Emily Climbs - Hardcover

Chapter 1

Writing Herself Out

Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down. She was at that moment as perfectly happy as any human being is ever permitted to be. Aunt Elizabeth, in consideration of the coldness of the night, had allowed her to have a fire in her little fireplace-a rare favor. It was burning brightly and showering a red-golden light over the small, immaculate room, with its old-time furniture and deep-set, wide-silled windows, to whose frosted, blue-white panes the snowflakes clung in little wreaths. It lent depth and mystery and allure to the mirror on the wall which reflected Emily as she sat coiled on the ottoman before the fire, writing, by the light of two tall, white candles-which were the only approved means of illumination at New Moon-in a brand-new, glossy, black "Jimmy-book" which Cousin Jimmy had given her that day. Emily had been very glad to get it, for she had filled the one he had given her the preceding autumn, and for over a week she had suffered acute pangs of suppression because she could not write in a non-existent "diary."

Her diary had become a dominant factor in her young, vivid life. It had taken the place of certain "letters" she had written in her childhood to her dead father, in which she had been wont to "write out" her problems and worries-for even in the magic years when one is almost fourteen one has problems and worries, especially when one is under the strict and well-meant but not over-tender governance of an Aunt Elizabeth Murray. Sometimes Emily felt that if it were not for her diary she would have flown into little bits by reason of consuming her own smoke. The fat, black "Jimmy-book" seemed to her like a personal friend and a safe confidant for certain matters which burned for expression and yet were too combustible to be trusted to the ears of any living being. Now blank books of any sort were not easy to come by at New Moon, and if it had not been for Cousin Jimmy, Emily might never have had one. Certainly Aunt Elizabeth would not give her one-Aunt Elizabeth thought Emily wasted far too much time "over her scribbling nonsense" as it was-and Aunt Laura did not dare to go contrary to Aunt Elizabeth in this-more by token that Laura herself really thought Emily might be better employed. Aunt Laura was a jewel of a woman, but certain things were holden from her eyes.

Now Cousin Jimmy was never in the least frightened of Aunt Elizabeth, and when the notion occurred to him that Emily probably wanted another "blank book," that blank book materialized straightway, in defiance of Aunt Elizabeth's scornful glances. He had gone to Shrewsbury that very day, in the teeth of the rising storm, for no other reason than to get it. So Emily was happy, in her subtle and friendly firelight, while the wind howled and shrieked through the great old trees to the north of New Moon, sent huge, spectral wreaths of snow whirling across Cousin Jimmy's famous garden, drifted the sundial completely over, and whistled eerily through the Three Princesses-as Emily always called the three tall Lombardies in the corner of the garden.

***

From the Diary of Emily Byrd Starr

I love a storm like this at night when I don't have to go out in it,

(wrote Emily).

Cousin Jimmy and I had a splendid evening planning out our garden and choosing our seeds and plants in the catalog. Just where the biggest drift is making, behind the summer-house, we are going to have a bed of pink asters, and we are going to give the Golden Ones-who are dreaming under four feet of snow-a background of flowering almond. I love to plan out summer days like this, in the midst of a storm. It makes me feel as if I were winning a victory over something ever so much bigger than myself, just because I have a brain and the storm is nothing but blind, white force-terrible, but blind. I have the same feeling when I sit here cozily by my own dear fire, and hear it raging all around me, and laugh at it. And that is just because over a hundred years ago great-great-grandfather Murray built this house and built it well. I wonder if, a hundred years from now, anybody will win a victory over anything because of something I left or did. It is an inspiring thought.

I drew that line of italics before I thought. Mr. Carpenter says I use far too many italics. He says it is an Early Victorian obsession, and I must strive to cast it off. I concluded I would when I looked in the dictionary, for it is evidently not a nice thing to be obsessed, though it doesn't seem quite so bad as to be possessed. There I go again: but I think the italics are all right this time.

I read the dictionary for a whole hour-till Aunt Elizabeth got suspicious and suggested that it would be much better for me to be knitting my ribbed stockings. She couldn't see exactly why it was wrong for me to be poring over the dictionary but she felt sure it must be because she never wants to do it. I love reading the dictionary. (Yes, those italics are necessary, Mr. Carpenter. An ordinary "love" wouldn't express my feeling at all!) Words are such fascinating things. (I caught myself at the first syllable that time!) The very sound of some of them-"haunted"-"mystic"-for example, gives me the flash. (Oh, dear! But I have to italicize the flash. It isn't ordinary-it's the most extraordinary and wonderful thing in my whole life. When it comes I feel as if a door had swung open in a wall before me and given me a glimpse of-yes, of heaven. More italics! Oh, I see why Mr. Carpenter scolds! I must break myself of the habit.)

Big words are never beautiful-"incriminating"-"obstreperous"-"international"-"unconstitutional." They make me think of those horrible big dahlias and chrysanthemums Cousin Jimmy took me to see at the exhibition in Charlottetown last fall. We couldn't see anything lovely in them, though some people thought them wonderful. Cousin Jimmy's little yellow 'mums, like pale, fairy-like stars shining against the fir copse in the northwest corner of the garden, were ten times more beautiful. But I am wandering from my subject-also a bad habit of mine, according to Mr. Carpenter. He says I must (the italics are his this time!) learn to concentrate-another big word and a very ugly one.

But I had a good time over that dictionary-much better than I had over the ribbed stockings. I wish I could have a pair-just one pair-of silk stockings. Ilse has three. Her father gives her everything she wants, now that he has learned to love her. But Aunt Elizabeth says silk stockings are immoral. I wonder why-any more than silk dresses.

Speaking of silk dresses, Aunt Janey Milburn, at Derry Pond-she isn't any relation really, but everybody calls her that-has made a vow that she will never wear a silk dress until the whole heathen world is converted to Christianity. That is very fine. I wish I could be as good as that, but I couldn't-I love silk too much. It is so rich and sheeny. I would like to dress in it all the time, and if I could afford to I would-though I suppose every time I thought of dear old Aunt Janey and the unconverted heathen I would feel conscience-stricken. However, it will be years, if ever, before I can afford to buy even one silk dress, and meanwhile I give some of my egg money every month to missions. (I have five hens of my own now, all descended from the gray pullet Perry gave me on my twelfth birthday.) If ever I can buy that one silk dress I know what it is going to be like. Not black or brown or navy blue-sensible, serviceable colors, such as New Moon Murrays always wear-oh, dear, no! It is to be of shot silk, blue in one light, silver in others, like a twilight sky, glimpsed through a frosted window pane-with a bit of lace-foam here and there, like those little feathers of snow clinging to my windowpane. Teddy says he will paint me in it and call it "The Ice Maiden," and Aunt Laura smiles and says, sweetly and condescendingly, in a way I hate, even in dear Aunt Laura,

"What use would such a dress be to you, Emily?"

It mightn't be of any use, but I would feel in it as if it were a part of me-that it grew on me and wasn't just bought and put on. I want one dress like that in my lifetime. And a silk petticoat underneath it-and silk stockings!

Ilse has a silk dress now-a bright pink one. Aunt Elizabeth says Dr. Burnley dresses Ilse far too old and rich for a child. But he wants to make up for all the years he didn't dress her at all. (I don't mean she went naked, but she might have as far as Dr. Burnley was concerned. Other people had to see to her clothes.) He does everything she wants him to do now, and gives her her own way in everything. Aunt Elizabeth says it is very bad for her, but there are times when I envy Ilse a little. I know it is wicked, but I cannot help it.

Dr. Burnley is going to send Ilse to Shrewsbury High School next fall, and after that to Montreal to study elocution. That is why I envy her-not because of the silk dress. I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art.

Teddy wants to go to Shrewsbury next fall, but his mother won't let him go, either. Not that she is afraid of his eloping, but because she loves him so much she can't part with him. Teddy wants to be an artist, and Mr. Carpenter says he has genius and should have his chance, but everybody is afraid to say anything to Mrs. Kent. She is a little bit of a woman-no taller than I am, really, quiet and shy-and yet everyone is afraid of her. I am-dreadfully afraid. I've always known she didn't like me-ever since those days long ago when Ilse and I first went up to the Tansy Patch, to play with Teddy. But now she hates me-I feel sure of it-just because Teddy likes me. She can't bear to have him like anybody or anything but her. She is even jealous of his pictures. So there is not much chance of his getting to Shrewsbury. Perry is going. He hasn't a cent, but he is going to work his way through. That is why he thinks he will go to Shrewsbury in place of Queen's Academy. He thinks it will be easier to get work to do in Shrewsbury, and board is cheaper there.

"My old beast of an Aunt Tom has a little money," he told me, "but she won't give me any of it-unless-unless-"

Then he looked at me significantly.

I blushed because I couldn't help it, and then I was furious with myself for blushing, and with Perry-because he referred to something I didn't want to hear about-that time ever so long ago when his Aunt Tom met me in Lofty John's bush and nearly frightened me to death by demanding that I promise to marry Perry when we grew up, in which case she would educate him. I never told anybody about it-being ashamed-except Ilse, and she said,

"The idea of old Aunt Tom aspiring to a Murray for Perry!"

But then, Ilse is awfully hard on Perry and quarrels with him half the time, over things I only smile at. Perry never likes to be outdone by anyone in anything. When we were at Amy Moore's party last week, her uncle told us a story of some remarkable freak calf he had seen, with three legs, and Perry said,

"Oh, that's nothing to a duck I saw once in Norway."

(Perry really was in Norway. He used to sail everywhere with his father when he was little. But I don't believe one word about that duck. He wasn't lying-he was just romancing. Dear Mr. Carpenter, I can't get along without italics.)

Perry's duck had four legs, according to him-two where a proper duck's legs should be, and two sprouting from its back. And when it got tired of walking on its ordinary pair it flopped over on its back and walked on the other pair!

Perry told this yarn with a sober face, and everybody laughed, and Amy's uncle said, "Go up head, Perry." But Ilse was furious and wouldn't speak to him all the way home. She said he had made a fool of himself, trying to "show off" with a silly story like that, and that no gentleman would act so.

Perry said: "I'm no gentleman, yet, only a hired boy, but some day, Miss Ilse, I'll be a finer gentleman than any one you know."

"Gentlemen," said Ilse in a nasty voice, "have to be born. They can't be made, you know."

Ilse has almost given up calling names, as she used to do when she quarreled with Perry or me, and taken to saying cruel, cutting things. They hurt far worse than the names used to, but I don't really mind them-much-or long-because I know Ilse doesn't mean them and really loves me as much as I love her. But Perry says they stick in his crop. They didn't speak to each other the rest of the way home, but next day Ilse was at him again about using bad grammar and not standing up when a lady enters the room.

"Of course you couldn't be expected to know that," she said in her nastiest voice, "but I am sure Mr. Carpenter has done his best to teach you grammar."

Perry didn't say one word to Ilse, but he turned to me.

"Will you tell me my faults?" he said. "I don't mind you doing it-it will be you that will have to put up with me when we're grown up, not Ilse."

He said that to make Ilse angry, but it made me angrier still, for it was an allusion to a forbidden topic. So we neither of us spoke to him for two days and he said it was a good rest from Ilse's slams anyway.

Perry is not the only one who gets into disgrace at New Moon. I said something silly yesterday evening which makes me blush to recall it. The Ladies' Aid met here and Aunt Elizabeth gave them a supper and the husbands of the Aid came to it. Ilse and I waited on the table, which was set in the kitchen because the dining-room table wasn't long enough. It was exciting at first and then, when everyone was served, it was a little dull and I began to compose some poetry in my mind as I stood by the window looking out on the garden. It was so interesting that I soon forgot everything else until suddenly I heard Aunt Elizabeth say, "Emily," very sharply, and then she looked significantly at Mr. Johnson, our new minister. I was confused and I snatched up the teapot and exclaimed,

"Oh, Mr. Cup, will you have your Johnson filled?"

Everybody roared and Aunt Elizabeth looked disgusted and Aunt Laura ashamed, and I felt as if I would sink through the floor. I couldn't sleep half the night for thinking over it. The strange thing was that I do believe I felt worse and more ashamed than I would have felt if I had done something really wrong. This is the "Murray pride" of course, and I suppose it is very wicked. Sometimes I am afraid Aunt Ruth Dutton is right in her opinion of me after all.

No, she isn't!

But it is a tradition of New Moon that its women should be equal to any situation and always be graceful and dignified. Now, there was nothing graceful or dignified in asking such a question of the new minister. I am sure he will never see me again without thinking of it and I will always writhe when I catch his eye upon me.

But now that I have written it out in my diary I don't feel so badly over it. Nothing ever seems as big o...