Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"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 minutes 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 to-day. I hope you realize 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.