The bang was just about at its best when the letter came from Great-Aunt Nancy.
It was written to Aunt Laura--Great-Aunt Nancy and Aunt Elizabeth were not over-fond of each other--and in it Great-Aunt Nancy said, "If you have a photograph of that child Emily send it along. I don't want to see her; she's stupid--I know she's stupid. But I want to see what Juliet's child looks like. Also the child of that fascinating young man, Douglas Starr. He was fascinating. What fools you all were to make such a fuss about Juliet running away with him. If you and Elizabeth had both run away with somebody in your running days it would have been better for you."
This letter was not shown to Emily. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura had a long secret consultation and then Emily was told that she was to be taken to Shrewsbury to have her picture taken for Aunt Nancy. Emily was much excited over this. She was dressed in her blue cashmere and Aunt Laura put a point lace collar on it and hung her Venetian beads over it. And new buttoned boots were got for the occasion.
"I'm so glad this has happened while I still have my bang," thought Emily happily.
But in the photographer's dressing-room, Aunt Elizabeth grimly proceeded to brush back her bang and pin it with hairpins.
"Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, let me have it down," Emily begged. "Just for the picture. After this I'll brush it back."
Aunt Elizabeth was inexorable. The bang was brushed back and the photograph taken. When Aunt Elizabeth saw the finished result she was satisfied.
"She looks sulky; but she is neat; and there is a resemblance to the Murrays I never noticed before," she told Aunt Laura. "That will please Aunt Nancy. She is very clannish under all her oddness."
Emily would have liked to throw every one of the photographs in the fire. She hated them. They made her look hideous. Her face seemed to be all forehead. If they sent Aunt Nancy that Aunt Nancy would think her stupider than ever. When Aunt Elizabeth did the photograph up in cardboard and told Emily to take it to the office Emily already knew what she meant to do. She went straight to the garret and took out of her box the water-color Teddy had made of her. It was just the same size as the photograph. Emily removed the latter from its wrappings, spurning it aside with her foot.
"That isn't me," she said. "I looked sulky because I felt sulky about the bang. But I hardly ever look sulky, so it isn't fair."
She wrapped Teddy's sketch up in the cardboard and then sat down and wrote a letter.
Dear Great-Aunt Nancy:
Aunt Elizabeth had my picture taken to send you but I don't like it because it makes me look too ugly and I am putting another picture in instead. An artist friend made it for me. It is just like me when I'm smiling and have a bang. I am only lending it to you, not giving it, because I valew it very highly.
Your obedient grand niece,
Emily Byrd Starr.
P.S. I am not so stupid as you think.
E. B. S.
P.S. No. 2. I am not stupid at all.
Emily put her letter in with the picture--thereby unconsciously cheating the post-office--and slipped out of the house to mail it. Once it was safely in the post-office she drew a breath of relief. She found the walk home very enjoyable. It was a bland day in early April and spring was looking at you round the corners. The Wind Woman was laughing and whistling over the wet sweet fields; freebooting crows held conferences in the tree tops; little pools of sunshine lay in the mossy hollows; the sea was a blaze of sapphire beyond the golden dunes; the maples in Lofty John's bush were talking about red buds. Everything Emily had ever read of dream and myth and legend seemed a part of the charm of that bush. She was filled to her finger-tips with a rapture of living.
"Oh, I smell spring!" she cried as she danced along the brook path.
Then she began to compose a poem on it. Everybody who has ever lived in the world and could string two rhymes together has written a poem on spring. It is the most be-rhymed subject in the world--and always will be, because it is poetry incarnate itself. You can never be a real poet if you haven't made at least one poem about spring.
Emily was wondering whether she would have elves dancing on the brookside by moonlight, or pixies sleeping in a bed of ferns in her poem, when something confronted her at a bend in the path which was neither elf nor pixy, but seemed odd and weird enough to belong to some of the tribes of Little People. Was it a witch? Or an elderly fay of evil intentions--the bad fairy of all christening tales?
"I'm the b'y's Aunt Tom," said the appearance, seeing that Emily was too amazed to do anything but stand and stare.
"Oh!" Emily gasped in relief. She was no longer frightened. But what a very peculiar looking lady Perry's Aunt Tom was. Old--so old that it seemed quite impossible that she could ever have been young; a bright red hood over crone-like, fluttering gray locks; a little face seamed by a thousand fine, criss-cross wrinkles; a long nose with a knob on the end of it; little twinkling, eager, gray eyes under bristly brows; a ragged man's coat covering her from neck to feet; a basket in one hand and a black knobby stick in the other.
"Staring wasn't thought good breeding in my time," said Aunt Tom.
"Oh!" said Emily again. "Excuse me--How do you do!" she added, with a vague grasp after her manners.
"Polite--and not too proud," said Aunt Tom, peering curiously at her. "I've been up to the big house with a pair of socks for the b'y but 'twas yourself I wanted to see."
"Me?" said Emily blankly.
"Yis. The b'y has been talking a bit of you and a plan kem into my head. Thinks I to myself it's no bad notion. But I'll make sure before I waste my bit o' money. Emily Byrd Starr is your name and Murray is your nature. If I give the b'y an eddication will ye marry him when ye grow up?"
"Me!" said Emily again. It seemed to be all she could say. Was she dreaming? She must be.
"Yis--you. You're half Murray and it'll be a great step up f'r the b'y. He's smart and he'll be a rich man some day and boss the country. But divil a cent will I spend on him unless you promise."
"Aunt Elizabeth wouldn't let me," cried Emily, too frightened of this odd old body to refuse on her own account.
"If you've got any Murray in you you'll do your own choosing," said Aunt Tom, thrusting her face so close to Emily's that her bushy eyebrows tickled Emily's nose. "Say you'll marry the b'y and to college he goes."
Emily seemed to be rendered speechless. She could think of nothing to say--oh, if she could only wake up! She could not even run.
"Say it!" insisted Aunt Tom, thumping her stick sharply on a stone in the path.
Emily was so horrified that she might have said something--anything--to escape. But at this moment Perry bounded out of the spruce copse, his face white with rage, and seized his Aunt Tom most disrespectfully by the shoulder.
"You go home!" he said furiously.
"Now, b'y dear," quavered Aunt Tom deprecatingly. "I was only trying to do you a good turn. I was asking her to marry ye after a bit an--"
"I'll do my own asking!" Perry was angrier than ever. "You've likely spoiled everything. Go home--go home, I say!"
Aunt Tom hobbled off muttering, "Then I'll know better than to waste me bit o' money. No Murray, no money, me b'y."
When she had disappeared down the brook path Perry turned to Emily. From white he had gone very red.
"Don't mind her--she's cracked," he said. "Of course, when I grow up I mean to ask you to marry me but--"
"I couldn't--Aunt Elizabeth--"
"Oh, she will then. I'm going to be premier of Canada some day."
"But I wouldn't want--I'm sure I wouldn't--"
"You will when you grow up. Ilse is better looking of course, and I don't know why I like you best but I do."
"Don't you ever talk to me like this again!" commanded Emily, beginning to recover her dignity.
"Oh, I won't--not till we grow up. I'm as ashamed of it as you are," said Perry with a sheepish grin. "Only I had to say something after Aunt Tom butted in like that. I ain't to blame for it so don't you hold it against me. But just you r
emember that I'm going to ask you some day. And I believe Teddy Kent is too."
Emily was walking haughtily away but she turned at this to say coolly over her shoulder,
"If he does I'll marry him."
"If you do I'll knock his head off," shouted Perry in a prompt rage.
But Emily walked steadily on home and went to the garret to think things over.
"It has been romantic but not comfortable," was her conclusion. And that particular poem on spring was never finished.
CHAPTER 22
Wyther Grange
No reply or acknowledgment came from Great-Aunt Nancy Priest regarding Emily's picture. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura, knowing Great-Aunt Nancy's ways tolerably well, were not surprised at this, but Emily felt rather worried over it. Perhaps Great-Aunt Nancy did not approve of what she had done; or perhaps she still thought her too stupid to bother with.
Emily did not like to lie under the imputation of stupidity. She wrote a scathing epistle to Great-Aunt Nancy on a letter-bill in which she did not mince her opinions as to that ancient lady's knowledge of the rules of epistolary etiquette; the letter was folded up and stowed away on the little shelf under the sofa but it served its purpose in blowing off steam and Emily had ceased to think about the matter when a letter came from Great-Aunt Nancy in July.
Elizabeth and Laura talked the matter over in the cookhouse, forgetful or ignorant of the fact that Emily was sitting on the kitchen doorstep just outside. Emily was imagining herself attending a drawing-room of Queen Victoria. Robed in white, with ostrich plumes, veil, and court train, she had just bent to kiss the Queen's hand when Aunt Elizabeth's voice shattered her dream as a pebble thrown into a pool scatters the fairy reflection.
"What is your opinion, Laura," Aunt Elizabeth was saying, "of letting Emily visit Aunt Nancy?"
Emily pricked up her ears. What was in the wind now?
"From her letter she seems very anxious to have the child," said Laura.
Elizabeth sniffed.
"A whim--a whim. You know what her whims are. Likely by the time Emily got there she'd be quite over it and have no use for her."
"Yes, but on the other hand if we don't let her go she will be dreadfully offended and never forgive us--or Emily. Emily should have her chance."
"I don't know that her chance is worth much. If Aunt Nancy really has any money beyond her annuity--and that's what neither you nor I nor any living soul knows, unless it's Caroline--she'll likely leave it all to some of the Priests--Leslie Priest's a favorite of hers, I understand. Aunt Nancy always liked her husband's family better than her own, even though she's always slurring at them. Still--she might take a fancy to Emily--they're both so odd they might suit each other--but you know the way she talks--she and that abominable old Caroline."
"Emily is too young to understand," said Aunt Laura.
"I understand more than you think," cried Emily indignantly.
Aunt Elizabeth jerked open the cookhouse door.
"Emily Starr, haven't you learned by this time not to listen?"
"I wasn't listening. I thought you knew I was sitting here--I can't help my ears hearing. Why didn't you whisper? When you whisper I know you're talking secrets and I don't try to hear them. Am I going to Great-Aunt Nancy's for a visit?"
"We haven't decided," said Aunt Elizabeth coldly, and that was all the satisfaction Emily got for a week. She hardly knew herself whether she wanted to go or not. Aunt Elizabeth had begun making cheese--New Moon was noted for its cheeses--and Emily found the whole process absorbing, from the time the rennet was put in the warm new milk till the white curds were packed away in the hoop and put under the press in the old orchard, with the big, round, gray "cheese" stone to weight it down as it had weighed down New Moon cheeses for a hundred years. And then she and Ilse and Teddy and Perry were absorbed heart and soul in "playing out" the "Midsummer Night's Dream" in Lofty John's bush and it was very fascinating. When they entered Lofty John's bush they went out of the realm of daylight and things known into the realm of twilight and mystery and enchantment. Teddy had painted wonderful scenery on old boards and pieces of sails, which Perry had got at the Harbor. Ilse had fashioned delightful fairy wings from tissue paper and tinsel, and Perry had made an ass's head for Bottom out of an old calf-skin that was very realistic. Emily had toiled happily for many weeks copying out the different parts and adapting them to circumstances. She had "cut" the play after a fashion that would have harrowed Shakespeare's soul but after all the result was quite pretty and coherent. It did not worry them that four small actors had to take six times as many parts. Emily was Titania and Hermia and a job lot of fairies besides, Ilse was Hippolyta and Helena, plus some more fairies, and the boys were anything that the dialogue required. Aunt Elizabeth knew nothing of it all; she would promptly have put a stop to the whole thing, for she thought play-acting exceedingly wicked; but Aunt Laura was privy to the plot, and Cousin Jimmy and Lofty John had already attended a moonlight rehearsal.
To go away and leave all this, even for a time, would be a hard wrench, but on the other hand Emily had a burning curiosity to see Great-Aunt Nancy and Wyther Grange, her quaint, old house at Priest Pond with the famous stone dogs on the gateposts. On the whole, she thought she would like to go; and when she saw Aunt Laura doing up her starched white petticoats and Aunt Elizabeth grimly dusting off a small, black, nail-studded trunk in the garret she knew, before she was told, that the visit to Priest Pond was going to come off; so she took out the letter she had written to Aunt Nancy and added an apologetic postscript.
Ilse chose to be disgruntled because Emily was going for a visit. In reality Ilse felt appalled at the lonely prospect of a month or more without her inseparable chum. No more jolly evenings of play-acting in Lofty John's bush, no more pungent quarrels. Besides, Ilse herself had never been anywhere for a visit in her whole life and she felt sore over this fact.
"I wouldn't go to Wyther Grange for anything," said Ilse. "It's haunted."
"'Tisn't."
"Yes! It's haunted by a ghost you can feel and hear but never see. Oh, I wouldn't be you for the world! Your Great-Aunt Nancy is an awful crank and the old woman who lives with her is a witch. She'll put a spell on you. You'll pine away and die."
"I won't--she isn't!"
"Is! Why, she makes the stone dogs on the gateposts howl every night if anyone comes near the place. They go, 'Wo-or-oo-oo.'"
Ilse was not a born elocutionist for nothing. Her "wo-or-oo-oo" was extremely gruesome. But it was daylight, and Emily was brave as a lion in daylight.
"You're jealous," she said, and walked off.
"I'm not, you blithering centipede," Ilse yelled after her. "Putting on airs because your aunt has stone dogs on her gateposts! Why, I know a woman in Shrewsbury who has dogs on her posts that are ten times stonier than your aunt's!"
But next morning Ilse was over to bid Emily good-bye and entreat her to write every week. Emily was going to drive to Priest Pond with Old Kelly. Aunt Elizabeth was to have driven her but Aunt Elizabeth was not feeling well that day and Aunt Laura could not leave her. Cousin Jimmy had to work at the hay. It looked as if she could not go, and this was rather serious, for Aunt Nancy had been told to expect her that day and Aunt Nancy did not like to be disappointed. If Emily did not turn up at Priest Pond on the day set Great-Aunt Nancy was quite capable of shutting the door in her face when she did appear and telling her to go back home. Nothing less than this conviction would have induced Aunt Elizabeth to fall in with Old Kelly's suggestion that Emily should ride to Priest Pond with him. His home was on the other side of it and he was going straight there.
Emily was quite delighted. She liked Old Kelly and thought that a drive on his fine red wagon would be quite an adventure. Her little black box was hoisted to the roof and tied there and they went clinking and glittering down the New Moon lane in fine style. The tins in the bowels of the wagon behind them rumbled like a young earthquake.
"Get up, my nag, get up," said
Old Kelly. "Sure, an' I always like to drive the pretty gurrls. An' when is the wedding to be?"
"Whose wedding?"
"The slyness av her! Your own, av coorse."
"I have no intention of being married--immediately," said Emily, in a very good imitation of Aunt Elizabeth's tone and manner.
"Sure, and ye're a chip av the ould block. Miss Elizabeth herself couldn't have said it better. Get up, my nag, get up."
"I only meant," said Emily, fearing that she had insulted Old Kelly, "that I am too young to be married."
"The younger the better--the less mischief ye'll be after working with them come-hither eyes. Get up, my nag, get up. The baste is tired. So we'll let him go at his own swate will. Here's a bag av swaties for ye. Ould Kelley always trates the ladies. Come now, tell me all about him."
"About who?"--but Emily knew quite well.
"Your beau, av coorse."
"I haven't any beau. Mr. Kelly, I wish you wouldn't talk to me about such things."
"Sure, and I won't if 'tis a sore subject. Don't ye be minding if ye haven't got one--there'll be scads av them after a while. And if the right one doesn't know what's good for him, just ye come to Ould Kelly and get some toad ointment."
Toad ointment! It sounded horrible. Emily shivered. But she would rather talk about toad ointment than beaux.
"What is that for?"
"It's a love charm," said Old Kelly mysteriously. "Put a li'l smootch on his eyelids and he's yourn for life with never a squint at any other gurrl."
"It doesn't sound very nice," said Emily. "How do you make it?"
"You bile four toads alive till they're good and soft and then mash--"
"Oh, stop, stop!" implored Emily, putting her hands to her ears. "I don't want to hear any more--you couldn't be so cruel!"
"Cruel is it? You were after eating lobsters this day that were biled alive--"
"I don't believe it. I don't. If it's true I'll never, never eat one again. Oh, Mr. Kelly, I thought you were a nice kind man--but those poor toads!"
"Gurrl dear, it was only me joke. An' you won't be nading toad ointment to win your lad's love. Wait you now--I've something in the till behind me for a prisent for you."
Old Kelly fished out a box which he put into Emily's lap. She found a dainty little hairbrush in it.