house that has never lived – that has not fulfilled its destiny. Its blind windows seem peering wistfully from its face as if seeking vainly for what they cannot find. No homelight has ever gleamed through them in summer dusk or winter darkness. And yet I feel, somehow, that the little house has kept its dream and that sometime it will come true.

“I wish I owned it.

“I dandered around all my old haunts tonight – Lofty John’s bush – Emily’s Bower – the old orchard – the pond graveyard – the Today Road – I love that little road. It’s like a personal friend to me.

“I think ‘dandering’ is a lovely word of its kind – not in
itself exactly, like some words, but because it is so perfectly expressive of its own meaning. Even if you’d never heard it before you’d know exactly what it meant –
dandering
could mean
only
dandering.

“The discovery of beautiful and interesting words always gives me joy. When I find a new, charming word I exult as a jewel-seeker and am unhappy until I’ve set it in a sentence.

“May 29, 19–

“Tonight Aunt Ruth came home with a portentous face.

“‘Em’ly, what does this story mean that is all over Shrewsbury – that you were seen standing on Queen Street last night
with a man’s arms around you, kissing him?

“I knew in a minute what had happened. I wanted to stamp – I wanted to laugh – I wanted to tear my hair. The whole thing was so absurd and ludicrous. But I had to keep a grave face and explain to Aunt Ruth.

“This is the dark, unholy tale.

“Ilse and I were ‘dandering’ along Queen Street last night at dusk. Just by the old Taylor house we met a man. I do not know the man – nor, likely I shall ever know him. I do not know if he was tall or short, old or young, handsome or ugly, black or white, Jew or Gentile, bond or free. But I
do
know he hadn’t shaved that day!

“He was walking at a brisk pace. Then something happened which passed in the wink of an eye, but takes several seconds to describe. I stepped aside to let him pass – he stepped in the same direction – I darted the other way – so did he – then I thought I saw a chance of getting past and I made a wild dash – he made a dash – with the result that I ran full tilt against him. He had thrown out his arms when he realised a collision was unavoidable – I went right between them – and
in the shock of the encounter they involuntarily closed around me for a moment while my nose came into violent contact with his chin.

“‘I – I – beg your pardon,’ the poor creature gasped, dropped me as if I were a hot coal, and tore off around the corner.

“Ilse was in fits. She said she had never seen anything so funny in her life. It had all passed so quickly that to a bystander it looked exactly as if that man and I had stopped, gazed at each other for a moment, and then rushed madly into each other’s arms.

“My nose ached for blocks. Ilse said she saw Miss Taylor peering from the window just as it happened. Of course that old gossip has spread the story with her own interpretation of it.

“I explained all this to Aunt Ruth, who remained incredulous and seemed to consider it a very limping tale indeed.

“‘It’s a
very
strange thing that on a sidewalk twelve feet wide you couldn’t get past a man without embracing him,’ she said.

“‘Come now, Aunt Ruth,’ I said, ‘I know you think me sly and deep and foolish and ungrateful. But you know I am half Murray, and
do
you think any one with
any
Murray in her would embrace a gentleman friend on the public street?’

“‘Oh, I
did
think you could hardly be so brazen,’ admitted Aunt Ruth. ‘But Miss Taylor said she
saw
it. Every one has heard it. I do
not
like to have one of my family talked about like that. It would not have occurred if you had not been out with Ilse Burnley in defiance of my advice. Don’t let anything like this happen again.’

“‘Things like that don’t happen,’ I said. ‘They are foreordained.’

“June 3, 19–

“The Land of Uprightness is a thing of beauty. I can go to the Fern Pool to write again. Aunt Ruth is very suspicious of this performance. She has never forgotten that I ‘met Perry’ there one evening. The Pool is very lovely now, under its new young ferns. I look into it and imagine it is the legendary pool in which one could see the future. I picture myself tiptoeing to it at midnight by full o’ moon – casting something precious into it – then looking timidly at what I saw.

“What
would
it show me? The Alpine Path gloriously climbed? Or failure?

“No, never failure!

“June 9, 19–

“Last week Aunt Ruth had a birthday and I gave her a centre-piece which I had embroidered. She thanked me rather stiffly and didn’t seem to care anything about it.

“Tonight I was sitting in the bay window recess of the dining-room, doing my algebra by the last light. The folding-doors were open and Aunt Ruth was talking to Mrs. Ince in the parlour. I thought they knew I was in the bay, but I suppose the curtains hid me. All at once I heard my name. Aunt Ruth was showing the centre-piece to Mrs. Ince – quite proudly.

“‘My niece Em’ly gave me this on my birthday. See how beautifully it is done – she is very skilful with her needle.’

“Could this be Aunt Ruth? I was so petrified with amazement that I could neither move nor speak.

“‘She is clever with more than her needle,’ said Mrs. Ince. ‘I hear Principal Hardy expects her to head her class in the terminal examinations.’

“‘Her mother – my sister Juliet – was a
very
clever girl,’ said Aunt Ruth.

“‘And she’s quite pretty, too,’ said Mrs. Ince.

“‘Her father, Douglas Starr, was a remarkably handsome man,’ said Aunt Ruth.

“They went out then. For once an eavesdropper heard something good of herself!

“But from Aunt Ruth!!

“June 17, 19–

“My ‘candle goeth not out by night’ now – at least not until quite late. Aunt Ruth lets me sit up because the terminal examinations are on. Perry infuriated Mr. Travers by writing at the end of his algebra paper, Matthew 7:5. When Mr. Travers turned it up he read: ‘Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.’ Mr. Travers is credited with knowing much less about mathematics than he pretends to. So he was furious and threw Perry’s paper out ‘as a punishment for impertinence.’ The truth is poor Perry made a mistake. He
meant
to write Matthew 5:7: ‘Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy’ He went and explained to Mr. Travers but Mr. Travers wouldn’t listen. Then Ilse bearded the lion in his den – that is, went to Principal Hardy told him the tale and induced him to intercede with Mr. Travers. As a result Perry got his marks, but was warned not to juggle with Scripture texts again.

“June 28, 19–

“School’s out. I have won my star pin. It has been a great old year of fun and study and
stings
. And now I’m going back to dear New Moon for two splendid months of freedom and happiness.

“I’m going to write a Garden Book in vacation. The idea
has been sizzling in my brain for some time and since I can’t write stories I shall try my hand at a series of essays on Cousin Jimmy’s garden, with a poem for a tail-piece to each essay It will be good practice and will please Cousin Jimmy”

“W
hy
do you want to do a thing like that?” said Aunt Ruth – sniffing, of course. A sniff may always be taken for granted with each of Aunt Ruth’s remarks, even when the present biographer omits mention of it.

“To poke some dollars into my slim purse,” said Emily.

Holidays were over – the Garden Book had been written and read in instalments to Cousin Jimmy, in the dusks of July and August, to his great delight; and now it was September, with its return to school and studies, the Land of Uprightness, and Aunt Ruth. Emily, with skirts a fraction longer and her hair clubbed up so high in the “Cadogan Braid” of those days, that it really was almost “up,” was back in Shrewsbury for her Junior year; and she had just told Aunt Ruth what she meant to do on her Shrewsbury Saturdays, for the autumn.

The editor of the Shrewsbury
Times
was planning a special illustrated Shrewsbury edition and Emily was going to canvass as much of the country as she could cover for subscriptions to it. She had wrung a rather reluctant consent from Aunt Elizabeth – a consent which could never have been
extorted if Aunt Elizabeth had been paying all Emily’s expenses at school. But there was Wallace paying for her books and tuition fees, and occasionally hinting to Elizabeth that he was a very fine, generous fellow to do so. Elizabeth, in her secret heart, was not overfond of her brother Wallace and resented his splendid airs over the little help he was extending to Emily. So, when Emily pointed out that she could easily earn, during the fall, at least half enough to pay for her books for the whole year, Elizabeth yielded. Wallace would have been offended if
she
, Elizabeth, had insisted on paying Emily’s expenses when
he
took a notion to do it, but he could not reasonably resent Emily earning part for herself. He was always preaching that girls should be self-reliant, and able to earn their own way in life.

Aunt Ruth could not refuse when Elizabeth had assented, but she did not approve.

“The idea of your wandering over the country alone!”

“Oh, I’ll not be alone. Ilse is going with me,” said Emily.

Aunt Ruth did not seem to consider this much of an improvement.

“We’re going to begin Thursday,” said Emily. “There is no school Friday, owing to the death of Principal Hardy’s father, and our classes are over at three on Thursday afternoon. We are going to canvass the Western Road that evening.”

“May I ask if you intend to camp on the side of the road?”

“Oh, no. We’ll spend the night with Ilse’s aunt at Wiltney. Then, on Friday, we’ll cut back to the Western Road, finish it that day and spend Friday night with Mary Carswell’s people at St. Clair – then work home Saturday by the River Road.”

“It’s perfectly absurd,” said Aunt Ruth. “No Murray ever did such a thing. I’m surprised at Elizabeth. It simply isn’t
decent for two young girls like you and Ilse to be wandering alone over the country for three days.”

“What do you suppose could happen to us?” asked Emily.

“A good many things might happen,” said Aunt Ruth severely.

She was right. A good many things might – and did – happen in that excursion; but Emily and Ilse set off in high spirits Thursday afternoon, two graceless school girls with an eye for the funny side of everything and a determination to have a good time. Emily especially was feeling uplifted. There had been another thin letter in the mail that day, with the address of a third-rate magazine in the corner, offering her three subscriptions to the said magazine for her poem
Night in the Garden
, which had formed the conclusion of her Garden Book and was considered both by herself and cousin Jimmy to be the gem of the volume. Emily had left the Garden Book locked up in the mantel cupboard of her room at New Moon, but she meant to send copies of its “tail pieces” to various publications during the fall. It augured well that the first one sent had been accepted so promptly.

“Well, we’re off,” she said, “‘over the hills and far away – what an alluring old phrase!
Anything
may be beyond those hills ahead of us.”

“I hope we’ll get lots of material for our essays,” said Ilse practically.

Principal Hardy had informed the Junior English class that he would require several essays from them during the fall term and Emily and Ilse had decided that one at least of their essays should recount their experiences in canvassing for subscriptions, from their separate points of view. Thus they had two strings to their bow.

“I suggest we work along the Western Road and its branches as far as Hunter’s Creek, tonight,” said Emily. “We ought to get there by sunset. Then we can hit the gypsy trail across the country, through the Malvern woods and come out on the other side of them, quite near Wiltney It’s only half an hour’s walk, while around by the Malvern Road it’s an hour. What a lovely afternoon this is!”

It was a lovely afternoon – such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour. Harvest fields drenched in sunshine lay all around them: the austere charm of northern firs made wonderful the ways over which they walked: goldenrod beribboned the fences and the sacrificial fires of willow-herb were kindled on all the burnt lands along the sequestered roads back among the hills. But they soon discovered that canvassing for subscriptions was not all fun – though, to be sure, as Ilse said, they found plenty of human nature for their essays.

There was the old man who said “Humph” at the end of every remark Emily made. When finally asked for a subscription he gruffly said “No.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘Humph’ this time,” said Emily. “It was getting monotonous.”

The old fellow stared – then chuckled.

“Are ye any relation to the proud Murrays? I worked at a place they call New Moon when I was young and one of the Murray gals – Elizabeth her name was – had a sort of high-and-lofty way o’ looking at ye, just like yours.”

“My mother was a Murray.”

“I was thinkin’ so – ye bear the stamp of the breed. Well, here’s two dollars an’ ye kin put my name down. I’d ruther see the special edition ‘fore I subscribe. I don’t favour buying bearskins afore I see the bear. But it’s worth two
dollars to see a proud Murray coming down to askin’ old Billy Scott fer a subscription.”

“Why didn’t you slay him with a glance?” asked Ilse as they walked away.

Emily was walking savagely, with her head held high and her eyes snapping.

“I’m out to get subscriptions, not to make widows. I didn’t expect it would be all plain sailing.”

There was another man who growled all the way through Emily’s explanations – and then, when she was primed for refusal, gave her five subscriptions.

“He likes to disappoint people,” she told Ilse, as they went down the lane. “He would rather disappoint them agreeably than not at all.”

One man swore volubly – “not at anything particular, but just at large,” as Ilse said; and another old man was on the point of subscribing when his wife interfered.

“I wouldn’t if I was you, Father. The editor of that paper is an infidel.”

“Very impudent of him, to be sure,” said “Father,” and put his money back in his wallet.

“Delicious!” murmured Emily when she was out of earshot. “I must jot that down in my Jimmy-book.”

As a rule the women received them more politely than the men, but the men gave them more subscriptions. Indeed, the only woman who subscribed was an elderly dame whose heart Emily won by listening sympathetically to a long account of the beauty and virtues of the said elderly lady’s deceased pet Thomas-cat – though it must be admitted that she whispered aside to Ilse at its conclusion,

“Charlottetown papers please copy.”

Their worst experience was with a man who treated
them to a tirade of abuse because his politics differed from the politics of the
Times
and he seemed to hold them responsible for it. When he halted for breath Emily stood up.

“Kick the dog – then you’ll feel better,” she said calmly, as she stalked out. Ilse was white with rage.

“Could you have believed people could be so detestable?” she exploded. “To rate
us
as if we were responsible for the politics of the
Times
! Well –
Human Nature from a Canvasser’s Point of View
is to be the subject of my essay. I’ll describe that man and picture myself telling him all the things I wanted to and didn’t!”

Emily broke into laughter – and found her temper again.

“
You
can.
I
can’t even take that revenge – my promise to Aunt Elizabeth binds me. I shall have to stick to facts. Come, let’s not think of the brute. After all, we’ve got quite a lot of subscriptions already – and there’s a clump of white birches in which it is reasonably certain a dryad lives – and that cloud over the firs looks like the faint, golden ghost of a cloud.”

“Nevertheless, I should have liked to reduce that old vampire to powder,” said Ilse.

At the next place of call, however, their experience was pleasant and they were asked to stay for supper. By sunset they had done reasonably well in the matter of subscriptions and had accumulated enough private jokes and bywords to furnish fun for many moons of reminiscence. They decided to canvass no more that night. They had not got quite as far as Hunter’s Creek but Emily thought it would be safe to make a cross-cut from where they were. The Malvern woods were not so very extensive and no matter where they came out on the northern side of them, they would be able to see Wiltney.

They climbed a fence, went up across a hill pasture field feathered with asters, and were swallowed up by the Malvern
woods, crossed and recrossed by dozens of trails. The world disappeared behind them and they were alone in a realm of wild beauty. Emily thought the walk through the woods all too short, though tired Ilse, whose foot had turned on a pebble earlier in the day, found it unpleasantly long. Emily liked everything about it – she liked to see that shining gold head of Ilse’s slipping through the grey-green trunks, under the long, swaying boughs – she liked the faint dream-like notes of sleepy birds – she liked the little wandering, whispering, tricksy wind o’ dusk among the tree crests – she liked the incredibly delicate fragrance of wood flowers and growths – she liked the little ferns that brushed Ilse’s silken ankles – she liked that slender, white, tantalising thing which gleamed out for a moment adown the dim vista of a winding path – was it a birch or a wood-nymph? No matter – it had given her that stab of poignant rapture she called “the flash” – her priceless thing whose flitting, uncalculated moments were worth cycles of mere existence. Emily wandered on, thinking all of the loveliness of the road and nothing of the road itself, absently following limping Ilse, until at last the trees suddenly fell away before them and they found themselves in the open, with a wild sort of little pasture before them, and beyond, in the clear afterlight, a long, sloping valley, rather bare and desolate, where the farmsteads had no great appearance of thrift or comfort.

“Why – where are we?” asked Ilse blankly. “I don’t see anything like Wiltney”

Emily came abruptly out of her dreams and tried to get her bearings. The only landmark visible was a tall spire on a hill ten miles away.

“Why, there’s the spire of the Catholic church at Indian Head,” she said flatly. “And that must be Hardscrabble Road down there. We must have taken a wrong turning somewhere,
Ilse – we’ve come out on the east side of the woods instead of the north.”

“Then we’re five miles from Wiltney,” said Ilse despairingly. “I can never walk that far – and we can’t go back through those woods – it will be pitch dark in a quarter of an hour. What on earth can we do?”

“Admit we’re lost and make a beautiful thing of it,” said Emily, coolly.

“Oh, we’re lost all right, to all intents and purposes,” moaned Ilse, climbing feebly up on the tumbledown fence and sitting there, “but I don’t see how we’re going to make it beautiful. We can’t stay here all night. The only thing to do is to go down and see if they’ll put us up at any of those houses. I don’t like the idea. If that’s Hardscrabble Road the people are all poor – and
dirty
. I’ve heard Aunt Net tell weird tales of Hardscrabble Road.”

“Why can’t we stay here all night?” said Emily.

Ilse looked at Emily to see if she meant it – saw that she did.

“Where can we sleep? Hang ourselves over this fence?”

“Over on that haystack,” said Emily. “It’s only half finished – Hardscrabble fashion. The top is flat – there’s a ladder leaning against it – the hay is dry and clean – the night is summer warm – there are no mosquitoes this time of year – we can put our raincoats over us to keep off the dew. Why not?”

Ilse looked at the haystack in the corner of the little pasture – and began to laugh assentingly.

“What will Aunt Ruth say?”

“Aunt Ruth need never know it. I’ll be sly for once with a vengeance. Besides, I’ve always longed to sleep out in the open. It’s been one of the secret wishes I believed were for ever unattainable, hedged about as I am with aunts. And now it has
tumbled into my lap like a gift thrown down by the gods. It’s really such good luck as to be uncanny.”

“Suppose it rains,” said Ilse, who, nevertheless, found the idea very alluring.

“It won’t rain – there isn’t a cloud in sight except those great fluffy rose-and-white ones piling up over Indian Head. They’re the kind of clouds that always make me feel that I’d love to soar up on wings as eagles and swoop right down into the middle of them.”

It was easy to ascend the little haystack. They sank down on its top with sighs of content, realising that they were tireder than they had thought. The stack was built of the wild, fragrant grasses of the little pasture, and yielded an indescribably alluring aroma, such as no cultivated clover can give. They could see nothing but a great sky of faint rose above them, pricked with early stars, and the dim fringe of tree-tops around the field. Bats and swallows swooped darkly above them against the paling western gold – delicate fragrances exhaled from the mosses and ferns just over the fence under the trees – a couple of aspen poplars in the corner talked in silvery whispers, of the gossip of the woods. They laughed together in sheer lawless pleasure. An ancient enchantment was suddenly upon them, and the white magic of the sky and the dark magic of the woods wove the final spell of a potent incantation.