X
"Last night I simply could not endure any longer the vaseful of dyed grasses on my mantelpiece. What if they had been there for forty years! I seized them, opened the window and strewed them over the lawn. This soothed me so that I slept like an infant. But this morning Cousin Jimmy had gathered them all up and handed them secretly back to me with a gentle warning not to let them 'blow out' again. Elizabeth would be horrified.
"I put them back in the vase. One cannot escape one's kismet."
XI
"Feb. 22, 19-
"There was a creamy, misty sunset this evening and then moonlight. Such moonlight. It is such a night as one might fall asleep in and dream happy dreams of gardens and songs and companionship, feeling all the while through one's sleep the splendour and radiance of white moon-world outside as one hears soft, far-away music sounding through the thoughts and words that are born of it.
"I slipped away for a solitary walk through that fairy world of glamour. I went through the orchard where the black shadows of the trees fell over the snow - I went up to the gleaming white hill with the stars over it, I lurked along fir copses dim with mystery and along still, wood aisles where the night hid from the moonshine. I loitered across a dreamland field of ebony and ivory. I had a tryst with my friend of old days, the Wind Woman. And every breath was a lyric and every thought an ecstasy and I've come back with a soul washed white and clean in the great crystal bath of the night.
"But Aunt Elizabeth said people would think me crazy if they saw me roaming around alone at this hour of the night. And Aunt Laura made me take a drink of hot black currant decoction lest I might have taken cold. Only Cousin Jimmy partly understood.
"'You went out to escape. I know,' he whispered.
"'My soul has pastured with the stars
Upon the meadowlands of space,'
I whispered in return."
XII
"Feb. 26, 19-
"Jasper Frost has been coming out here from Shrewsbury of late. I don't think he will come any more - after our conversation of last night. He told me he loved me with a love 'that would last through eternity' But I thought an eternity with Jasper would be rather long. Aunt Elizabeth will be a little disappointed, poor dear. She likes Jasper and the Frosts are 'a good family' I like him, too, but he is too prim and bandboxy "'Would you like a slovenly beau?' demanded Aunt Elizabeth.
"This posed me. Because I wouldn't.
"'Surely there's a happy medium,' I protested.
"A girl shouldn't be too particular when she is' - I feel sure Aunt Elizabeth was going to say 'nearly twenty-four.' But she changed it to 'not entirely perfect herself.'
"I wish Mr. Carpenter had been alive to hear Aunt Elizabeth's italics. They were killing."
XIII
"March 1, 19-
"A wonderful music of night is coming to my window from Lofty John's bush. No, not Lofty John's bush any more.
"Emily Byrd Starr's bush!
"I bought it to-day, with the proceeds of my latest serial. And it is mine - mine - mine. All the lovely things in it are mine - its moonlit vistas - the grace of its one big elm against the starlight - its shadowy little dells - its June-bells and ferns - its crystalline spring - its wind music sweeter than an old Cremona. No one can ever cut it down or desecrate it in any way.
"I am so happy. The wind is my comrade and the evening star my friend."
XIV
"March 23, 19-
"Is there any sound in the world sadder and weirder than the wail of the wind around the eaves and past the windows on a stormy night? It sounds as if all the brokenhearted cries of fair, unhappy women who died and were forgotten ages ago were being re-echoed in the moaning wind of to-night. All my own past pain finds a voice in it as if it were moaning a plea for re-entrance into the soul that has cast it out. There are strange sounds in that night wind clamouring there at my little window. I hear the cries of old sorrows in it - and the moans of old despairs - and the phantom songs of dead hopes. The night wind is the wandering soul of the past. It has no share in the future - and so it is mournful."
XV
"April 10, 19-
"This morning I felt more like myself than I have for a long time. I was out for a walk over the Delectable Mountain. It was a very mild, still, misty morning with lovely pearl-grey skies and smell of spring in the air. Every turn and twist on that hill-road was an old friend to me. And everything was so young. April couldn't be old. The young spruces were so green and companionable with pearl-like beads of moisture fringing their needles.
"'You are mine,' called the sea beyond Blair Water.
"'We have a share in her,' said the hills.
"'She is my sister,' said a polly fir-tree.
"Looking at them the flash came - my old supernal moment that has come so sadly seldom these past dreary months. Will I lose it altogether as I grow old? Will nothing but 'the light of common day' be mine then?
"But at least it came to me this morning and I felt my immortality. After all, freedom is a matter of the soul.
"'Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.'
"She has always a gift of healing for us if we come humbly to her. Corroding memories and discontents vanished. I felt suddenly that some old gladness was yet waiting for me, just around the curve of the hill.
"The frogs are singing to-night. Why is frog such a funny, dear, charming, absurd word?"
XVI
"May 15, 19-
"I know that when I am dead I shall sleep peaceably enough under the grasses through the summer and autumn and winter but when spring comes my heart will throb and stir in my sleep and call wistfully to all the voices calling far and wide in the world above me. Spring and morning were laughing to each other to-day and I went out to them and made a third.
"Ilse wrote to-day - a stingy little letter as far as news went - and spoke of coming home.
"'I'm homesick,' she wrote. 'Are the wild birds still singing in the Blair Water woods and are the waves still calling beyond the dunes? I want them. And oh, to see the moon rise over the harbour as we watched it do scores of times when we were children. And I want to see you. Letters are so unsatisfactory. There are so many things I'd like to talk over with you. Do you know I felt a little old to-day. It was a curious sensation.'
"She never mentioned Teddy's name. But she asked, 'Is it true that Perry Miller is engaged to Judge Elmsley's daughter?'
"I don't think it is. But the mere report shows where Perry has climbed to already."
TWENTY
I
On her twenty-fourth birthday Emily opened and read the letter she had written "from herself at fourteen to herself at twenty-four." It was not the amusing performance she had once expected it to be. She sat long at her window with the letter in her hand, watching the light of yellow, sinking stars over the bush that was still called Lofty John's oftener than not, from old habit. What would pop out when she opened that letter? A ghost of first youth? Of ambition? Of vanished love? Of lost friendship? Emily felt she would rather burn the letter than read it. But that would be cowardly. One must face things - even ghosts. With a sudden quick movement she cut open the envelope and took out the letter.
A whiff of old fragrance came with it. Folded in it were some dried rose-leaves - crisp brown things that crumbled to dust under her touch. Yes, she remembered that rose - Teddy had brought it to her one evening when they had been children together and he had been so proud of that first red rose that bloomed on a little house rosebush Dr. Burnley had given him - the only rose that ever did bloom on it, for that matter. His mother had resented his love for the little plant. One night it was accidentally knocked off the window-sill and broken. If Teddy thought or knew there was any connection between the two facts he never said so. Emily had kept the rose as long as possible in a little vase on her study table; but the night she had written her letter she had taken the limp, faded thing and folded it - with a kiss - between the sheets of paper. She had forgot
ten that it was there; and now it fell in her hand, faded, unbeautiful, like the rose-hopes of long ago, yet with some faint bitter-sweetness still about it. The whole letter seemed full of it - whether of sense or spirit she could hardly tell.
This letter was, she sternly told herself, a foolish, romantic affair. Something to be laughed at. Emily carefully laughed at some parts of it. How crude - how silly - how sentimental - how amusing! Had she really ever been young and callow enough to write such flowery, exultant nonsense? And one would have thought, too, that fourteen regarded twenty-four as verging on venerable.
"Have you written your great book?" airily asked Fourteen in conclusion. "Have you climbed to the very top of the Alpine Path? Oh, Twenty-Four, I'm envying you. It must be splendid to be you. Are you looking back patronisingly and pityingly to met You wouldn't swing on a gate now, would you? Are you a staid old married woman with several children, living in the Disappointed House with One-You-Know-Of? Only don't be stodgy, I implore you, dear Twenty-Four. And do be dramatic. I love dramatic things and people. Are you Mrs. -- --? What name will fill those blanks? Oh, dear Twenty-Four, I put into this letter for you a kiss - and a handful of moonshine - and the soul of a rose - and some of the green sweetness of the old hill field - and a whiff of wild violets. I hope you are happy and famous and lovely; and I hope you haven't quite forgotten.
"Your foolish
"OLD SELF."
Emily locked the letter away.
"So much for that nonsense," she said scoffingly
Then she sat down in her chair, and dropped her head on her desk. Little silly, dreamy, happy, ignorant Fourteen! Always thinking that something great and wonderful and beautiful lay in the years ahead. Quite sure that the "mountain purple" could be reached. Quite sure that dreams always come true. Foolish Fourteen, who yet had known how to be happy.
"I'm envying you," said Emily. "I wish I had never opened your letter, foolish little Fourteen. Go back to your shadowy past and don't come again - mocking me. I'm going to have a white night because of you. I'm going to lie awake all night and pity myself."
Yet already the footsteps of destiny were sounding on the stairs - though Emily thought they were only Cousin Jimmy's.
II
He had come to bring her a letter - a thin letter - and if Emily had not been too much absorbed in herself at fourteen she might have noticed that Cousin Jimmy's eyes were as bright as a cat's and that an air of ill-concealed excitement pervaded his whole being. Moreover that, when she had thanked him absently for the letter and gone back to her desk, he remained in the shadowy hall outside, watching her slyly through the half-open door. At first he thought she was not going to open the letter - she had flung it down indifferently and sat staring at it. Cousin Jimmy went nearly mad with impatience.
But after a few minutes more of absent musing Emily roused herself with a sigh and stretched out a hand for the letter.
"If I don't miss my guess, dear little Emily, you won't sigh when you read what's in that letter," thought Cousin Jimmy exultantly.
Emily looked at the return address in the upper corner, wondering what the Wareham Publishing Company were writing to her about. The big Warehams! The oldest and most important publishing house in America. A circular of some kind, probably. Then she found herself staring incredulously at the typewritten sheet - while Cousin Jimmy performed a noiseless dance on Aunt Elizabeth's braided rug out in the hall.
"I - don't - understand," gasped Emily.
Dear Miss Starr: -
We take pleasure in advising you that our readers report favourably with regard to your story The Moral of the Rose and if mutually satisfactory arrangements can be made we shall be glad to add the book to our next seasons lists. We shall also be interested in hearing of your plans with regard to future writing.
Very sincerely yours, etc.
"I don't - understand -" said Emily again.
Cousin Jimmy could hold himself in no longer. He made a sound between a whoop and hurrah. Emily flew across the room and dragged him in.
"Cousin Jimmy, what does this mean? You must know something about it - how did the House of Wareham ever get my book?"
"Have they really accepted it?" demanded Cousin Jimmy.
"Yes. And I never sent it to them. I wouldn't have supposed it was the least use - the Warehams. Am I dreaming?"
"No. I'll tell you - don't be mad now, Emily. You mind Elizabeth asked me to tidy up the garret a month ago. I was moving that old cardboard box you keep a lot of stuff in and the bottom fell out. Everything went - so - all over the garret. I gathered 'em up - and your book manuscript was among 'em. I happened to look at a page - and then I set down - and Elizabeth came up an hour later and found me still a-sitting there on my hams reading. I'd forgot everything. My, but she was mad! The garret not half done and dinner ready. But I didn't mind what she said - I was thinking, 'If that book made me forget everything like that there's something in it. I'll send it somewhere.' And I didn't know anywhere to send it but to the Warehams. I'd always heard of them. And I didn't know how to send it - but I just stuffed it in an old cracker box and mailed it to them off-hand."
"Didn't you even send stamps for its return?" gasped Emily, horrified.
"No, never thought of it. Maybe that's why they took it. Maybe the other firms sent it back because you sent stamps."
"Hardly." Emily laughed and found herself crying.
"Emily, you ain't mad at me, are you?"
"No - no - darling - I'm only so flabbergasted, as you say yourself, that I don't know what to say or do. It's all so - the Warehams!"
"I've been watching the mails ever since," chuckled Cousin Jimmy. "Elizabeth has been thinking I've gone clear daft at last. If the story had come back I was going to smuggle it back to the garret - I wasn't going to let you know. But when I saw that thin envelope - I remembered you said once the thin envelopes always had good news - dear little Emily don't cry!"
"I can't - help it - and oh, I'm sorry for what I called you, little Fourteen. You weren't silly - you were wise - you knew."
"It's gone to her head a little," said Cousin Jimmy to himself. "No wonder - after so many setbacks. But she'll soon be quite sensible again."
TWENTY-ONE
I
Teddy and Ilse were coming home for a brief ten days in July. How was it, wondered Emily, that they always came together? That couldn't be just coincidence. She dreaded the visit and wished it were over. It would be good to see Ilse again - somehow she could never feel a stranger with Ilse. No matter how long she was away, the moment she came back you found the old Ilse. But she did not want to see Teddy. Teddy who had forgotten her. Who had never written since he went away last. Teddy who was already famous, as a painter of lovely women. So famous and so successful that - Ilse wrote - he was going to give up magazine work. Emily felt a certain relief when she read that. She would no longer dread to open a magazine lest she see her own face - or soul - looking at her out of some illustration - with "Frederick Kent" scrawled in the corner, as if to say "know all men by these presents that this girl is mine." Emily resented less the pictures which looked like her whole face than the ones in which only the eyes were hers. To be able to paint her eyes like that Teddy must know everything that was in her soul. The thought always filled her with fury and shame - and a sense of horrible helplessness. She would not - could not - tell Teddy to stop using her as a model. She had never stooped to acknowledge to him that she had noticed any resemblance to herself in his illustrations - she never would stoop.
And now he was coming home - might be home any time. If only she could go away - on any pretence - for a few weeks. Miss Royal was wanting her to go to New York for a visit. But it would never do to go away when Ilse was coming.
Well - Emily shook herself. What an idiot she was! Teddy was coming home, a dutiful son, to see his mother - and he would doubtless be glad enough to see old friends when their actual presence recalled them to his memory; and why should there be anythin
g difficult about it? She must get rid of this absurd self-consciousness. She would.
She was sitting at her open window. The night outside was like a dark, heavy, perfumed flower. An expectant night - a night when things intended to happen. Very still. Only the loveliest of muted sounds - the faintest whisper of trees, the airiest sigh of wind, the half-heard, half-felt moan of the sea.
"Oh, beauty!" whispered Emily, passionately, lifting her hands to the stars. "What would I have done without you all these years?"
Beauty of night - and perfume - and mystery. Her soul was filled with it. There was, just then, room for nothing else. She bent out, lifting her face to the jewelled sky-rapt, ecstatic.
Then she heard it. A soft, silvery signal in Lofty John's bush - two higher notes and one long, low one - the old, old call that would once have sent her with flying feet to the shadows of the firs.
Emily sat as if turned to stone, her white face framed in the vines that clustered round her window. He was there - Teddy was there - in Lofty John's bush - waiting for her - calling to her as of old. Expecting her!
Almost she had sprung to her feet - almost she had run downstairs where he was waiting for her. But -
Was he only trying to see if he still had the old power over her?
He had gone away two years ago without even a written word of farewell. Would the Murray pride condone that? Would the Murray pride run to meet the man who had held her of so little account? The Murray pride would not. Emily's young face took on lines of stubborn determination in the dim light. She would not go. Let him call as he might. "Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad," indeed! No more of that for Emily Byrd Starr. Teddy Kent need not imagine that he could come and go as went the years and find her meekly waiting to answer his lordly signal.
Emily's Quest Page 15
