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, bareheaded, 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 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 out when it is too late. Good night, Teddy. Thank you again for coming to my rescue. Good night, 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 use 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 use 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 tragi-comic 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.”
“As Ithers See Us”
Emily 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 use “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 recognized the propriety of this, yet was, nevertheless, foolish and young enough to feel that she would die of shame if seen by anyone 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 realized 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 use 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 realized 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 criticized 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 candle-light 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 — anyone 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 patronizing. “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!”)
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 256