"Mrs. Kent has told Teddy he can go for another year. After that he doesn't know what will happen. So we are all going back and I am so happy that I want to write it in Italics.
"September 10, 19-
"I have been elected president of the Senior class for this year. And the Skulls and Owls sent me a notice that I had been elected a member of their august fraternity without the formality of an application.
"Evelyn Blake, by the way, is at present laid up with tonsillitis!
"I accepted the presidency - but I wrote a note to the Skull and Owl declining membership with awful politeness.
"After black-beaning me last year, indeed!
"October 7, 19-
"There was great excitement today in class when Dr. Hardy made a certain announcement. Kathleen Darcy's uncle, who is a Professor of McGill, is visiting here, and he has taken it into his head to offer a prize for the best poem, written by a pupil of Shrewsbury High School - said prize being a complete set of Parkman. The poems must be handed in by the first of November, and are to be 'not less than twenty lines, and no more than sixty' Sounds as if a tape measure was the first requisite. I have been wildly hunting through my Jimmy-books tonight and have decided to send in Wild Grapes. It is my second best poem. A Song of Sixpence is my best, but it has only fifteen lines and to add any more would spoil it. I think I can improve Wild Grapes a bit. There are two or three words in it I've always been dubious about. They don't exactly express fully what I want to say, but I can't find any others that do, either. I wish one could coin words, as I used to do long ago when I wrote letters to Father and just invented a word whenever I wanted one. But then, Father would have understood the words if he had ever seen the letters - while I am afraid the judges in the contest wouldn't.
"Wild Grapes should certainly win the prize. This isn't conceit or vanity or presumption. It's just knowing. If the price were for mathematics Kath Darcy should win it. If it were for beauty Hazel Ellis would win it. If it were for all round proficiency; Perry Miller - for elocution, Ilse - for drawing, Teddy. But since it is for poetry, E. B. Starr is the one!
"We are studying Tennyson and Keats in Senior Literature this year. I like Tennyson but sometimes he enrages me. He is beautiful - not too beautiful, as Keats is - the Perfect Artist. But he never let us forget the artist - we are always conscious of it - he is never swept away by some splendid mountain torrent of feeling. Not he - he slows on serenely between well-ordered banks and carefully laid-out gardens. And no matter how much one loves a garden one doesn't want to be cooped up in it all the time - one likes an excursion now and then into the wilderness. At least Emily Byrd Starr does - to the sorrow of her relations.
"Keats is too full of beauty. When I read his poetry I feel stifled in roses and long for a breath of frosty air or the austerity of a chill mountain peak. But, oh, he has some lines -
"'Magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faerylands forlorn' -
"When I read them I always feel a sort of despair! What is the Ilse of trying to do what has been done, once and for all?
"But I found some other lines that inspire me - I have written them on the index-page of my new Jimmy-book.
"'He ne'er is crowned
With immortality who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.'
"Oh, it's true. We must follow our 'airy voices,' follow them through every discouragement and doubt and disbelief till they lead us to our City of Fulfilment, wherever it may be.
"I had four rejections in the mail today, raucously shrieking failure at me. Airy Voices grow faint in such a clamour: But I'll hear them again. And I will follow - I will not be discouraged. Years ago I wrote a 'vow' - I found it the other day in an old packet in my cupboard - that I would 'climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.'
"I'll keep on climbing!
"October 20, 19-
"I read my Chronicles of an Old Garden over the other night. I think I can improve it considerably, now that Aunt Elizabeth has lifted the ban. I wanted Mr. Carpenter to read it, but he said,
"'Lord, girl, I can't wade through all that stuff. My eyes are bad. What is it - a book? Jade, it will be time ten years from now for you to be writing books.'
"'I've got to practice,' I said indignantly.
"'Oh, practice - practice - but don't try out the results on me. I'm too old - I really am, Jade. I don't mind a short - a very short story - now and then - but let a poor old devil off the books.'
"I might ask Dean what he thinks of it. But Dean does laugh now at my ambitions - very cautiously and kindly - but he does laugh. And Teddy thinks everything I write perfect, so he's no Ilse as a critic. I wonder - I wonder if any publisher would accept The Chronicles? I'm sure I've seen books of the kind that weren't much better.
"November 11, 19-
"This evening I spent 'expurgating' a novel for Mr. Towers' Ilse and behoof. When Mr. Towers was away in August on his vacation the sub-editor, Mr. Grady, began to run a serial in the Times called A Bleeding Heart. Instead of getting A.P.A. stuff, as Mr. Towers always does, Mr. Grady simply bought the reprint of a sensational and sentimental English novel at the Shoppe and began publishing it. It was very long and only about half of it has appeared. Mr. Towers saw that it would run all winter in its present form. So he bade me take it and cut out 'all unnecessary stuff I have followed instructions mercilessly- 'cutting out' most of the kisses and embraces, two-thirds of the love making and all the descriptions, with the happy result that I have reduced it to about a quarter of its normal length; and all I can say is may heaven have mercy on the soul of the compositor who has to set it in its present mutilated condition.
"Summer and autumn have gone. It seems to me they go more quickly than they used to. The goldenrod has turned white in the corners of the Land of Uprightness and the frost lies like a silver scarf on the ground o' mornings. The evening winds that go 'piping down the valleys wild' are heart-broken searchers, seeking for things loved and lost, calling in vain on elf and fay. For the fairy folk, if they be not all fled afar to the southlands, must be curled up asleep in the hearts of the firs or among the roots of the ferns.
"And every night we have murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson across the harbour, with a star above them like a saved soul gazing with compassionate eyes into pits of torment where sinful spirits are being purged from the stains of earthly pilgrimage.
"Would I dare to show the above sentence to Mr. Carpenter? I would not. Therefore there is something fearfully wrong with it.
"I know what's wrong with it, now that I've written it in cold blood. It's 'fine writing.' And yet it's just what I felt when I stood on the hill beyond the Land of Uprightness tonight and looked across the harbour. And who cares what this old journal thinks?
"December 2, 19—
The results of the prize poem competition were announced today. Evelyn Blake is the winner with a poem entitled A Legend of Abegweit.
"There isn't anything to say - so I say it.
"Besides, Aunt Ruth has said everything!
"December 15, 19-
"Evelyn's prize poem was printed in the Times this week with her photograph and a biographical sketch. The set of Parkman is on exhibition in the windows of the Booke Shoppe.
"A Legend of Abegweit is a fairly good poem. It is in ballad style, and rhythm and rhyme are correct - which could not be said of any other poem of Evelyn's I've ever seen.
"Evelyn Blake has said of everything of mine she ever saw in print that she was sure I copied it from somewhere. I hate to imitate her - but I know that she never wrote that poem. It isn't any expression of her at all. She might as well have imitated Dr. Hardy's handwriting and claimed it as her own. Her mincing, copperplate script is as much like Dr. Hardy's black, forcible scrawl as that poem is like her.
"Besides, thought Legend of Abegweit is fairly good it is not as good as Wild Grapes.
"I am not going to say so to any one b
ut down it goes in this journal. Because it's true.
"Dec. 20, 19-
"I showed A Legend of Abegweit and Wild Grapes to Mr. Carpenter. When he had read them both he said, 'Who were the judges?'
"I told him.
"'Give them my compliments and tell them they're asses,' he said.
"I feel comforted. I won't tell the judges - or any one - they're asses. But it soothes me to know they are.
"The strange thing is - Aunt Elizabeth asked to see Wild Grapes and when she had read it she said,
"'I am no judge of poetry, of course, but it seems to me that yours is of a higher order'
"Jan. 4, 19-
"I spent the Christmas week at Uncle Oliver's. I didn't like it. It was too noisy. I would have liked it years ago but they never asked me then. I had to eat when I wasn't hungry - play parchesi when I didn't want to - talk when I wanted to be silent. I was never alone for one moment all the time I was there. Besides, Andrew is getting to be such a nuisance. And Aunt Addie was odiously kind and motherly. I just felt all the time like a cat who is held on a lap where it doesn't want to be and gently, firmly stroked. I had to sleep with Jen, who is my first cousin and just my age, and who thinks in her heart I'm not half good enough for Andrew but is going to try with the blessing of God, to make the best of it. Jen is a nice, sensible girl and she and I are friendish. That is a word of my own coining. Jen and I are more than mere acquaintances but not really friendly. We will always be friendish and never more than friendish. We don't talk the same language.
"When I got home to dear New Moon I went up to my room and shut the door and revelled in the solitude.
"Schooled opened yesterday. Today in the Booke Shoppe I had an internal laugh. Mrs. Rodney and Mrs. Elder were looking over some books and Mrs. Rodney said,
"'That story in the Times - A Bleeding Heart - was the strangest one I ever read. It wandered on, chapter after chapter, for weeks, and never seemed to get anywhere, and then it just finished up in eight chapters lickety-split. I can't understand it.'
"I could have solved the mystery for her but I didn't."
IN THE OLD JOHN HOUSE
When The Woman Who Spanked the King was accepted and published by a New York magazine of some standing, quite a sensation was produced in Blair Water and Shrewsbury, especially when the incredible news was whispered from lip to lip that Emily had actually been paid forty dollars for it. For the first time her clan began to take her writing mania with some degree of seriousness and Aunt Ruth gave up, finally and for ever, all slurs over wasted time. The acceptance came at the psychological moment when the sands of Emily's faith were running rather low. All the fall and winter her stuff had been coming back to her, except from two magazines whose editors evidently thought that literature was its own reward and quite independent of degrading monetary considerations. At first she had always felt dreadfully when a poem or story over which she had agonised came back with one of those icy little rejection slips or a few words of faint praise - the "but" rejections, Emily called these, and hated them worse than the printed ones. Tears of disappointment would come. But after a time she got hardened to it and didn't mind - so much. She only gave the editorial slip the Murray look and said, "I will succeed." And never at any time had she any real doubt that she would. Down, deep down, something told her that her time would come. So, though she flinched momentarily at each rejection, as from the flick of a whip, she sat down and - wrote another story.
Still, her inner voice had grown rather faint under so many discouragements. The acceptance of The Woman Who Spanked the King suddenly raised it into a joyous paean of certainty again. The cheque meant much, but the storming of that magazine much more. She felt that she was surely winning a foothold. Mr. Carpenter chuckled over it and told her it really was "absolutely good."
"The best in this story belongs to Mistress McIntyre," said Emily ruefully. "I can't call it mine."
"The setting is yours - and what you've added harmonises perfectly with your foundation. And you didn't polish hers up too much - that shows the artist. Weren't you tempted to?"
"Yes. There were so many places I thought I could improve it a good deal."
"But you didn't try to - that makes it yours," said Mr. Carpenter - and left her to puzzle his meaning out for herself.
Emily spent thirty-five of her dollars so sensibly that even Aunt Ruth herself couldn't find fault with her budget. But with the remaining five she bought a set of Parkman. It was a much nicer set than the prize one - which the donor had really picked out of a mail-order list - and Emily felt much prouder of it than if it had been the prize. After all, it was better to earn things for yourself. Emily has those Parkmans yet - somewhat faded and frayed now, but dearer to her than all the other volumes in her library. For a few weeks she was very happy and uplifted. The Murrays were proud of her, Principal Hardy had congratulated her, a local elocutionist of some repute had read her story at a concert in Charlottetown. And, most wonderful of all, a far-away reader in Mexico had written her a letter telling her what pleasure The Woman Who Spanked the King had given him. Emily read and reread that letter until she knew if off by heart, and slept with it under her pillow. No lover's missive was ever more tenderly treated.
Then the affair of the old John house came up like a thunder-cloud and darkened all her cerulean sky.
There was a concert and "pie social" at Derry Pond one Friday night and Ilse had been asked to recite. Dr. Burnley took Ilse and Emily and Perry and Teddy over in his big, double-seated sleigh, and they had a gay and merry eight miles' drive through the soft snow that was beginning to fall. When the concert was half over, Dr. Burnley was summoned out. There was sudden and serious illness in a Derry Pond household. The doctor went, telling Teddy that he must drive the party home. Dr. Burnley made no bones about it. They might have silly rules about chaperonage in Shrewsbury and Charlottetown, but in Blair Water and Derry Pond they did not obtain. Teddy and Perry were decent boys - Emily was a Murray - Ilse was no fool. The doctor would have summed them up thus tersely if he had thought about it at all.
When the concert was over they left for home. It was snowing very thickly now and the wind was rising rapidly, but the first three miles of the road were through sheltering woods and were not unpleasant. There was a wild, weird beauty in the snow-coated ranks of trees, standing in the pale light of the moon behind the storm-clouds. The sleigh-bells laughed at the shriek of the wind far overhead. Teddy managed the doctor's team without difficulty. Once or twice Emily had a strong suspicion that he was using only one arm to drive them. She wondered if he had noticed that evening that she wore her hair really "up" for the first time - in a soft ebony "Psyche knot" under her crimson hat. Emily thought again that there was something quite delightful about a storm.
But when they left the woods their troubles began. The storm swooped down on them in all its fury. The winter road went through the fields and wound and twisted and doubled in and out and around corners and spruce groves - a road that would "break a snake's back," as Perry said. The track was already almost obliterated with the drift and the horses plunged to their knees. They had not gone a mile before Perry whistled in dismay.
"We'll never make Blair Water tonight, Ted."
"We've got to make somewhere," shouted Ted. "We can't camp here. And there's no house till we get back to the summer road, past Shaw's hill. Duck under the robes, girls. You'd better get back with Ilse, Emily, and Perry will come here with me."
The transfer was effected, Emily no longer thinking storms quite so delightful. Perry and Teddy were both thoroughly alarmed. They knew the horses could not go much farther in that depth of snow - the summer road beyond Shaw's hill would be blocked with drift - and it was bitterly cold on those high, bleak hills between the valleys of Derry Pond and Blair Water.
"If we can only get to Malcolm Shaw's we'll be all right," muttered Perry.
"We'll never get that far. Shaw's hill is filled in by this time to the fence-tops," said Te
ddy. "Here's the old John house. Do you suppose we could stay here?"
"Cold as a barn," said Perry. "The girls would freeze. We must try to make Malcolm's."
When the plunging horses reached the summer road, the boys saw at a glance that Shaw's hill was a hopeless proposition. All traces of track were obliterated by drifts that were over the fence-tops. Telephone-posts were blown down across the road and a huge, fallen tree blocked the gap where the field road ran out to it.
"Nothing to do but go back to the old John house," said Perry. "We can't go wandering over the fields in the teeth of this storm, looking for a way through to Malcolm's. We'd get stuck and freeze to death."
Teddy turned the horses. The snow was thicker than ever. Every minute the drift deepened. The track was entirely gone, and if the old John house had been very far away they could never have found it. Fortunately, it was near, and after one last wild flounder through the unbroken drift around it, during which the boys had to get out and scramble along on their own feet, they reached the comparative calm of the little cleared space in the young spruce woods, wherein stood the old John house.
The "old John house" had been old when, forty years before, John Shaw had moved into it with his young bride. It had been a lonely spot even then, far back from the road, and almost surrounded by spruce woods. John Shaw had lived there five years; then his wife died; he had sold the farm to his brother Malcolm and gone West. Malcolm farmed the land and kept the little barn in good repair, but the house had never been occupied since, save for a few weeks in winter when Malcolm's boys camped there while they "got out" their firewood. It was not even locked. Tramps and burglars were unknown in Derry Pond. Our castaways found easy entrance through the door of the tumbledown porch and drew a breath of relief to find themselves out of the shrieking wind and driving snow.
"We won't freeze anyhow," said Perry. "Ted and I'll have to see if we can get the horses in the barn and then we'll come back and see if we can't make ourselves comfortable. I've got matches and I've never been stumped yet."
Emily Climbs Page 25
