The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 230
In the back of her mind Emily knew quite well that she should not be going to Lofty John’s at all. To be sure, she had never been forbidden to go — simply because it had never occurred to her aunts that an inmate of New Moon could so forget the beloved old family feud between the houses of Murray and Sullivan belonging to two generations back. It was an inheritance that any proper Murray would live up to as a matter of course. But when Emily was off with that wild little Ishmaelite of an Ilse, traditions lost their power under the allurement of Lofty John’s “reds” and “scabs.”
She wandered rather lonesomely into his workshop one September evening at twilight. She had been alone since she came from school; her aunts and Cousin Jimmy had gone to Shrewsbury, promising to be back by sunset. Ilse was away also, her father, prodded thereto by Mrs Simms, having taken her to Charlottetown to get her a winter coat. Emily liked being alone very well at first. She felt quite important over being in charge of New Moon. She ate the supper Aunt Laura had left on the cook-house dresser for her and she went into the dairy and skimmed six lovely big pans of milk. She had no business at all to do this but she had always hankered to do it and this was too good a chance to be missed. She did it beautifully and nobody ever knew — each aunt supposing the other had done it — and so she was never scolded for it. This does not point any particular moral, of course; in a proper yarn Emily should either have been found out and punished for disobedience or been driven by an uneasy conscience to confess; but I am sorry — or ought to be — to have to state that Emily’s conscience never worried her about the matter at all. Still, she was doomed to suffer enough that night from an entirely different cause, to balance all her little peccadillos.
By the time the cream was skimmed and poured into the big stone crock and well stirred — Emily didn’t forget that, either — it was after sunset and still nobody had come home. Emily didn’t like the idea of going alone into the big, dusky, echoing house; so she hied her to Lofty John’s shop, which she found unoccupied, though the plane halted midway on a board indicated that Lofty John had been working there quite recently and would probably return. Emily sat down on a round section of a huge log and looked around to see what she could get to eat. There was a row of “reds” and “scabs” clean across the side of the shop but no “sweet” among them; and Emily felt that what she needed just then was a “sweet” and nothing else.
Then she spied one — a huge one — the biggest “sweet” Emily had ever seen, all by itself on one of the steps of the stair leading up to the loft. She climbed up, possessed herself of it and ate it out of hand. She was gnawing happily at the core when Lofty John came in. He nodded to her with a seemingly careless glance around.
“Just been in to get my supper,” he said. “The wife’s away so I had to get it myself.”
He fell to planing in silence. Emily sat on the stairs, counting the seeds of the big “sweet” — you told your fortunes by the seeds — listening to the Wind Woman whistling elfishly through a knot hole in the loft, and composing a “Deskripshun of Lofty John’s Carpenter Shop By Lantern Light,” to be written later on a letter-bill. She was lost in a mental hunt for an accurate phrase to picture the absurd elongated shadow of Lofty John’s nose on the opposite wall when Lofty John whirled about, so suddenly that the shadow of his nose shot upward like a huge spear to the ceiling, and demanded in a startled voice,
“What’s become av that big sweet apple that was on that stair?”
“Why — I — I et it,” stammered Emily.
Lofty John dropped his plane, threw up his hands and looked at Emily with a horrified face.
“The saints preserve us, child. Ye never et that apple — don’t tell me ye’ve gone and et that apple!”
“Yes, I did,” said Emily uncomfortably. “I didn’t think it was any harm — I—”
“Harm! Listen to her, will you? That apple was poisoned for the rats! They’ve been plaguing me life out here and I had me mind made up to finish their fun. And now you’ve et the apple — it would kill a dozen av ye in a brace of shakes.”
Lofty John saw a white face and a gingham apron flash through the workshop and out into the dark. Emily’s first wild impulse was to get home at once — before she dropped dead. She tore across the field through the bush and the garden and dashed into the house. It was still silent and dark — nobody was home yet. Emily gave a bitter little shriek of despair — when they came they would find her stiff and cold, black in the face likely, everything in this dear world ended for her for ever, all because she had eaten an apple which she thought she was perfectly welcome to eat. It wasn’t fair — she didn’t want to die.
But she must. She only hoped desperately that some one would come before she was dead. It would be so terrible to die there all alone in that great, big, empty New Moon. She dared not try to go anywhere for help. It was too dark now and she would likely drop dead on the way. To die out there — alone — in the dark — oh, that would be too dreadful. It did not occur to her that anything could be done for her; she thought if you once swallowed poison that was the end of you.
With hands shaking in panic she got a candle lighted. It wasn’t quite so bad then — you could face things in the light. And Emily, pale, terrified, alone, was already deciding that this must be faced bravely. She must not shame the Starrs and the Murrays. She clenched her cold hands and tried to stop trembling. How long would it be before she died, she wondered. Lofty John had said the apple would kill her in a “brace of shakes.” What did that mean? How long was a brace of shakes? Would it hurt her to die? She had a vague idea that poison did hurt you awfully. Oh; and just a little while ago she had been so happy! She had thought she was going to live for years and write great poems and be famous like Mrs Hemans. She had had a fight with Ilse the night before and hadn’t made it up yet — never could make it up now. And Ilse would feel so terribly. She must write her a note and forgive her. Was there time for that much? Oh, how cold her hands were! Perhaps that meant she was dying already. She had heard or read that your hands turned cold when you were dying. She wondered if her face was turning black. She grasped her candle and hurried up the stairs to the spare-room. There was a looking-glass there — the only one in the house hung low enough for her to see her reflection if she tipped the bottom of it back. Ordinarily Emily would have been frightened to death at the mere thought of going into that spare-room by dim, flickering candlelight. But the one great terror had swallowed up all lesser ones. She looked at her reflection, amid the sleek, black flow of her hair, in the upward-striking light on the dark background of the shadowy room. Oh, she was pale as the dead already. Yes, that was a dying face — there could be no doubt of it.
Something rose up in Emily and took possession of her — some inheritance from the good old stock behind her. She ceased to tremble — she accepted her fate — with bitter regret, but calmly.
“I don’t want to die but since I have to I’ll die as becomes a Murray,” she said. She had read a similar sentence in a book and it came pat to the moment. And now she must hurry. That letter to Ilse must be written. Emily went to Aunt Elizabeth’s room first, to assure herself that her right-hand top bureau drawer was quite tidy; then she flitted up the garret stairs to her dormer corner. The great place was full of lurking, pouncing shadows that crowded about the little island of faint candlelight, but they had no terrors for Emily now.
“And to think I was feeling so bad to-day because my petticoat was bunchy,” she thought, as she got one of her dear letter-bills — the last she would ever write on. There was no need to write to Father — she would see him soon — but Ilse must have her letter — dear, loving, jolly, hot-tempered Ilse, who, just the day before had shrieked insulting epithets after her and who would be haunted by remorse all her life for it.
“Dearest Ilse,” wrote Emily, her hand shaking a little but her lips firmly set. “I am going to die. I have been poisoned by an apple Lofty John had put for rats. I will never see you again, but I am writing this to tell you I love you and you are not to feel bad because you called me a skunk and a bloodthirsty mink yesterday. I forgive you, so do not worry over it. And I am sorry I told you that you were beneath contemt because I didn’t mean a word of it. I leave you all my share of the broken dishes in our playhouse and please tell Teddy good-bye for me. He will never be able to teach me how to put worms on a fish-hook now. I promised him I would learn because I did not want him to think I was a coward but I am glad I did not for I know what the worm feels like now. I do not feel sick yet but I don’t know what the simptoms of poisoning are and Lofty John said there was enough to kill a dozen of me so I cant have long to live. If Aunt Elizabeth is willing you can have my necklace of Venetian beads. It is the only valuable possession I have. Don’t let anybody do anything to Lofty John because he did not mean to poison me and it was all my own fault for being so greedy. Perhaps people will think he did it on purpose because I am a Protestant but I feel sure he did not and please tell him not to be hawnted by remorse. I think I feel a pain in my stomach now so I guess that the end draws ni. Fare well and remember her who died so young.
“Your own devoted,
“Emily.”
As Emily folded up her letter-bill she heard the sound of wheels in the yard below. A moment later Elizabeth and Laura Murray were confronted in the kitchen by a tragic-faced little creature, grasping a guttering candle in one hand and a red letter-bill in the other.
“Emily, what is the matter?” cried Aunt Laura.
“I’m dying,” said Emily solemnly. “I et an apple Lofty John had poisoned for rats. I have only a few minutes to live, Aunt Laura.”
Laura Murray dropped down on the black bench with her hand at her heart. Elizabeth turned as pale as Emily herself.
“Emily, is this some play-acting of yours?” she demanded sternly.
“No,” cried Emily, quite indignantly. “It’s the truth. Do you suppose a dying person would be play-acting? And oh, Aunt Elizabeth, please will you give this letter to Ilse — and please forgive me for being naughty — though I wasn’t always naughty when you thought I was — and don’t let any one see after I’m dead if I turn black — especially Rhoda Stuart.”
By this time Aunt Elizabeth was herself again.
“How long ago is it since you ate that apple, Emily?”
“About an hour.”
“If you’d eaten a poisoned apple an hour ago you’d be dead or sick by now—”
“Oh,” cried Emily transformed in a second. A wild, sweet hope sprang up in her heart — was there a chance for her after all? Then she added despairingly, “But I felt another pain in my stomach just as I came downstairs.”
“Laura,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “take this child out to the cook-house and give her a good dose of mustard and water at once. It will do no harm and may do some good, if there’s anything in this yarn of hers. I’m going down to the doctor’s — he may be back — but I’ll see Lofty John on the way.”
Aunt Elizabeth went out — and Aunt Elizabeth went out very quickly — if it had been any one else it might have been said she ran. As for Emily — well, Aunt Laura gave her that emetic in short order and two minutes later Emily had no doubt at all that she was dying then and there — and the sooner the better. When Aunt Elizabeth returned Emily was lying on the sofa in the kitchen, as white as the pillow under her head, and as limp as a faded lily.
“Wasn’t the doctor home?” cried Aunt Laura desperately.
“I don’t know — there’s no need of the doctor. I didn’t think there was from the first. It was just one of Lofty John’s jokes. He thought he’d give Emily a fright — just for fun — his idea of fun. March you off to bed, Miss Emily. You deserve all you’ve got for going over there to Lofty John’s at all and I don’t pity you a particle. I haven’t had such a turn for years.”
“I did have a pain in my stomach,” wailed Emily, in whom fright and mustard-and-water combined had temporarily extinguished all spirit.
“Any one who eats apples from dawn to dark must expect a few pains in her stomach. You won’t have any more tonight, I reckon — the mustard will remedy that. Take your candle and go.”
“Well,” said Emily, getting unsteadily to her feet. “I hate that dod-gasted Lofty John.”
“Emily!” said both aunts together.
“He deserves it,” said Emily vindictively.
“Oh, Emily — that dreadful word you used!” Aunt Laura seemed curiously upset about something.
“Why, what’s the matter with dod-gasted?” said Emily, quite mystified. “Cousin Jimmy uses it often, when things vex him. He used it to-day — he said that dod-gasted heifer had broken out of the graveyard pasture again.”
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth, with the air of one impaling herself on the easiest horn of a dilemma, “your Cousin Jimmy is a man — and men sometimes use expressions, in the heat of anger, that are not proper for little girls.”
“But what is the matter with dod-gasted?” persisted Emily. “It isn’t a swear word, is it? And if it isn’t, why can’t I use it?”
“It isn’t a — a ladylike word,” said Aunt Laura.
“Well, then, I won’t use it any more,” said Emily resignedly, “but Lofty John is dod-gasted.”
Aunt Laura laughed so much after Emily had gone upstairs that Aunt Elizabeth told her a woman of her age should have more sense.
“Elizabeth, you know it was funny,” protested Laura.
Emily being safely out of sight, Elizabeth permitted herself a somewhat grim smile.
“I told Lofty John a few plain truths — he’ll not go telling children they’re poisoned again in a hurry. I left him fairly dancing with rage.”
Worn out, Emily fell asleep as soon as she was in bed; but an hour later she awakened. Aunt Elizabeth had not yet come to bed so the blind was still up and Emily saw a dear, friendly star winking down at her. Far away the sea moaned alluringly. Oh, it was nice just to be alone and to be alive. Life tasted good to her again—”tasted like more,” as Cousin Jimmy said. She could have a chance to write more letter-bills, and poetry — Emily already saw a yard of verses entitled “Thoughts of One Doomed to Sudden Death” — and play with Ilse and Teddy — scour the barns with Saucy Sal, watch Aunt Laura skim cream in the dairy and help Cousin Jimmy garden — read books in Emily’s Bower and trot along the To-day Road — but not visit Lofty John’s workshop. She determined that she would never have anything to do with Lofty John again after his diabolical cruelty. She felt so indignant with him for frightening her — after they had been such good friends, too — that she could not go to sleep until she had composed an account of her death by poison, of Lofty John being tried for her murder and condemned to death, and of his being hanged on a gibbet as lofty as himself, Emily being present at the dreadful scene, in spite of the fact that she was dead by his act. When she had finally cut him down and buried him with obloquy — the tears streaming down her face out of sympathy for Mrs Lofty John — she forgave him. Very likely he was not dod-gasted after all.
She wrote it all down on a letter-bill in the garret the next day.
Fancy Fed
In October Cousin Jimmy began to boil the pigs’ potatoes — unromantic name for a most romantic occupation — or so it appeared to Emily, whose love of the beautiful and picturesque was satisfied as it had never yet been on those long, cool, starry twilights of the waning year at New Moon.
There was a clump of spruce-trees in a corner of the old orchard, and under them an immense iron pot was hung over a circle of large stones — a pot so big that an ox could have been comfortably stewed in it. Emily thought it must have come down from the days of fairy tales and been some giant’s porridge pot; but Cousin Jimmy told her that it was only a hundred years old and old Hugh Murray had had it sent out from England.
“We’ve used it ever since to boil the potatoes for the New Moon pigs,” he said. “Blair Water folks think it old-fashioned; they’ve all got boiler-houses now, with built-in boilers; but as long as Elizabeth’s boss at New Moon we’ll use this.”
Emily was sure no built-in boiler could have the charm of the big pot. She helped Cousin Jimmy fill it full of potatoes, after she came from school; then, when supper was over, Cousin Jimmy lighted the fire under it and pottered about it all the evening. Sometimes he poked the fire — Emily loved that part of the performance — sending glorious streams of rosy sparks upward into the darkness; sometimes he stirred the potatoes with a long pole, looking, with his queer, forked grey beard and belted “jumper,” just like some old gnome or troll of northland story mixing the contents of a magical cauldron; and sometimes he sat beside Emily on the grey granite boulder near the pot and recited his poetry for her. Emily liked this best of all, for Cousin Jimmy’s poetry was surprisingly good — at least in spots — and Cousin Jimmy had “fit audience though few” in this slender little maiden with her pale eager face and rapt eyes.
They were an odd couple and they were perfectly happy together. Blair Water people thought Cousin Jimmy a failure and a mental weakling. But he dwelt in an ideal world of which none of them knew anything. He had recited his poems a hundred times thus, as he boiled the pigs’ potatoes; the ghosts of a score of autumns haunted the clump of spruces for him. He was an odd, ridiculous figure enough, bent and wrinkled and unkempt, gesticulating awkwardly as he recited. But it was his hour; he was no longer “simple Jimmy Murray” but a prince in his own realm. For a little while he was strong and young and splendid and beautiful, accredited master of song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous, sensible Blair Water neighbours ever lived through such an hour. He would not have exchanged places with one of them. Emily, listening to him, felt vaguely that if it had not been for that unlucky push into the New Moon well, this queer little man beside her might have stood in the presence of kings.
But Elizabeth had pushed him into the New Moon well and as a consequence he boiled pigs’ potatoes and recited poetry to Emily — Emily, who wrote poetry too, and loved these evenings so much that she could not sleep after she went to bed until she had composed a minute description of them. The flash came almost every evening over something or other. The Wind Woman swooped or purred in the tossing boughs above them — Emily had never been so near to seeing her; the sharp air was full of the pleasant tang of the burning spruce cones Cousin Jimmy shovelled under the pot; Emily’s furry kitten, Mike II, frisked and scampered about like a small, charming demon of the night; the fire glowed with beautiful redness and allure through the gloom; there were nice whispery sounds everywhere; the “great big dark” lay spread around them full of mysteries that daylight never revealed; and over all a purple sky powdered with stars.
