Greene paid for it herself — but it covers me all up.”
“Little girls who do not understand things should hold their tongues,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “I do not choose that Blair Water people should see my niece in such a dress as that wretched black merino. And if Ellen Greene paid for it we must repay her. You should have told us that before we came away from Maywood. No, you are not going to church to-day. You can wear the black dress to school tomorrow. We can cover it up with an apron.”
Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home; but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday for her.
“Why are all the Murrays buried here?” asked Emily. “Is it really because they are too good to be buried with common people?”
“No — no, pussy. We don’t carry our pride as far as that. When old Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That’s why the old Murrays were buried here — and later on we kept it up because we wanted to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair Water.”
“That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy,” said Emily.
“So it is — out of one of my poems.”
“I kind of like the idea of a ‘sclusive burying-ground like this,” said Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept graves.
Cousin Jimmy chuckled.
“And yet they say you ain’t a Murray,” he said. “Murray and Byrd and Starr — and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much mistaken.”
“Shipley?”
“Yes — Hugh Murray’s wife — your great-great-grandmother — was a Shipley — an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New Moon?”
“No.”
“They were bound for Quebec — hadn’t any notion of coming to P. E. I. They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of the New Moon put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died of seasickness coming but — never seemed to get her sea-legs — so the captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she went and when she got to shore she said, ‘Here I stay.’ And stay she did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh — he was young Hugh then, of course, coaxed and stormed and raged and argued — and even cried, I’ve been told — but Mary wouldn’t be moved. In the end he gave in and had his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came to P. E. Island.”
“I’m glad it happened like that,” said Emily.
“So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily — it rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is over there in the corner — that one with the flat red stone. Go you and look at what he had put on it.”
Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, “Here I stay.”
“That’s how he got even with her,” said Cousin Jimmy. “He was a good husband to her — and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family — and he never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it had to come out.”
Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather terrifying.
“I’m glad I’m only half Murray,” she said to herself. Aloud—”Father told me it was a Murray tradition not to carry spite past the grave.”
“So ‘tis now — but it took its rise from this very thing. His family were so horrified at it, you see. It made considerable of a scandal. Some folks twisted it round to mean that Old Hugh didn’t believe in the resurrection, and there was talk of the session taking it up, but after a while the talk died away.”
Emily skipped over to another lichen-grown stone.
“Elizabeth Burnley — who was she, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Old William Murray’s wife. He was Hugh’s brother, and came out here five years after Hugh did. His wife was a great beauty and had been a belle in the Old Country. She didn’t like the P. E. Island woods. She was homesick, Emily — scandalous homesick. For weeks after she came here she wouldn’t take off her bonnet — just walked the floor in it, demanding to be taken back home.”
“Didn’t she take it off when she went to bed?” asked Emily.
“Dunno if she did go to bed. Anyway, William wouldn’t take her back home so in time she took off her bonnet and resigned herself. Her daughter married Hugh’s son, so Elizabeth was your great-great-grandmother.”
Emily looked down at the sunken green grave and wondered if any homesick dreams haunted Elizabeth Burnley’s slumber of a hundred years.
“It’s dreadful to be homesick — I know,” she thought sympathetically.
“Little Stephen Murray is buried over there,” said Cousin Jimmy. “His was the first marble stone in the burying-ground. He was your grandfather’s brother — died when he was twelve. He has,” said Cousin Jimmy solemnly, “became a Murray tradition.”
“Why?”
“He was so beautiful and clever and good. He hadn’t a fault — so of course he couldn’t live. They say there never was such a handsome child in the connection. And lovable — everybody loved him. He has been dead for ninety years — not a Murray living to-day ever saw him — and yet we talk about him at family gatherings — he’s more real than lots of living people. So you see, Emily, he must have been an extraordinary child — but it ended in that—” Cousin Jimmy waved his hand towards the grassy grave and the white, prim headstone.
“I wonder,” thought Emily, “if anyone will remember me ninety years after I’m dead.”
“This old yard is nearly full,” reflected Cousin Jimmy. “There’s just room in yonder corner for Elizabeth and Laura — and me. None for you, Emily.”
“I don’t want to be buried here,” flashed Emily. “I think it’s splendid to have a graveyard like this in the family — but I am going to be buried in Charlottetown graveyard with Father and Mother. But there’s one thing worries me Cousin Jimmy, do you think I’m likely to die of consumption?”
Cousin Jimmy looked judicially down into her eyes.
“No,” he said, “no, Miss Puss. You’ve got enough life in you to carry you far. You aren’t meant for death.”
“I feel that, too,” said Emily, nodding. “And now, Cousin Jimmy, why is that house over there disappointed?”
“Which one? — oh, Fred Clifford’s house. Fred Clifford began to build that house thirty years ago. He was to
