Emmy Lou Part 23

Emily had not known that her eyes had filled--tears come so unlooked-for these days--until the ring on Miss Beaton's hand glistened and the facets of its jewel broke into gleams.

She caught her breath, she sat up suddenly, for she knew--all at once she knew--it was Miss Beaton who had been the bride, and the ring was the sign.

She loved Miss Beaton with a sudden rapture, and henceforth gazed upon her with secret adoration. She made excuses to consult books in Miss Beaton's room, that she might be near her; she dreamed, and the sweetness and the sadness of it centred about Miss Beaton.

She told Rosalie. "Why, of course, I guessed her right at first," said Rosalie; but she said it jealously, for she, too, was secretly adoring Miss Beaton.

Emily had been trying to ask Margaret something, but each time the question stuck in her throat. Now she gathered courage.

It was spring, and the High School populace turned out at recess to promenade the yard. On the third round about the gravel, in the farthest corner where a lilac bush topping the fence from next door lent a sort of screen and privacy, Emily caught Margaret by the arm and held her back. After that there was no retreat; she had to speak.

"How--how do you do it?" she asked.

"What?" asked Margaret.

"Write?" said Emily, holding to Margaret tight--she had never before thus laid bare the secrets of her soul.

"Oh," said Margaret, and her lips parted and her face lighted as she and Emily gazed into each other's eyes, "you just feel it and then you write."

There was a time when Emily would have asked, "Feel what?" "It" as used by Margaret was indefinite, but Emily understood. You just feel it and then you write.

In her study hour Emily took her pencil and, with Latin Grammar as barrier and blind to an outside world, bent over her paper. She did not speak them, those whispers hunting the rhyme: she only felt them, and they spoke.

She did not know, she did not dream that she was finding the use, the purpose for it all, these years of the climb toward knowledge. Some day it would dawn on her that we only garner to give out.

_Creare--creatum_, she had repeated in cla.s.s from her Latin Grammar, but she did not understand the meaning then. In the beginning G.o.d made, and Man is in the image of G.o.d. She had found the answer to her discontent; for to create, to give out, is the law.

She wrote on, head bent, cheek flushed, leaning absorbed above the paper in her book.

On the way home she whispered that which had written itself, while her feet kept time to the rhythm. It was Beautiful and Sad, and it was True:

"The bride and her maidens sat in her bower----"

She nodded to William loitering near the High School gate, and hurried on. She did not want company just now:

"And they 'broidered a snow-white veil, And their laughter was sweet as the orange flower That breathed on the soft south gale."

But here William caught up with her. She had thought he would take the hint, but he didn't, going with her to her very gate. But once inside, she drew a long breath. The cherry buds were swelling and the sky was blue. She took up her verse where William had interrupted:

"The bride and her maidens sit in her bower, And they st.i.tch at a winding-sheet; And they weep as the breath of the orange flower----"

Emily is so absorbed at the dinner-table that Aunt Cordelia is moved to argue about it. She sha'n't go to school if she does not eat her dinner when she gets home. "And that beautiful slice of good roast beef untouched," says Aunt Cordelia.

Emily frowned, being intent on that last line, which is not written yet.

She is hunting the rhyme for winding-sheet.

What is this Aunt Cordelia is saying? "Eat--meat----"

How _can_ Aunt Cordelia?--it throws one off--it upsets one.

Hattie chanced to be criticising Miss Beaton the next day, saying that she required too little of her cla.s.ses. "But then she is more concerned getting ready to be married, I reckon," said Hattie.

"Oh," said Emily, "Hattie!" She was shocked, almost hurt, with Hattie.

"Don't you know about it?" she went on to explain. "She was going to be married and--he--he never came--he was dead."

"No such thing," said Hattie. "He runs a feed store next my father's office. We've got cards. It's the day after school's out."

"Then--which--" asked Emily falteringly.

"Why, I heard that the first of the year," said Hattie. "It was Miss Carmichael that happened to."

Emily went off to herself. She felt bitter and cross and disposed to blame Miss Beaton. She never wanted to see or to hear of Miss Beaton again.

Upstairs she took from her Latin Grammar a pencilled paper, interlined and much erased, and tore it into bits--viciously little bits. Then she went and put them in the waste-paper basket.

"You just feel it and then you write," Margaret had said, and Emily was feeling again, and deeply; later she wrote.

It was gloomy, that which wrote itself on the paper, nor did it especially apply to the case in point, "but then," she reminded herself, bitterly recalling the faithlessness of Hattie, of Rosalie, of Miss Beaton, "it's True."

She took it to Hattie from some feeling that she was mixed up in this thing. Hattie closed her Algebra, keeping her finger in the place, while she took the paper and looked at it. She did not seem impressed or otherwise, but read it aloud in a matter-of-fact tone:

"A flower sprang from the earth one day And nodded and blew in a blithesome way, And the warm sun filled its cup!

A careless hand broke it off and threw It idly down where it lately grew, And the same sun withered it up."

"'Up,'" said Hattie, "what's the up for? You don't need it."

"It's--it's for the rhyme," said Emily.

"It's redundancy," said Hattie.

VENUS OR MINERVA?

It was gratifying to be attached to a name again. As a Freshman, personality had been lost in the High School by reason of overwhelming numbers. The under-world seems always to be over-populated and valued accordingly. But progress in the High School, by rigorous enforcement of the survival of the fittest, brings ultimately a chance for ident.i.ty.

Emmy Lou, a survivor, found a personality awaiting her in her Soph.o.m.ore year. Henceforth she was to be Miss MacLauren.

The year brought further distinction. Along in the term Miss MacLauren received notification that she had been elected to membership in the Platonian Society.

"On account of recognised literary qualifications," the note set forth.

Miss MacLauren read the note with blushes, and because of the secret joy its perusal afforded, she re-read it in private many times more. The first-fruits of fame are sweet; and as an Athenian might have regarded an invitation into Olympus, so Miss MacLauren looked upon this opening into Platonia.

As a Freshman, on Friday afternoons, she had noted certain of the upper pupils strolling about the building after dismissal, clothed, in lieu of hats and jackets, with large importance. She had learned that they were Platonians, and from the out-courts of the un-elect she had watched them, in pairs and groups, mount the stairs with laughter and chatter and covert backward glances. She did not wonder, she would have glanced backward, too, for wherein lies the satisfaction of being elect, but in a knowledge of the envy of those less privileged?

And mounting the stairs to the mansard, their door had shut upon the Platonians; it was a secret society.