Emmy Lou Part 22

Miss Carmichael was short and square, and her nose was large. She rubbed it with her knuckle like a man. She had rubbed it one day as she looked at Emily, whom she had called upon as "the girl who answers to the name of MacLauren."

It was not a flattering way to be designated, but freshmen learn to be grateful for any ident.i.ty. Then, too, Miss Carmichael was famed for her wit, and much is to be overlooked in a wit which in another might seem to be bad manners. Once Emily had been hazy about the word _wit_, but now she knew. If you understand at once it is not wit; but if, as you begin to understand, you find you don't, that is apt to be wit. Miss Carmichael was famed for hers.

Thus called upon, the girl who answered to the name of MacLauren stood up. The lecture under discussion was concerned with a matter called perpetuation of type. Under fire of questions it developed that the pupil in hand was sadly muddled over it.

Under such circ.u.mstances, it was a way with Miss Carmichael to play with the pupil's mystification. "'Be a kitten and cry mew,'" said she, her eyes snapping with the humour of it. "Why mew and not baa? Why does the family of cow continue to wear horns?"

Why, indeed? There wasn't any sense. Emily felt wild. Miss Carmichael here evidently decided it was time to temper glee with something else.

Emily was prepared for that, having discovered that wit is uncertain in its humours.

"An organ not exercised loses power to perform its function. Think!"

said Miss Carmichael. "Haven't you taken down the lecture?"

Emily had taken down the lecture, but she had not taken in the lecture.

She looked unhappy. "I don't think I understand it," she confessed.

"Then why didn't you have it explained?"

"I did try." Which was true, for Emily had gone with questions concerning perpetuation of type to her Aunt Cordelia.

"What did you want to know?" demanded Miss Carmichael.

"About--about the questions at the end for us to answer--about that one, 'What makes types repeat themselves?'"

"And what does?" said Miss Carmichael. "That is exactly what I'm trying to find out."

Emily looked embarra.s.sed. Aunt Cordelia's answer was the same one that she gave to all the puzzling _whys_, but Emily did not want to give it here.

"Come, come, come," said Miss Carmichael. She was standing by her table, and she rapped it sharply, "And what does?"

"G.o.d," said Emily desperately.

She felt the general embarra.s.sment as she sat down. She felt Hattie give a quick look at her, then saw her glance around. Was it for her?

Hattie's cheek was red. Rosalie, with her cheek crimson, was looking in her lap.

In the High School some have pa.s.sed out of Eden, while others are only approaching the fruit of the tree.

Hattie had glanced at her protectingly, and though Emily did not understand just why, she was glad, for of late she had been feeling apart from Hattie and estranged from Rosalie, and altogether alone and aggrieved.

Hattie now wrote herself Harriet, and had seemed to change in the process, though Emily, who had once been Emily Louise herself, felt she had not changed to her friends. But Hattie was one to look facts in the face. "If you're not pretty," she had a while back confided to Emily, "you've got to be smart." And forthwith taking to learning, Hattie was fast becoming a shining light.

Rosalie had taken to things of a different nature, which she called Romantic Situations. To have the wind whisk off your hat and take it skurrying up the street just as you meet a boy is a Romantic Situation.

Emmy Lou had no sympathy with them, whatever; it even embarra.s.sed her to hear about them and caused her to avoid Rosalie's eye. Perhaps Rosalie divined this, for she took to another thing--and that was Pauline. With arms about each other, the two walked around the bas.e.m.e.nt promenade at recess, while Emily stood afar off and felt aggrieved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'If you're not pretty, you've got to be smart.'"]

She was doing a good deal of feeling these days, but princ.i.p.ally she felt cross. For one thing, she was having to wear a sailor suit in which she hated herself. It takes a jaunty juvenility of spirit to wear a sailor suit properly, and she was not feeling that way these days. She was feeling tall and conscious of her angles. The tears, too, came easily, as at thought of herself deserted by Hattie and Rosalie, or at sight of herself in the sailor suit. It was in Aunt Cordelia's Mirror that she viewed herself with such dissatisfaction; but while looking, the especial grievance was forgotten by reason of her gaze centring upon the reflected face. She was wondering if she was pretty. But even while her cheek flamed with the thinking of it, she forgot why the cheek was hot in the absorption of watching it fade, until--eyes met eyes----

She turned quickly and hid her face against the sofa. Emmy Lou had met Self.

But later she almost quarrelled with Aunt Cordelia about the sailor suit.

One day at recess a new-comer who had entered late was standing around.

Her cheek was pale, though her eager look about lent a light to her face. But all seemed paired off and absorbed and the eager look faded.

Emily, whom she had not seen, moved nearer, and the new-comer's face brightened. "They give long recesses," she said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Wondering if she was pretty."]

Emily felt drawn to her, for since being deserted she was not enjoying recesses herself.

"Yes," she said, "they do"; and the next day another pair, Emily and the new-comer, joined the promenade about the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The new pupil's name was Margaret; that is, since it stopped being Maggie. Emily confessed to having once been Emmy herself, with a middle name of Lou besides, and after that they told each other everything.

Margaret loved to read and had lately come to own a certain book which she brought to lend Emily, and over its pages they drew together. The book was called "Percy's Reliques."

Beside the common way lies the Ballad Age, but Emily would have pa.s.sed, unknowing, had not Margaret, drawing the branches aside, revealed it; and into the sylvan glades she stepped, pipes and tabret luring, with life and self at once in tune.

And then Margaret told her something, "if she would never, never tell"--Margaret wrote things herself.

It was about this time that Rosalie was moved to seek Emily, as of old, to relate a Romantic Situation. She warned her that it would be sad, but Emily did not mind that. She loved sad things these days, and even found an exultation in them if they were very, very sad.

Rosalie took her aside to tell it: "There was a bride, ready, even to her veil, and he, the bridegroom, never came--he was dead."

Rosalie called this a Romantic Situation. Emily admitted it, feeling, however, that it was more, though she could not tell Rosalie that.

It--it was like the poetry in the book, only poetry would not have left it there!

"O mither, mither mak my bed O mak it saft and narrow; Since my love died for me to-day, Ise die for him to-morrowe."

"It's about a teacher right here in the High School," Rosalie went on to tell.

Then it was true. "Which one?" asked Emily.

But that Rosalie did not know.

It was like poetry. But then life was all turning to poetry now. One climbed the stairs to the mansard now with winged feet, for Rhetoric is concerned with metaphor and simile, and Rhetoric treats of rhyme. There is a sudden meaning in Learning since it leads to a desired end.

Poetry is everywhere around. The prose light of common day is breaking into prismatic rays. Into the dusty highway of Ancient History all at once sweeps the pageantry of Mythology. Philemon bends above old Baucis at the High School gate, though hitherto they have been sycamores.

Olympus is just beyond the clouds. The Elysian Fields lie only the surrender of the will away, if one but droops, with absent eye, head propped on hand, and dreams----

But Emily, all at once, is conscious that Miss Beaton's eyes are on her, at which she moves suddenly and looks up. But this mild-eyed teacher with the sweet, strong smile is but gazing absently down on her the while she talks.

Emily likes Miss Beaton, the teacher of History. Her skirts trail softly and her hair is ruddy where it is not brown; she forgets, and when she rises her handkerchief is always fluttering to the floor. Emily loves to be the one to jump and pick it up. Miss Beaton's handkerchiefs are fine and faintly sweet and softly crumpled, and Emily loves the smile when Miss Beaton's absent gaze comes back and finds her waiting.

But to-day, what is this she is saying? Who is the beautiful youth she is telling about? Adonis? Beloved, did she say, and wounded? Wounded unto death, but loved and never forgotten, and from whose blood sprang the windswept petals of anemone----

Miss Beaton's gaze comes back to her school-room and she takes up the book. The story is told.