Emily of New Moon (9 page)

Trial by Fire

Aunt Elizabeth drove Emily to school the next morning. Aunt Laura had thought that, since there was only a month before vacation, it was not worth while for Emily to “start school.” But Aunt Elizabeth did not yet feel comfortable with a small niece skipping around New Moon, poking into everything insatiably, and was resolved that Emily must go to school to get her out of the way. Emily herself, always avid for new experiences, was quite keen to go, but for all that she was seething with rebellion as they drove along. Aunt Elizabeth had produced a terrible gingham apron and an equally terrible gingham sunbonnet from somewhere in the New Moon garret, and made Emily put them on. The apron was a long sack-like garment, high in the neck, with
sleeves
. Those sleeves were the crowning indignity. Emily had never seen any little girl wearing an apron with sleeves. She rebelled to the point of tears over wearing it, but Aunt Elizabeth was not going to have any nonsense. Emily saw the Murray look then; and when she saw it she buttoned her rebellious feelings tightly up in her soul and let Aunt Elizabeth put the apron on her.

“It was one of your mother's aprons when she was a little girl, Emily,” said Aunt Laura comfortingly, and rather sentimentally.

“Then,” said Emily, uncomforted and unsentimental, “I don't wonder she ran away with Father when she grew up.”

Aunt Elizabeth finished buttoning the apron and gave Emily a none too gentle push away from her.

“Put on your sunbonnet,” she ordered.

“Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, don't make me wear that horrid thing.”

Aunt Elizabeth, wasting no further words, picked up the bonnet and tied it on Emily's head. Emily had to yield. But from the depths of the sunbonnet issued a voice, defiant though tremulous.

“Anyway, Aunt Elizabeth, you can't boss God,” it said.

Aunt Elizabeth was too cross to speak all the way to the schoolhouse. She introduced Emily to Miss Brownell, and drove away. School was already “in,” so Emily hung her sunbonnet on the porch nail and went to the desk Miss Brownell assigned her. She had already made up her mind that she did not like Miss Brownell and never would like her.

Miss Brownell had the reputation in Blair Water of being a fine teacher—due mainly to the fact that she was a strict disciplinarian and kept excellent “order.” She was a thin, middle-aged person with a colorless face, prominent teeth, most of which she showed when she laughed, and cold, watchful gray eyes—colder even than Aunt Ruth's. Emily felt as if those merciless agate eyes saw clean through her to the core of her sensitive little soul. Emily could be fearless enough on occasion; but in the presence of a nature which she instinctively felt to be hostile to hers she shrank away in something that was more repulsion than fear.

She was a target for curious glances all the morning. The Blair Water school was large and there were at least twenty little girls of about her own age. Emily looked back curiously at them all and thought the way they whispered to each other behind hands and books when they looked at her very ill-mannered. She felt suddenly unhappy and homesick and lonesome—she wanted her father and her old home and the dear things she loved.

“The New Moon girl is crying,” whispered a black-eyed girl across the aisle. And then came a cruel little giggle.

“What is the matter with you, Emily?” said Miss Brownell suddenly and accusingly.

Emily was silent. She could not tell Miss Brownell what was the matter with her—especially when Miss Brownell used such a tone.

“When I ask one of my pupils a question, Emily, I am accustomed to having an answer. Why are you crying?”

There was another giggle from across the aisle. Emily lifted miserable eyes and in her extremity fell back on a phrase of her father's.

“It is a matter that concerns only myself,” she said.

A red spot suddenly appeared in Miss Brownell's sallow cheek. Her eyes gleamed with cold fire.

“You will remain in during recess as a punishment for your impertinence,” she said—but she left Emily alone the rest of the day.

Emily did not in the least mind staying in at recess, for, acutely sensitive to her environment as she was, she realized that, for some reason she could not fathom, the atmosphere of the school was antagonistic. The glances cast at her were not only curious but ill-natured. She did not want to go out to the playground with those girls. She did not want to go to school in Blair Water. But she would not cry any more. She sat erect and kept her eyes on her book. Suddenly a soft, malignant hiss came across the aisle.

“Miss Pridey—Miss Pridey!”

Emily looked across at the girl. Large, steady, purplish-gray eyes gazed into beady, twinkling, black ones—gazed unquailingly—with something in them that cowed and compelled. The black eyes wavered and fell, their owner covering her retreat with another giggle and toss of her short braid of hair.

“I can master
her
,” thought Emily, with a thrill of triumph.

But there is strength in numbers and at noon hour Emily found herself standing alone on the playground facing a crowd of unfriendly faces. Children can be the most cruel creatures alive. They have the herd instinct of prejudice against any outsider, and they are merciless in its indulgence. Emily was a stranger and one of the proud Murrays—two counts against her. And there was about her, small and ginghamed and sunbonneted as she was, a certain reserve and dignity and fineness that they resented. And they resented the level way she looked at them, with that disdainful face under cloudy black hair, instead of being shy and drooping as became an interloper on probation.

“You are a proud one,” said Black-eyes. “Oh, my, you may have buttoned boots, but you are living on charity.”

Emily had not wanted to put on the buttoned boots. She wanted to go barefoot as she had always done in summer. But Aunt Elizabeth had told her that no child from New Moon had ever gone barefoot to school.

“Oh, just look at the baby apron,” laughed another girl, with a head of chestnut curls.

Now Emily flushed. This was indeed the vulnerable point in her armor. Delighted at her success in drawing blood the curled one tried again.

“Is that your grandmother's sunbonnet?”

There was a chorus of giggles.

“Oh, she wears a sunbonnet to save her complexion,” said a bigger girl. “That's the Murray pride. The Murrays are rotten with pride, my mother says.”

“You're awful ugly,” said a fat, squat little miss, nearly as broad as she was long. “Your ears look like a cat's.”

“You needn't be so proud,” said Black-eyes. “Your kitchen ceiling isn't plastered even.”

“And your Cousin Jimmy is an idiot,” said Chestnut-curls.

“He isn't!” cried Emily. “He has more sense than any of you. You can say what you like about me but you are not going to
insult
my
family
. If you say one more word about them I'll look you over with the evil eye.”

Nobody understood what this threat meant, but that made it all the more effective. It produced a brief silence. Then the baiting began again in a different form.

“Can you sing?” asked a thin, freckled girl, who yet contrived to be very pretty in spite of thinness and freckles.

“No,” said Emily.

“Can you dance?”

“No.”

“Can you sew?”

“No.”

“Can you cook?”

“No.”

“Can you knit lace?”

“No.”

“Can you crochet?”

“No.”

“Then what
can
you do?” said the freckled-one in a contemptuous tone.

“I can write poetry,” said Emily, without in the least meaning to say it. But at that instant she knew she
could
write poetry. And with this queer unreasonable conviction came—the flash! Right there, surrounded by hostility and suspicion, fighting alone for her standing, without backing or advantage, came the wonderful moment when soul seemed to cast aside the bonds of flesh and spring upward to the stars. The rapture and delight on Emily's face amazed and enraged her foes. They thought it a manifestation of Murray pride in an uncommon accomplishment.

“You lie,” said Black-eyes bluntly.

“A Starr does not lie,” retorted Emily. The flash was gone, but its uplift remained. She looked them all over with a cool detachment that quelled them temporarily.

“Why don't you like me?” she asked directly.

There was no reply. Emily looked straight at Chestnut-curls and repeated her question. Chestnut-curls felt herself compelled to answer it.

“Because you ain't a bit like us,” she muttered.

“I wouldn't want to be,” said Emily scornfully.

“Oh my, you are one of the Chosen People,” mocked Black-eyes.

“Of course I am,” retorted Emily.

She walked away to the schoolhouse, conqueror in that battle.

But the forces against her were not so easily cowed. There was much whispering and plotting after she had gone in, a conference with some of the boys, and a handing over of bedizened pencils and chews of gum for value received.

An agreeable sense of victory and the afterglow of the flash carried Emily through the afternoon in spite of the fact that Miss Brownell ridiculed her for her mistakes in spelling. Miss Brownell was very fond of ridiculing her pupils. All the girls in the class giggled except one who had not been there in the morning and was consequently at the tail. Emily had been wondering who she was. She was as unlike the rest of the girls as Emily herself, but in a totally different style. She was tall, oddly dressed in an overlong dress of faded, striped print, and barefooted. Her thick hair, cut short, fluffed out all around her head in a bushy wave that seemed to be of brilliant spun gold; and her glowing eyes were of a brown so light and translucent as to be almost amber. Her mouth was large, and she had a saucy, pronounced chin. Pretty she might not be called, but her face was so vivid and mobile that Emily could not drag her fascinated eyes from it. And she was the only girl in class who did not, sometime through the lesson, get a barb of sarcasm from Miss Brownell, though she made as many mistakes as the rest of them.

At recess one of the girls came up to Emily with a box in her hand. Emily knew that she was Rhoda Stuart and thought her very pretty and sweet. Rhoda had been in the crowd around her at the noon hour but she had not said anything. She was dressed in a crispy pink gingham; she had smooth, lustrous braids of sugar-brown hair, big blue eyes, a rose-bud mouth, doll-like features and a sweet voice. If Miss Brownell could be said to have a favorite it was Rhoda Stuart, and she seemed generally popular in her own set and much petted by the older girls.

“Here is a present for you,” she said sweetly.

Emily took the box unsuspectingly. Rhoda's smile would have disarmed any suspicion. For a moment Emily was happily anticipant as she removed the cover. Then with a shriek she flung the box from her, and stood pale and trembling from head to foot. There was a snake in the box—whether dead or alive she did not know and did not care. For any snake Emily had a horror and repulsion she could not overcome. The very sight of one almost paralyzed her.

A chorus of giggles ran around the porch.

“Before I'd be so scared of an old dead snake!” scoffed Black-eyes.

“Can you write poetry about
that
?” giggled Chestnut-curls.

“I
hate
you—I hate you!” cried Emily. “You are mean, hateful girls!”

“Calling names isn't ladylike,” said the Freckled-one. “I thought a Murray would be too grand for that.”

“If you come to school tomorrow,
Miss
Starr,” said Black-eyes deliberately, “we are going to take that snake and put it around your neck.”

“Let me see you do it!” cried a clear, ringing voice. Into their midst with a bound came the girl with amber eyes and short hair. “Just let me
see
you do it, Jennie Strang!”

“This isn't any of your business, Ilse Burnley,” muttered Jennie, sullenly.

“Oh, isn't it? Don't you sass me, Piggy-eyes.” Ilse walked up to the retreating Jennie and shook a sunburned fist in her face. “If I catch you teasing Emily Starr tomorrow with that snake again I'll take
it
by the tail and
you
by
your
tail, and slash you across the face with it. Mind that, Piggy-eyes. Now you go and pick up that precious snake of yours and throw it down on the ash pile.”

Jennie actually went and did it. Ilse faced the others.

“Clear out, all of you, and leave the New Moon girl alone after this,” she said. “If I hear of any more meddling and sneaking I'll slit your throats, and rip out your hearts and tear your eyes out. Yes, and I'll cut off your ears and wear them pinned on my dress!”

Cowed by these ferocious threats, or by something in Ilse's personality, Emily's persecutors drifted away. Ilse turned to Emily.

“Don't mind them,” she said contemptuously. “They're jealous of you, that's all—jealous because you live at New Moon and ride in a fringed-top buggy and wear buttoned boots. You smack their mugs if they give you any more of their jaw.”

Ilse vaulted the fence and tore off into the maple bush without another glance at Emily. Only Rhoda Stuart remained.

“Emily, I'm awful sorry,” she said, rolling her big blue eyes appealingly. “I didn't know there was a snake in that box, cross my heart I didn't. The girls just told me it was a present for you. You're not mad at me, are you? Because I like you.”

Emily had been “mad” and hurt and outraged. But this little bit of friendliness melted her instantly. In a moment she and Rhoda had their arms around each other, parading across the playground.

“I'm going to ask Miss Brownell to let you sit with me,” said Rhoda. “I used to sit with Annie Gregg but she's moved away. You'd like to sit with me, wouldn't you?”