Emily Climbs (2 page)

“‘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 or as terrible – oh, nor as beautiful and grand, either, alas! –when it is written out, as it does when you are thinking or feeling about it. It seems to
shrink
directly you put it into words. Even the line of poetry I had made just before I asked that absurd question won’t seem half as fine when I write it down:

“It
doesn’t
. Some bloom seems gone from it. And yet, while I was standing there, behind all those chattering, eating people, and
saw
darkness stealing so softly over the garden and
the hills, like a beautiful woman robed in shadows, with stars for eyes, the
flash
came and I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came into my mind it didn’t seem to me that
I
composed it at all – it seemed as if
Something Else
were trying to speak through me – and it was that
Something Else
that made the line seem wonderful – and now when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.

“Oh, if I could only put things into words as I
see
them! Mr. Carpenter says, ‘Strive – strive – keep on – words are your medium – make them your slaves – until they will say for you what you want them to say.’ That is true – and I do try – but it seems to me there is something
beyond
words – any words – all words – something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it – and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t reached for it.

“I remember one day last fall when Dean and I walked over the Delectable Mountain to the woods beyond it – fir woods mostly, but with one corner of splendid old pines. We sat under them and Dean read
Peveril of the Peak
and some of Scott’s poems to me; and then he looked up into the big, plumy boughs and said,

“‘The gods are talking in the pines – gods of the old northland – of the viking sagas. Star, do you know Emerson’s lines?’

“And then he quoted them – I’ve remembered and loved them ever since.

“Oh, that ‘random word’ – that is the
Something
that escapes me. I’m always listening for it – I know I can never hear it –
my
ear isn’t attuned to it – but I am sure I hear at times a little, faint, far-off echo of it – and it makes me feel a delight that is like pain and a despair of ever being able to translate its beauty into any words I know.

“Still, it
is
a pity I made such a goose of myself immediately after that wonderful experience.

“If I had just floated up behind Mr. Johnson, as velvet-footedly as darkness herself, and poured his tea gracefully from Great-grandmother Murray’s silver teapot, like my shadow-woman pouring night into the white cup of Blair Valley, Aunt Elizabeth would be far better pleased with me than if I could write the most wonderful poem in the world.

“Cousin Jimmy is so different. I recited my poem to him this evening after we had finished with the catalogue and he thought it was beautiful. (
He
couldn’t know how far it fell short of what I had seen in my mind.) Cousin Jimmy composes poetry himself. He is very clever in spots. And in other spots, where his brain was hurt when Aunt Elizabeth pushed him into our New Moon well, he isn’t
anything
. There’s just
blankness
there. So people call him simple, and Aunt Ruth dares to say he hasn’t sense enough to shoo a cat from cream. And yet if you put all his clever spots together there isn’t anybody in Blair Water has half as much real cleverness as he has – not even Mr. Carpenter. The trouble is you can’t put his
clever spots together – there are always those gaps between. But I love Cousin Jimmy and I’m never in the least afraid of him when his queer spells come on him. Everybody else is – even Aunt Elizabeth though perhaps it is remorse with her, instead of fear – except Perry. Perry always brags that he is never afraid of anything – doesn’t know what fear is. I think that is very wonderful. I wish I could be so fearless. Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.

“‘Cast it out, Jade,’ he says – ‘cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn’t be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson – “always do what you are afraid to do.’“

“But that is a counsel of perfection, as Dean says, and I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to attain to it. To be honest, I am afraid of a good many
things
, but there are only two people in the world I’m truly afraid of. One is Mrs. Kent, and the other is Mad Mr. Morrison. I’m terribly afraid of him and I think almost every one is. His home is in Derry Pond, but he hardly ever stays there – he roams over the country looking for his lost bride. He was married only a few weeks when his young wife died, many years ago, and he has never been right in his mind since. He insists she is not dead, only lost, and that he will find her some time. He has grown old and bent, looking for her; but to him she is still young and fair.

“He was here one day last summer, but would not come in – just peered into the kitchen wistfully and said, ‘Is Annie here?’ He was quite gentle that day, but sometimes he is very wild and violent. He declares he always hears Annie calling to him – that her voice flits on before him – always before him, like my random word. His face is wrinkled and shrivelled and he looks like an old, old monkey. But the
thing I hate most about him is his right hand – it is a deep blood-red all over – birth-marked. I can’t tell why, but that hand fills me with horror. I could not bear to touch it. And sometimes he laughs to himself very horribly. The only living thing he seems to care for is his old black dog that always is with him. They say he will never ask for a bite of food for himself. If people do not offer it to him he goes hungry, but he will beg for his dog.

“Oh, I am terribly afraid of him, and I was so glad he didn’t come into the house that day. Aunt Elizabeth looked after him, as he went away with his long, grey hair streaming in the wind, and said,

“‘Fairfax Morrison was once a fine, clever, young man, with excellent prospects. Well, God’s ways are very mysterious.’

“‘That is why they are interesting,’ I said.

“But Aunt Elizabeth frowned and told me not to be irreverent, as she always does when I say anything about God. I wonder why. She won’t let Perry and me talk about Him, either, though Perry is really very much interested in Him and wants to find out all about Him. Aunt Elizabeth overheard me telling Perry one Sunday afternoon what I thought God was like, and she said it was scandalous.

“It wasn’t! The trouble is, Aunt Elizabeth and I have different Gods, that is all. Everybody has a different God, I think. Aunt Ruth’s, for instance, is one that punishes her enemies – sends ‘judgments’ on them. That seems to me to be about all the use He really is to her. Jim Cosgrain uses his to swear by. But Aunt Janey Milburn walks in the light of her God’s countenance, every day, and shines with it.

“I have written myself out for tonight, and am going to bed. I know I have ‘wasted words’ in this diary – another of my literary faults, according to Mr. Carpenter.

“‘You waste words, Jade – you spill them about too lavishly. Economy and restraint – that’s what you need.’

“He’s right, of course, and in my essays and stories I try to practise what he preaches. But in my diary, which nobody sees but myself, or ever will see until after I’m dead, I like just to let myself go.”

Emily looked at her candle – it, too, was almost burned out. She knew she could not have another that night – Aunt Elizabeth’s rules were as those of Mede and Persian: she put away her diary in the little right-hand cupboard above the mantel, covered her dying fire, undressed and blew out her candle. The room slowly filled with the faint, ghostly snow-light of a night when a full moon is behind the driving storm-clouds. And just as Emily was ready to slip into her high black bedstead a sudden inspiration came – a splendid new idea for a story. For a minute she shivered reluctantly: the room was getting cold. But the idea would not be denied. Emily slipped her hand between the feather tick of her bed and the chaff mattress and produced a half-burned candle, secreted there for just such an emergency.

It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor ever will pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.

She lighted her candle, put on her stockings and a heavy coat, got out another half-filled Jimmy-book, and began to write by the single, uncertain candle which made a pale oasis of light in the shadows of the room. In that oasis Emily wrote, her black head bent over her book, as the hours of night crept away and the other occupants of New Moon slumbered soundly; she grew chill and cramped, but she was quite unconscious of it. Her eyes burned – her cheeks glowed – words came like troops
of obedient genii to the call of her pen. When at last her candle went out with a sputter and a hiss in its little pool of melted tallow, she came back to reality with a sigh and a shiver. It was two, by the clock, and she was very tired and very cold; but she had finished her story and it was the best she had ever written. She crept into her cold nest with a sense of completion and victory, born of the working out of her creative impulse, and fell asleep to the lullaby of the waning storm.

T
his book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of extracts from Emily’s diary; but, byway of linking up matters unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material ready to hand, why not Ilse it? Emily’s “diary,” with all its youthful crudities and italics, really gives a better interpretation of her and of her imaginative and introspective mind, in that, her fourteenth spring, than any biographer, however sympathetic, could do. So let us take another peep into the yellowed pages of that old “Jimmy-book,” written long ago in the “look-out” of New Moon.

“February 15, 19–

“I have decided that I will write down, in this journal, every day, all my good deeds and all my bad ones. I got the idea out of a book, and it appeals to me. I mean to be as honest about it as I can. It will be easy, of course, to write down the good deeds, but not so easy to record the bad ones.

“I did only one bad thing today– only one thing
I
think bad, that is. I was impertinent to Aunt Elizabeth. She thought I took too long washing the dishes. I didn’t suppose there was any hurry and I was composing a story called
The Secret of the Mill
. Aunt Elizabeth looked at me and then at the clock, and said in her most disagreeable way,

“‘Is the snail your sister, Emily?’

“‘No! Snails are no relation to
me,’
I said
haughtily
.

“It was not what I said, but the way I said it that was impertinent.
And I meant it to be
. I was very angry – sarcastic speeches always aggravate me. Afterwards I was very sorry that I had been in a temper – but I was sorry because it was
foolish
and
undignified
not because it was
wicked
. So I suppose that was not true repentance.

“As for my good deeds, I did two today. I saved two little lives. Saucy Sal had caught a poor snow-bird and I took it from her. It flew off quite briskly, and I am sure it felt wonderfully happy. Later on I went down to the cellar cupboard and found a mouse caught in a trap by its foot. The poor thing lay there, almost exhausted from struggling, with
such
a look in its black eyes. I
couldn’t
endure it so I set it free, and it managed to get away quite smartly in spite of its foot. I do not feel
sure
about
this
deed. I know it was a good one from the mouse’s point of view, but what about Aunt Elizabeth’s?

“This evening Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth read and burned a boxful of old letters. They read them aloud and commented on them, while I sat in a corner and knitted my stockings. The letters were very interesting and I learned a great deal about the Murrays I had never known before. I feel that it is quite wonderful to belong to a family like this. No wonder the Blair Water folks call us ‘the Chosen People’ – though
they
don’t mean it as a compliment. I feel that I must live up to the traditions of my family.

“I had a long letter from Dean Priest today. He is spending the winter in Algiers. He says he is coming home in April and is going to take rooms with his sister, Mrs. Fred Evans, for the summer. I am so glad. It will be splendid to have him in Blair Water all summer. Nobody ever talks to me as Dean does. He is the nicest and most interesting old person I know. Aunt Elizabeth says he is selfish, as all the Priests are. But then she does not like the Priests. And she always calls him Jarback, which somehow sets my teeth on edge. One of Dean’s shoulders
is
a little higher than the other, but that is not his fault. I told Aunt Elizabeth once that I wished she would not call my friend that, but she only said,

“‘I did not nickname
your friend
, Emily. His own clan have always called him Jarback. The Priests are not noted for delicacy!’

“Teddy had a letter from Dean, too, and a book –
The Lives of Great Artists
– Michael Angelo, Raphael, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian. He says he dare not let his mother see him reading it – she would burn it. I am sure if Teddy could only have his chance he would be as great an artist as any of them.

“February 18, 19–

“I had a lovely time with myself this evening, after school, walking on the brook road in Lofty John’s bush. The sun was low and creamy and the snow so white and the shadows so slender and blue. I think there is nothing so beautiful as tree shadows. And when I came out into the garden my own shadow looked so funny – so long that it stretched right across the garden. I immediately made a poem of which two lines were,

“I think there is a good deal of
philosophy
in that.

“Tonight I wrote a story and Aunt Elizabeth knew what I was doing and was very much annoyed. She scolded me for wasting time. But it
wasn’t
wasted time. I
grew
in it – I know I did. And there was something about some of the sentences I liked. ‘
I am afraid of the grey wood
‘ – that pleased me very much. And – ‘white and stately she walked the dark wood like a moonbeam.’ I think that is rather fine. Yet Mr. Carpenter tells me that whenever I think a thing especially fine I am to cut it out. But oh, I
can’t
cut that out – not yet, at least. The strange part is that about three months after Mr. Carpenter tells me to cut a thing out I come round to his point of view and feel ashamed of it. Mr. Carpenter was quite merciless over my essay today. Nothing about it suited him.

“‘Three
alas’s
in one paragraph, Emily. One would have been too many in this year of grace!’
‘More irresistible
– Emily for heaven’s sake, write English! That is unpardonable.’

“It
was
too. I saw it for myself and I felt shame going all over me from head to foot like a red wave. Then, after Mr. Carpenter had blue-pencilled almost every sentence and sneered at all my fine phrases and found fault with most of my constructions and told me I was too fond of putting ‘clever-isms’ into everything I wrote, he flung my exercise book down, tore at his hair and said,

“‘You write! Jade, get a spoon and learn to cook!’

“Then he strode off, muttering maledictions ‘not loud but deep.’ I picked up my poor essay and didn’t feel very badly. I
can
cook already, and I have learned a thing or two about
Mr. Carpenter. The better my essays are the more he rages over them. This one must have been quite good. But it makes him so angry and impatient to see where I might have made it
still better
and didn’t – through carelessness or laziness or indifference – as he thinks. And he can’t tolerate a person who
could
do better and doesn’t. And he wouldn’t bother with me at all if he didn’t think I may amount to something by and by.

“Aunt Elizabeth does not approve of Mr. Johnson. She thinks his theology is not sound. He said in his sermon last Sunday that there was some good in Buddhism.

“‘He will be saying that there is some good in Popery next,’ said Aunt Elizabeth indignantly at the dinner table.

“There
may
be some good in Buddhism. I must ask Dean about it when he comes home.

“March 2, 19–

“We were all at a funeral today – old Mrs. Sarah Paul. I have always liked going to funerals. When I said that, Aunt Elizabeth looked shocked and Aunt Laura said, ‘Oh, Emily
dear!’
I rather like to shock Aunt Elizabeth, but I never feel comfortable if I worry Aunt Laura – she’s
such
a darling – so I explained – or tried to. It is sometimes very hard to explain things to Aunt Elizabeth.

“‘Funerals are interesting,’ I said. And humorous, too.’ “I think I only made matters worse by saying
that
. And yet Aunt Elizabeth knew as well as I did that it was funny to see some of those relatives of Mrs. Paul, who have fought with and hated her for years – she
wasn’t
amiable, if she is dead! – sitting there, holding their handkerchiefs to their faces and pretending to cry. I knew quite well what each and every one was thinking in his heart. Jake Paul was wondering if the old harridan had by any chance left him anything in her will – and Alice Paul, who
knew
she
wouldn’t get anything, was hoping Jake Paul wouldn’t either. That would satisfy
her
. And Mrs. Charlie Paul was wondering how soon it would be decent to do the house over the way she had always wanted it and Mrs. Paul
hadn’t
. And Aunty Min was worrying for fear there wouldn’t be enough baked meats for such a mob of fourth cousins that they’d never expected and didn’t want, and Lisette Paul was counting the people and feeling vexed because there wasn’t as large an attendance as there was at Mrs. Henry Lister’s funeral last week. When I told Aunt Laura this, she said gravely,

“All this may be true, Emily’ – (she knew it was!) – ‘but somehow it doesn’t seem quite right for so young a girl as you, to – to – to be able to see these things, in short.’

“However, I can’t help seeing them. Darling Aunt Laura is always so sorry for people that she can’t see their humorous side. But I saw other things too. I saw that little Zack Fritz, whom Mrs. Paul adopted and was very kind to, was almost broken-hearted, and I saw that Martha Paul was feeling sorry and ashamed to think of her bitter old quarrel with Mrs. Paul – and I saw that Mrs. Paul’s face, that looked so discontented and thwarted in life, looked peaceful and majestic and even beautiful – as if Death had
satisfied
her at last.

“Yes, funerals
are
interesting.

“March 5, 19–

“It is snowing a little tonight. I love to see the snow coming down in slanting lines against the dark trees.

“I
think
I did a good deed today. Jason Merrowby was here helping Cousin Jimmy saw wood – and I
saw him sneak into the pighouse, and take a swig from a whiskey bottle
. But I did not say one word about it to any one – that is my good deed.

“Perhaps I
ought
to tell Aunt Elizabeth, but if I did she would never have him again, and he needs all the work he can get, for his poor wife’s and children’s sakes. I find it is not always easy to be sure whether your deeds are good or bad.

“March 20, 19–

“Yesterday Aunt Elizabeth was very angry because I would not write an ‘obituary poem’ for old Peter DeGeer who died last week. Mrs. DeGeer came here and asked me to do it. I wouldn’t – I felt very indignant at such a request. I felt it would be
a desecration of my art
to do such a thing – though of course I didn’t say that to Mrs. DeGeer. For one thing it would have hurt her feelings, and for another she wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what I meant. Even Aunt Elizabeth hadn’t when I told her my reasons for refusing, after Mrs. DeGeer had gone.

“‘You are always writing yards of trash that nobody wants,’ she said. ‘I think you might write something that
is
wanted. It would have pleased poor old Mary DeGeer. “Desecration of your art” indeed. If you
must
talk, Emily, why not talk sense?’

“I proceeded to talk sense.

“Aunt Elizabeth,’ I said seriously, ‘how could I write that obituary poem for her? I couldn’t write an
untruthful
one to please anybody. And you know yourself that nothing good
and
truthful could be said about old Peter DeGeer!’

“Aunt Elizabeth did know it, and it posed her, but she was all the more displeased with me for that. She vexed me so much that I came up to my room and wrote an ‘obituary poem’ about Peter, just for my own satisfaction. It is certainly great fun to write a
truthful
obituary of some one you don’t like. Not that I disliked Peter DeGeer; I just despised him as
everybody did. But Aunt Elizabeth had annoyed me, and when I am annoyed I can write very sarcastically. And again I felt that
Something
was writing through me – but a very different
Something
from the usual one – a malicious, mocking
Something
that
enjoyed
making fun of poor, lazy, shiftless, lying, silly, hypocritical, old Peter DeGeer. Ideas – words – rhymes – all seemed to drop into place while that
Something
chuckled.

“I thought the poem was so clever that I couldn’t resist the temptation to take it to school today and show it to Mr. Carpenter. I thought he would enjoy it – and I think he
did too
, in a way, but after he had read it he laid it down and looked at me.

“‘I suppose there
is
a pleasure in satirizing a failure,’ he said. ‘Poor old Peter was a failure – and he is dead – and His Maker may be merciful to him, but his fellow creatures will not. When
I
am dead, Emily, will you write like this about me? You have the power – oh, yes, it’s all here – this
is
very clever. You can paint the weakness and foolishness and wickedness of a character in a way that is positively uncanny, in a girl of your age. But – is it worth while, Emily?’

“‘No – no,’ I said. I was so ashamed and sorry that I wanted to get away and cry. It was terrible to think Mr. Carpenter imagined I would ever write so about
him
after all he has done for me.

“‘It isn’t,’ said Mr. Carpenter. ‘There is a place for satire – there are gangrenes that can only be burned out – but leave the burning to the great geniuses. It’s better to heal than hurt. We failures know that.’

“‘Oh, Mr. Carpenter!’ I began. I wanted to say
he
wasn’t a failure – I wanted to say a hundred things – but he wouldn’t let me.

“‘There – there, we won’t talk of it, Emily When
I
am dead say, “He was a failure, and none knew it more truly or felt it more bitterly than himself” Be merciful to the failures, Emily Satirise wickedness if you must – but pity weakness.’

“He stalked off then, and called school in. I’ve felt wretched ever since and I won’t sleep tonight. But here and now I record this vow, most solemnly, in my diary,
My pen shall heal, not hurt
. And I write it in italics, Early Victorian or not, because I am tremendously in earnest.