Chapter 11 Emily’s Quest by Lucy Montgomery
I
When the letter came from Teddy--the first letter for so long--Emily's hand trembled so that she could hardly open it.
"I must tell you of a strange thing that has happened," he wrote. "Perhaps you know it already. And perhaps you know nothing and will think me quite mad. I don't know what to think of it myself. I know only what I saw--or thought I saw.
"I was waiting to buy my ticket for the boat-train to Liverpool--I was to sail on the Flavian. Suddenly I felt a touch on my arm--I turned and saw you. I swear it. You said, 'Teddy--come.' I was so amazed I could not think or speak. I could only follow you. You were running--no, not running. I don't know how you went--I only knew that you were retreating. How rotten this all sounds. Was I crazy? And all at once you weren't there--though we were by now away from the crowd in an open space where nothing could have prevented me from seeing you. Yet I looked everywhere--and came to my senses to realize that the boat-train had gone and I had lost my passage on the Flavian. I was furious--ashamed--until the news came. Then--I felt my scalp crinkle.
"Emily--you're not in England? It can't be possible you are in England. But then--what was it I saw in that station?
"Anyhow, I suppose it saved my life. If I had gone on the Flavian--well, I didn't. Thanks to--what?
"I'll be home soon. Will sail on the Moravian--if you don't prevent me again. Emily, I heard a queer story of you long ago--something about Ilse's mother. I've almost forgotten. Take care. They don't burn witches nowadays, of course--but still--"
No, they didn't burn witches. But still--Emily felt that she could have more easily faced the stake than what was before her.
II
Emily went up the hill path to keep tryst with Dean at the Disappointed House. She had had a note from him that day, written on his return from Montreal, asking her to meet him there at dusk. He was waiting for her on the doorstep--eagerly, happily. The robins were whistling softly in the fir copse and the evening was fragrant with the tang of balsam. But the air all about them was filled with the strangest, saddest, most unforgettable sound in nature--the soft, ceaseless wash on a distant shore on a still evening of the breakers of a spent storm. A sound rarely heard and always to be remembered. It is even more mournful than the rain-wind of night--the heart-break and despair of all creation is in it. Dean took a quick step forward to meet her--then stopped abruptly. Her face--her eyes--what had happened to Emily in his absence? This was not Emily--this strange, white, remote girl of the pale twilight.
"Emily--what is it?" asked Dean--knowing before she told him.
Emily looked at him. If you had to deal a mortal blow why try to lighten it?
"I can't marry you after all, Dean," she said. "I don't love you."
That was all she could say. No excuses--no self-defence. There was none she could make. But it was shocking to see all the happiness wiped out of a human face like that.
There was a little pause--a pause that seemed an eternity with that unbearable sorrow of the sea throbbing through it. Then Dean said still quietly:
"I knew you didn't love me. Yet you were--content to marry me--before this. What has made it impossible?"
It was his right to know. Emily stumbled through her silly, incredible tale.
"You see," she concluded miserably, "when--I can call like that to him across space--I belong to him. He doesn't love me--he never will--but I belong to him. . . . Oh, Dean, don't look so. I had to tell you this--but if you wish it--I will marry you--only I felt you must know the whole truth--when I knew it myself."
"Oh, a Murray of New Moon always keeps her word." Dean's face twisted mockingly. "You will marry me--if I want you to. But I don't want it--now. I see how impossible it is just as clearly as you do. I will not marry a woman whose heart is another man's."
"Can you ever forgive me, Dean?"
"What is there to forgive? I can't help loving you and you can't help loving him. We must let it go at that. Even the gods can't unscramble eggs. I should have known that only youth could call to youth--and I was never young. If I ever had been, even though I am old now, I might have held you."
He dropped his poor grey face in his hands. Emily found herself thinking what a nice, pleasant, friendly thing death would be.
But when Dean looked up again his face had changed. It had the old, mocking, cynical look.
"Don't look so tragic, Emily. A broken engagement is a very slight thing nowadays. And it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. Your aunts will thank whatever gods there be and my own clan will think that I have escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler. Still--I rather wish that old Highland Scotch grandmother who passed that dangerous chromosome down to you had taken her second sight to the grave with her."
Emily put her hands against the little porch column and laid her head against them. Dean's face changed again as he looked at her. His voice when he spoke was very gentle--though cold and pale. All the brilliance and colour and warmth had gone from it.
"Emily, I give your life back to you. It has been mine, remember, since I saved you that day on Malvern rocks. It's your own again. And we must say good-bye at last--in spite of our old compact. Say it briefly--'all farewells should be sudden when forever.'"
Emily turned and caught at his arm.
"Oh, not good-bye, Dean--not good-bye. Can't we be friends still? I can't live without your friendship."
Dean took her face in his hands--Emily's cold face that he had once dreamed might flush against his kiss--and looked gravely and tenderly into it.
"We can't be friends again, dear."
"Oh, you will forget--you will not always care--"
"A man must die to forget you, I think. No, Star, we cannot be friends. You will not have my love and it has driven everything else out. I am going away. When I am old--really old--I will come back and we will be friends again, perhaps."
"I can never forgive myself."
"Again I ask what for? I do not reproach you--I even thank you for this year. It has been a royal gift to me. Nothing can ever take it from me. After all, I would not give that last perfect summer of mine for a generation of other men's happiness. My Star--my Star!"
Emily looked at him, the kiss she had never given him in her eyes. What a lonely place the world would be when Dean was gone--the world that had all at once grown very old. And would she ever be able to forget his eyes with that terrible expression of pain in them?
If he had gone then she would never have been quite free--always fettered by those piteous eyes and the thought of the wrong she had done him. Perhaps Dean realized this, for there was a hint of some malign triumph in his parting smile as he turned away. He walked down the path--he paused with his hand on the gate--he turned and came back.
III
"Emily, I've something to confess, too. May as well get it off my conscience. A lie--an ugly thing. I won you by a lie, I think. Perhaps that is why I couldn't keep you."
"A lie?"
"You remember that book of yours? You asked me to tell you the truth about what I thought of it? I didn't. I lied. It is a good piece of work--very good. Oh, some faults in it of course--a bit emotional--a bit overstrained. You still need pruning--restraint. But it is good. It is out of the ordinary both in conception and development. It has charm and your characters do live. Natural, human, delightful. There, you know what I think of it now."
Emily stared at him, a hot flush suddenly staining the pallor of her tortured little face.
"Good? And I burned it," she said in a whisper.
Dean started.
"You--burned it!"
"Yes. And I can never write it again. Why--why did you lie to me? You?"
"Because I hated the book. You were more interested in it than in me. You would have found a publisher eventually--and it would have been successful. You would have been lost to me. How ugly some motives look when you put them into words. And you burned it? It seems very idle to say I'm bitterly sorry for all this. Idle to ask your forgiveness."
Emily pulled herself together. Something had happened--she was really free--free from remorse, shame, regret. Her own woman once more. The balance hung level between them.
"I must not hold a grudge against Dean for this--like old Hugh Murray," she thought confusedly. Aloud--"But I do--I do forgive it, Dean."
"Thank you." He looked up at the little grey house behind her. "So this is still to be the Disappointed House. Verily, there is a doom on it. Houses, like people, can't escape their doom, it seems."
Emily averted her gaze from the little house she had loved--still loved. It would never be hers now. It was still to be haunted by the ghosts of things that never happened.
"Dean--here is the key."
Dean shook his head. "Keep it till I ask for it. What use would it be to me? The house can be sold, I suppose--though that seems like sacrilege."
There was still something more. Emily held out her left hand with averted face. Dean must take off the emerald he had put on. She felt it drawn from her finger, leaving a little cold band where it had warmed against her flesh, like a spectral circlet. It had often seemed to her like a fetter, but she felt sick with regret when she realized it was gone--forever. For with it went something that had made life beautiful for years--Dean's wonderful friendship and companionship. To miss that--forever. She had not known how bitter a thing freedom could be.
When Dean had limped out of sight Emily went home. There was nothing else to do. With her mocking triumph that Dean had at last admitted she could write.
IV
If Emily's engagement to Dean had made a commotion in the clans the breaking of it brewed a still wilder teapot tempest. The Priests were exultant and indignant at one and the same time, but the inconsistent Murrays were furious. Aunt Elizabeth had steadily disapproved of the engagement, but she disapproved still more strongly of its breaking. What would people think? And many things were said about "the Starr fickleness."
"Did you," demanded Uncle Wallace sarcastically, "expect that girl to remain in the same mind from one day to another?"
All the Murrays said things, according to their separate flavour, but for some reason Andrew's dictum rankled with the keenest venom in Emily's bruised spirit. Andrew had picked up a word somewhere--he said Emily was "temperamental." Half the Murrays did not know just what it meant but they pounced on it eagerly. Emily was "temperamental"--just that. It explained everything--henceforth it clung to her like a burr. If she wrote a poem--if she didn't like carrot pudding when everybody else in the clan did--if she wore her hair low when every one else was wearing it high--if she liked a solitary ramble over moonlit hills--if she looked some mornings as if she had not slept--if she took a notion to study the stars through a field-glass--if it was whispered that she had been seen dancing alone by moonlight among the coils of a New Moon hayfield--if tears came into her eyes at the mere glimpse of some beauty--if she loved a twilight tryst in the "old orchard" better than a dance in Shrewsbury--it was all because she was temperamental. Emily felt herself alone in a hostile world. Nobody, not even Aunt Laura, understood. Even Ilse wrote rather an odd letter, every sentence of which contradicted some other sentence and left Emily with a nasty, confused feeling that Ilse loved her as much as ever but thought her "temperamental" too. Could Ilse, by any chance, have suspected the fact that, as soon as Perry Miller heard that "everything was off" between Dean Priest and Emily Starr, he had come out to New Moon and again asked Emily to promise to marry him? Emily had made short work of him, after a fashion which made Perry vow disgustedly that he was done with the proud monkey. But then he had vowed that so many times before.