Emmy Lou

A BALLAD IN PRINT O' LIFE

Double names are childish things; therefore Emmy Lou entered the high school as Emily MacLauren.

Her disapproval of the arrangements she found there was decided. High-school pupils have no abiding place, but are nomadic in their habits and enforced wanderers between shrines of learning, changing quarters as well as teachers for every recitation; and the constant readjustment of mood to meet the varied temperaments of successive teachers is wearing on the temper.

Yet there is a law in the high school superior to that of the teacher. At the dictates of a gong, classes arise in the face of a teacher's incompleted peroration and depart. As for the pupils, there is no rest for the soles of their feet; a freshman in the high school is a mere abecedarian part of an ever-moving line, which toils, weighted with pounds of text-books, up and down the stairways of knowledge, climbing to the mansard heights for rhetoric, to descend, past doors to which it must later return, to the foundation floor for Ancient History.

Looking back at the undulating line winding in dizzy spiral about the stairways, Emily, at times, seemed to herself to be a vertebrate part of some long, forever-uncoiling monster, one of those prehistoric, seen-before-in-dreams affairs. She chose her figures knowingly, for she was studying zoology now.

Classes went to the laboratory for this subject, filing into an amphitheatre of benches about Miss Carmichael, who stood in the centre of things and wasted no time; she even clipped her words, perhaps that they might not impede each other in their flow, which lent a disconcerting curtness of enunciation to an amazing rapidity of the same. Indeed, Miss Carmichael talked so fast that Emily got but a blurred impression of her surroundings, carrying away a dazed consciousness that the contents of certain jars to the right and left of the lady were amphibian in their nature, and that certain other objects in skin leering down from dusty shelves were there because of saurian claims. And because man is a vertebrate, having an internal, jointed, bony skeleton, man stood in a glass case behind the oracular priestess of the place, in awful, articulated, bony whole, from which the newly initiated had constantly to drag their fascinated, shuddering gaze. Not that Emily wanted to look, indeed she had no time to be looking, needing it all to keep up with Miss Carmichael, discoursing in unpunctuated, polysyllablic flow of things batrachian and things reptilian, which, like the syllables falling from the lips of the wicked daughter in the story-book, proved later to be toads and lizards.

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 identity. 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 circumstances, 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 embarrassed. 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?"

"God," said Emily desperately.

She felt the general embarrassment 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 passed 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 embarrassed 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 basement promenade at recess, while Emily stood afar off and felt aggrieved.

[Illustration: "'If you're not pretty, you've got to be smart.'"]

She was doing a good deal of feeling these days, but principally 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.

[Illustration: "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 basement.

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 passed, 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.

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 class from her Latin Grammar, but she did not understand the meaning then. In the beginning God made, and Man is in the image of God. 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 stitch 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 classes. "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.