Emily Climbs (6 page)

Suddenly Emily awoke to the strangeness of Teddy’s coming.

“How did you happen to come, Teddy?”

“Why, I heard you call me,” he said. “You did call me, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Emily, slowly, “I called for you when I saw Mad Mr. Morrison first. But, Teddy, you couldn’t have heard me – you
couldn’t
. The Tansy Patch is a mile from here.”

“I
did
hear you,” said Teddy, stubbornly. “I was asleep and it woke me up. You called ‘Teddy, Teddy, save me’ – it was your voice as plain as I ever heard it in my life. I got right up and hurried on my clothes and came here as fast as I could.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Why – I don’t know,” said Teddy confusedly. “I didn’t stop to think – I just seemed to
know
you were in the church when I heard you calling me, and I must get here as quick as I could. It’s – it’s all – funny,” he concluded lamely.

“It’s – it’s – it frightens me a little.” Emily shivered. “Aunt Elizabeth says I have second sight – you remember Ilse’s mother? Mr. Carpenter says I’m psychic – I don’t know just what that means, but think I’d rather not be it.”

She shivered again. Teddy thought she was cold and, having nothing else to put around her, put his arm – somewhat tentatively, since Murray pride and Murray dignity might be outraged. Emily was not cold in body, but a little chill had blown over her soul. Something supernatural – some mystery she could not understand – had brushed too near her in that strange summoning. Involuntarily she nestled a little closer to Teddy, acutely conscious of the boyish tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his boyish shyness. Suddenly she knew that she liked Teddy better than anybody – better even than Aunt Laura or Ilse or Dean.

Teddy’s arm tightened a little.

“Anyhow, I’m glad I got here in time,” he said. “If I hadn’t that crazy old man might have frightened you to death.”

They sat so for a few minutes in silence. Everything seemed very wonderful and beautiful – and a little unreal. Emily thought she must be in a dream, or in one of her own wonder tales. The storm had passed, and the moon was shining clearly once more. The cool fresh air was threaded with beguiling voices – the fitful voice of raindrops falling from the shaken boughs of the maple woods behind them – the freakish voice of the Wind Woman around the white church – the far-off, intriguing Voice of the sea – and, still finer and rarer, the little, remote, detached voices of the night. Emily heard them all, more with the ears of her soul than of her body, it seemed, as she had never heard them before. Beyond were fields and groves and roads, pleasantly suggestive and elusive, as if brooding over elfish secrets in the moonlight.
Silver-white daisies were nodding and swaying all over the graveyard above graves remembered and graves forgotten. An owl laughed delightfully to itself in the old pine. At the magical sound Emily’s mystic flash swept over her, swaying her like a strong wind. She felt as if she and Teddy were all alone in a wonderful new world, created for themselves only out of youth and mystery and delight. They seemed, themselves, to be part of the faint, cool fragrance of the night, of the owl’s laughter, of the daisies blowing in the shadowy air.

As for Teddy, he was thinking that Emily looked very sweet in the pale moonshine, with her fringed, mysterious eyes and the little dark love-curls clinging to her ivory neck. He tightened his arm a little more – and still Murray pride and Murray dignity made not a particle of protest.

“Emily,” whispered Teddy, “you’re the sweetest girl in the world.”

The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so many millions of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters. But when you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life. Emily thrilled, from the crown of her head to the toes of her slippered feet, with a sensation of hitherto unknown and almost terrifying sweetness – a sensation that was to sense what her “flash” was to spirit. It is quite conceivable and not totally reprehensible that the next thing that happened might have been a kiss. Emily thought Teddy was going to kiss her: Teddy knew he was: and the odds are that he wouldn’t have had his face slapped as Geoff North had had.

But it was not to be. A shadow that had slipped in at the gate and drifted across the wet grass halted beside them, and touched Teddy’s shoulder, just as he bent his glossy black head. He looked up, startled. Emily looked up. Mrs. Kent was standing there, bare-headed, her scarred face clear in the moonlight, looking at them tragically.

Emily and Teddy both stood up so suddenly that they seemed veritably to have been jerked to their feet. Emily’s fairy world vanished like a dissolving bubble. She was in a different world altogether – an absurd, ridiculous one. Yes, ridiculous. Everything had suddenly become ridiculous.
Could
anything be more ridiculous than to be caught here with Teddy,
by his mother
, at two o’clock at night – what was that horrid word she had lately heard for the first time? – oh, yes,
spooning
– that was it – spooning on George Horton’s eighty-year-old tombstone? That was how other people would look at it. How could a thing be so beautiful one moment and so absurd the next? She was one horrible scorch of shame from head to feet. And Teddy – she knew Teddy was feeling like a fool.

To Mrs. Kent it was not ridiculous – it was dreadful. To her abnormal jealousy the incident had the most sinister significance. She looked at Emily with her hollow, hungry eyes.

“So you are trying to steal my son from me,” she said. “He is all I have and you are trying to steal him.”

“Oh, Mother, for goodness’ sake, be sensible!” muttered Teddy.

“He – he tells me to be sensible,” Mrs. Kent echoed tragically to the moon. “Sensible!”

“Yes, sensible,” said Teddy angrily. “There’s nothing to make such a fuss about. Emily was locked in the church by accident and Mad Mr. Morrison was there, too, and nearly frightened her to death. I came to let her out and we were
sitting here for a few minutes until she got over her fright and was able to walk home. That’s all.”

“How did you know she was here?” demanded Mrs. Kent.

How indeed! This was a hard question to answer. The truth sounded like a silly, stupid invention. Nevertheless, Teddy told it.

“She called me,” he said bluntly.

“And you heard her – a mile away. Do you expect me to believe that?” said Mrs. Kent, laughing wildly.

Emily had by this time recovered her poise. At no time in her life was Emily Byrd Starr ever disconcerted for long. She drew herself up proudly and in the dim light, in spite of her Starr features, she looked much as Elizabeth Murray must have looked over thirty years before.

“Whether you believe it or not it is true, Mrs. Kent,” she said haughtily. “I am not stealing your son – I do not want him – he can go.”

“I’m going to take you home first, Emily,” said Teddy. He folded his arms and threw back his head and tried to look as stately as Emily. He felt that he was a dismal failure at it, but it imposed on Mrs. Kent. She began to cry.

“Go – go,” she said. “Go to her – desert me.”

Emily was thoroughly angry now. If this irrational woman persisted in making a scene, very well: a scene she should have.

“I won’t let him take me home,” she said, freezingly “Teddy, go with your mother.”

“Oh, you command him, do you? He must do as you tell him, must he?” cried Mrs. Kent, who now seemed to lose all control of herself. Her tiny form was shaken with violent sobs. She wrung her hands.

“He shall choose for himself,” she cried. “He shall go
with you – or come with me. Choose, Teddy, for yourself. You shall not do her bidding. Choose!”

She was fiercely dramatic again, as she lifted her hand and pointed it at poor Teddy.

Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male creature does when two women are quarrelling about him in his presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away. What a mess to be in – and to be made ridiculous like this before Emily! Why on earth couldn’t his mother behave like other boys’ mothers? Why must she be so intense and exacting? He knew Blair Water gossip said she was “a little touched.” He did not believe that. But – but – well, in short here
was
a mess. You came back to that every time. What on earth was he to do? If he took Emily home he knew his mother would cry and pray for days. On the other hand to desert Emily after her dreadful experience in the church, and leave her to traverse that lonely road alone was unthinkable. But Emily now dominated the situation. She was very angry, with the icy anger of old Hugh Murray that did not dissipate itself in idle bluster, but went straight to the point.

“You are a foolish, selfish woman,” she said, “and you will make your son hate you.”

“Selfish! You call me selfish,” sobbed Mrs. Kent. “I live only for Teddy – he is all I have to live for.”

“You
are
selfish.” Emily was standing straight: her eyes had gone black: her voice was cutting: “the Murray look” was on her face, and in the pale moonlight it was a rather fearsome thing. She wondered, as she spoke, how she knew certain things. But she
did
know them. “You think you love him – it is only yourself you love. You are determined to spoil his life. You won’t let him go to Shrewsbury because it will hurt you to let him go away from you. You have let your jealousy of everything he cares
for eat your heart out, and master you. You won’t bear a little pain for his sake. You are not a mother at all. Teddy has a great talent – every one says so. You ought to be proud of him – you ought to give him his chance. But you won’t – and some day he will hate you for it – yes, he will.”

“Oh, no, no,” moaned Mrs. Kent. She held up her hands as if to ward off a blow and shrank back against Teddy. “Oh, you are cruel – cruel. You don’t know what I’ve suffered – you don’t know what ache is always at my heart. He is all I have – all. I have nothing else – not even a memory. You don’t understand. I can’t – I can’t give him up.”

“If you let your jealousy ruin his life you will lose him,” said Emily inexorably. She had always been afraid of Mrs. Kent. Now she was suddenly no longer afraid of her – she knew she would never be afraid of her again. “You hate everything he cares for – you hate his friends and his dog and his drawing. You know you do. But you can’t keep him that way, Mrs. Kent. And you will find it out when it is too late. Good-night, Teddy. Thank you again for coming to my rescue. Goodnight, Mrs. Kent.”

Emily’s good-night was very final. She turned and stalked across the green without another glance, holding her head high. Down the wet road she marched – at first very angry – then, as anger ebbed, very tired – oh, horribly tired. She discovered that she was fairly shaking with weariness. The emotions of the night had exhausted her, and now – what to do? She did not like the idea of going home to New Moon. Emily felt that she could never face outraged Aunt Elizabeth if the various scandalous doings of this night should be discovered. She turned in at the gate of Dr. Burnley’s house. His doors were never locked. Emily slipped into the front hall as the dawn began to whiten in the sky and curled up on the
lounge behind the staircase. There was no Ilse in waking Ilse. She would tell her the whole story in the morning and bind her to secrecy – all, at least, except one thing Teddy had said, and the episode of Mrs. Kent. One was too beautiful, and the other too disagreeable to be talked about. Of course, Mrs. Kent wasn’t like other women and there was no Ilse in feeling too badly about it. Nevertheless, she had wrecked and spoiled a frail, beautiful something – she had blotched with absurdity a moment that should have been eternally lovely. And she had, of course, made poor Teddy feel like an ass.
That
, in the last analysis, was what Emily really could not forgive.

As she drifted off to sleep she recalled drowsily the events of that bewildering night – her imprisonment in the lonely church – the horror of touching the dog – the worse horror of Mad Mr. Morrison’s pursuit – her rapture of relief at Teddy’s voice – the brief little moonlit idyll in the graveyard – of all places for an idyll! – the tragicomic advent of poor morbid, jealous Mrs. Kent.

“I hope I wasn’t too hard on her,” thought Emily as she drifted into slumber. “If I was I’m sorry. I’ll have to write it down as a bad deed in my diary. I feel somehow as if I’d grown up all at once tonight – yesterday seems years away. But what a chapter it will make for my diary. I’ll write it all down – all but Teddy’s saying I was the sweetest girl in the world.
That’s
too – dear – to write. I’ll – just –
remember
it.”

E
mily had finished mopping up the kitchen floor at New Moon and was absorbed in sanding it in the beautiful and complicated “herring-bone pattern” which was one of the New Moon traditions, having been invented, so it was said, by great-great-grandmother of “Here I stay” fame. Aunt Laura had taught Emily how to do it and Emily was proud of her skill. Even Aunt Elizabeth had condescended to say that Emily sanded the famous pattern very well, and when Aunt Elizabeth praised, further comment was superfluous. New Moon was the only place in Blair Water where the old custom of sanding the floor was kept up; other housewives had long ago begun to Ilse “new-fangled” devices and patent cleaners for making their floors white. But Dame Elizabeth Murray would none of such; as long as she reigned at New Moon so long should candles burn and sanded floors gleam whitely.

Aunt Elizabeth had exasperated Emily somewhat by insisting that the latter should put on Aunt Laura’s old “Mother Hubbard” while she was scrubbing the floor. A “Mother Hubbard,” it may be necessary to explain to those of this generation, was a loose and shapeless garment which
served principally as a sort of morning gown and was liked in its day because it was cool and easily put on. Aunt Elizabeth, it is quite unnecessary to say, disapproved entirely of Mother Hubbards. She considered them the last word in slovenliness, and Laura was never permitted to have another one. But the old one, though its original pretty lilac tint had faded to a dingy white, was still too “good” to be banished to the rag bag; and it was this which Emily had been told to put on.

Emily detested Mother Hubbards as heartily as Aunt Elizabeth herself did. They were worse, she considered, even than the hated “baby aprons” of her first summer at New Moon. She knew she looked ridiculous in Aunt Laura’s Mother Hubbard, which came to her feet, and hung in loose, unbeautiful lines from her thin young shoulders; and Emily had a horror of being “ridiculous.” She had once shocked Aunt Elizabeth by coolly telling her that she would “rather be bad than ridiculous.” Emily had scrubbed and sanded with one eye on the door, ready to run if any stranger loomed up while she had on that hideous wrapper.

It was not, as Emily very well knew, a Murray tradition to “run.” At New Moon you stood your ground, no matter what you had on – the presupposition being that you were always neatly and properly habited for the occupation of the moment. Emily recognised the propriety of this, yet was, nevertheless, foolish and young enough to feel that she would die of shame if seen by any one in Aunt Laura’s Mother Hubbard. It was neat – it was clean – but it was “ridiculous.” There you were!

Just as Emily finished sanding and turned to place her can of sand in the niche under the kitchen mantel, where it had been kept from time immemorial, she heard strange voices in the kitchen yard. A hasty glimpse through the window revealed to her the owners of the voices – Miss Beulah Potter, and
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla Potter, calling, no doubt, in regard to the projected Ladies’ Aid Social. They were coming to the back door as was the Blair Water custom when running in to see your neighbours, informally or on business; they were already past the gay platoons of hollyhocks with which Cousin Jimmy had flanked the stone path to the dairy, and of all the people in Blair Water and out of it they were the two whom Emily would least want to see her in any ridiculous plight whatever. Without stopping to think, she darted into the boot closet and shut the door.

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla knocked twice at the kitchen door, but Emily did not budge. She knew Aunt Laura was weaving in the garret – she could hear the dull thud of the treadles overhead – but she thought Aunt Elizabeth was concocting pies in the cook-house and would see or hear the callers. She would take them into the sitting-room and then Emily could make her escape. And on one thing she was determined – they should not see her in that Mother Hubbard. Miss Potter was a thin, venomous, acidulated gossip who seemed to dislike everybody in general and Emily in particular; and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla was a plump, pretty, smooth, amiable gossip who, by very reason of her smoothness and amiability, did more real harm in a week than Miss Potter did in a year. Emily distrusted her even while she could not help liking her. She had so often heard Mrs. Ann Cyrilla make smiling fun of people, to whose “faces” she had been very sweet and charming, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had been one of the “dressy Wallaces” from Derry Pond, was especially fond of laughing over the peculiarities of other people’s clothes.

Again the knock came – Miss Potter’s this time, as Emily knew by the staccato raps. They were getting impatient. Well, they might knock there till the cows come home, vowed
Emily She would not go to the door in the Mother Hubbard. Then she heard Perry’s voice outside explaining that Miss Elizabeth was away in the stumps behind the barn picking raspberries, but that he would go and get her if they would walk in and make themselves at home. To Emily’s despair, this was just what they did. Miss Potter sat down with a creak and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla with a puff, and Perry’s retreating footsteps died away in the yard. Emily realised that she was by way of being in a plight. It was very hot and stuffy in the tiny boot closet – where Cousin Jimmy’s working clothes were kept as well as boots. She hoped earnestly that Perry would not be long in finding Aunt Elizabeth.

“My, but it’s awful hot,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, with a large groan.

Poor Emily – no, no, we must not call her poor Emily; she does not deserve pity – she has been very silly and is served exactly right; Emily, then, already violently perspiring in her close quarters, agreed wholly with her.

“
I
don’t feel the heat as fat people do,” said Miss Potter. “I hope Elizabeth won’t keep us waiting long. Laura’s weaving – I hear the loom going in the garret. But there would be no Ilse in seeing her – Elizabeth would override anything Laura might promise, just because it wasn’t
her
arrangement. I see somebody has just finished sanding the floor. Look at those worn boards, will you? You’d think Elizabeth Murray would have a new floor laid down; but she is too mean, of course. Look at that row of candles on the chimney-piece – all that trouble and poor light because of the little extra coal-oil would cost. Well, she can’t take her money with her – she’ll have to leave it all behind at the golden gate even if she
is
a Murray.”

Emily experienced a shock. She realised that not only was she being half suffocated in the boot closet, but that she
was an eavesdropper – something she had never been since the evening at Maywood when she had hidden under the table to hear her aunts and uncles discussing her fate. To be sure, that had been voluntary, while this was compulsory – at least, the Mother Hubbard had made it compulsory. But that would not make Miss Potter’s comments any pleasanter to hear. What business had she to call Aunt Elizabeth mean? Aunt Elizabeth
wasn’t
mean. Emily was suddenly very angry with Miss Potter. She, herself, often criticised Aunt Elizabeth in secret, but it was intolerable that an outsider should do it. And that little sneer at the Murrays! Emily could imagine the shrewish glint in Miss Potter’s eye as she uttered it. As for the candles –

“The Murrays can see farther by candlelight than
you
can by sunlight, Miss Potter,” thought Emily disdainfully – or at least as disdainfully as it is possible to think when a river of perspiration is running down your back, and you have nothing to breathe but the aroma of old leather.

“I suppose it’s because of the expense that she won’t send Emily to school any longer than this year,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “Most folks think she ought to give her a year at Shrewsbury, anyhow – you’d think she would for pride’s sake, if nothing else. But I am told she has decided against it.”

Emily’s heart sank. She hadn’t been quite sure till now that Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t send her to Shrewsbury. The tears sprang to her eyes – burning, stinging tears of disappointment.

“Emily ought to be taught something to earn a living by,” said Miss Potter. “Her father left nothing.”

“He left
me
” said Emily below her breath, clenching her fists. Anger dried up her tears.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, laughing with tolerant derision, “I hear that Emily is going to make a living by writing stories – not only a living but a fortune, I believe.”

She laughed again. The idea was so exquisitely ridiculous. Mrs. Ann Cyrilla hadn’t heard anything so funny for a long time.

“They say she wastes half her time scribbling trash,” agreed Miss Potter. “If I was her Aunt Elizabeth I would soon cure her of that nonsense.”

“You mightn’t find it so easy. I understand she has always been a difficult girl to manage – so very pig-headed, Murray-like. The whole clamjamfry of them are as stubborn as mules.”

(
Emily, wrathfully:
“What a disrespectful way to speak of us! Oh, if I only hadn’t on this Mother Hubbard I’d fling this door open and confront them.”)

“She needs a tight rein, if
I
know anything of human nature,” said Miss Potter. “She’s going to be a flirt – any one can see that. She’ll be Juliet over again. You’ll see. She makes eyes at every one and her only fourteen!”

(
Emily, sarcastically:
“I do
not!
And Mother wasn’t a flirt. She
could
have been, but she wasn’t.
You
couldn’t flirt, even if you wanted to – you respectable old female!”)

“She isn’t pretty as poor Juliet was, and she’s very sly – sly and deep. Mrs. Dutton says she’s the slyest child she ever saw. But still there are things I like about poor Emily.”

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s tone was very patronising. “Poor” Emily writhed among the boots.

“The thing
I
don’t like in her is that she is always trying to be smart,” said Miss Potter decidedly. “She says clever things she has read in books and passes them off as her own –”

(
Emily, outraged:
“I don’t!”)

“And she’s very sarcastic and touchy, and of course as proud as Lucifer,” concluded Miss Potter.

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla laughed pleasantly and tolerantly again.

“Oh, that goes without saying in a Murray. But their
worst fault is that they think nobody can do anything right but themselves, and Emily is full of it. Why, she even thinks she can preach better than Mr. Johnson.”

(
Emily:
“That is because I said he contradicted himself in one of his sermons – and he
did
. And I’ve heard
you
criticise dozens of sermons, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.”)

“She’s jealous, too,” continued Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “She can’t bear to be beaten – she wants to be first in everything. I understand she actually shed tears of mortification the night of the concert because Ilse Burnley carried off the honours in the dialogue. Emily did very poorly – she was a perfect
stick
. And she contradicts older people continually. It would be funny if it weren’t so ill-bred.”

“It’s odd Elizabeth doesn’t cure her of
that
. The Murrays think their breeding is a little above the common,” said Miss Potter.

(
Emily, wrathfully, to the boots:
“It
is
, too.”)

“Of course,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, “I think a great many of Emily’s faults come from her intimacy with Ilse Burnley. She shouldn’t be allowed to run about with Ilse as she does. Why, they say Ilse is as much an infidel as her father. I have always understood she doesn’t believe in God at all – or the Devil either.”

(
Emily:
“Which is a far worse thing
m your
eyes.”)

“Oh, the doctor’s training her a little better now since he found out his precious wife didn’t elope with Leo Mitchell,” sniffed Miss Potter. “He makes her go to Sunday School. But she’s no fit associate for Emily. She swears like a trooper, I’m told. Mrs. Mark Burns was in the doctor’s office one day and heard Ilse in the parlour say distinctly ‘out, damned Spot!’ probably to the dog.”

“Dear, dear,” moaned Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.

“Do you know what
I
saw her do one day last week – saw her with my own eyes!” Miss Potter was very emphatic over this. Ann Cyrilla need not suppose that she had been using any other person’s eyes.

“You couldn’t surprise me,” gurgled Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “Why, they say she was at the charivari at Johnson’s last Tuesday night, dressed as a boy.”

“Quite likely. But this happened in my own front yard. She was there with Jen Strang, who had come to get a root of my Persian rose-bush for her mother. I asked Ilse if she could sew and bake and a few other things that I thought she ought to be reminded of. Ilse said ‘No’ to them all, quite brazenly, and then
she
said –
what
do you think that girl said!”

“Oh, what?” breathed Mrs. Ann Cyrilla eagerly.

“She said,
‘Can you
stand on one foot and lift your other to a level with your eyes, Miss Potter? I can.’ And” – Miss Potter hushed her tone to the proper pitch of horror – “
she did it!
“

The listener in the closet stifled a spasm of laughter in Cousin Jimmy’s grey jumper. How madcap Ilse did love to shock Miss Potter!

“Good gracious, were there any men around?” entreated Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.

“No – fortunately. But it’s my belief she would have done it just the same no matter who was there. We were close to the road –
anybody
might have been passing. I felt so ashamed. In
my
time a young girl would have
died
before she would have done a thing like that.”

“It’s no worse than her and Emily bathing by moonlight up on the sands
without a stitch on
,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “
That
was the most scandalous thing. Did you hear about it?”

“Oh, yes, that story’s all over Blair Water. Everybody’s heard it but Elizabeth and Laura. I can’t find out how it started. Were they
seen?
“

“Oh, dear no, not so bad as that. Ilse told it herself. She seemed to think it was quite a matter of course,
I
think some one ought to tell Laura and Elizabeth.”