Emily Climbs (11 page)

“‘If I did it to keep you out of it, isn’t that
why?
I said as contemptuously as I felt. I picked up my book-bag and stalked to the door. There I stopped. It occurred to me that, whatever the Murrays might or might not do, I was not behaving as a Starr should. Father wouldn’t have approved of my behaviour. So I turned and said, very politely,

“‘I should not have spoken like that, Aunt Ruth, and I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean anything by sitting in the corner. It was just because I happened to go into the pew first. I didn’t know you preferred the corner.’

“Perhaps I overdid the politeness. At any rate, my apology only seemed to irritate Aunt Ruth the more. She sniffed and said,

“‘I will forgive you this time, but don’t let it happen again. Of course I didn’t expect you would tell me your reason. You are too sly for that.’

“Aunt Ruth, Aunt Ruth! If you keep on calling me sly you’ll drive me into being sly in reality and
then
watch out. If I choose to be sly I can twist you round my finger! It’s only because I’m straightforward that you can manage me at all.

“I have to go to bed every night at nine o’clock – ‘people who are threatened with consumption require a great deal of sleep.’ When I come from school there are chores to be done and I must study in the evenings. So I haven’t a moment of time for writing anything. I know Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth have had a conference on the subject. But I
have
to write. So I get up in the morning as soon as it is daylight, dress, and put on a coat – for the mornings are cold now – sit down and scribble for a priceless hour. I didn’t choose that Aunt Ruth should discover it and call me sly so I told her I was doing it. She gave me to understand that I was mentally unsound and would make a bad end in some asylum, but she didn’t actually forbid me – probably because she thought it would be of no use. It wouldn’t. I’ve
got
to write, that is all there is to it. That hour in the grey morning is the most delightful one in the day for me.

“Lately, being forbidden to write stories, I’ve been
thinking
them out. But one day it struck me that I was breaking my compact with Aunt Elizabeth in spirit if not in letter. So I have stopped it.

“I wrote a character study of Ilse today. Very fascinating. It is difficult to analyse her. She is so different and unexpectable. (I coined that word myself.) She doesn’t even get mad like anybody else. I enjoy her tantrums. She doesn’t say so many awful things in them as she used to but she
is piquant
. (Piquant is a new word for me. I like using a new word. I never think I really own a word until I’ve spoken or written it.)

“I am writing by my window. I love to watch the Shrewsbury lights twinkle out in the dusk over that long hill.

“I had a letter from Dean today. He is in Egypt – among ruined shrines of old gods and the tombs of old kings. I saw that strange land through his eyes – I seemed to go back with him through the old centuries – I knew the magic of its skies. I was Emily of Karnak or Thebes – not Emily of Shrewsbury at all. That is a trick Dean has.

“Aunt Ruth insisted on seeing his letter and when she read it she said it was impious!

“I should never have thought of that adjective.

“October 21, 19–

“I climbed the steep little wooded hill in the Land of Uprightness tonight and had an exultation on its crest. There’s always something satisfying in climbing to the top of a hill. There was a fine tang of frost in the air, the view over Shrewsbury Harbour was very wonderful, and the woods all about me were expecting something to happen soon – at least that is the only way I can describe the effect they had on me. I forgot
everything
– Aunt Ruth’s stings and Evelyn Blake’s patronage and Queen Alexandra’s dog collar – everything in life that isn’t just right. Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren’t
my
thoughts. I couldn’t think anything half so exquisite. They
came
from somewhere.

“Coming back, on that dark little path, where the air was full of nice, whispering sounds, I heard a chuckle of laughter in a fir copse just behind me. I was startled – and a little bit alarmed. I knew at once it wasn’t human laughter – it was more like the Puckish mirth of fairy folk, with just a faint hint of malice in it. I can no longer believe in wood elves – alas, one loses so much when one becomes incredulous – so this laughter puzzled me – and, yes, a horrid, crawly feeling began in my spine. Then, suddenly, I thought of owls and knew it
for what it was – a truly delightful sound, as if some survival of the Golden Age were chuckling to himself there in the dark. There were two of them, I think, and they were certainly having a good time over some owlish joke. I must write a poem about it – though I’ll never be able to put into words half the charm and devilry of it.

“Ilse was up on the carpet in the principal’s room yesterday for walking home from school with Guy Lindsay. Something Mr. Hardy said made her so furious that she snatched up a vase of chrysanthemums that was on his desk and hurled it against the wall, where of course it was smashed to pieces.

“‘If I hadn’t thrown it at the wall I’d have had to have thrown it at
you,’
she told him.

“It would have gone hard with some girls but Mr. Hardy is a friend of Dr. Burnley’s. Besides, there is something about those yellow eyes of Ilse’s that do things to you. I know exactly how she would look at Mr. Hardy after she had smashed the vase. All her rage would be gone and her eyes would be laughing and daring – impudent, Aunt Ruth would call it. Mr. Hardy merely told her she was acting like a baby and would have to pay for the vase, since it was school property. That rather squelched Ilse; she thought it a tame ending to her heroics.

“I scolded her roundly. Really, somebody
has
to bring Ilse up and nobody but me seems to feel any responsibility in the matter. Dr. Burnley will just roar with laughter when she tells him. But I might as well have scolded the Wind Woman. Ilse just laughed and hugged me.

“‘Honey, it made such a jolly smash. When I heard it I wasn’t a bit mad any more.’

“Ilse recited at our school concert last week and everybody thought her wonderful.

“Aunt Ruth told me today that she expected me to be a star pupil. She wasn’t punning on my name – oh, no, Aunt Ruth hasn’t a nodding acquaintance with puns. All the pupils who make ninety per cent average at the Christmas exams and do not fall below eighty in any subject are called ‘Star’ pupils and are given a gold star pin to wear for the rest of the term. It is a coveted distinction and of course not many win it. If I fail Aunt Ruth will rub it in to the bone. I must
not
fail.

“October 30, 19–

“The November
Quill
came out today. I sent my owl poem in to the editor a week ago but he didn’t Ilse it. And he
did
Ilse one of Evelyn Blake’s – a silly, simpering little rhyme about
Autumn Leaves
– very much the sort of thing
I
wrote three years ago.

“And Evelyn
condoled
with me before the whole roomful of girls because
my
poem hadn’t been taken. I suppose Tom Blake had told her about it.

“‘You mustn’t feel badly about it, Miss Starr. Tom said it wasn’t half bad but of course not up to
The Quills
standard. Likely in another year or two you’ll be able to get in. Keep on trying.’

“‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m not feeling badly. Why should I? I didn’t make “beam” rhyme with “green” in
my
poem. If I had I’d be feeling very badly indeed.’

“Evelyn coloured to her eyes.

“‘Don’t show your disappointment so plainly,
child,’
she said.

“But I noticed she dropped the subject after that.

“For my own satisfaction I wrote a criticism of Evelyn’s poem in my Jimmy-book as soon as I came from school. I modelled it on Macaulay’s essay on poor Robert Montgomery,
and I got so much fun out of it that I didn’t feel sore and humiliated any more. I must show it to Mr. Carpenter when I go home. He’ll chuckle over it.

“November 6, 19–

“I noticed this evening in glancing over my journal that I soon gave up recording my good and bad deeds. I suppose it was because so many of my doings were half-and-half. I never could decide in what class they belonged.

“We are expected to answer roll call with a quotation on Monday mornings. This morning I repeated a verse from my own poem
A Window that Faces the Sea
. When I left Assembly to go down to the Prep classroom Miss Aylmer, the Vice-Principal, stopped me.

“‘Emily, that was a beautiful verse you gave at roll call. Where did you get it? And do you know the whole poem?’

“I was so elated I could hardly answer,

“‘Yes, Miss Aylmer,’
very
demurely.

“‘I would like a copy of it,’ said Miss Aylmer. ‘Could you write me off one? And who is the author?’

“‘The author,’ I said laughing, ‘is Emily Byrd Starr. The truth is, Miss Aylmer, that I forgot to look up a quotation for roll call and couldn’t think of any in a hurry, so just fell back on a bit of my own.’

“Miss Aylmer didn’t say anything for a moment. She just looked at me. She is a stout, middle-aged woman with a square face and nice, wide, grey eyes.

“‘Do you still want the poem, Miss Aylmer?’ I said, smiling.

“‘Yes,’ she said, still looking at me in that funny way, as if she had never seen me before. ‘Yes – and autograph it, please.’

“I promised and went on down the stairs. At the foot I glanced back. She was still looking after me. Something in her look made me feel glad and proud and happy and humble – and – and –
prayerful
. Yes, that was just how I felt.

“Oh, this has been a wonderful day. What care I now for
The Quill
or Evelyn Blake?

“This evening Aunt Ruth marched up town to see Uncle Oliver’s Andrew, who is in the bank here now. She made me go along. She gave Andrew lots of good advice about his morals and his meals and his underclothes and asked him to come down for an evening whenever he wished. Andrew is a Murray, you see, and can therefore rush in where Teddy and Perry dare not tread. He is quite good-looking, with straight, well-groomed, red hair. But he always looks as if he’d just been starched and ironed.

“I thought the evening not wholly wasted, for Mrs. Garden, his landlady, has an interesting cat who made certain advances to me. But when Andrew patted him and called him ‘Poor pussy’ the intelligent animal hissed at him.

“‘You mustn’t be too familiar with a cat,’ I advised Andrew. And you must speak respectfully
to
and
of’
him.’

“‘Piffle!’ said Aunt Ruth.

“But a cat’s a cat for a’ that.

“November 8, 19–

“The nights are cold now. When I came back Monday I brought one of the New Moon gin jars for my comforting. I cuddle down with it in bed and enjoy the contrasting roars of the storm wind outside in the Land of Uprightness, and the rain whirling over the roof. Aunt Ruth worries for fear the cork will come out and deluge the bed. That would be almost as bad as what really did happen night before last. I woke up
about midnight with the most wonderful idea for a story. I felt that I must rise at once and jot it down in a Jimmy-book before I forgot it. Then I could keep it until my three years are up and I am free to write it.

“I hopped out of bed and, in pawing around my table to find my candle, I upset my ink bottle. Then of course I went mad and couldn’t find
anything!
Matches – candles – everything had disappeared. I set the ink bottle up, but I knew there was a pool of ink on the table. I had ink all over my fingers and dared not touch anything in the dark and couldn’t find anything to wipe it off. And all the time I heard that ink drip-dripping on the floor.

“In desperation I opened the door – with my
toes
because I dare not touch it with my inky hands – and went downstairs where I wiped my hands on the stove rag and got some matches. By this time, of course, Aunt Ruth was up, demanding whys and motives. She took my matches, lighted her candle, and marched me upstairs. Oh, ‘twas a gruesome sight! How could a small stone ink-bottle hold a quart of ink? There
must
have been a quart to have made the mess it did.

“I felt like the old Scotch emigrant who came home one evening, found his house burned down and his entire family scalped by Indians and said, ‘This is pairfectly redeeclous.’ The table cover was ruined – the carpet was soaked – even the wall paper was bespattered. But Queen Alexandra smiled benignly over all and Byron went on dying.

“Aunt Ruth and I had an hour’s seance with salt and vinegar. Aunt Ruth wouldn’t believe me when I said I got up to jot down the plot of a story. She knew I had some other motive and it was just some more of my deepness and slyness. She also said a few other things which I won’t write down. Of course I deserved a scolding for leaving that ink bottle
uncorked; but I
didn’t
deserve all she said. However, I took it all very meekly. For one thing I
had
been careless: and for another I had my bedroom shoes on. Any one can overcrow me when I’m wearing bedroom shoes. Then she wound up by saying she would forgive me this time, but it was not to happen again.

“Perry won the mile race in the school sports and broke the record. He bragged too much about it and Ilse raged at him.

“November 11, 19–

“Last night Aunt Ruth found me reading
David Copperfield
and crying over
Davy’s
alienation from his mother, with a black rage against
Mr. Murdstone
in my heart. She must know
why
I was crying and wouldn’t believe me when I told her.

“‘Crying over people who never existed!’ said my Aunt Ruth incredulously.

“‘Oh, but they
do
exist,’ I said. ‘Why, they are as real as
you
are, Aunt Ruth. Do you mean to say that Miss Betsy Trotwood is a delusion?’

“I thought perhaps I could have
real
tea when I came to Shrewsbury, but Aunt Ruth says it is not healthy. So I drink cold water for I will
not
drink cambric tea any longer. As if I were a child!