Lucy Montgomery: Emily of New Moon

"I wish you — could take me right through the door with you,” whispered Emily.

"After a little while you won't wish that. You have yet to learn how kind time is. And life has something for you — I feel it. Go forward to meet it fearlessly, dear. I know you don't feel like that just now — but you will remember my words by and by.”

"I feel just now," said Emily, who couldn't bear to hide anything from Father, "that I don't like God any more.”

Douglas Starr laughed — the laugh Emily liked best. It was such a dear laugh — she caught her breath over the dearness of it. She felt his arms tightening round her.

"Yes, you do, honey. You can't help liking God. He is Love itself, you know. You mustn't mix Him up with Ellen Greene's God, of course.”

Emily didn't know exactly what Father meant. But all at once she found that she wasn't afraid any longer — and the bitterness had gone out of her sorrow, and the unbearable pain out of her heart.

She felt as if love was all about her and around her, breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering Tenderness. One couldn't be afraid or bitter where love was — and love was everywhere. Father was going through the door — no, he was going to lift a curtain — she liked THAT thought better, because a curtain wasn't as hard and fast as a door — and he would slip into that world of which the flash had given her glimpses. He would be there in its beauty — never very far away from her. She could bear anything if she could only feel that Father wasn't very far away from her — just beyond that wavering curtain.

Douglas Starr held her until she fell asleep; and then in spite of his weakness he managed to lay her down in her little bed.

"She will love deeply — she will suffer terribly — she will have glorious moments to compensate — as I have had. As her mother's people deal with her, so may God deal with them," he murmured brokenly.

Douglas Starr lived two weeks more. In after years when the pain had gone out of their recollection, Emily thought they were the most precious of her memories. They were beautiful weeks — beautiful and not sad. And one night, when he was lying on the couch in the sitting-room, with Emily beside him in the old wing- chair, he went past the curtain — went so quietly and easily that Emily did not know he was gone until she suddenly felt the strange STILLNESS of the room — there was no breathing in it but her own.

"Father — Father!" she cried. Then she screamed for Ellen.

Ellen Greene told the Murrays when they came that Emily had behaved real well, when you took everything into account. To be sure, she had cried all night and hadn't slept a wink; none of the Maywood people who came flocking kindly in to help could comfort her; but when morning came her tears were all shed. She was pale and quiet and docile.

"That's right, now," said Ellen, "that's what comes of being properly prepared. Your pa was so mad at me for warning you that he wasn't rightly civil to me since — and him a dying man. But I don't hold any grudge against him. I did my duty. Mrs Hubbard's fixing up a black dress for you, and it'll be ready by supper-time.

Your ma's people will be here to-night, so they've telegraphed, and I'm bound they'll find you looking respectable. They're well off and they'll provide for you. Your pa hasn't left a cent but there ain't any debts, I'll say THAT for him. Have you been in to see the body?”

"Don't call him THAT," cried Emily, wincing. It was horrible to hear Father called THAT.

"Why not? If you ain't the queerest child! He makes a better- looking corpse than I thought he would, what with being so wasted and all. He was always a pretty man, though too thin.”

"Ellen Greene," said Emily, suddenly, "if you say any more of — those things — about Father, I will put the black curse on you!”

Ellen Greene stared.

"I don't know what on earth you mean. But that's no way to talk to me, after all I've done for you. You'd better not let the Murrays' hear you talking like that or they won't want much to do with you.

The black curse indeed! Well, here's gratitude!”

Emily's eyes smarted. She was just a lonely, solitary little creature and she felt very friendless. But she was not at all remorseful for what she had said to Ellen and she was not going to pretend she was.

"Come you here and help me wash these dishes," ordered Ellen.

"It'll do you good to have something to take up your mind and then you won't be after putting curses on people who have worked their fingers to the bone for you.”

Emily, with an eloquent glance at Ellen's hands, went and got a dish-towel.

"Your hands are fat and pudgy," she said. "The bones don't show at all.”

"Never mind sassing back! It's awful, with your poor pa dead in there. But if your Aunt Ruth takes you she'll soon cure you of that.”

"Is Aunt Ruth going to take me?”

"I don't know, but she ought to. She's a widow with no chick or child, and well-to-do.”

"I don't think I want Aunt Ruth to take me," said Emily, deliberately, after a moment's reflection.

"Well, YOU won't have the choosing likely. You ought to be thankful to get a home anywhere. Remember you're not of much importance.”

"I am important to myself," cried Emily proudly.

"It'll be some chore to bring YOU up," muttered Ellen. "Your Aunt Ruth is the one to do it, in my opinion. SHE won't stand no nonsense. A fine woman she is and the neatest housekeeper on P. E.

Island. You could eat off her floor.”

"I don't want to eat off her floor. I don't care if a floor is dirty as long as the tablecloth is clean.”

"Well, her tablecloths are clean too, I reckon. She's got an elegant house in Shrewsbury with bow windows and wooden lace all round the roof. It's very stylish. It would be a fine home for you. She'd learn you some sense and do you a world of good.”

"I don't want to learn sense and be done a world of good to," cried Emily with a quivering lip. "I — I want somebody to love me.”

"Well, you've got to behave yourself if you want people to like you. You're not to blame so much — your pa has spoiled you. I told him so often enough, but he just laughed. I hope he ain't sorry for it now. The fact is, Emily Starr, you're queer, and folks don't care for queer children.”

"How am I queer?" demanded Emily.

"You talk queer — and you act queer — and at times you look queer.

And you're too old for your age — though that ain't YOUR fault. It comes of never mixing with other children. I've always threaped at your father to send you to school — learning at home ain't the same thing — but he wouldn't listen to me, of course. I don't say but what you are as far along in book learning as you need to be, but what you want is to learn how to be like other children. In one way it would be a good thing if your Uncle Oliver would take you, for he's got a big family. But he's not as well off as the rest, so it ain't likely he will. Your Uncle Wallace might, seeing as he reckons himself the head of the family. He's only got a grown-up daughter. But his wife's delicate — or fancies she is.”

"I wish Aunt Laura would take me," said Emily. She remembered that Father had said Aunt Laura was something like her mother.

"Aunt Laura! SHE won't have no say in it — Elizabeth's boss at New Moon. Jimmy Murray runs the farm, but he ain't quite all there, I'm told...”

"What part of him isn't there?" asked Emily curiously.

"Laws, it's something about his mind, child. He's a bit simple — some accident or other when he was a youngster, I've heard. It addled his head, kind of. Elizabeth was mixed up in it some way — I've never heard the rights of it. I don't reckon the New Moon people will want to be bothered with you. They're awful set in their ways. You take my advice and try to please your Aunt Ruth.