Emily Climbs

by L. M. Montgomery

  "May 15, 19-

  "We had our Prep 'Pow-wow' last night. It always comes off in May. We had it in the Assembly room of the school and when we got there we found we couldn't light the gas. We didn't know what was the matter but suspected the Juniors. (Today we discovered they had cut off the gas in the basement and locked the basement doors.) At first we didn't know what to do: then I remembered that Aunt Elizabeth had brought Aunt Ruth a big box of candles for my use. I tore home and got them - Aunt Ruth being out - and we stuck them all around the room. So we had our Pow-wow after all and it was a brilliant success. We had such fun improvising candle holders that we got off to a good start, and somehow the candle-light was so much more friendly and inspiring than gas. We all seemed to be able to think of wittier things to say. Everybody was supposed to make a speech on any subject he or she wished. Perry made the speech of the evening. He had prepared a speech on 'Canadian History - very sensible and, I suspect, dull; but at the last minute he changed his mind and spoke on 'candles' - just making it up as he went along, telling of all the candles he saw in different lands when he was a little boy sailing with his father. It was so witty and interesting that we sat enthralled and I think the students will forget about French fashions and the old farmer who left the hoeing and weeding to God.

  "Aunt Ruth hasn't found out about the candles yet, as the old box isn't quite empty. When I go to New Moon tomorrow night I'll coax Aunt Laura to give me another box - I know she will - and I'll bring them to Aunt Ruth.

  "May 22, 19-

  "Today there was a hateful, long, fat envelope for me in the mail. Golden Hours has sent my story back. The accompanying rejection slip said:

  "'We have read your story with interest, and regret to say that we cannot accept it for publication at the present time.'

  "At first I tried to extract a little comfort from the fact that they had read it with 'keen interest.' Then it came home to me that the rejection slip was a printed one, so of course it is just what they send with all rejected manuscripts.

  "The worst of it was that Aunt Ruth had seen the packet before I got home from school and had opened it. It was humiliating to have her know of my failure.

  "'I hope this will convince you that you'd better waste no more stamps on such nonsense, Em'ly. The idea of your thinking you could write a story fit to be published.'

  "'I've had two poems published,' I cried.

  "Aunt Ruth sniffed.

  "'Oh, poems. Of course they have to have something to fill up the corners.'

  "Perhaps it's so. I felt very flat as I crawled off to my room with my poor story. I was quite 'content to fill a little space' then. You could have packed me in a thimble.

  "My story is all dog-eared and smells of tobacco. I've a notion to burn it.

  "No, I won't!! I'll copy it out again and try somewhere else. I will succeed!

  "I think, from glancing over the recent pages of this journal, that I am beginning to be able to do without italics. But sometimes they are necessary.

  "New Moon, Blair Water.

  "May 24, 19-

  "'For lo, the winter is past: the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth: the time of the singing of birds has come.'

  "I'm sitting on the sill of my open window in my own dear room. It's so lovely to get back to it every now and then. Out there, over Lofty John's bush, is a soft yellow sky and one very white little star is just visible where the pale yellow shades off into paler green. Far off, down in the south 'in regions mild of calm and serene air' are great cloud-palaces of rosy marble. Leaning over the fence is a choke-cherry tree that is a mass of blossoms like creamy caterpillars. Everything is so lovely- 'the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing.'

  "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"

  AT THE SIGN OF THE HAYSTACK

  "Why 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 f
irst 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."