Emily's Quest (8 page)

“Well, gurrl dear, ye do be having a good mouth for kissing, anyway. I see ye're set on it. But I do be thinking the Lord intended ye for something different. Anyway, here's hoping we'll all make a good end. But he knows too much, that Jarback Praste, he's after knowing far too much.”

Old Kelly drove off, waiting till he was decently out of earshot to mutter:

“Don't it bate hell? And him as odd-looking as a crosseyed cat!”

Emily stood still for a few minutes looking after Old Kelly's retreating chariot. He had found the one joint in her armour and the thrust had struck home. A little chill crept over her as if a wind from the grave had blown across her spirit. All at once an old, old story whispered long ago by
Great-aunt Nancy to Caroline Priest flashed into her recollection. Dean, so it was said, had seen the Black Mass celebrated.

Emily shook the recollection from her.
That was
all nonsense – silly, malicious, envious gossip of stay-at-homes. But Dean
did
know too much. He had eyes that had seen too much. In a way that had been part of the distinct fascination he had always had for Emily. But now it frightened her. Had she not always felt – did she not feel – that he always seemed to be laughing at the world from some mysterious standpoint of inner knowledge – a knowledge she did not share – could not share – did not, to come down to the bare bones of it, want to share? He had lost some intangible, all-real zest of faith and idealism. It was there deep in her heart – an inescapable conviction, thrust it out of sight as she might. For a moment she felt with Ilse that it was a decidedly devilish thing to be a woman.

“It serves me right for bandying words with Old Jock Kelly on such a subject,” she thought angrily.

Consent was never given in set terms to Emily's engagement. But the thing came to be tacitly accepted. Dean was well-to-do. The Priests had all the necessary traditions, including that of a grandmother who had danced with the Prince of Wales at the famous ball in Charlottetown. After all, there would be a certain relief in seeing Emily safely married.

“He won't take her away from us,” said Aunt Laura, who could have reconciled herself to almost anything for that. How could they lose the one bright, gay thing in that faded house?

“Tell Emily,” wrote old Aunt Nancy, “that twins run in the Priest family.”

But Aunt Elizabeth did not tell her.

Dr. Burnley, who had made the most fuss, gave in when he heard that Elizabeth Murray was overhauling the chests of
quilts in the attic of New Moon and that Laura was hemstitching table linen.

“Those whom Elizabeth Murray has joined together let no man put asunder,” he said resignedly.

Aunt Laura cupped Emily's face in her gentle hands and looked deep into her eyes. “God bless you, Emily, dear child.”

“Very mid-Victorian,” commented Emily to Dean. “But I liked it.”

O
n one point Aunt Elizabeth was adamant. Emily should not be married until she was twenty. Dean, who had dreamed of an autumn wedding and a winter spent in a dreamy Japanese garden beyond the western sea, gave in with a bad grace. Emily, too, would have preferred an earlier bridal. In the back of her mind, where she would not even glance at it, was the feeling that the sooner it was over and made irrevocable, the better.

Yet she was happy, as she told herself very often and very sincerely. Perhaps there
were
dark moments when a disquieting thought stared her in the face – it was but a crippled, broken-winged happiness – not the wild, free-flying happiness she had dreamed of. But that, she reminded herself, was lost to her forever.

One day Dean appeared before her with a flush of boyish excitement on his face.

“Emily, I've been and gone and done something. Will you approve? Oh, Lord, what will I do if you don't approve?”

“What is it you've done?”

“I've bought me a house.”

“A house!”

“A house! I, Dean Priest, am a landed proprietor – owning a house, a garden and a spruce lot five acres in extent. I, who this morning hadn't a square inch of earth to call my own. I, who all my life have been hungry to own a bit of land.”

“
What
house have you bought, Dean?”

“Fred Clifford's house – at least the house he has always owned by a legal quibble. Really
our
house – appointed – foreordained for us since the foundation of the world.”

“The Disappointed House?”

“Oh, yes, that was your old name for it. But it isn't going to be Disappointed any longer. That is – if – Emily,
do
you approve of what I've done?”

“Approve? You're simply a darling, Dean. I've always loved that house. It's one of those houses you love the minute you see them. Some houses are like that, you know – full of magic. And others having nothing at all of it in them. I've always longed to see that house fulfilled. Oh – and somebody told me you were going to buy that big horrible house at Shrewsbury. I was afraid to ask if it were true.”

“Emily, take back those words. You knew it wasn't true. You knew me better. Of course, all the Priests wanted me to buy that house. My dear sister was almost in tears because I wouldn't. It was to be had at a bargain – and it was
such
an elegant house.”

“It
is
elegant – with all the word implies,” agreed Emily. “But it's an impossible house – not because of its size or its elegance but just because of its impossibility.”

“E-zackly Any proper woman would feel the same. I'm so glad you're pleased, Emily. I had to buy Fred's house yesterday in Charlottetown – without waiting to consult you – another
man was on the point of buying it, so I wired Fred instantly. Of course, if you hadn't liked it I'd have sold it again. But
I felt
you would. We'll make such a home of it, dear. I want a home. I've had many habitations but no homes. I'll have it finished and fixed up as beautifully as possible for you, Star – my Star who is fit to shine in the palaces of kings.”

“Let's go right up and look at it,” said Emily. “I want to tell it what is coming to it. I want to tell it it is going to
live
at last.”

“We'll go up and look at it and
in
it. I've got the key. Got it from Fred's sister. Emily, I feel as if I'd reached up and plucked the moon.”

“Oh,
I've
picked a lapful of stars,” cried Emily gaily.

They went up to the Disappointed House – through the old orchard full of columbines and along the To-morrow Road, across a pasture field, up a little slope of golden fern, and over an old meandering fence with its longers bleached to a silvery grey, with clusters of wild everlastings and blue asters in its corners, then up the little winding, capricious path on the long fir hill, which was so narrow they had to walk singly and where the air always seemed so full of nice whispering sounds.

When they came to its end there was a sloping field before them, dotted with little, pointed firs, windy, grassy, lovable. And on top of it, surrounded by hill glamour and upland wizardry, with great sunset clouds heaped up over it, the house –
their
house.

A house with the mystery of woods behind it and around it, except on the south side where the land fell away in a long hill looking down on the Blair Water, that was like
a bowl of dull gold now, and across it to meadows of starry rest beyond and the Derry Pond Hills that were as blue and romantic as the famous Alsatian Mountains. Between the house and the view, but not hiding it, was a row of wonderful Lombardy poplars.

They climbed the hill to the gate of a little enclosed garden – a garden far older than the house which had been built on the site of a little log cabin of pioneer days.

“That's a view I can live with,” said Dean exultantly. “Oh, ‘tis a dear place this. The hill is haunted by squirrels, Emily. And there are rabbits about. Don't you love squirrels and rabbits? And there are any number of shy violets hereabouts in spring, too. There is a little mossy hollow behind those young firs that is full of violets in May – violets,

Emily's a nicer name than Cytherea or Juno, I think. I want you to notice especially that little gate over yonder. It isn't really needed. It opens only into that froggy marsh beyond the wood. But isn't it a gate? I love a gate like that – a reasonless gate. It's full of promise. There
may
be something wonderful beyond. A gate is always a mystery, anyhow – it lures – it is a symbol. And listen to that bell ringing somewhere in the twilight across the harbour. A bell in twilight always has a magic sound – as if it came from somewhere ‘far far in fairyland.' There are roses in that far corner – old-fashioned roses like sweet old songs set to flowering. Roses white enough to lie in your white bosom, my sweet, roses red enough to star that soft dark cloud of your hair. Emily, do you know I'm a little drunk to-night – on the wine of life. Don't wonder if I say crazy things.”

Emily was very happy. The old, sweet garden seemed to be talking to her as a friend in the drowsy, winking light. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the place. She looked at the Disappointed House adoringly. Such a dear
thoughtful
little house. Not an old house – she liked it for that – an old house knew too much – was haunted by too many feet that had walked over its threshold – too many anguished or impassioned eyes that had looked out of its windows. This house was ignorant and innocent like herself. Longing for happiness. It should have it. She and Dean would drive out the ghosts of things that never happened. How sweet it would be to have a home of her very own.

“That house wants us as badly as we want it,” she said.

“I love you when your tones soften and mute like that, Star,” said Dean. “Don't ever talk so to any other man, Emily.”

Emily threw him a glance of coquetry that very nearly made him kiss her. He had never kissed her yet. Some subtle prescience always told him she was not yet ready to be kissed. He might have dared it there and then, in that hour of glamour that had transmuted everything into terms of romance and charm – he might even have won her wholly then. But he hesitated – and the magic moment passed. From somewhere down the dim road behind the spruces came laughter. Harmless, innocent laughter of children. But it broke some faintly woven spell.

“Let us go in and see our house,” said Dean. He led the way across the wild-grown grasses to the door that opened into the living-room. The key turned stiffly in the rusted lock. Dean took Emily's hand and drew her in.

“Over your own threshold, sweet –”

He lifted his flashlight and threw a circle of shifting light around the unfinished room, with its bare, staring, lathed
walls, its sealed windows, its gaping doorways, its empty fireplace – no, not quite empty Emily saw a little heap of white ashes in it – the ashes of the fire she and Teddy had kindled years ago that adventurous summer evening of childhood – the fire by which they had sat and planned out their lives together. She turned to the door with a little shiver.

“Dean, it looks too ghostly and forlorn. I think I'd rather explore it by daylight. The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.”

It was Dean's suggestion that they spend the summer finishing and furnishing their house – doing everything possible themselves and fixing it up exactly as they wanted it.

“Then we can be married in the spring – spend the summer listening to temple bells tinkling over eastern sands – watch Philae by moonlight – hear the Nile moaning by Memphis – come back in the autumn, turn the key of our own door – be at home.”

Emily thought the program delightful. Her aunts were dubious about it – it didn't seem quite proper and respectable really – people would talk terribly. And Aunt Laura was worried over some old superstition that it wasn't lucky to furnish a house
before
a wedding. Dean and Emily didn't care whether it was respectable and lucky or not. They went ahead and did it.

Naturally they were overwhelmed with advice from every one in the Priest and Murray clans – and took none of it. For one thing, they wouldn't paint the Disappointed House – just shingled it and left the shingles to turn woodsy grey, much to Aunt Elizabeth's horror.

“It's only Stovepipe Town houses that aren't painted,” she said.

They replaced the old, unused, temporary board steps, left by the carpenters thirty years before, with broad, red sandstones from the shore. Dean had casement windows put in with diamond-shaped panes which Aunt Elizabeth warned Emily would be terrible things to keep clean. And he added a dear little window over the front door with a little roof over it like a shaggy eyebrow and in the living-room they had a French window from which you could step right out into the fir wood.

And Dean had jewels of closets and cupboards put in everywhere.

“I'm not such a fool as to imagine that a girl can keep on loving a man who doesn't provide her with proper cupboards,” he declared.

Aunt Elizabeth approved of the cupboards but thought they were clean daft in regard to the wallpapers. Especially the living-room paper. They should have had something cheerful there – flowers or gold stripes; or even, as a vast concession to modernity, some of those “landscape papers” that were coming in. But Emily insisted on papering it with a shadowy grey paper with snowy pine branches over it. Aunt Elizabeth declared she would as soon live in the woods as in such a room. But Emily in this respect, as in all others concerning her own dear house, was “as pig-headed as ever,” so exasperated Aunt Elizabeth averred, quite unconscious that a Murray was borrowing one of Old Kelly's expressions.

But Aunt Elizabeth was really very good. She dug up, out of long undisturbed boxes and chests, china and silver belonging to her stepmother – the things Juliet Murray would
have had if she had married in orthodox fashion a husband approved of her clan – and gave them to Emily. There were some lovely things among them – especially a priceless pink lustre jug and a delightful old dinner set of real willow-ware – Emily's grandmother's own wedding set. Not a piece was missing. And it had shallow thin cups and deep saucers and scalloped plates and round, fat, pobby tureens. Emily filled the built-in cabinet in the living-room with it and gloated over it. There were other things she loved too; a little gilt-framed oval mirror with a black cat on top of it, a mirror that had so often reflected beautiful women that it lent a certain charm to every face; and an old clock with a pointed top and two tiny gilded spires on each side, a clock that gave warning ten minutes before it struck, a gentlemanly clock never taking people unawares. Dean wound it up but would not start it.

“When we come home – when I bring you in here as bride and queen, you shall start it going,” he said.

It turned out, too, that the Chippendale sideboard and the claw-footed mahogany table at New Moon were Emily's. And Dean had no end of quaint, delightful things picked up all over the world – a sofa covered with striped silk that had been in the Salon of a Marquise of the Old Regime, a lantern of wrought-iron lace from an old Venetian palace to hang in the living-room, a Shiraz rug, a prayer-tug from Damascus, brass andirons from Italy, jades and ivories from China, lacquer bowls from Japan, a delightful little green owl in Japanese china, a painted Chinese perfume-bottle of agate which he had found in some weird place in Mongolia, with the perfume of the east – which is never the perfume of the west – clinging to it, a Chinese teapot with dreadful golden dragons coiling over it – five-clawed dragons whereby the initiated knew that
it was of the Imperial cabinets. It was part of the loot of the Summer Palace in the Boxer Rebellion, Dean told Emily, but he would not tell her how it had come into his possession.

“Not yet. Some day. There's a story about almost everything I've put in this house.”

They had a great day putting the furniture in the living-room. They tried it in a dozen different places and were not satisfied until they had found the absolutely right one. Sometimes they could not agree about it and then they would sit on the floor and argue it out. And if they couldn't settle it they got Daffy to pull straws with his teeth and decide it that way. Daffy was always around. Saucy Sal had died of old age and Daffy was getting stiff and a bit cranky and snored dreadfully when he was sleeping, but Emily adored him and would not go to the Disappointed House without him. He always slipped up the hill path beside her like a grey shadow dappled with dark.