Emily Climbs (21 page)

“I’m going to leave it for my next trip,” she said. “I can’t go canvassing today, somehow. Friend of my heart, let’s go to Malvern Bridge and take the morning train to Shrewsbury.”

“It – was – awfully funny – about your dream,” said Ilse. “It makes me a little afraid of you, Emily – somehow.”

“Oh, don’t be afraid of me,” implored Emily. “It was only a coincidence. I was thinking of him so much – and the house took possession of me yesterday –”

“Remember how you found out about Mother?” said Ilse, in a low tone. “You
have
some power the rest of us haven’t.”

“Perhaps I’ll grow out of it,” said Emily desperately. “I hope so – I don’t
want
to have any such power – you don’t know how I feel about it, Ilse. It seems to me a terrible thing – as if I were marked out in some uncanny way – I don’t feel
human
. When Dr. McIntyre spoke about
something
using me as an instrument, I went cold all over. It seemed to me that while
I
was asleep some
other
intelligence must have taken possession of my body and drawn that picture.”

“It was
your
writing,” said Ilse.

“Oh, I’m not going to talk of it – or
think
of it. I’m going to forget it. Don’t ever speak of it to me again, Ilse.”

“Shrewsbury,    

“October 3, 19–

“I have finished canvassing my allotted portion of our fair province – I have the banner list of all the canvassers – and I have made almost enough out of my commissions to pay for my books for my whole Junior year. When I told Aunt Ruth this she did
not
sniff I consider that a fact worth recording.

“Today my story,
The Sands of Time
, came back from
Merton’s Magazine
. But the rejection slip was typewritten, not printed. Typewriting doesn’t seem
quite
as insulting as print, some way.

“If they meant that ‘with interest,’ it is a little encouragement. But were they only trying to soften the blow?

“Ilse and I were notified recently that there were nine vacancies in the
Skull and Owl
and that we had been put on
the list of those who might apply for membership. So we did. It is considered a great thing in school to be a Skull and Owl.

“The Junior year is in full swing now, and I find the work very interesting. Mr. Hardy has several of our classes, and I like him as a teacher better than any one since Mr. Carpenter. He was very much interested in my essay,
The Woman Who Spanked the King
. He gave it first place and commented on it specially in his class criticisms. Evelyn Blake is sure, naturally that I copied it out of something, and feels certain she has read it somewhere before. Evelyn is wearing her hair in the new pompadour style this year and I think it is very unbecoming to her. But then, of course, the only part of Evelyn’s anatomy I like is her back.

“I understand that the Martin clan are furious with me. Sally Martin was married last week in the Anglican church here, and the
Times
editor asked me to report it. Of course, I went – though I
hate
reporting weddings. There are so many things I’d
like
to say sometimes that can’t
be
said. But Sally’s wedding was pretty and so was she, and I sent in quite a nice report of it, I thought, specially mentioning the bride’s beautiful bouquet of ‘roses and orchids’ – the first bridal bouquet of orchids ever seen in Shrewsbury. I wrote as plain as print and there was no excuse whatever for that wretched typesetter on the
Times
turning ‘orchids’ into
sardines
. Of course, anybody with any sense would have known that it was only a printer’s error. But the Martin clan have taken into their heads the absurd notion that I wrote
sardines
on purpose for a silly joke – because, it seems, it has been reported to them that I said once I was tired of the conventional reports of weddings and would like to write just one along different lines. I
did
say it – but my craving for originality would hardly lead me to report the bride as carrying a bouquet of sardines! Nevertheless, the
Martins
do
think it, and Stella Martin didn’t invite me to her thimble party – and Aunt Ruth says she doesn’t wonder at it – and Aunt Elizabeth says I shouldn’t have been so careless.
I
! Heaven grant me patience!

“October 5, 19–

“Mrs. Will Bradshaw came to see me this evening. Luckily Aunt Ruth was out – I say luckily, for I don’t want Aunt Ruth to find out about my dream and its part in finding little Allan Bradshaw. This may be ‘sly’ as Aunt Ruth would say, but the truth is that, sly or not sly, I could
not
bear to have Aunt Ruth sniffing and wondering and pawing over the incident.

“Mrs. Bradshaw came to thank me. It embarrassed me – because, after all, what had
I
to do with it? I don’t want to think of or talk of it at all. Mrs. Bradshaw says little Allan is all right again, now, though it was a week after they found him before he could sit up. She was very pale and earnest.

“‘He would have died there if you hadn’t come, Miss Starr – and
I
would have died. I couldn’t have gone on living – not knowing – oh, I shall never forget the horror of those days. I
had
to come and try to utter a little of my gratitude – you were gone when I came back that morning – I felt that I had been very inhospitable –’

“She broke down and cried – and so did I – and we had a good howl together. I am very glad and thankful that Allan was found, but I shall never like to think of the way it happened.

“New Moon,     

“October 7, 19–

“I had a lovely walk and prowl this evening in the pond graveyard. Not exactly a cheerful place for an evening’s ramble, one might suppose. But I always like to wander over that little
westward slope of graves in the gentle melancholy of a fine autumn evening. I like to read the names on the stones and note the ages and think of all the loves and hates and hopes and fears that lie buried there. It was beautiful – and not sad. And all around were the red ploughed fields and the frosted, ferny woodsides and all the old familiar things I have loved – and love more and more it seems to me, the older I grow. Every week-end I come home to New Moon these things seem dearer to me – more a part of me. I love
things
just as much as
people
. I think Aunt Elizabeth is like this, too. That is why she will not have anything changed at New Moon. I am beginning to understand her better. I believe she likes me now, too. I was only a duty at first, but now I am something more.

“I stayed in the graveyard until a dull gold twilight came down and made a glimmering spectral place of it. Then Teddy came for me and we walked together up the field and through the Tomorrow Road. It is really a Today Road now, for the trees along it are above our heads, but we still call it the Tomorrow Road – partly out of habit and partly because we talk so much on it of
our
tomorrows and what we hope to do in them. Somehow, Teddy is the only person I like to talk to about my tomorrows and my ambitions. There is no one else. Perry scoffs at my literary aspirations. He says, when I say anything about writing books, ‘What is the good of that sort of thing?’ And of course if a person can’t see ‘the good’ for himself you can’t explain it to him. I can’t even talk to Dean about them – not since he said so bitterly one evening, ‘I hate to hear of your tomorrows – they cannot be
my
tomorrows.’ I think in a way Dean doesn’t like to think of my growing up – I
think
he has a little of the Priest jealousy of sharing
anything
, especially friendship, with any one else – or with the world. I feel thrown back on myself. Somehow, it has seemed to me lately that Dean isn’t
interested any longer in my writing ambitions. He even, it seems to me, ridicules them slightly. For instance, Mr. Carpenter was delighted with my
Woman Who Spanked the King
, and told me it was excellent; but when Dean read it he smiled and said, ‘It will do very well for a school essay, but –’ and then he smiled again. It was not the smile I liked, either. It had ‘too much Priest in it,’ as Aunt Elizabeth would say. I felt – and feel – horribly cast down about it. It seemed to say, ‘You can scribble amusingly, my dear, and have a pretty knack of phrase-turning; but I should be doing you an unkindness if I let you think that such a knack meant a very great deal.’ If this is true – and it very likely is, for Dean is so clever and knows so much – then I can never accomplish anything worth while. I won’t
try
to accomplish anything – I
won’t
be just a ‘pretty scribbler.’

“But it’s different with Teddy.

“Teddy was wildly elated tonight – and so was I when I heard his news. He showed two of his pictures at the Charlottetown exhibition in September, and Mr. Lewes, of Montreal, has offered him fifty dollars apiece for them. That will pay his board in Shrewsbury for the winter and make it easier for Mrs. Kent: Although
she
wasn’t glad when he told her. She said, ‘Oh, yes, you think you are independent of me now’ – and cried. Teddy was hurt, because he had never thought of such a thing. Poor Mrs. Kent. She must be very lonely. There is some strange barrier between her and her kind. I haven’t been to the Tansy Patch for a long, long time. Once in the summer I went with Aunt Laura, who had heard Mrs. Kent was ill. Mrs. Kent was able to be up and she talked to Aunt Laura, but she never spoke to me, only looked at me now and then with a queer, smouldering fire in her eyes. But when we rose to come away, she spoke once – and said,

“‘You are very tall. You will soon be a woman – and stealing some other woman’s son from her.’

“Aunt Laura said, as we walked home, that Mrs. Kent had always been strange, but was growing stranger.

“‘Some people think her mind is affected,’ she said.

“‘I don’t think the trouble is in her mind. She has a sick soul,’ I said.

“‘Emily, dear, that is a dreadful thing to say,’ said Aunt Laura.

“I don’t see why. If bodies and minds can be sick, can’t souls be, too? There are times when I feel as certain as if I had been told it that Mrs. Kent got some kind of terrible soul-wound some time, and it has never healed. I wish she didn’t hate me. It hurts me to have Teddy’s mother hate me. I don’t know why this is. Dean is just as dear a friend as Teddy, yet I wouldn’t care if all the rest of the Priest clan hated me.

“October 19, 19–

“Ilse and the other seven applicants were elected Skulls and Owls. I was black-beaned. We were notified to that effect Monday.

“Of course, I know it was Evelyn Blake who did it. There is nobody else who would do it. Ilse was furious: she tore into pieces the notification of her election and sent the scraps back to the secretary with a scathing repudiation of the
Skull and Owl
and all its works.

“Evelyn met me in the cloakroom today and assured me that she had voted for both Ilse and me.

“‘Has any one been saying you did not?’ I asked, in my best Aunt Elizabethan manner.

“Yes – Ilse has,’ said Evelyn peevishly. ‘She was very
insolent to me about it. Do you want to know who I
think
put the black bean in?’

“I looked Evelyn straight in the eyes.

“‘No, it is not necessary. I
know
who put it in’ – and I turned and left her.

“Most of the Skulls and Owls are very angry about it – especially the Skulls. One or two Owls, I have heard, hoot that it is a good pill for the Murray pride. And, of course, several Seniors and Juniors who were not among the favoured nine are either gloatingly rejoiced or odiously sympathetic.

“Aunt Ruth heard of it today and wanted to know
why
I was black-beaned.

“New Moon,         

“November 5, 19–

“Aunt Laura and I spent this afternoon, the one teaching, the other learning, a certain New Moon tradition – to wit, how to put pickles into glass jars in patterns. We stowed away the whole big crockful of new pickles, and when Aunt Elizabeth came to look them over she admitted she could not tell those which Aunt Laura had done from mine.

“This evening was very delightful. I had a good time with myself, out in the garden. It was lovely there tonight with the eerie loveliness of a fine November evening. At sunset there had been a wild little shower of snow, but it had cleared off, leaving the world just lightly covered, and the air clear and tingling. Almost all the flowers, including my wonderful asters, which were a vision all through the fall, were frozen black two weeks ago, but the beds still had white drifts of alyssum all around them. A big, smoky-red hunter’s moon was just rising above the tree-tops. There was a yellow-red glow in the west behind the white hills on which a few dark trees grew.
The snow had banished all the strange deep sadness of a dead landscape on a late fall evening, and the slopes and meadows of old New Moon farm were transformed into a wonderland in the faint, early moonlight. The old house had a coating of sparkling snow on its roof. Its lighted windows glowed like jewels. It looked exactly like a picture on a Christmas card. There was just a suggestion of grey-blue chimney smoke over the kitchen. A nice reek of burning autumn leaves came from Cousin Jimmy’s smouldering bonfires in the lane. My cats were there, too, stealthy, goblin-eyed, harmonising with the hour and the place. The twilight – appropriately called the cats’ light – is the only time when a cat really reveals himself. Saucy Sal was thin and gleaming, like the silvery ghost of a pussy. Daff was like a dark-grey, skulking tiger. He certainly gives the world assurance of a cat: he doesn’t condescend to every one – and he never talks too much. They pounced at my feet and tore off and frisked back and rolled each other over – and were all so a part of the night and the haunted place that they didn’t disturb my thoughts at all. I walked up and down the paths and around the dial and the summer-house in exhilaration. Air such as I breathed then always makes me a little drunk, I verily believe. I laughed at myself for feeling badly over not being elected an
Owl
. An Owl! Why, I felt like a young eagle, soaring sunward. All the world was before me to see and learn, and I exulted in it. The future was mine – and the past, too. I felt as if I had been alive here always – as if I shared in all the loves and lives of the old house. I felt as if I would live always – always – always – I was sure of immortality then. I didn’t just believe it – I
felt
it.

“Dean found me there: he was close beside me before I was aware of his presence.

“‘You are smiling,’ said Dean. ‘I like to see a woman
smiling to herself. Her thoughts must be innocent and pleasant. Has the day been kind to you, dear lady?’

“‘Very kind – and this evening is its best gift. I’m
so
happy tonight, Dean – just to be alive makes me happy. I feel as if I were driving a team of stars. I wish such a mood could last, I feel so sure of myself tonight – so sure of my future. I’m not afraid of
anything
. At life’s banquet of success I may not be the guest of honour, but I’ll be among those present.’

“‘You looked like a seeress gazing into the future as I came down the walk,’ said Dean, ‘standing here in the moonlight, white and rapt. Your skin is like a narcissus petal. You could dare to hold a white rose against your face – very few women can dare that. You aren’t really very pretty, you know, Star, but your face makes people think of beautiful things – and that is a far rarer gift than mere beauty’