Miss Emily Read Online Free PDF

Sue, a cascade of sun fell from her head to her shoulders to her feet. She was entirely lit up, standing in the hallway of her sister’s home when we came to call. She was Susan Gilbert then, a new face in our orbit, and we all loved her instantly. Her composure, her china-white skin and her even features all drew me to Sue, before I knew of her boundless intelligence. She was as luminous then as she is now.
    â€œYou cultivate possessiveness,” Vinnie once told me. “You smother Sue, and every other acquaintance, with friendship.”
    She meant it kindly—in an instructional way—but it set me thinking about Vinnie and whether she knows the real me, the me of my deepest desires. Vinnie has never been a good character judge; she runs with a lot of sillies who care more for Holland lace and ensnaring men than the finer things of the mind and heart. It strikes me that perhaps it is not possible ever to know another, no matter how much we long to. Sue is bridled to Austin, but he does not know her as I do. Before they married, he complained to me that she did not respond to him as he might have liked.
    â€œDollie is filled with sawdust,” he declared one day, a moment of extreme exasperation, surely, for the Susan I know is wholly flesh, with a heart that pumps hot blood. There is nothing dry or inert about her; she has passion for poetry and every fine thing. She is of the world in a way that I could never be, and I love that she brings the world to me.
    On this day Sue occupies her seat elegantly, as if her stomach is not full with a wriggling babe. “It is so hot,” she says, flicking a pamphlet in front of her face as a fan.
    â€œWhat will hell be like?” I ask, and we both laugh.
    â€œWhat news, Emily? Entertain me, for I cannot quite entertain myself these days. My brain has dried to biscuit.”
    â€œThe chartreuse zinnia we planted in the conservatory has come up.”
    â€œHow lovely.”
    â€œAnd I have been itching to tell you all about our new maid.”
    â€œAustin mentioned you had taken another Irish girl.”
    â€œYes, and she is a darling. Her name is Ada Concannon. Does her name not sound like a peregrine fruit, Sue? Something meaty but sweetly exotic?” Sue nods uncertainly. “Ada talks about Mother as if I were not related to her and then hastily excuses herself. But she means every word she says. There is something of the scamp about her.”
    â€œIs it wise to engage so? Certainly do not encourage her to have a loose tongue, Emily. It may deliver trouble to your door.”
    Sue settles back into the chair and folds her hands across her high belly; she sighs and retreats into that space expectant women go to—a covert, mystical place of the mind with room for only one: the soon-to-be mother.
    â€œFather was speechifying yesterday, Sue.”
    â€œOh, yes? I do love when he sits atop his highest horse. What was his subject, Emily?”
    â€œThe usual: ‘Intellectual eminence should not be woman’s goal. Do not read too much, Emily.’ And then he handed me a parcel of new books, though he fears they ‘joggle the mind.’ ”
    â€œBooks are always welcome indeed. Was the latest Dostoyevsky among them?” I shake my head. “You must read it, my dear. It is about brilliance and murder—you will love its pathos.”
    â€œBut is it dignified, Susan?” I say, imitating Father’s sternest voice. “We must read only what is dignified !”
    Sue laughs and tells me more about Crime and Punishment, about its treatise on intellectualism and its fluid, squalid nature. “Dostoyevsky seems almost casual about death, Emily. It is shocking. Wonderfully so.”
    â€œJust yesterday Ada found a hole in a loaf of bread she had baked. She held it up to me in dismay. I assured her it was all right and that a hole did not make the bread inedible. ‘You don’t understand,