me? You have the power—oh, yes, it’s all here—this is very clever. You can paint the weakness and foolishness and wickedness of a character in a way that is positively uncanny, in a girl of your age. But—is it worth while, Emily?’
“‘No—no,’ I said. I was so ashamed and sorry that I wanted to get away and cry. It was terrible to think Mr. Carpenter imagined I would ever write so about him, after all he has done for me.
“‘It isn’t,’ said Mr. Carpenter. ‘There is a place for satire—there are gangrenes that can only be burned out—but leave the burning to the great geniuses. It’s better to heal than hurt. We failures know that.’
“‘Oh, Mr. Carpenter!’ I began. I wanted to say he wasn’t a failure—I wanted to say a hundred things—but he wouldn’t let me.
“‘There—there, we won’t talk of it, Emily. When I am dead say, “He was a failure, and none knew it more truly or felt it more bitterly than himself.” Be merciful to the failures, Emily. Satirize wickedness if you must—but pity weakness.’
“He stalked off then, and called school in. I’ve felt wretched ever since and I won’t sleep to-night. But here and now I record this vow, most solemnly, in my diary, My pen shall heal, not hurt. And I write it in italics, Early Victorian or not, because I am tremendously in earnest.
“I didn’t tear that poem up, though—I couldn’t—it really was too good to destroy. I put it away in my literary cupboard to read over once in a while for my own enjoyment, but I will never show it to anybody.
“Oh, how I wish I hadn’t hurt Mr. Carpenter!
* * * * *
“April 1, 19—
“Something I heard a visitor in Blair Water say today annoyed me very much. Mr. and Mrs. Alec Sawyer, who live in Charlottetown, were in the post office when I was there. Mrs. Sawyer is very handsome and fashionable and condescending. I heard her say to her husband, ‘How do the natives of this sleepy place continue to live here year in and year out? I should go mad. Nothing ever happens here.’
“I would dearly have liked to tell her a few things about Blair Water. I could have been sarcastic with a vengeance. But, of course, New Moon people do not make scenes in public. So I contented myself with bowing very coldly when she spoke to me and sweeping past her. I heard Mr. Sawyer say, ‘Who is that girl?’ and Mrs. Sawyer said, ‘She must be that Starr puss—she has the Murray trick of holding her head, all right.’
“The idea of saying ‘nothing ever happens here’! Why, things are happening right along—thrilling things. I think life here is extremely wonderful. We have always so much to laugh and cry and talk about.
“Look at all the things that have happened in Blair Water in just the last three weeks—comedy and tragedy all mixed up together. James Baxter has suddenly stopped speaking to his wife and nobody knows why. She doesn’t, poor soul, and she is breaking her heart about it. Old Adam Gillian, who hated pretence of any sort, died two weeks ago and his last words were, ‘See that there isn’t any howling and sniffling at my funeral.’ So nobody howled or sniffled. Nobody wanted to, and since he had forbidden it nobody pretended to. There never was such a cheerful funeral in Blair Water. I’ve seen weddings that were more melancholy—Ella Brice’s, for instance. What cast a cloud over hers was that she forgot to put on her white slippers when she dressed, and went down to the parlour in a pair of old, faded, bedroom shoes with holes in the toes. Really, people couldn’t have talked more about it if she had gone down without anything on. Poor Ella cried all through the wedding-supper about it.
“Old Robert Scobie and his half-sister have quarrelled, after living together for thirty years without a fuss, although she is said to be a very aggravating woman. Nothing she did or said ever provoked Robert into an outburst, but it seems that there was just one doughnut left from supper one evening recently, and Robert is very fond of doughnuts. He put it away in the pantry for a bedtime snack, and when he went to get it he found that Matilda had eaten it. He went into a terrible rage, pulled her nose, called her a she-deviless, and ordered her out of his house. She has gone to live with her sister at Derry Pond, and Robert is going to bach it. Neither of them will ever forgive the other, Scobie-like, and neither will ever be happy or contented again.
“George Lake was walking home from Derry Pond one moonlit evening two weeks ago, and all at once he saw another very black shadow going along beside his, on the moonlit snow.
“And there was nothing to cast that shadow.
“He rushed to the nearest house, nearly dead with fright, and they say he will never be the same man again.
“This is the most dramatic thing that has happened. It makes me shiver as I write of it. Of course George must have been mistaken. But he is a truthful man, and he doesn’t drink. I don’t know what to think of it.
“Arminius Scobie is a very mean man and always buys his wife’s hats for her, lest she pay too much for them. They know this in the Shrewsbury stores, and laugh at him. One day last week he was in Jones and McCallum’s, buying her a hat, and Mr. Jones told him that if he would wear the hat from the store to the station he would let him have it for nothing. Arminius did. It was a quarter of a mile to the station and all the small boys in Shrewsbury ran after him and hooted him. But Arminius didn’t care. He had saved three dollars and forty-nine cents.
“And, one evening, right here at New Moon, I dropped a soft-boiled egg on Aunt Elizabeth’s second-best cashmere dress. That was a happening. A kingdom might have been upset in Europe, and it wouldn’t have made such a commotion at New Moon.
“So, Mistress Sawyer, you are vastly mistaken. Besides, apart from all happenings, the folks here are interesting in themselves. I don’t like every one but I find every one interesting—Miss Matty Small, who is forty and wears outrageous colours—she wore an old-rose dress and a scarlet hat to church all last summer—old Uncle Reuben Bascom, who is so lazy that he held an umbrella over himself all one rainy night in bed, when the roof began to leak, rather than get out and move the bed—Elder McCloskey, who thought it wouldn’t do to say ‘pants’ in a story he was telling about a missionary, at prayer-meeting, so always said politely ‘the clothes of his lower parts’—Amasa Derry, who carried off four prizes at the Exhibition last fall, with vegetables he stole from Ronnie Bascom’s field, while Ronnie didn’t get one prize—Jimmy Joe Belle, who came here from Derry Pond yesterday to get some lumber ‘to beeld a henhouse for my leetle dog’—old Luke Elliott, who is such a systematic fiend that he even draws up a schedule of the year on New Year’s day, and charts down all the days he means to get drunk on—and sticks to it:—they’re all interesting and amusing and delightful.
“There, I’ve proved Mrs. Alex Sawyer to be so completely wrong that I feel quite kindly towards her, even though she did call me a puss.
“Why don’t I like being called a puss, when cats are such nice things? And I like being called pussy.
* * * * *
“April 28, 19—
“Two weeks ago I sent my very best poem, Wind Song, to a magazine in New York, and to-day it came back with just a little printed slip saying, ‘We regret we cannot use this contribution.’
“I feel dreadfully. I suppose I can’t really write anything that is any good.
“I can. That magazine will be glad to print my pieces some day!
“I didn’t tell Mr. Carpenter I sent it. I wouldn’t get any sympathy from him. He says that five years from now will be time enough to begin pestering editors. But I know that some poems I’ve read in that very magazine were not a bit better than Wind Song.
“I feel more like writing poetry in spring than at any other time. Mr. Carpenter tells me to fight against the impulse. He says spring has been responsible for more trash than anything else in the universe of God.
“Mr. Carpenter’s way of talking has a tang to it.
*