There were points about sitting on the side bench. You could see all over the school without turning your head—and Miss Brownell could not sneak up behind you and look over your shoulder to see what you were up to; but in Emily’s eyes the finest thing about it was that you could look right down into the “school bush,” and watch the old spruces where the Wind Woman played, the long grey-green trails of moss hanging from the branches, like banners of Elfland, the little red squirrels running along the fence, and the wonderful white aisles of snow where splashes of sunlight fell like pools of golden wine; and there was one little opening in the trees through which you could see right over the Blair Water valley to the sand-hills and the gulf beyond. Today the sand-hills were softly rounded and gleaming white under the snow, but beyond them the gulf was darkly, deeply blue with dazzling white masses of ice like baby icebergs, floating about in it. Just to look at it thrilled Emily with a delight that was unutterable but which she yet must try to utter. She began her poem. Fractions were utterly forgotten—what had numerators and denominators to do with those curving bosoms of white snow—that heavenly blue—those crossed dark fir tips against the pearly skies—those ethereal woodland aisles of pearl and gold? Emily was lost to her world—so lost that she did not know the geography class had scattered to their respective seats and that Miss Brownell, catching sight of Emily’s entranced gaze skywards as she searched for a rhyme, was stepping softly towards her. Ilse was drawing a picture on her slate and did not see her or she would have warned Emily. The latter suddenly felt her slate drawn out of her hand and heard Miss Brownell saying:
“I suppose you have finished those sums, Emily?”
Emily had not finished even one sum—she had only covered her slate with verses—verses that Miss Brownell must not see—must not see! Emily sprang to her feet and clutched wildly after her slate. But Miss Brownell, with a smile of malicious enjoyment on her thin lips, held it beyond her reach.
“What is this? It does not look—exactly—like fractions. ’Lines on the View—v-e-w—from the Window of Blair Water School.’ Really, children, we seem to have a budding poet among us.”
The words were harmless enough, but—oh, the hateful sneer that ran through the tone—the contempt, the mockery that was in it! It seared Emily’s soul like a whiplash. Nothing was more terrible to her than the thought of having her beloved “poems” read by stranger eyes—cold, unsympathetic, derisive, stranger eyes.
“Please—please, Miss Brownell,” she stammered miserably, “don’t read it—I’ll rub it off—I’ll do my sums right away. Only please don’t read it. It—it isn’t anything.”
Miss Brownell laughed cruelly.
“You are too modest, Emily. It is a whole slateful of—poetry—think of that, children—poetry. We have a pupil in this school who can write—poetry. And she does not want us to read this—poetry. I am afraid Emily is selfish. I am sure we should all enjoy this—poetry.”
Emily cringed every time Miss Brownell said “poetry,” with that jeering emphasis and that hateful pause before it. Many of the children giggled, partly because they enjoyed seeing a “Murray of New Moon” grilled, partly because they realized that Miss Brownell expected them to giggle. Rhoda Stuart giggled louder than anyone else; but Jennie Strang, who had tormented Emily on her first day at school, refused to giggle and scowled blackly at Miss Brownell instead.
Miss Brownell held up the slate and read Emily’s poem aloud, in a singsong nasal voice, with absurd intonations and gestures that made it seem a very ridiculous thing. The lines Emily had thought the finest seemed the most ridiculous. The other pupils laughed more than ever and Emily felt that the bitterness of the moment could never go out of her heart. The little fancies that had been so beautiful when they came to her as she wrote were shattered and bruised now, like torn and mangled butterflies—“vistas in some fairy dream,” chanted Miss Brownell, shutting her eyes and wagging her head from side to side. The giggles became shouts of laughter.
“Oh,” thought Emily, clenching her hands, “I wish—I wish the bears that ate the naughty children in the Bible would come and eat you.”
There were no nice, retributive bears in the school bush, however, and Miss Brownell read the whole “poem” through. She was enjoying herself hugely. To ridicule a pupil always gave her pleasure and when that pupil was Emily of New Moon, in whose heart and soul she had always sensed something fundamentally different from her own, the pleasure was exquisite.
When she reached the end she handed the slate back to the crimson-cheeked Emily.
“Take your—poetry, Emily,” she said.
Emily snatched the slate. No slate “rag” was handy but Emily gave the palm of her hand a fierce lick and one side of the slate was wiped off. Another lick—and the rest of the poem went. It had been disgraced—degraded—it must be blotted out of existence. To the end of her life Emily never forgot the pain and humiliation of that experience.
Miss Brownell laughed again.
“What a pity to obliterate such—poetry, Emily,” she said. “Suppose you do those sums now. They are not—poetry, but I am in this school to teach arithmetic and I am not here to teach the art of writing—poetry. Go to your own seat. Yes, Rhoda?”
For Rhoda Stuart was holding up her hand and snapping her fingers.
“Please, Miss Brownell,” she said, with distinct triumph in her tones, “Emily Starr has a whole bunch of poetry in her desk. She was reading it to Ilse Burnley this morning while you thought they were learning history.”
Perry Miller turned around and a delightful missile, compounded of chewed paper
