The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  Emily had never seen a kitchen like this before. It had dark wooden walls and low ceiling, with black rafters crossing it, from which hung hams and sides of bacon and bunches of herbs and new socks and mittens, and many other things, the names and uses of which Emily could not imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged, making a queer, shallow little hollow. In one corner of the ceiling was a large square hole which looked black and spookish in the candlelight, and made her feel creepy. Something might pop down out of a hole like that if one hadn’t behaved just right, you know. And candles cast such queer wavering shadows. Emily didn’t know whether she liked the New Moon kitchen or not. It was an interesting place — and she rather thought she would like to describe it in the old account-book, if it hadn’t been burned — but Emily suddenly found herself trembling on the verge of tears.

  “Cold?” said Aunt Laura kindly. “These June evenings are chilly yet. Come into the sitting-room — Jimmy has kindled a fire in the stove there.”

  Emily, fighting desperately for self-control, went into the sitting-room. It was much more cheerful than the kitchen. The floor was covered with gay-striped homespun, the table had a bright crimson cloth, the walls were hung with pretty, diamond-patterned paper, the curtains were of wonderful pale-red damask with a design of white ferns scattered all over them. They looked very rich and imposing and Murray-like. Emily had never seen such curtains before. But best of all were the friendly gleams and flickers from the jolly hardwood fire in the open stove that mellowed the ghostly candlelight with something warm and rosy-golden. Emily toasted her toes before it and felt reviving interest in her surroundings. What lovely little leaded glass doors closed the china closets on either side of the high, black, polished mantel! What a funny, delightful shadow the carved ornament on the sideboard cast on the wall behind it — just like a negro’s side-face, Emily decided. What mysteries might lurk behind the chintz-lined glass doors of the bookcase! Books were Emily’s friends wherever she found them. She flew over to the bookcase and opened the door. But before she could see more than the backs of rather ponderous volumes, Aunt Elizabeth came in, with a mug of milk and a plate whereon lay two little oatmeal cakes.

  “Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, “shut that door. Remember that after this you are not to meddle with things that don’t belong to you.”

  “I thought books belonged to everybody,” said Emily.

  “Ours don’t,” said Aunt Elizabeth, contriving to convey the impression that New Moon books were in a class by themselves. “Here is your supper, Emily. We are all so tired that we are just having a lunch. Eat it and then we will go to bed.”

  Emily drank the milk and worried down the oatcakes, still gazing about her. How pretty the wallpaper was, with the garland of roses inside the gilt diamond! Emily wondered if she could “see it in the air.” She tried — yes, she could — there it hung, a yard from her eyes, a little fairy pattern, suspended in mid-air like a screen. Emily had discovered that she possessed this odd knack when she was six. By a certain movement of the muscles of her eyes, which she could never describe, she could produce a tiny replica of the wallpaper in the air before her — could hold it there and look at it as long as she liked — could shift it back and forth, to any distance she chose, making it larger or smaller as it went farther away or came nearer. It was one of her secret joys when she went into a new room anywhere to “see the paper in the air.” And this New Moon paper made the prettiest fairy paper she had ever seen.

  “What are you staring at nothing in that queer way for?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth, suddenly returning.

  Emily shrank into herself. She couldn’t explain to Aunt Elizabeth — Aunt Elizabeth would be like Ellen Greene and say she was “crazy.”

  “I — I wasn’t staring at anything.”

  “Don’t contradict. I say you were,” retorted Aunt Elizabeth. “Don’t do it again. It gives your face an unnatural expression. Come now — we will go upstairs. You are to sleep with me.”

  Emily gave a gasp of dismay. She had hoped it might be with Aunt Laura. Sleeping with Aunt Elizabeth seemed a very formidable thing. But she dared not protest. They went up to Aunt Elizabeth’s big, sombre bedroom where there was dark, grim wallpaper that could never be transformed into a fairy curtain, a high black bureau, topped with a tiny swing-mirror, so far above her that there could be no Emily-in-the-glass, tightly closed windows with dark-green curtains, a high bedstead with a dark-green canopy, and a huge, fat, smothering feather-bed, with high, hard pillows.

  Emily stood still, gazing about her.

  “Why don’t you get undressed?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.

  “I — I don’t like to undress before you,” faltered Emily.

  Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily through her cold, spectacled eyes.

  “Take off your clothes, at once,” she said.

  Emily obeyed, tingling with anger and shame. It was abominable — taking off her clothes while Aunt Elizabeth stood and watched her. The outrage of it was unspeakable. It was even harder to say her prayers before Aunt Elizabeth. Emily felt that it was not much good to pray under such circumstances. Father’s God seemed very far away and she suspected that Aunt Elizabeth’s was too much like Ellen Greene’s.

  “Get into bed,” said Aunt Elizabeth, turning down the clothes.

  Emily glanced at the shrouded window.

  “Aren’t you going to open the window, Aunt Elizabeth?”

  Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily as if the latter had suggested removing the roof.

  “Open the window — and let in the night air!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not!”

  “Father and I always had our window open,” cried Emily.

  “No wonder he died of consumption,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Night air is poison.”

  “What air is there at night but night air?” asked Emily.

  “Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth icily, “get — into — bed.”

  Emily got in.

  But it was utterly impossible to sleep, lying there in that engulfing bed that seemed to swallow her up, with that cloud of blackness above her and not a gleam of light anywhere — and Aunt Elizabeth lying beside her, long and stiff and bony.

  “I feel as if I was in bed with a griffin,” thought Emily. “Oh — oh — oh — I’m going to cry — I know I am.”

  Desperately and vainly she strove to keep the tears back — they would come. She felt utterly alone and lonely — there in that darkness, with an alien, hostile world all around her — for it seemed hostile now. And there was such a strange, mysterious, mournful sound in the air — far away, yet clear. It was the murmur of the sea, but Emily did not know that and it frightened her. Oh, for her little bed at home — oh, for Father’s soft breathing in the room — oh, for the dancing friendliness of well-known stars shining down through her open window! She must go back — she couldn’t stay here — she would never be happy here! But there wasn’t any “back” to go to — no home — no father — . A great sob burst from her — another followed and then another. It was no use to clench her hands and set her teeth — and chew the inside of her cheeks — nature conquered pride and determination and had her way.

  “What are you crying for?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.

  To tell the truth Aunt Elizabeth felt quite as uncomfortable and disjointed as Emily did. She was not used to a bedfellow; she didn’t want to sleep with Emily any more than Emily wanted to sleep with her. But she considered it quite impossible that the child should be put off by herself in one of the big, lonely New Moon rooms; and Laura was a poor sleeper, easily disturbed; children always kicked, Elizabeth Murray had heard. So there was nothing to do but take Emily in with her; and when she had sacrificed comfort and inclination to do her unwelcome duty this ungrateful and unsatisfactory child was not contented.

  “I asked you what you were
crying for, Emily?” she repeated.

  “I’m — homesick, I guess,” sobbed Emily.

  Aunt Elizabeth was annoyed.

  “A nice home you had to be homesick for,” she said sharply.

  “It — it wasn’t as elegant — as New Moon,” sobbed Emily, “but — Father was there. I guess I’m Fathersick, Aunt Elizabeth. Didn’t you feel awfully lonely when your father died?”

  Elizabeth Murray involuntarily remembered the ashamed, smothered feeling of relief when old Archibald Murray had died — the handsome, intolerant, autocratic old man who had ruled his family with a rod of iron all his life and had made existence at New Moon miserable with the petulant tyranny of the five years of invalidism that had closed his career. The surviving Murrays had behaved impeccably, and wept decorously, and printed a long and flattering obituary. But had one genuine feeling of regret followed Archibald Murray to his tomb? Elizabeth did not like the memory and was angry with Emily for evoking it.

  “I was resigned to the will of Providence,” she said coldly. “Emily, you must understand right now that you are to be grateful and obedient and show your appreciation of what is being done for you. I won’t have tears and repining. What would you have done if you had no friends to take you in? Answer me that.”

  “I suppose I would have starved to death,” admitted Emily — instantly beholding a dramatic vision of herself lying dead, looking exactly like the pictures she had seen in one of Ellen Greene’s missionary magazines depicting the victims of an Indian famine.

  “Not exactly — but you would have been sent to some orphanage where you would have been half-starved, probably. You little know what you have escaped. You have come to a good home where you will be cared for and educated properly.”

  Emily did not altogether like the sound of being “educated properly.” But she said humbly,

  “I know it was very good of you to bring me to New Moon, Aunt Elizabeth. And I won’t bother you long, you know. I’ll soon be grown-up and able to earn my own living. What do you think is the earliest age a person can be called grown-up, Aunt Elizabeth?”

  “You needn’t think about that,” said Aunt Elizabeth shortly. “The Murray women have never been under any necessity for earning their own living. All we require of you is to be a good and contented child and to conduct yourself with becoming prudence and modesty.”

  This sounded terribly hard.

  “I will be,” said Emily, suddenly determining to be heroic, like the girl in the stories she had read. “Perhaps it won’t be so very hard after all, Aunt Elizabeth,” — Emily happened at this point to recall a speech she had heard her father use once, and thought this a good opportunity to work it in—”because, you know, God is good and the devil might be worse.”

  Poor Aunt Elizabeth! To have a speech like that fired at her in the darkness of the night from that unwelcome little interloper into her orderly life and peaceful bed! Was it any wonder that for a moment or so she was too paralysed to reply! Then she exclaimed in tones of horror, “Emily, never say that again!”

  “All right,” said Emily meekly. “But,” she added defiantly under her breath, “I’ll go on thinking it.”

  “And now,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “I want to say that I am not in the habit of talking all night if you are. I tell you to go to sleep, and I expect you to obey me. Good night.”

  The tone of Aunt Elizabeth’s good night would have spoiled the best night in the world. But Emily lay very still and sobbed no more, though the noiseless tears trickled down her cheeks in the darkness for some time. She lay so still that Aunt Elizabeth imagined she was asleep and went to sleep herself.

  “I wonder if anybody in the world is awake but me,” thought Emily, feeling a sickening loneliness. “If I only had Saucy Sal here! She isn’t so cuddly as Mike but she’d be better than nothing. I wonder where she is. I wonder if they gave her any supper.”

  Aunt Elizabeth had handed Sal’s basket to Cousin Jimmy with an impatient, “Here — look to this cat,” and Jimmy had carried it off. Where had he put it? Perhaps Saucy Sal would get out and go home — Emily had heard cats always went back home. She wished she could get out and go home — she pictured herself and her cat running eagerly along the dark, starlit roads to the little house in the hollow — back to the birches and Adam-and-Eve and Mike, and the old wing-chair and her dear little cot and the open window where the Wind Woman sang to her and at dawn one could see the blue of the mist on the homeland hills.

  “Will it ever be morning?” thought Emily. “Perhaps things won’t be so bad in the morning.”

  And then — she heard the Wind Woman at the window — she heard the little, low, whispering murmur of the June night breeze — cooing, friendly, lovesome.

  “Oh, you’re out there, are you, dearest one?” she whispered, stretching out her arms. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear you. You’re such company, Wind Woman. I’m not lonesome any more. And the flash came, too! I was afraid it might never come at New Moon.”

  Her soul suddenly escaped from the bondage of Aunt Elizabeth’s stuffy feather-bed and gloomy canopy and sealed windows. She was out in the open with the Wind Woman and the other gipsies of the night — the fireflies, the moths, the brooks, the clouds. Far and wide she wandered in enchanted reverie until she coasted the shore of dreams and fell soundly asleep on the fat, hard pillow, while the Wind Woman sang softly and luringly in the vines that clustered over New Moon.

  The Book of Yesterday

  That first Saturday and Sunday at New Moon always stood out in Emily’s memory as a very wonderful time, so crowded was it with new and generally delightful impressions. If it be true that we “count time by heart throbs” Emily lived two years in it instead of two days. Everything was fascinating from the moment she came down the long, polished staircase into the square hall that was filled with a soft, rosy light coming through the red glass panes of the front door. Emily gazed through the panes delightedly. What a strange, fascinating, red world she beheld, with a weird red sky that looked, she thought, as if it belonged to the Day of Judgment.

  There was a certain charm about the old house which Emily felt keenly and responded to, although she was too young to understand it. It was a house which aforetime had had vivid brides and mothers and wives, and the atmosphere of their loves and lives still hung around it, not yet banished by the old-maidishness of the regime of Elizabeth and Laura.

  “Why — I’m going to love New Moon,” thought Emily, quite amazed at the idea.

  Aunt Laura was setting the breakfast table in the kitchen, which seemed quite bright and jolly in the glow of morning sunshine. Even the black hole in the ceiling had ceased to be spookish and become only a commonplace entrance to the kitchen loft. And on the red-sandstone doorstep Saucy Sal was sitting, preening her fur as contentedly as if she had lived at New Moon all her life. Emily did not know it, but Sal had already drunk deep the delight of battle with her peers that morning and taught the barn cats their place once and for all. Cousin Jimmy’s big yellow Tom had got a fearful drubbing, and was minus several bits of his anatomy, while a stuck-up, black lady-cat, who fancied herself considerably, had made up her mind that if that grey-and-white, narrow-faced interloper from goodness knew where was going to stay at New Moon, she was not.

  Emily gathered Sal up in her arms and kissed her joyously, to the horror of Aunt Elizabeth, who was coming across the platform from the cook-house with a plate of sizzling bacon in her hands.

  “Don’t ever let me see you kissing a cat again,” she ordered.

  “Oh, all right,” agreed Emily cheerfully, “I’ll only kiss her when you don’t see me after this.”

  “I don’t want any of your pertness, miss. You are not to kiss cats at all.”

  “But Aunt Elizabeth, I didn’t kiss her on her mouth, of course. I just kissed her between her ears. It’s nice — won’t you just try it for once and see for yourself?”

  “That will do, Emily. You have said quite enough.” And Aunt Elizabeth
sailed on into the kitchen majestically, leaving Emily momentarily wretched. She felt that she had offended Aunt Elizabeth, and she hadn’t the least notion why or how.

  But the scene before her was too interesting to worry long about Aunt Elizabeth. Delicious smells were coming from the cook-house — a little, slant-roofed building at the corner where the big cooking-stove was placed in summer. It was thickly overgrown with hop vines, as most of the New Moon buildings were. To the right was the “new” orchard, very wonderful now in blossom, but a rather commonplace spot after all, since Cousin Jimmy cultivated it in most up-to-date fashion and had grain growing in the wide spaces between the straight rows of trees that looked all alike. But on the other side of the barn lane, just behind the well, was the “old orchard,” where Cousin Jimmy said the columbines grew and which seemed to be a delightful place where trees had come up at their own sweet will, and grown into individual shapes and sizes, where blue-eyed ivy twined about their roots and wild-briar roses rioted over the grey paling fence. Straight ahead, closing the vista between the orchards, was a little slope covered with huge white birches, among which were the big New Moon barns, and beyond the new orchard a little, lovable red road looped lightly up and up, over a hill, until it seemed to touch the vivid blue of the sky.

  Cousin Jimmy came down from the barns, carrying brimming pails of milk, and Emily ran with him to the dairy behind the cook-house. Such a delightful spot she had never seen or imagined. It was a snow-white little building in a clump of tall balm-of-gileads. Its grey roof was dotted over with cushions of moss like fat green-velvet mice. You went down six sand-stone steps with ferns crowding about them, and opened a white door with a glass panel in it, and went down three more steps. And then you were in a clean, earthy-smelling, damp, cool place with an earthen floor and windows screened by the delicate emerald of young hop vines, and broad wooden shelves all around, whereon stood wide, shallow pans of glossy brown ware, full of milk coated over with cream so rich that it was positively yellow.