Emily Climbs/Chapter 8
Emily regretfully left the “Booke Shoppe,” where the aroma of books and new magazines was as the savour of sweet incense in her nostrils, and hastened down cold and blustery Prince Street. Whenever possible she slipped into the Booke Shoppe and took hungry dips into magazines she could not afford to buy, avid to learn what kind of stuff they published—especially poetry. She could not see that many of the verses in them were any better than some of her own, yet editors sent hers back religiously. Emily had already used a considerable portion of the American stamps she had bought with Cousin Jimmy’s dollar in paying the homeward way of her fledglings, accompanied by only the cold comfort of rejection slips. Her Owl’s Laughter had already been returned six times, but Emily had not wholly lost faith in it yet. That very morning she had dropped it again into the letter-box at the Shoppe.
“The seventh time brings luck,” she thought as she turned down the street leading to Ilse’s boarding-house. She had her examination in English at eleven o’clock and she wanted to glance over Ilse’s note-book before she went for it. The Preps were almost through their terminal examinations, taking them by fits and starts when the class-rooms were free from Seniors and Juniors—a thing that always made the Preps furious. Emily felt comfortably certain she would get her star pin. The examinations in her hardest subjects were over and she did not believe she had fallen below eighty in any of them. Today was English, in which she ought to go well over ninety. Remained only history, which she also loved. Everybody expected her to win the star pin. Cousin Jimmy was intensely excited over it, and Dean had sent her premature congratulations from the top of a pyramid, so sure was he of her success. His letter had come the previous day, along with the packet containing his Christmas gift.
“I send you a little gold necklace that was taken from the mummy of a dead princess of the nineteenth dynasty,” wrote Dean. “Her name was Mena and it said in her epitaph that she was ‘sweet of heart.’ So I think she fared well in the Hall of Judgment and that the dread old gods smiled indulgently upon her. This little amulet lay on her dead breast for thousands of years. I send it to you weighted with centuries of love. I think it must have been a love gift. Else why should it have rested on her heart all this time? It must have been her own choice. Others would have put a finer thing on the neck of a king’s daughter.”
The little trinket intrigued Emily with its charm and mystery, yet she was almost afraid of it. She gave a slight ghostly shudder as she clasped it around her slim white throat and wondered about the royal girl who had worn it in those days of a dead empire. What was its history and its secret?
Naturally Aunt Ruth had disapproved. What business had Emily to be getting Christmas presents from Jarback Priest?
“At least he might have sent you something new if he had to send anything,” she said.
“A souvenir of Cairo, made in Germany,” suggested Emily gravely.
“Something like that,” agreed Aunt Ruth unsuspiciously. “Mrs. Ayers has a handsome, gold-mounted glass paper-weight with a picture of the Sphinx in it that her brother brought her from Egypt. That battered thing looks positively cheap.”
“Cheap! Aunt Ruth, do you realise that this necklace was made by hand and worn by an Egyptian princess before the days of Moses?”
“Oh, well—if you want to believe Jarback Priest’s fairy tales,” said Aunt Ruth, much amused. “I wouldn’t wear it in public if I were you, Em’ly. The Murrays never wear shabby jewelry. You're not going to leave it on tonight, child?”
“Of course I am. The last time it was worn was probably at the court of Pharaoh in the days of the oppression. Now, it will go to Kit Barrett’s snowshoe dance. What a difference! I hope the ghost of Princess Mena won't haunt me tonight. She may resent my sacrilege—who knows? But it was not I who rifled her tomb, and somebody would have this if I didn’t—somebody who mightn’t think of the little princess at all. I’m sure she would rather that it was warm and shining about my neck than in some grim museum for thousands of curious, cold eyes to stare at. She was ‘sweet of heart,’ Dean says—she won’t grudge me her pretty pendant. Lady of Egypt, whose kingdom has been poured on the desert sands like spilled wine, I salute you across the gulf of time.”
Emily bowed deeply and waved her hand adown the vistas of dead centuries.
“Such high-falutin’ language is very foolish,” sniffed Aunt Ruth.
“Oh, most of that last sentence was a quotation from Dean’s letter,” said Emily candidly.
“Sounds like him,” was Aunt Ruth’s contemptuous agreement. “Well, I think your Venetian beads would be better than that heathenish-looking thing. Now, mind you don’t stay too late, Em’ly. Make Andrew bring you home not later than twelve.”
Emily was going with Andrew to Kitty Barrett’s dance—a privilege quite graciously accorded since Andrew was one of the elect people. Even when she did not get home until one o’clock Aunt Ruth overlooked it. But it left Emily rather sleepy for the day, especially as she had studied late the two previous nights. Aunt Ruth relaxed her rigid rules in examination time and permitted an extra allowance of candles. What she would have said had she known that Emily used some of the extra candle-light to write a poem on Shadows I do not know and cannot record. But no doubt she would have considered it an added proof of slyness. Perhaps it was sly. Remember that I am only Emily’s biographer, not her apologist.
Emily found Evelyn Blake in Ilse’s room and Evelyn Blake was secretly much annoyed because she had not been invited to the snowshoe dance and Emily Starr had. Therefore Evelyn, sitting on Ilse’s table and swinging her high, silken-sheathed instep flauntingly in the face of girls who had no silk stockings, was prepared to be disagreeable.
“I’m glad you’ve come, trusty and well-beloved,” moaned Ilse. “Evelyn has been clapper-clawing me all the morning. Perhaps she’ll whirl in at you now and give me a rest.”
“I have been telling her that she should learn to control her temper,” said Evelyn virtuously. “Don’t you agree with me, Miss Starr?”
“What have you been doing now, Ilse?” asked Emily.
“Oh, I had a large quarrel with Mrs. Adamson this morning. It was bound to come sooner or later. I’ve been good so long there was an awful lot of wickedness bottled up in me. Mary knew that, didn’t you, Mary? Mary felt quite sure an explosion was due to happen. Mrs. Adamson began it by asking disagreeable questions. She’s always doing that—isn’t she, Mary? After that she started in scolding—and finally she cried. Then I slapped her face.”
“You see,” said Evelyn, significantly.
“I couldn’t help it,” grinned Ilse. “I could have endured her impertinence and her scolding—but when she began to cry—she’s so ugly when she cries—well, I just slapped her.”
“I suppose you felt better after that,” said Emily, determined not to show any disapproval before Evelyn.
Ilse burst out laughing.
“Yes, at first. It stopped her yowling, anyway. But afterwards came remorse. I’ll apologise to her, of course. I do feel real sorry—but I’m quite likely to do it again. If Mary here weren’t so good I wouldn’t be half as bad. I have to even the balance up a bit. Mary is meek and humble and Mrs. Adamson walks all over her. You should hear her scold Mary if Mary goes out more than one evening a week.”
“She is right,” said Evelyn. “It would be much better if you went out less. You're getting talked about, Ilse.”
“You weren’t out last night, anyhow, were you, dear?” asked Ilse with another unholy grin.
Evelyn coloured and was haughtily silent. Emily buried herself in her note-book and Mary and Ilse went out. Emily wished Evelyn would go, too. But Evelyn had no intention of going.
“Why don’t you make Ilse behave herself?” she began in a hatefully confidential sort of way.
“I have no authority over Ilse,” said Emily coldly. “Besides, I don’t think she misbehaves.”
“Oh, my dear girl—why, you heard her yourself saying she slapped Mrs. Adamson.”
“Mrs. Adamson needed it. She’s an odious woman—always crying when there’s no need in the world for her to cry. There’s nothing more aggravating.”
“Well, Ilse skipped French again yesterday afternoon and went for a walk up-river with Ronnie Gibson. If she does that too often she’s going to get caught.”
“Ilse is very popular with the boys,” said Emily, who knew that Evelyn wanted to be.
“She’s popular in the wrong quarters.” Evelyn was condescending now, knowing by instinct that Emily Starr hated to be condescended to. “She always has a ruck of wild boys after her—the nice ones don’t bother with her, you notice.”
“Ronnie Gibson’s nice, isn’t he?”
“Well, what do you say to Marshall Orde?’
“Ilse has nothing to do with Marshall Orde.”
“Oh, hasn’t she! She was driving with him till twelve o’clock last Tuesday night—and he was drunk when he got the horse from the livery stable.”
“I don’t believe a word of it! Ilse never went driving with Marsh Orde.” Emily was white-lipped with indignation.
“I was told by a person who saw them. Ilse is being talked about everywhere. Perhaps you have no authority over her but surely you have some influence. Though you do foolish things yourself sometimes, don’t you? Not meaning any harm perhaps. That time you went bathing on the Blair Water sands without any clothes on, for instance? That’s known all through the school. I heard Marsh’s brother laughing about it. Now, wasn’t that foolish, my dear?”
Emily blushed with anger and shame—though quite as much over being my-deared by Evelyn Blake as anything else. That beautiful bathing by moonlight—what a thing of desecration it had been made by the world! She would not discuss it with Evelyn—she would not even tell Evelyn they had their petticoats on. Let her think what she would.
“I don’t think you quite understand some things, Miss Blake,” she said, with a certain fine, detached irony of tone and manner which made very commonplace words seem charged with meanings unutterable.
“Oh, you belong to the Chosen People, don’t you?” Evelyn laughed her malicious little laugh.
“I do,” said Emily calmly, refusing to withdraw her eyes from her note-book.
“Well, don’t get so vexed, dear. I only spoke because I thought it a pity to see poor Ilse getting in wrong everywhere. I rather like her, poor soul. And I wish she would tone down her taste in colours a bit. That scarlet evening dress she wore at the Prep concert—really, you know, it’s weird.”
“She looked like a tall golden lily in a scarlet sheath, I thought,” said Emily.
“What a loyal friend you are, dear. I wonder if Ilse would stand up for you like that. Well, I suppose I ought to let you study. You have English at ten, haven’t you? Mr. Scoville is going to watch the room—Mr. Travers is sick. Don’t you think Mr. Scoville’s hair is wonderful? Speaking of hair, dear, why don’t you dress yours low enough at the sides to hide your ears—the tips, anyway? I think it would become you so much better.”
Emily decided that if Evelyn Blake called her “dear” again she would throw an ink-bottle at her. Why didn’t she go away and let her study?
Evelyn had another shot in her locker.
“That callow young friend of yours from Stovepipe Town has been trying to get into The Quill. He sent in a patriotic poem. Tom showed it to me. It was a scream. One line especially was delicious—‘Canada, like a maiden, welcomes back her sons.’ You should have heard Tom howl.”
Emily could hardly help smiling herself, though she was horribly annoyed with Perry for making such a target of himself. Why couldn’t he learn his limitations and understand that the slopes of Parnassus were not for him?
“I do not think the editor of The Quill has any business to show rejected contributions to outsiders,” she said coldly.
“Oh, Tom doesn’t look on me as an outsider. And that really was too good to keep. Well, I think I'll run down to the Shoppe.”
Emily sighed with relief as Evelyn took her departure. Presently Ilse returned.
“Evelyn gone? Sweet temper she was in this morning. I can’t understand what Mary sees in her. Mary’s a decent sort though she isn’t exciting.”
“Ilse,” said Emily seriously. “Were you out driving with Marsh Orde one night last week?”
Ilse stared.
“No, you dear young ass, I wasn’t. I can guess where you heard that yarn. I don’t know who the girl was.”
“But you cut French and went up-river with Ronnie Gibson?”
“Peccavi.”
“Ilse—you shouldn’t—really”
“Now, don’t make me mad, Emily!” said Ilse shortly. “You're getting too smug—something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic. I hate prunes and prisms. I’m off—I want to run round to the Shoppe before I go to the school.”
Ilse gathered up her books pettishly and flounced out. Emily yawned and decided she was through with the note-book. She had half an hour yet before it was necessary to go to the school. She would lie down on Ilse’s bed for just a moment.
It seemed the next minute when she found herself sitting up, staring with dismayed face at Mary Carswell’s clock. Five minute to eleven—five minutes to cover a quarter of a mile and be at her desk for examination. Emily flung on coat and cap, caught up her note-books and fled. She arrived at the High School out of breath, with a nasty subconsciousness that people had looked at her queerly as she tore through the streets, hung up her wraps without a glance at the mirror, and hurried into the class-room.
A stare of amazement followed by a ripple of laughter went over the room. Mr. Scoville, tall, slim, elegant, was giving out the examination papers. He laid one down before Emily and said gravely,
“Did you look in your mirror before you came to class, Miss Starr?”
“No,” said Emily resentfully, sensing something fearfully wrong somewhere.
“I—think—I would look—now—if I were—you.”’ Mr. Scoville seemed to be speaking with difficulty.
Emily got up and went back to the girls’ dressing-room. She met Principal Hardy in the Hall and Principal Hardy stared at her. Why Principal Hardy stared—why the Preps had laughed—Emily understood when she confronted the dressing-room looking-glass.
Drawn skilfully and blackly across her upper lip and her cheeks was a moustache—a flamboyant, very black moustache, with fantastically curled ends. For a moment Emily gaped at herself in blank horror—why—what—who had done it?
She whirled furiously about. Evelyn Blake had just entered the room.
“You—you did this!” panted Emily.
Evelyn stared for a moment—then went off into a peal of laughter.
“Emily Starr! You look like a nightmare. Do you mean to tell me you went into class with that on your face?”
Emily clenched her hands.
“You did it,” she said again.
Evelyn drew herself up very haughtily.
“Really, Miss Starr, I hope you don’t think I’d stoop to such a trick. I suppose your dear friend Ilse thought she’d play a joke on you—she was chuckling over something when she came in a few minutes ago.”
“Ilse never did it,’ cried Emily.
Evelyn shrugged her shoulders.
“I’d wash it off first and find out who did it afterward,” she said with a twitching face as she went out.
Emily, trembling from head to foot with anger, shame and the most intense humiliation she had ever suffered, washed the moustache off her face. Her first impulse was to go home—she could not face that roomful of Preps again. Then she set her teeth and went back, holding her black head very high as she walked down the aisle to her desk. Her face was burning and her spirit was aflame. In the corner she saw Ilse’s yellow head bent over her paper. The others were smiling and tittering. Mr. Scoville was insultingly grave. Emily took up her pen but her hand shook over her paper.
If she could have had a good cry there and then her shame and anger would have found a saving vent. But that was impossible. She would not cry. She would not let them see the depths of her humiliation. If Emily could have laughed off the malicious joke it would have been better for her. Being Emily—and being one of the proud Murrays—she could not. She resented the indignity to the very core of her passionate soul.
As far as the English paper was concerned she might almost as well have gone home. She had lost twenty minutes already. It was ten minutes more before she could steady her hand sufficiently to write. Her thoughts she could not command at all. The paper was a difficult one, as Mr. Travers’ papers always were. Her mind seemed a chaos of jostling ideas spinning around a fixed point of torturing shame. When she handed in her paper and left the class-room she knew she had lost her star. That paper would be no more than a pass, if it were that. But in her turmoil of feeling she did not care. She hurried home to her unfriendly room, thankful that Aunt Ruth was out, threw herself on the bed and wept. She felt sore, beaten, bruised—and under all her pain was a horrible, teasing little doubt.
Did Ilse do it—no, she didn’t—she couldn’t have. Who then? Mary? The idea was absurd. It must have been Evelyn—Evelyn had come back and played that cruel trick on her out of spite and pique. Yet she had denied it, with seemingly insulted indignation, and eyes that were perhaps a shade too innocent. What had Ilse said—“You are getting positively smug—something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic.” Had Ilse taken that abominable way of curing her?
“No—no—no!” Emily sobbed fiercely into her pillow. But the doubt persisted.
Aunt Ruth had no doubt. Aunt Ruth was calling on her friend, Mrs. Ball, and her friend, Mrs. Ball, had a daughter who was a Prep. Anita Ball came home with the tale that had been well laughed over in Prep and Junior and Senior classes, and Anita Ball said that Evelyn Blake had said Ilse Burnley had done the deed.
“Well,” said Aunt Ruth, invading Emily’s room on her return home, “I hear Ilse Burnley decorated you beautifully today. I hope you realise what she is now.”
“Ilse didn’t do it,” said Emily.
“Have you asked her?”
“No. I wouldn’t insult her with such a question.”
“Well, I believe she did do it. And she is not to come here again. Understand that.”
“Aunt Ruth”
“You've heard what I said, Em’ly. Ilse Burnley is no fit associate for you. I’ve heard too many tales about her lately. But this is unpardonable.”
“Aunt Ruth, if I ask Ilse if she did it and she says she did not, won’t you believe her?”
“No, I wouldn’t believe any girl brought up as Ilse Burnley was. It’s my belief she’d do anything and say anything. Don’t let me see her in my house again.”
Emily stood up and tried to summon the Murray look into a face distorted by weeping.
“Of course, Aunt Ruth,” she said coldly, “I won’t bring Ilse here if she is not welcome. But I shall go to see her. And if you forbid me—I’ll—I’ll go home to New Moon. I feel as if I wanted to go anyhow now. Only—I won’t let Evelyn Blake drive me away.”
Aunt Ruth knew quite well that the New Moon folks would not agree to a complete divorce between Emily and Ilse. They were too good friends with the doctor for that. Mrs. Dutton had never liked Dr. Burnley. She had to be content with the excuse for keeping Ilse away from her house, for which she had long hankered. Her own annoyance over the matter was not born out of any sympathy with Emily but solely from anger at a Murray being made ridiculous.
“I would have thought you’d had enough of going to see Ilse. As for Evelyn Blake, she is too clever and sensible a girl to have played a silly trick like that. I know the Blakes. They are an excellent family and Evelyn’s father is well-to-do. Now, stop crying. A pretty face you’ve got. What sense is there in crying?”
“None at all,” agreed Emily drearily, “only I can’t help it. I can’t bear to be made ridiculous. I can endure anything but that. Oh, Aunt Ruth, please leave me alone. I can’t eat any supper.”
“You've got yourself all worked up—Starr-like. We Murrays conceal our feelings.”
“I don’t believe you’ve any to conceal—some of you,” thought Emily rebelliously.
“Keep away from Ilse Burnley after this, and you'll not be so likely to be publicly disgraced,” was Aunt Ruth’s parting advice.
Emily, after a sleepless night—during which it seemed to her that if she couldn’t push that ceiling farther from her face she would surely smother—went to see Ilse the next day and reluctantly told her what Aunt Ruth had said. Ilse was furious—but Emily noted with a pang that she did not assert any innocence of the crayon trick.
“Ilse, you—you didn’t really do that?” she faltered. She knew Ilse hadn’t—she was sure of it—but she wanted to hear her say so. To her surprise, a sudden blush swept over Ilse’s face.
“Is thy servant a dog?” she said, rather confusedly. It was very unlike straightforward, outspoken Ilse to be so confused. She turned her face away and began fumbling aimlessly with her book-bag. “You don’t suppose I’d do anything like that to you, Emily?”
“No, of course not,” said Emily, slowly. The subject was dropped. But the little doubt and distrust at the bottom of Emily’s mind came out of its lurking-place and declared itself. Even yet she couldn’t believe Ilse could do such a thing—and lie about it afterward. But why was she so confused and shamefaced? Would not an innocent Ilse have stormed about according to form, berated Emily, roundly, for mere suspicion, and aired the subject generally until all the venom had been blown out of it?
It was not referred to again. But the shadow was there and spoiled, to a certain extent, the Christmas holidays at New Moon. Outwardly, the girls were the friends they had always been, but Emily was acutely conscious of a sudden rift between them. Strive as she would she could not bridge it. The seeming unconsciousness of any such severance on Ilse’s part served to deepen it. Hadn’t Ilse cared enough for her and her friendship to feel the chill that had come over it? Could she be so shallow and indifferent as not to perceive it? Emily brooded and grew morbid over it. A thing like that—a dim, poisonous thing that lurked in shadow and dared not come into the open—always played havoc with her sensitive and passionate temperament. No open quarrel with Ilse could have affected her like this—she had quarrelled with Ilse scores of times and made up the next minute with no bitterness or backward glance. This was different. The more Emily brooded over it the more monstrous it grew. She was unhappy, absent, restless. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy noticed it but attributed it to her disappointment over the star pin. She had told them she was sure she would not win. But Emily had ceased to care about the star pin.
To be sure, she had a bad time of it, when she went back to High School and the examination results were announced. She was not one of the envied four who flaunted star pins and Aunt Ruth rubbed it in for weeks. Aunt Ruth felt that she had lost family prestige in Emily’s failure and she was very bitter about it. Altogether Emily felt that the New Year had come in very inauspiciously for her. The first month of it was a time she never liked to recall. She was very lonely. Ilse could not come to see her, and though she made herself go to see Ilse the subtle little rift between them was slowly widening. Ilse still gave no sign of feeling it; but then, somehow, she was seldom alone with Ilse now. The room was always filled with girls, and there was a good deal of noise and laughter and jokes and school gossip—all very harmless and even jolly, but very different from the old intimacy and understanding comradeship with Ilse. Formerly it used to be a chummy jest between them that they could walk or sit for hours together and say no word and yet feel that they had had a splendid time. There were no such silences now: when they did happen to be alone together they both chattered gaily and shallowly, as if each were secretly afraid that there might come a moment for the silence that betrays.
Emily’s heart ached over their lost friendship: every night her pillow was wet with tears. Yet there was nothing she could do: she could not, try as she would, banish the doubt that possessed her. She made many an honest effort to do so. She told herself every day that Ilse Burnley could never have played that trick—that she was constitutionally incapable of it—and went straightway to Ilse with the firm determination to be just what she had always been to her. With the result that she was unnaturally cordial and friendly—even gushing—and no more like her real self than she was like Evelyn Blake. Ilse was just as cordial and friendly—and the rift was wider still.
“Ilse never goes into a tantrum with me now,” Emily reflected sadly.
It was quite true. Ilse was always good-tempered with Emily, presenting a baffling front of politeness unbroken by a single flash of her old wild spirit. Emily felt that nothing could have been more welcome than one of Ilse’s stormy rages. It might break the ice that was forming so relentlessly between them, and release the pent-up flood of old affection.
One of the keenest stings in the situation was that. Evelyn Blake was quite well aware of the state of affairs between Ilse and Emily. The mockery of her long brown eyes and the hidden sneer in her casual sentences betrayed her knowledge and her enjoyment of it. This was gall and wormwood to Emily, who felt that she had no defence against it. Evelyn was a girl whom intimacies between other girls annoyed, and the friendship between. Ilse and Emily had annoyed her especially. It had been so complete—so absorbing. There had been no place in it for any one else. And Evelyn did not like to feel that she was barred out—that there was some garden enclosed, into which she might not enter. She was therefore hugely delighted to think that this vexingly beautiful friendship between two girls she secretly hated was at an end.