Chapter 18 Emily’s Quest by Lucy Montgomery
I
One day in the last week of October Cousin Jimmy began to plough the hill field, Emily found the lost legendary diamond of the Murrays,* and Aunt Elizabeth fell down the cellar steps and broke her leg.
*See Emily of New Moon.
Emily, in the warm amber of the afternoon, stood on the sandstone front steps of New Moon and looked about her with eyes avid for the mellow loveliness of the fading year. Most of the trees were leafless, but a little birch, still in golden array, peeped out of the young spruces--a birch Danae in their shadows--and the Lombardies down the lane were like a row of great golden candles. Beyond was the sere hill field scarfed with three bright red ribbons--the "ridges" Cousin Jimmy had ploughed. Emily had been writing all day and she was tired. She went down the garden to the little vine-hung summer house--she poked dreamily about; deciding where the new tulip bulbs should be planted. Here--in this moist rich soil where Cousin Jimmy had recently pried out the mouldering old side-steps. Next spring it should be a banquet board laden with stately chalices. Emily's heel sank deeply into the moist earth and came out laden. She sauntered over to the stone bench and daintily scraped off the earth with a twig. Something fell and glittered on the grass like a dewdrop. Emily picked it up with a little cry. There in her hand was the Lost Diamond--lost over sixty years before, when Great-aunt Miriam Murray had gone into the summer house.
It had been one of her childish dreams to find the Lost Diamond--she and Ilse and Teddy had hunted for it scores of times. But of late years she had not thought about it. And here it was--as bright, as beautiful, as ever. It must have been hidden in some crevice of the old side-steps and fallen to the earth when they had been torn away. It made quite a sensation at New Moon. A few days later the Murrays had a conclave about Aunt Elizabeth's bed to decide what should be done with it. Cousin Jimmy said stoutly that finding was keeping in this case. Edward and Miriam Murray were long since dead. They had left no family. The diamond by rights was Emily's.
"We are all heirs to it," said Uncle Wallace judicially. "It cost, I've heard, a thousand dollars sixty years ago. It's a beautiful stone. The fair thing is to sell it and give Emily her mother's share."
"One shouldn't sell a family diamond," said Aunt Elizabeth firmly.
This seemed to be the general opinion at bottom. Even Uncle Wallace acknowledged the sway of noblesse oblige. Eventually they all agreed that the diamond should be Emily's.
"She can have it set as a little pendant for her neck," said Aunt Laura.
"It was meant for a ring," said Aunt Ruth, just for the sake of disagreeing. "And she shouldn't wear it, in any case, until she is married. A diamond as big as that is in bad taste for a young girl."
"Oh, married!" Aunt Addie gave a rather nasty little laugh. It conveyed her opinion that if Emily waited for that to wear the diamond it was just possible she might never wear it. Aunt Addie had never forgiven Emily for refusing Andrew. And here she was at twenty-three--well, nearly--with no eligible beau in sight.
"The Lost Diamond will bring you luck, Emily," said Cousin Jimmy. "I'm glad they've left it with you. It's rightly yours. But will you let me hold it sometimes, Emily,--just hold it and look into it. When I look into anything like that I--I--find myself. I'm not simple Jimmy Murray then--I'm what I would have been if I hadn't been pushed into a well. Don't say anything about it to Elizabeth, Emily, but just let me hold it and look at it once in awhile."
"My favourite gem is the diamond, when all is said and done," Emily wrote to Ilse that night. "But I love gems of all kinds--except turquoise. Them I loathe--the shallow, insipid, soulless things. The gloss of pearl, glow of ruby, tenderness of sapphire, melting violet of amethyst, moonlit glimmer of acquamarine, milk and fire of opal--I love them all."
"What about emeralds?" Ilse wrote back--a bit nastily, Emily thought, not knowing that a Shrewsbury correspondent of Ilse's wrote her now and then some unreliable gossip about Perry Miller's visits to New Moon. Perry did come to New Moon occasionally. But he had given up asking Emily to marry him and seemed wholly absorbed in his profession. Already he was regarded as a coming man and shrewd politicians were said to be biding their time until he should be old enough to "bring out" as a candidate for the Provincial House.
"Who knows? You may be 'my lady' yet," wrote Ilse, "Perry will be Sir Perry some day."
Which Emily thought was even nastier than the scratch about the emerald.
II
At first it did not seem that the Lost Diamond had brought luck to any one at New Moon. The very evening of its finding Aunt Elizabeth broke her leg. Shawled and bonnetted for a call on a sick neighbour--bonnets had long gone out of fashion even for elderly ladies, but Aunt Elizabeth wore them still--she had started down cellar to get a jar of black currant jam for the invalid, had tripped in some way and fallen. When she was taken up it was found that her leg was broken and Aunt Elizabeth faced the fact that for the first time in her life she was to spend weeks in bed.
Of course New Moon got on without her, though she believed it couldn't. But the problem of amusing her was a more serious one than the running of New Moon. Aunt Elizabeth fretted and pined over her enforced inactivity--could not read much herself--didn't like to be read to--was sure everything was going to the dogs--was sure she was going to be lame and useless all the rest of her life--was sure Dr. Burnley was an old fool--was sure Laura would never get the apples packed properly--was sure the hired boy would cheat Cousin Jimmy.
"Would you like to hear the little story I finished to-day, Aunt Elizabeth?" asked Emily one evening. "It might amuse you."
"Is there any silly love-making in it?" demanded Aunt Elizabeth ungraciously.
"No love-making of any kind. It's pure comedy."
"Well, let me hear it. It may pass the time."
Emily read the story. Aunt Elizabeth made no comment whatever. But the next afternoon she said, hesitatingly, "Is there--any more--of that story you read last night?"
"No."
"Well, if there was--I wouldn't mind hearing it. It kind of took my thoughts away from myself. The folks seemed--sort of--real to me. I suppose that is why I feel as if I want to know what happens to them," concluded Aunt Elizabeth as if apologizing for her weakness.
"I'll write another story about them for you," promised Emily.
When this was read Aunt Elizabeth remarked that she didn't care if she heard a third one.
"Those Applegaths are amusing," she said. "I've known people like them. And that little chap, Jerry Stowe. What happens to him when he grows up, poor child?"
III
Emily's idea came to her that evening as she sat idly by her window looking rather drearily out on cold meadows and hills of grey, over which a chilly, lonesome wind blew. She could hear the dry leaves blowing over the garden wall. A few great white flakes were beginning to come down.
She had had a letter from Ilse that day. Teddy's picture, The Smiling Girl, which had been exhibited in Montreal and had made a tremendous sensation, had been accepted by the Paris Salon.
"I just got back from the coast in time to see the last day of its exhibition here," wrote Ilse. "And it's you--Emily--it's you. Just that old sketch he made of you years ago completed and glorified--the one your Aunt Nancy made you so mad by keeping--remember? There you were smiling down from Teddy's canvas. The critics had a great deal to say about his colouring and technique and 'feeling' and all that sort of jargon. But one said, 'The smile on the girl's face will become as famous as Mona Lisa's.' I've seen that very smile on your face a hundred times, Emily--especially when you were seeing that unseeable thing you used to call your flash. Teddy has caught the very soul of it--not a mocking, challenging smile like Mona Lisa's--but a smile that seems to hint at some exquisitely wonderful secret you could tell if you liked--some whisper eternal--a secret that would make every one happy if they could only get you to tell it. It's only a trick, I suppose--you don't know that secret any more than the rest of us. But the smile suggests that you do--suggests it marvellously. Yes, your Teddy has genius--that smile proves it. What does it feel like, Emily, to realize yourself the inspiration of a genius? I'd give years of my life for such a compliment."
Emily didn't quite know what it felt like. But she did feel a certain small, futile anger with Teddy. What right had he who scorned her love and was indifferent to her friendship to paint her face--her soul--her secret vision--and hang it up for the world to gaze at? To be sure, he had told her in childhood that he meant to do it--and she had agreed then. But everything had changed since then. Everything.
Well, about this story, regarding which Aunt Elizabeth had such an Oliver Twist complex. Suppose she were to write another one--suddenly the idea came. Suppose she were to expand it into a book. Not like A Seller of Dreams, of course. That old glory could come back no more. But Emily had an instantaneous vision of the new book, as a whole--a witty, sparkling rill of human comedy. She ran down to Aunt Elizabeth.
"Aunty, how would you like me to write a book for you about those people in my story? Just for you--a chapter every day."
Aunt Elizabeth carefully hid the fact that she was interested.
"Oh, you can if you want to. I wouldn't mind hearing about them. But mind, you are not to put any of the neighbours in."
Emily didn't put any of the neighbours in--she didn't need to. Characters galore trooped into her consciousness, demanding a local habitation and a name. They laughed and scowled and wept and danced--and even made a little love. Aunt Elizabeth tolerated this, supposing you couldn't have a novel without some of it. Emily read a chapter every evening, and Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy were allowed to hear it along with Aunt Elizabeth. Cousin Jimmy was in raptures. He was sure it was the most wonderful story ever written.
"I feel young again when I'm listening to you," he said.
"Sometimes I want to laugh and sometimes I want to cry," confessed Aunt Laura. "I can't sleep for wondering what is going to happen to the Applegaths in the next chapter."
"It might be worse," conceded Aunt Elizabeth. "But I wish you'd cut out what you said about Gloria Applegath's greasy dish-towels. Mrs. Charlie Frost of Derry Pond, will think you mean her. Her towels are always greasy."
"Chips are bound to light somewhere," said Cousin Jimmy. "Gloria is funny in a book, but she'd be awful to live with. Too busy saving the world. Somebody ought to tell her to read her Bible."
"I don't like Cissy Applegath, though," said Aunt Laura apologetically. "She has such a supercilious way of speaking."
"A shallow-pated creature," said Aunt Elizabeth.
"It's old Jesse Applegath I can't tolerate," said Cousin Jimmy fiercely. "A man who would kick a cat just to relieve his feelings! I'd go twenty miles to slap the old he-devil's face. But"--hopefully--"maybe he'll die before long."
"Or reform," suggested Aunt Laura mercifully.
"No, no, don't let him reform," said Cousin Jimmy anxiously. "Kill him off, if necessary, but don't reform him. I wish, though, you'd change the colour of Peg Applegath's eyes. I don't like green eyes--never did."
"But I can't change them. They are green," protested Emily.
"Well, then, Abraham Applegath's whiskers," pleaded Cousin Jimmy. "I like Abraham. He's a gay dog. Can't he help his whiskers, Emily?"
"No"--firmly--"he can't."
Why couldn't they understand? Abraham had whiskers--wanted whiskers--was determined to have whiskers. She couldn't change him.
"It's time we remembered that these people have no real existence," rebuked Aunt Elizabeth.
But once--Emily counted it her greatest triumph--Aunt Elizabeth laughed. She was so ashamed of it she would not even smile all the rest of the reading.
"Elizabeth thinks God doesn't like to hear us laugh," Cousin Jimmy whispered behind his hand to Laura. If Elizabeth had not been lying there with a broken leg Laura would have smiled. But to smile under the circumstances seemed like taking an unfair advantage of her.
Cousin Jimmy went downstairs shaking his head and murmuring, "How does she do it? How does she do it! I can write poetry--but this. Those folks are alive!"
One of them was too much alive in Aunt Elizabeth's opinion.
"That Nicholas Applegath is too much like old Douglas Courcy, of Shrewsbury," she said. "I told you not to put any people we knew in it."
"Why, I never saw Douglas Courcy."
"It's him to the life. Even Jimmy noticed it. You must cut him out, Emily."
But Emily obstinately refused to "cut him out." Old Nicholas was one of the best characters in her book. She was very much absorbed in it by this time. The composition of it was never the ecstatic rite the creation of A Seller of Dreams had been, but it was very fascinating. She forgot all vexing and haunting things while she was writing it. The last chapter was finished the very day the splints were taken off Aunt Elizabeth's leg and she was carried down to the kitchen lounge.
"Well, your story has helped," she admitted. "But I'm thankful to be where I can keep my eye on things once more. What are you going to do with your book? What are you going to call it?"
"The Moral of the Rose."
"I don't think that is a good title at all. I don't know what it means--nobody will know."
"No matter. That is the book's name."
Aunt Elizabeth sighed.
"I don't know where you get your stubbornness from, Emily. I'm sure I don't. You never would take advice. And I know the Courcys will never speak to us again, after the book is published."
"The book hasn't any chance of being published," said Emily gloomily. "They'll send it back, 'damned with faint praise.'"
Aunt Elizabeth had never heard this expression before and she thought Emily had originated it and was being profane.
"Emily," she said sternly, "don't let me ever hear such a word from your lips again. I've more than suspected Ilse of such language--that poor girl never got over her early bringing up--she's not to be judged by our standards. But Murrays of New Moon do not swear."
"It was only a quotation, Aunt Elizabeth," said Emily wearily.
She was tired--a little tired of everything. It was Christmas now and a long, dreary winter stretched before her--an empty, aimless winter. Nothing seemed worth while--not even finding a publisher for The Moral of the Rose.
IV
However, she typewrote it faithfully and sent it out. It came back. She sent it out again, three times. It came back. She retyped it--the MS. was getting dog-eared--and sent it out again. At intervals all that winter and summer she sent it out, working doggedly through a list of possible publishers. I forget how many times she retyped it. It became a sort of a joke--a bitter joke.
The worst of it was that the New Moon folk knew of all these rejections and their sympathy and indignation were hard to bear. Cousin Jimmy was so angry over every rejection of this masterpiece that he could not eat for a day afterwards and she gave up telling him of the journeys. Once she thought of sending it to Miss Royal and asking her if she had any influence to use. But the Murray pride would not brook the idea. Finally in the autumn when it returned from the last publisher on her list Emily did not even open the parcel. She cast it contemptuously into a compartment of her desk.
Too sick at heart to war
With failure any more.
"That's the end of it--and of all my dreams. I'll use it up for scribbling paper. And now I'll settle down to a tepid existence of pot-boiling."
As least magazine editors were more appreciative than book publishers--as Cousin Jimmy indignantly said, they appeared to have more sense. While her book was seeking vainly for its chance her magazine clientele grew daily. She spent long hours at her desk and enjoyed her work after a fashion. But there was a little consciousness of failure under it all. She could never get much higher on the Alpine path. The glorious city of fulfilment on its summit was not for her. Pot-boiling! That was all. Making a living in what Aunt Elizabeth thought was a shamefully easy way.
Miss Royal wrote her frankly that she was falling off.
"You're getting into a rut, Emily," she warned, "A self-satisfied rut. The admiration of Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy is a bad thing for you. You should be here--we would keep you up to the scratch."
Suppose she had gone to New York with Miss Royal when she had the chance six years ago. Would she not have been able to get her book published? Was it not the fatal Prince Edward Island postmark that condemned it--the little out-of-the-world province from which no good thing could ever come?
Perhaps! Perhaps Miss Royal had been right. But what did it matter?
No one came to Blair Water that summer. That is--Teddy Kent did not come. Ilse was in Europe again. Dean Priest seemed to have taken up his residence permanently at the Pacific Coast. Life at New Moon went on unchanged. Except that Aunt Elizabeth limped a little and Cousin Jimmy's hair turned white quite suddenly, overnight as it seemed. Now and then Emily had a quick, terrible vision that Cousin Jimmy was growing old. They were all growing old. Aunt Elizabeth was nearly seventy. And when she died New Moon went to Andrew. Already there were times when Andrew seemed to be putting on proprietary airs in his visits to New Moon. Not that he would ever live there himself, of course. But it ought to be kept in good shape against the day when it would be necessary to sell it.
"It's time those old Lombardies were cut down," said Andrew to Uncle Oliver one day. "They're getting frightfully ragged at the tops. Lombardies are so out of date now. And that field with the young spruces should be drained and ploughed."
"That old orchard should be cleared out," said Uncle Oliver. "It's more like a jungle than an orchard. The trees are too old for any good anyhow. They should all be chopped down. Jimmy and Elizabeth are too old-fashioned. They don't make half the money out of this farm they should."
Emily, overhearing this, clenched her fists. To see New Moon desecrated--her old, intimate, beloved trees cut down--the spruce field where wild strawberries grew improved out of existence--dreamy beauty of the old orchard destroyed--the little dells and slopes that kept all the ghostly joys of her past changed--altered. It was unbearable.
"If you had married Andrew New Moon would have been yours," said Aunt Elizabeth bitterly, when she found Emily crying over what they had said.
"But the changes would have come just the same," said Emily. "Andrew wouldn't have listened to me. He believes that the husband is the head of the wife."
"You will be twenty-four your next birthday," said Aunt Elizabeth. Apropos of what?