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 be married and his lady picked out the plan. And when the house was just as far along as you see she jilted him, Emily — right in the face of day she jilted him. Never another nail was driven in the house. Fred went out to British Columbia. He’s living there yet — married and happy. But he won’t sell that lot to anyone — so I reckon he feels the sting yet.”
“I’m so sorry for that house. I wish it had been finished. It wants to be — even yet it wants to be.”
“Well, I reckon it never will. Fred had a bit of Shipley in him, too, you see. One of old Hugh’s girls was his grandmother. And Doctor Burnley up there in the big grey house has more than a bit.”
“Is he a relation of ours, too, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Forty-second cousin. Way back he had a cousin of Mary Shipley’s for a great-something. That was in the Old Country — his forebears came out here after we did. He’s a good doctor but an odd stick — odder by far than I am, Emily, and yet nobody ever says he’s not all there. Can you account for that? He doesn’t believe in God — and I am not such a fool as that.”
“Not in any God?”
“Not in any God. He’s an infidel, Emily. And he’s bringing his little girl up the same way, which I think is a shame, Emily,” said Cousin Jimmy confidentially.
“Doesn’t her mother teach her things?”
“Her mother is — dead,” answered Cousin Jimmy, with a little odd hesitation. “Dead these ten years,” he added in a firmer tone. “Ilse Burnley is a great girl — hair like daffodils and eyes like yellow diamonds.”
“Oh, Cousin Jimmy, you promised you’d tell me about the Lost Diamond,” cried Emily eagerly.
“To be sure — to be sure. Well, it’s there — somewhere in or about the old summer-house, Emily. Fifty years ago Edward Murray and his wife came here from Kingsport for a visit. A great lady she was, and wearing silks and diamonds like a queen, though no beauty. She had a ring on with a stone in it that cost two hundred pounds, Emily. That was a big lot of money to be wearing on one wee woman-finger, wasn’t it? It sparkled on her white hand as she held her dress going up the steps of the summer-house; but when she came down the steps it was gone.”
“And was it never found?” asked Emily breathlessly.
“Never — and for no lack of searching. Edward Murray wanted to have the house pulled down — but Uncle Archibald wouldn’t hear of it — because he had built it for his bride. The two brothers quarrelled over it and were never good friends again. Everybody in the connection has taken a spell hunting for the diamond. Most folks think it fell out of the summer-house among the flowers or shrubs. But I know better, Emily. I know Miriam Murray’s diamond is somewhere about that old house yet. On moonlit nights, Emily, I’ve seen it glinting — glinting and beckoning. But never in the same place — and when you go to it — it’s gone, and you see it laughing at you from somewhere else.”
Again there was that eerie, indefinable something in Cousin Jimmy’s voice or look that gave Emily a sudden crinkly feeling in her spine. But she loved the way he talked to her, as if she were grownup; and she loved the beautiful land around her; and, in spite of the ache for her father and the house in the hollow which persisted all the time and hurt her so much at night that her pillow was wet with secret tears, she was beginning to be a little glad again in sunset and bird song and early white stars, in moonlit nights and singing winds. She knew life was going to be wonderful here — wonderful and interesting, what with outdoor cookhouses and cream-girdled dairies and pond paths and sundials, and Lost Diamonds, and Disappointed Houses and men who didn’t believe in any God — not even Ellen Greene’s God. Emily hoped she would soon see Dr Burnley. She was very curious to see what an infidel looked like. And she had already quite made up her mind that she would find the Lost Diamond.
Trial by Fire
Aunt Elizabeth drove Emily to school the next morning. Aunt Laura had thought that, since there was only a month