Chapter 9 Emily’s Quest by Lucy Montgomery
I
On 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 for ever.
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 have 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.
II
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 whispery 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 exultingly. "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,
Sweeter than lids of Emily's eyes
Or Emily's breath.
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."
III
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 programme 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-rug 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."
IV
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.
"You love that old cat more than you do me, Emily," Dean once said--jestingly yet with an undernote of earnest.
"I have to love him," defended Emily. "He's growing old. You have all the years before us. And I must always have a cat about. A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion. And you must have a dog."
"I've never cared to have a dog since Tweed died. But perhaps I'll get one--an altogether different kind of a one. We'll need a dog to keep your cats in order. Oh, isn't it nice to feel that a place belongs to you?"
"It's far nicer to feel that you belong to a place," said Emily, looking about her affectionately.
"Our house and we are going to be good friends," agreed Dean.
V
They hung their pictures one day. Emily brought her favourites up, including the Lady Giovanna and Mona Lisa. These two were hung in the corner between the windows.
"Where your writing-desk will be," said Dean. "And Mona Lisa will whisper to you the ageless secret of her smile and you shall put it in a story."
"I thought you didn't want me to write any more stories," said Emily. "You've never seemed to like the fact of my writing."
"That was when I was afraid it would take you away from me. Now, it doesn't matter. I want you to do just as pleases you."
Emily felt indifferent. She had never cared to take up her pen since her illness. As the days passed she felt a growing distaste to the thought of ever taking it up. To think of it meant to think of the book she had burned; and that hurt beyond bearing. She had ceased to listen for her "random word"--she was an exile from her old starry kingdom.
"I'm going to hang old Elizabeth Bas by the fireplace," said Dean. "'Engraving from a portrait by Rembrandt.' Isn't she a delightful old woman, Star, in her white cap and tremendous white ruff collar? And did you ever see such a shrewd, humorous, complacent, slightly contemptuous old face?"
"I don't think I should want to have an argument with Elizabeth," reflected Emily. "One feels that she is keeping her hands folded under compulsion and might box your ears if you disagreed with her."
"She has been dust for over a century," said Dean dreamily. "Yet here she is living on this cheap reprint of Rembrandt's canvas. You are expecting her to speak to you. And I feel, as you do, that she wouldn't put up with any nonsense."
"But likely she has a sweetmeat stored away in some pocket of her gown for you. That fine, rosy, wholesome old woman. She ruled her family--not a doubt of it. Her husband did as she told him--but never knew it."
"Had she a husband?" said Dean doubtfully. "There's no wedding-ring on her finger."
"Then she must have been a most delightful old maid," averred Emily.
"What a difference between her smile and Mona Lisa's," said Dean, looking from one to the other. "Elizabeth is tolerating things--with just a hint of a sly, meditative cat about her. But Mona Lisa's face has that everlasting lure and provocation that drives men mad and writes scarlet pages on dim historical records. La Gioconda would be a more stimulating sweetheart. But Elizabeth would be nicer for an aunt."
Dean hung a little old miniature of his mother up over the mantelpiece. Emily had never seen it before. Dean Priest's mother had been a beautiful woman.
"But why does she look so sad?"
"Because she was married to a Priest," said Dean.
"Will I look sad?" teased Emily.
"Not if it rests with me," said Dean.
But did it? Sometimes that question forced itself on Emily, but she would not answer it. She was very happy two-thirds of that summer--which she told herself was a high average. But in the other third were hours of which she never spoke to any one--hours in which her soul felt caught in a trap--hours when the great, green emerald winking on her finger seemed like a fetter. And once she even took it off just to feel free for a little while--a temporary escape for which she was sorry and ashamed the next day, when she was quite sane and normal again, contented with her lot and more interested than ever in her little grey house, which meant so much to her--"more to me than Dean does," she said to herself once in a three-o'clock moment of stark, despairing honesty; and then refused to believe it next morning.
VI
Old Great-aunt Nancy of Priest Pond died that summer, very suddenly. "I'm tired of living. I think I'll stop," she said one day--and stopped. None of the Murrays benefited by her will; everything she had was left to Caroline Priest; but Emily got the gazing-ball and the brass chessy-cat knocker and the gold ear-rings--and the picture Teddy had done of her in water-colours years ago. Emily put the chessy-cat on the front porch door of the Disappointed House and hung the great silvery gazing-ball from the Venetian lantern and wore the quaint old ear-rings to many rather delightful pomps and vanities. But she put the picture away in a box in the New Moon attic--a box that held certain sweet, old, foolish letters full of dreams and plans.
VII
They had glorious minutes of fun when they stopped to rest occasionally. There was a robin's nest in the fir at the north corner which they watched and protected from Daffy.
"Think of the music penned in this fragile, pale blue wall," said Dean, touching an egg one day. "Not the music of the moon perhaps, but an earthlier, homelier music, full of wholesome sweetness and the joy of living. This egg will some day be a robin, Star, to whistle us blithely home in the afterlight."
They made friends with an old rabbit that often came hopping out of the woods into the garden. They had a game as to who could count the most squirrels in the daytime and the most bats in the evening. For they did not always go home as soon as it got too dark to work. Sometimes they sat out on their sandstone steps listening to the melancholy loveliness of night-wind on the sea and watching the twilight creep up from the old valley and the shadows waver and flicker under the fir-trees and the Blair Water turning to a great grey pool tremulous with early stars. Daff sat beside them, watching everything with his great moonlight eyes, and Emily pulled his ears now and then.
"One understands a cat a little better now. At all other times he is inscrutable, but in the time of dusk and dew we can catch a glimpse of the tantalizing secret of his personality."
"One catches a glimpse of all kinds of secrets now," said Dean. "On a night like this I always think of the 'hills where spices grow.' That line of the old hymn Mother used to sing has always intrigued me--though I can't 'fly like a youthful hart or roe.' Emily, I can see that you are getting your mouth in the proper shape to talk about the colour we'll paint the woodshed. Don't you do it. No one should talk paint when she's expecting a moonrise. There'll be a wonderful one presently--I've arranged for it. But if we must talk of furniture let's plan for a few things we haven't got yet and must have--a canoe for our boating trips along the Milky Way, for instance--a loom for the weaving of dreams and a jar of pixy-brew for festal hours. And can't we arrange to have the spring of Ponce de Leon over in that corner? Or would you prefer a fount of Castaly? As for your trousseau, have what you like in it but there must be a gown of grey twilight with an evening star for your hair. Also one trimmed with moonlight and a scarf of sunset cloud."
Oh, she liked Dean. How she liked him. If she could only love him!
One evening she slipped up alone to see her little house by moonlight. What a dear place it was. She saw herself there in the future--flitting through the little rooms--laughing under the firs--sitting hand in hand with Teddy at the fireplace--Emily came to herself with a shock. With Dean, of course, with Dean. A mere trick of the memory.
VIII
There came a September evening when everything was done--even to the horseshoe over the door to keep the witches out--even to the candles Emily had stuck all about the living-room--a little, jolly, yellow candle--a full, red, pugnacious candle--a dreamy, pale blue candle--a graceless candle with aces of hearts and diamonds all over it--a slim, dandyish candle.
And the result was good. There was a sense of harmony in the house. The things in it did not have to become acquainted but were good friends from the very start. They did not shriek at each other. There was not a noisy room in the house.
"There's absolutely nothing more we can do," sighed Emily. "We can't even pretend there's anything more to do."
"I suppose not," agreed Dean regretfully. Then he looked at the fireplace where kindlings and pinewood were laid.
"Yes, there is," he cried. "How could we have forgotten it? We've got to see if the chimney will draw properly. I'm going to light that fire."
Emily sat down on the settee in the corner and when the fire began to burn Dean came and sat beside her. Daffy lay stretched out at their feet, his little striped flanks moving peacefully up and down.
Up blazed the merry flames. They shimmered over the old piano--they played irreverent hide-and-seek with Elizabeth Bas' adorable old face--they danced on the glass doors of the cupboard where the willow-ware dishes were; they darted through the kitchen door and the row of brown and blue bowls Emily had ranged on the dresser winked back at them.
"This is home," said Dean softly. "It's lovelier than I've ever dreamed of its being. This is how we'll sit on autumn evenings all our lives, shutting out the cold misty nights that come in from the sea--just you and I alone with the firelight and the sweetness. But sometimes we'll let a friend come in and share it--sip of our joy and drink of our laughter. We'll just sit here and think about it all--till the fire burns out."
The fire crackled and snapped. Daffy purred. The moon shone down through the dance of the fir-boughs straight on them through the windows. And Emily was thinking--could not help thinking--of the time she and Teddy had sat there. The odd part was that she did not think of him longingly or lovingly. She just thought of him. Would she, she asked herself, in mingled exasperation and dread, find herself thinking of Teddy when she was standing up to be married to Dean?
When the fire had died down into white ashes Dean got up.
"It was worth while to have lived long dreary years for this--and to live them again, if need be, looking back to it," he said, holding out his hand. He drew her nearer. What ghost came between the lips that might have met? Emily turned away with a sigh.
"Our happy summer is over, Dean."
"Our first happy summer," corrected Dean. But his voice suddenly sounded a little tired.