Emily Climbs (15 page)

“Have a doughnut, pussy.”

Emily hesitated. She was very fond of doughnuts – and it had been a long time since she had her supper. But doughnuts seemed out of keeping with rebellion and tumult. They were decidedly reactionary in their tendencies. Some vague glimmering of this made Emily refuse the doughnut.

Cousin Jimmy took one himself.

“So, you’re not going back to Shrewsbury?”

“Not to Aunt Ruth’s,” said Emily.

“It’s the same thing,” said Cousin Jimmy.

Emily knew it was. She knew it was of no Ilse to hope that Aunt Elizabeth would let her board elsewhere.

“And you walked all the way home over those roads.” Cousin Jimmy shook his head. “Well, you
have
spunk. Heaps of it,” he added meditatively between bites.

“Do you blame me?” demanded Emily passionately – all the more passionately because she felt some inward support had been shaken away by Cousin Jimmy’s head.

“No-o-o, it was a durn mean shame to lock you out – just like Ruth Dutton.”

“And you see – don’t you – that I can’t go back after such an insult?”

Cousin Jimmy nibbled at the doughnut cautiously, as if bent on trying to see how near he could nibble to the hole without actually breaking through.

“I don’t think any of your grandmothers would have given up a chance for an education so easily,” he said. “Not on the Murray side, anyhow,” he added after a moment’s reflection, which apparently reminded him that he knew too little about the Starrs to dogmatise concerning them.

Emily sat very still. As Teddy would have said in cricket parlance, Cousin Jimmy had got her middle wicket with the first ball. She felt at once that when Cousin Jimmy, in that diabolical fit of inspiration, dragged her grandmothers in, everything was over but the precise terms of surrender. She could see them all around her – the dear, dead ladies of New Moon – Mary Shipley and Elizabeth Burnley and all the rest – mild, determined, restrained, looking down with something of contemptuous pity on her, their foolish, impulsive descendant. Cousin Jimmy appeared to think there might be some weakness on the Starr side. Well, there wasn’t – she would show him!

She
had
expected more sympathy from Cousin Jimmy. She had known Aunt Elizabeth would condemn her and even Aunt Laura would look disappointed question. But she
had counted on Cousin Jimmy taking her part. He always had before.

“My grandmothers never had to put up with Aunt Ruth,” she flung at him.

“They had to put up with your grandfathers.” Cousin Jimmy appeared to think that this was conclusive – as any one who had known Archibald and Hugh Murray might have very well thought.

“Cousin Jimmy, do you think I ought to go back and accept Aunt Ruth’s scolding and go on as if this had never happened?”

“What do
you
think about it?” asked Cousin Jimmy. “Do take a doughnut, pussy.”

This time Emily took the doughnut. She might as well have some comfort. Now, you can’t eat doughnuts and remain dramatic. Try it.

Emily slipped from her peak of tragedy to the valley of petulance.

“Aunt Ruth has been
abominable
these past two months – ever since her bronchitis has prevented her from going out. You don’t know
what
it’s been like.”

“Oh, I do – I do. Ruth Dutton never made any one feel better pleased with herself. Feet getting warm, Emily?”

“I hate her,” cried Emily, still grasping after self-justification. “It’s horrible to live in the same house with any one you hate –”

“Poisonous,” agreed Cousin Jimmy.

“And it
isn’t
my fault. I
have
tried to like her – tried to please her – she’s always twitting me – she attributes mean motives to everything I do or say – or
don’t
do or say. I’ve never heard the last of sitting in the corner of the pew – and failing to get a star pin. She’s always
hinting
insults to my
father and mother. And she’s always
forgiving
me for things I haven’t done – or that don’t need forgiveness.”

“Aggravating – very,” conceded Cousin Jimmy.

“Aggravating – you’re right. I know if I go back she’ll say ‘I’ll forgive you this time, but don’t let it happen again.’ And she will
sniff
– oh, Aunt Ruth’s sniff is the hatefulest sound in the world!”

“Ever hear a dull knife sawing through thick cardboard?” murmured Cousin Jimmy.

Emily ignored him and swept on.

“I can’t be
always
in the wrong – but Aunt Ruth thinks I am – and says she has ‘to make allowances’ for me. She doses me with cod-liver oil – she never lets me go out in the evening if she can help it – ‘consumptives should never be out after eight o’clock.’ If
she
is cold,
I
must put on an extra petticoat. She is always asking disagreeable questions and refusing to believe my answers. She believes and always will believe that I kept this play a secret from her because of slyness. I never thought of such a thing. Why, the Shrewsbury
Times
referred to it last week. Aunt Ruth doesn’t often miss anything in the
Times
. She twitted me for days because she found a composition of mine that I had signed ‘Emilie.’ ‘Better try to spell your name after some unheard-of twist,’ she sneered!”

“Well, wasn’t it a bit silly, pussy?”

“Oh, I suppose my grandmothers wouldn’t have done it! But Aunt Ruth needn’t have kept it up as she did.
That
is what is so dreadful – if she’d speak her mind on a thing and have done with it. Why, I got a little spot of iron-rust on my white petticoat and Aunt Ruth harped on it for weeks. She was determined to find out
when
it was rusted and
how
– and I hadn’t the least idea. Really, Cousin Jimmy, when this had gone on for three weeks I thought I’d have to scream if she mentioned it again.”

“
Any
proper person would feel the same,” said Cousin Jimmy to the beef ham.

“Oh, any
one
of these things is only a pin-prick, I know – and you think I’m silly to mind it – but –”

“No, no. A hundred pin-pricks would be harder to put up with than a broken leg.
I’d
sooner be knocked on the head and be done with it.”

“Yes, that’s it – nothing but pin-pricks all the time. She won’t let Ilse come to the house – or Teddy, or Perry– nobody but that stupid Andrew. I’m so tired of him. She wouldn’t let me go to the Prep dance. They had a sleigh drive and supper at the Brown Teapot Inn and a little dance – everybody went but me – it was the event of the winter. If I go for a walk in the Land of Uprightness at sunset she is sure there is something sinister in it –
she
never wants to walk in the Land of Uprightness, so why should
P
. She says I have got too high an opinion of myself. I
haven’t– have
I, Cousin Jimmy?”

“No,” said Cousin Jimmy thoughtfully. “High – but not
too
high.”

“She says I’m always displacing things – if I look out of a window she’ll trot across the room and mathematically match the corners of the curtains again. And it’s ‘Why – why – why – all the time,
all
the time, Cousin Jimmy.”

“I know you feel a lot better now that you’ve got all that out of your system,” said Cousin Jimmy. “‘Nother doughnut?”

Emily, with a sigh of surrender, took her feet off the stove and moved over to the table. The crock of doughnuts was between her and Cousin Jimmy. She
was
very hungry.

“Ruth give you enough to eat?” queried Cousin Jimmy anxiously.

“Oh, yes. Aunt Ruth keeps up one New Moon tradish at least. She has a good table. But there are no snacks.”

“And you always liked a tasty bite at bed-time, didn’t you? But you took a box back last time you were home?”

“Aunt Ruth confiscated it. That is, she put it in the pantry and served its contents up at meal times. These doughnuts
are
good. And there is always something exciting and lawless about eating at unearthly hours like this, isn’t there? How did you happen to be up, Cousin Jimmy?”

“A sick cow. Thought I’d better sit up and look after her.”

“It was lucky for me you were. Oh, I’m in my proper senses again, Cousin Jimmy. Of course, I know you think I’ve been a little fool.”

“Everybody’s a fool in some particular,” said Cousin Jimmy.

“Well, I’ll go back and bite the sour apple without a grimace.”

“Lie down on the sofa and have a nap. I’ll hitch up the grey mare and drive you back as soon as it begins to be daylight.”

“No, that won’t do at all. Several reasons. In the first place, the roads aren’t fit for wheels or runners. In the second place we couldn’t drive away from here without Aunt Elizabeth hearing us, and then she’d find out all about it and I don’t want her to. We’ll keep my foolishness a dark and deadly secret between you and me, Cousin Jimmy.”

“Then how are you going to get back to Shrewsbury?”

“Walk.”

“Walk? To Shrewsbury? At this hour of the night?”

“Haven’t I just walked from Shrewsbury at this hour? I can do it again and it won’t be any harder than bumping over those awful roads behind the grey mare. Of course, I’ll put something on my feet that will be a little more protection than kid slippers. I’ve ruined your Christmas present in my
brain-storm. There is a pair of my old boots in the closet there. I’ll put them on – and my old ulster. I’ll be back in Shrewsbury by daylight. I’ll start as soon as we finish the doughnuts. Let’s lick the platter clean, Cousin Jimmy.”

Cousin Jimmy yielded. After all, Emily was young and wiry, the night was fine, and the less Elizabeth knew about some things the better for all concerned. With a sigh of relief that the affair had turned out so well – he had really been afraid at first that Emily’s underlying “stubbornness” had been reached and then, whew! – Cousin Jimmy settled down to doughnuts.

“How’s the writing coming on?” he asked.

“I’ve written a good deal lately – though it’s pretty cold in my room mornings, but I love it so – it’s my dearest dream to do something worth while some day.”

“So you will.
You
haven’t been pushed down a well,” said Cousin Jimmy.

Emily patted his hand. None realised better than she what Cousin Jimmy might have done if
he
had not been pushed down a well.

When the doughnuts were finished Emily donned her old boots and ulster. It was a very shabby garment but her young-moon beauty shone over it like a star in the old, dim, candle-lighted room.

Cousin Jimmy looked up at her. He thought that she was a gifted, beautiful, joyous creature and that some things were a shame.

“Tall and stately – tall and stately like all our women,” he murmured dreamily. “Except Aunt Ruth,” he added.

Emily laughed – and “made a face.”

“Aunt Ruth will make the most of her inches in our forthcoming interview. This will last her the rest of the year. But don’t worry, Cousin darling, I won’t do any more foolish
things for quite a long time now. This has cleared the air. Aunt Elizabeth will think it was dreadful of you to eat a whole crockful of doughnuts yourself, you greedy Cousin Jimmy.”

“Do you want another blank-book?”

“Not yet. The last one you gave me is only half-full yet. A blank-book lasts me quite a while when I can’t write stories. Oh, I wish I could, Cousin Jimmy.”

“The time will come – the time will come,” said Cousin Jimmy encouragingly. “Wait a while – just wait a while. If we don’t chase things – sometimes the things following us can catch up. ‘Through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding is it established. And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches’ – all precious and pleasant riches, Emily. Proverbs twenty-fourth, third and fifth.”

He let Emily out and bolted the door. He put out all the candles but one. He glared at it for a few moments, then, satisfied that Elizabeth could not hear him, Cousin Jimmy said fervently,

“Ruth Dutton can go to – to – to –” Cousin Jimmy’s courage failed him. “– to heaven!”

Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty-and Emily was one of “the eternal slaves of beauty,” of whom Carman sings, who are yet “masters of the world.” She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was
good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.

As she walked along she dramatised the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily’s nature – a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own – the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.

The big fir trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was ever anything so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean-limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them – of little children’s dear hands folded in exquisite slumber – of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils – of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night – all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.

And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad – things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp – she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses – something frisked across her path – it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person: the trees put on half pleasing, half terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.