The pupils disappeared and a mellow sunshiny stillness settled over the old schoolroom. Mr. Carpenter took the little packet she had given him in the morning out of his desk, came down the aisle and sat in the seat before her, facing her. Very deliberately he settled his glasses astride his hooked nose, took out her manuscripts and began to read—or rather to glance over them, flinging scraps of comments, mingled with grunts, sniffs and hoots, at her as he glanced. Emily folded her cold hands on her desk and braced her feet against the legs of it to keep her knees from trembling. This was a very terrible experience. She wished she had never given her verses to Mr. Carpenter. They were no good—of course they were no good. Remember the editor of the Enterprise.
“Humph!” said Mr. Carpenter. “Sunset—Lord, how many poems have been written on ‘Sunset’—
‘The clouds are massed in splendid state
At heaven’s unbarred western gate
Where troops of star-eyed spirits wait’—
By gad, what does that mean?”
“I—I—don’t know,” faltered startled Emily, whose wits had been scattered by the sudden swoop of his spiked glance.
Mr. Carpenter snorted.
“For heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write what you can’t understand yourself. And this—To Life—‘Life, as thy gift I ask no rainbow joy’—is that sincere? Is it, girl. Stop and think. Do you ask ‘no rainbow joy’ of life?”
He transfixed her with another glare. But Emily was beginning to pick herself up a bit. Nevertheless, she suddenly felt oddly ashamed of the very elevated and unselfish desires expressed in that sonnet.
“No—o,” she answered reluctantly. “I do want rainbow joy—lots of it.”
“Of course you do. We all do. We don’t get it—you won’t get it—but don’t be hypocrite enough to pretend you don’t want it, even in a sonnet. ‘Lines to a Mountain Cascade’—‘On its dark rocks like the whiteness of a veil around a bride’—Where did you see a mountain cascade in Prince Edward Island?”
“Nowhere—there’s a picture of one in Dr. Burnley’s library.”
“‘A Wood Stream’—
‘The threading sunbeams quiver,
The bending bushes shiver,
O’er the little shadowy river’—
There’s only one more rhyme that occurs to me and that’s ’liver.’ Why did you leave it out?”
Emily writhed.
“‘Wind Song’—
‘I have shaken the dew in the meadows
From the clover’s creamy gown’—
Pretty, but weak. June—June, for heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write poetry on June. It’s the sickliest subject in the world. It’s been written to death.”
“No, June is immortal,” cried Emily suddenly, a mutinous sparkle replacing the strained look in her eyes. She was not going to let Mr. Carpenter have it all his own way.
But Mr. Carpenter had tossed June aside without reading a line of it.
“ ‘I weary of the hungry world’—what do you know of the hungry world?—you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids—but it is hungry. Ode to Winter—the seasons are a sort of disease all young poets must have, it seems—ha! ‘Spring will not forget’—that’s a good line—the only good line in it. H’m’m—‘Wanderings’—
‘I’ve learned the secret of the rune
That the somber pines on the hillside croon’—
Have you—have you learned that secret?”
“I think I’ve always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and gone.
“Aim and Endeavour—too didactic—too didactic. You’ve no right to try to teach until you’re old—and then you won’t want to—
‘Her face was like a star all pale and fair’—
Were you looking in the glass when you composed that line?”
“No—” indignantly.
“ ’When the morning light is shaken like a banner on the hill’—a good line—a good line—
‘Oh, on such a golden morning
To be living is delight’—
Too much like a faint echo of Wordsworth. ‘The Sea in September’—‘blue and austerely bright’—‘austerely bright’—child, how can you marry the right adjectives like that? ’Morning’—‘all the secret fears that haunt the night’—what do you know of the fears that haunt the night?”
“I know something,” said Emily decidedly, remembering her first night at Wyther Grange.
“‘To a Dead Day’—
‘With the chilly calm on her brow
That only the dead may wear’—
Have you ever seen the chilly calm on the brow of the dead, Emily?”
“Yes,” said Emily softly, recalling that grey dawn in the old house in the hollow.
“I thought so—otherwise you couldn’t have written that—and even as it is—how old are you, jade?”
“Thirteen, last May.”
“Humph! ‘Lines to Mrs. George Irving’s Infant Son’—you should study the art of titles, Emily—there’s a fashion in them as in everything else. Your titles are as out of date as the candles of New Moon—
‘Soundly he sleeps with his red lips pressed
Like a beautiful blossom close to her breast’—
The rest isn’t worth reading. ‘September’—is there a month you’ve missed?—‘Windy meadows harvest-deep’—good line. ‘Blair Water by Moonlight’—gossamer, Emily, nothing but gossamer. ‘The Garden of New Moon’—
‘Beguiling laughter and old song
Of merry maids and men’—
Good line—I suppose New Moon is full of ghosts. ‘Death’s fell minion well fulfilled its part’—that might have passed in Addison’s day but not now—not now, Emily—
‘Your azure dimples are the graves
Where million buried sunbeams play’—
Atrocious, girl—atrocious. Graves aren’t playgrounds. How much would you play if you were buried?”
Emily writhed and blushed again. Why couldn’t she have seen that herself? Any goose could have seen it.
“ ‘Sail onward, ships—white wings, sail on,
Till past the horizon’s purple bar
You drift from sight.—In flush of dawn
Sail on, and ’neath the evening star’—
Trash—trash—and yet there’s a picture in it—
‘Lap softly, purple waves. I dream,
And dreams
