Chapter 25 Emily’s Quest by Lucy Montgomery
I
Only two weeks till the wedding. Emily found out how long two weeks can be, in spite of the fact that every waking moment was crowded with doings, domestic and social. The affair was much talked of everywhere. Emily set her teeth and went through with it. Ilse was here--there--everywhere. Doing nothing--saying much.
"About as composed as a flea," growled Dr. Burnley.
"Ilse has got to be such a restless creature," complained Aunt Elizabeth. "She seems to be frightened people wouldn't know she was alive if she sat still a moment."
"I've got forty-nine remedies for seasickness," said Ilse. "If Aunt Kate Mitchell gets here I'll have fifty. Isn't it delightful to have thoughtful relatives, Emily?"
They were alone in Ilse's room. It was the evening Teddy was expected. Ilse had tried on half a dozen different dresses and tossed them aside scornfully.
"Emily, what will I wear? Decide for me."
"Not I. Besides--what difference does it make what you put on?"
"True--too true. Teddy never notices what I have on. I like a man who does notice and tells me of it. I like a man who likes me better in silk than in gingham."
Emily looked out of the window into a tangled garden where the moonlight was an untroubled silver sea bearing softly on its breast a fleet of poppies. "I meant that Teddy--won't think of your dress--only of you."
"Emily, why do you persist in talking as if you thought Teddy and I were madly in love with each other? Is it that Victorian complex of yours?"
"For heaven's sake, shut up about things Victorian!" Emily exclaimed with unusual, un-Murray-like violence. "I'm tired of it. You call every nice, simple, natural emotion Victorian. The whole world to-day seems to be steeped in a scorn for things Victorian. Do they know what they're talking of? But I like sane, decent things--if that is Victorian."
"Emily, Emily, do you suppose Aunt Elizabeth would think it either a sane or decent thing to be madly in love?"
Both girls laughed and the sudden tension relaxed.
"You're not off, Emily?"
"Of course I am. Do you think I'd play gooseberry at such a time as this?"
"There you go again. Do you think I want to be shut up alone a whole evening with undiluted Teddy. We'll have a scene every few minutes over something. Of course scenes are lovely. They brighten up life so. I've just got to have a scene once a week. You know I always did enjoy a good fight. Remember how you and I used to scrap? You haven't been a bit of good at a row lately. Even Teddy is only half-hearted in a set-to. Perry, now--he could fight. Think what gorgeous rows Perry and I would have had. Our quarrels would have been splendid. Nothing petty--or quarrelsome--about them. And how we would have loved each other between them! O-hone-a-rie!"
"Are you hankering after Perry Miller yet?" demanded Emily fiercely.
"No, dear infant. And neither am I crazy about Teddy. After all, ours is only second-hand love on both sides, you know. Cold soup warmed over. Don't worry. I'll be good for him. I'll keep him up to the notch in everything much better than if I thought him a little lower than the angels. It doesn't do to think a man is perfection because he naturally thinks so, too, and when he finds some one who agrees with him he is inclined to rest on his oars. It riles me up a bit when every one seems to think I'm so amazingly lucky to 'get' Teddy for a husband. Comes Aunt Ida Mitchell--'You are getting a perfectly wonderful husband, Ilse'--comes Bridget Mooney from Stovepipe Town scrubbing the floor--'Gosh but you're gettin' a swell man, Miss'--'Sisters under their skins,' you perceive. Teddy is well enough--especially since he found out he isn't the only man in the world. He has learned sense somewhere. I'd like to know what girl taught it to him. Oh, there was one. He told me something about the affair--not much but enough. She used to snub him terribly--and then after she had led him on to think she cared she turned him down cold. Never even answered the letter in which he told her he loved her. I hate that girl, Emily--isn't it odd?"
"Don't hate her," said Emily, wearily. "Perhaps she didn't know what she was doing."
"I hate her for using Teddy like that. Though it did him heaps of good. Why do I hate her, Emily? Employ your renowned skill in psychological analysis and expound to me that mystery."
"You hate her--because--to borrow a certain crude expression we've often heard--you're 'taking her leavings.'"
"You demon! I suppose it's so. How ugly some things are when you ferret them out! I've been flattering myself that it was a noble hatred because she made Teddy suffer. After all, the Victorians were right in covering lots of things up. Ugly things should be hidden. Now, go home if go you must and I'll try to look like some one about to receive a blessing."
II
Lorne Halsey came with Teddy--the great Halsey whom Emily liked very much in spite of his gargoyleishness. A comical looking fellow with vital, mocking eyes, who seemed to look upon everything in general and Frederick Kent's wedding in particular as a huge joke. Somehow, this attitude made things a little easier for Emily. She was very brilliant and gay in the evenings they all spent together. She was terribly afraid of silence in Teddy's presence. "Never be silent with the person you love and distrust," Mr. Carpenter had said once. "Silence betrays."
Teddy was very friendly, but his gaze always omitted Emily. Once, when they all walked in the old, overgrown, willow-bordered lawn of the Burnley place, Ilse stumbled on the happy idea of pick-out your favourite star.
"Mine is Sirius. Lorne?"
"Antares of the Scorpion--the red star of the south," said Halsey.
"Bellatrix of Orion," said Emily quickly. She had never thought about Bellatrix before, but she dared not hesitate a moment before Teddy.
"I have no especial favourite--there is only one star I hate. Vega of the Lyre," said Teddy quietly. His voice was charged with a significance which instantly made every one uncomfortable though neither Halsey nor Ilse knew why. No more was said about stars. But Emily watched alone till they faded out one by one in the dawn.
III
Three nights before the wedding-day Blair Water and Derry Pond were much scandalized because Ilse Burnley had been seen driving with Perry Miller in his new run-about at some ungodly hour. Ilse coolly admitted it when Emily reproached her.
"Of course I did. I had had such a dull, bored evening with Teddy. We began it well with a quarrel over my blue Chow. Teddy said I cared more for it than I did for him. I said of course I did. It infuriated him, though he didn't believe it. Teddy, manlike, really believes I'm dying about him.
"'A dog that never chased a cat in its life,' he sneered.
"Then we both sulked the rest of the evening. He went home at eleven without kissing me. I resolved I'd do something foolish and beautiful for the last time, so I sneaked down the lane for a lovely, lonely walk down to the dunes. Perry came along in his car and I just changed my mind and went for a little moonlit spin with him. I wasn't married yet. Don't be after looking at me so. We only stayed out till one and we were really very good and proper. I only wondered once--just what would happen if I suddenly said, 'Perry, darling, you're the only man I've ever really cared a hang for. Why can't we get married?' I wonder if when I'm eighty I'll wish I'd said it."
"You told me you had quite got over caring for Perry.'
"But did you believe me? Emily, thank God you're not a Burnley."
Emily reflected bitterly that it was not much better being a Murray. If it had not been for her Murray pride she would have gone to Teddy the night he called her--and she would have been tomorrow's bride--not Ilse.
To-morrow. It was to-morrow--the morrow when she would have to stand near Teddy and hear him vowing lifelong devotion to another woman. All was in readiness. A wedding-supper that pleased even Dr. Burnley, who had decreed that there should be "a good, old-fashioned wedding-supper--none of your modern dabs of this and that. The bride and groom mayn't want much maybe, but the rest of us still have stomachs. And this is the first wedding for years. We've been getting pretty much like heaven in one respect anyhow--neither marrying nor giving in marriage. I want a spread. And tell Laura for heaven's sake not to yowl at the wedding."
So Aunts Elizabeth and Laura saw to it that for the first time in twenty years the Burnley house had a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. Dr. Burnley thanked God forcibly several times that he would only have to go through this once, but nobody paid any attention to him. Elizabeth and Laura had new satin dresses made. It was such a long time since they had had any excuse for new satin dresses.
Aunt Elizabeth made the wedding-cakes and saw to the hams and chickens. Laura made creams and jellies and salads and Emily carried them over to the Burnley Place, wondering at times if she wouldn't soon wake up--before--before--
"I'll be glad when all this fuss is over," growled Cousin Jimmy. "Emily's working herself to death--look at the eyes of her!"
IV
"Stay with me to-night, Emily," entreated Ilse. "I swear I won't talk you to death and I won't cry either. Though I admit if I could just be snuffed out to-night like a candle I wouldn't mind. Jean Askew was Milly Hyslop's bridesmaid and she spent the night before her wedding with her and they both cried all night. Fancy such an orgy of tears. Milly cried because she was going to be married--and I suppose Jean must have been crying because she wasn't. Thank heaven, Emily, you and I were never the miauling kind. We'll be more likely to fight than cry, won't we? I wonder if Mrs. Kent will come to-morrow? I don't suppose so. Teddy says she never mentions his marriage. Though he says she seem oddly changed--gentler--calmer--more like other women. Emily, do you realize that by this time to-morrow I'll be Ilse Kent?"
Yes, Emily realized that.
They said nothing more. But two hours later when wakeful Emily had supposed the motionless Ilse was sound asleep Ilse suddenly sat up in bed and grabbed Emily's hand in the darkness.
"Emily--if one could only go to sleep unmarried--and wake up married--how nice it would be."
V
It was dawn--the dawn of Ilse's wedding-day. Ilse was sleeping when Emily slipped out of bed and went to the window. Dawn. A cluster of dark pines in a trance of calm down by the Blair Water. The air tremulous with elfin music; the wind winnowing the dunes; dancing amber waves on the harbour; the eastern sky abloom; the lighthouse at the harbour pearl-white against the ethereal sky; beyond all the blue field of the sea with its foam blossoms and behind that golden haze that swathed the hill of the Tansy Patch, Teddy--wakeful--waiting--welcoming the day that gave him his heart's desire. Emily's soul was washed empty of every wish or hope or desire except that the day were over.
"It is," she thought, "comforting when a thing becomes irrevocable."
"Emily--Emily."
Emily turned from the window.
"It's a lovely day, Ilse. The sun will shine on you. Ilse--what is the matter? Ilse--you're crying!"
"I can't--help it," sniffed Ilse. "It seems to be the proper, inescapable caper after all. I beg Milly's pardon. But--I'm so beastly afraid. It's an infernal sensation. Do you think it would do any good if I threw myself on the floor and screamed?"
"What are you afraid of?" said Emily, a little impatiently.
"Oh,"--Ilse sprang defiantly out of bed--"afraid I'll stick my tongue out at the minister. What else?"
VI
What a morning! It always seemed a sort of nightmare recollection to Emily. Guests of the clan came early--Emily welcomed them until she felt that the smile must be frozen on her face. There were endless wedding-gifts to unwrap and arrange. Ilse, before she dressed, came to look them over indifferently.
"Who sent in that afternoon tea-set?" she asked.
"Perry," said Emily. She had helped him choose it. A dainty service in a quaint old-fashioned rose design. A card with Perry's black forcible handwriting. "To Ilse with the best wishes of her old friend Perry."
Ilse deliberately picked up piece after piece and dashed it in fragments on the floor before the transfixed Emily could stop her.
"Ilse! Have you gone crazy?"
"There! What a glorious smash! Sweep up the fragments, Emily. That was just as good as screaming on the floor. Better. I can go through with it now."
Emily disposed of the fragments just in time--Mrs. Clarinda Mitchell came billowing in, in pale-blue muslin and cherry-hued scarf. A sonsy, smiling, good-hearted cousin-by-marriage. Interested in everything. Who gave this?--Who had sent that?
"She'll be such a sweet bride, I'm sure," gushed Mrs. Clarinda. "And Teddy Kent is such a splendid fellow. It's really an ideal marriage, isn't it? One of those you read about! I love weddings like this. I thank my stars I didn't lose my interest in youthful things when I lost my youth. I've lots of sentiment in me yet--and I'm not afraid to show it. And did Ilse's wedding stockings really cost fourteen dollars?"
Aunt Isabella Hyslop, nee Mitchell, was gloomy. Offended because her costly present of cut sherbet glasses had been placed beside Cousin Annabel's funny set of old-fashioned crocheted doilies. Inclined to take a dark view of things.
"I hope everything will go off well. But I've got an uneasy feeling that trouble is coming--a presentiment, so to speak. Do you believe in signs? A big black cat ran right across the road in front of us down in the hollow. And right on that tree as we turned in at the lane was the fragment of an old election poster, 'Blue Ruin,' in black letters three inches long staring us in the face."
"That might mean bad luck for you, but hardly for Ilse."
Aunt Isabella shook her head. She would not be comforted.
"They say the wedding dress is like nothing ever seen on Prince Edward Island. Do you think such extravagance proper, Miss Starr!"
"The expensive part of it was a present from Ilse's old great-aunts in Scotland, Mrs. Mitchell. And most of us are married only once."
Whereupon Emily remembered that Aunt Isabella had been married three times and wondered if there wasn't something in black cat magic.
Aunt Isabella swept coldly off, and later on was heard to say that "that Starr girl is really intolerable since she got a book published. Thinks herself at liberty to insult any one."
Emily, before she had time to thank the Fates for her freedom, fell into the clutches of more Mitchell relatives. This aunt did not approve of another aunt's gift of a pair of ornate Bohemian glass vases.
"Bessie Jane never had much sense. A foolish choice. The children will be sure to unhook the prisms and lose them."
"What children?"
"Why, the children they will have, of course."
"Miss Starr will put that in a book, Matilda," warned her husband, chuckling. Then he chuckled again and whispered to Emily:
"Why aren't you the bride to-day? How come Ilse to cut you out, hey?"
Emily was thankful when she was summoned upstairs to help Ilse dress. Though even here aunts and cousins kept bobbing in and out, saying distracting things.
"Emily, do you remember the day of our first summer together when we fought over the honour of playing bride in one of our dramatic stunts? Well, I feel as if I were just playing bride. This isn't real."
Emily felt, too, as if it were not real. But soon--soon now--it would be all over and she could be blessedly alone. And Ilse when dressed was such an exquisite bride that she justified all the fuss of the wedding. How Teddy must love her!
"Doesn't she look just like a queen?" whispered Aunt Laura adoringly.
Emily having slipped into her own harebell blue kissed the flushed maiden face under the rose-point cap and pearls of its bridal veil.
"Ilse dear, don't think me hopelessly Victorian if I say I hope you'll be happy 'ever after.'"
Ilse squeezed her hand, but laughed a little too loudly.
"I hope it isn't Queen Victoria Aunt Laura thinks I resemble," she whispered. "And I have the most horrible suspicion that Aunt Janie Milburn is praying for me. Her face betrayed her when she came in to kiss me. It always makes me furious to suspect that people are praying for me. Now, Emily, do me one last favour. Herd everybody out of this room--everybody. I want to be alone, absolutely alone, for a few minutes."
Somehow Emily managed it. The aunts and cousins fluttered downstairs. Dr. Burnley was waiting impatiently in the hall.
"Won't you soon be ready? Teddy and Halsey are waiting for the signal to go into the drawing-room."
"Ilse wants a few minutes alone. Oh, Aunt Ida, I'm so glad you got here"--to a stout lady who was coming pantingly up the stairs. "We were afraid something had happened to prevent you."
"Something did," gasped Aunt Ida--who was really a second-cousin. In spite of her breathlessness Aunt Ida was happy. She always liked to be the first to tell a piece of news--especially unpleasant news. "And the doctor couldn't come at all--I had to get a taxi. That poor Perry Miller--you know him, don't you? Such a clever young chap--was killed in a motor collision about an hour ago."
Emily stifled a shriek, with a frantic glance at Ilse's door. It was slightly ajar. Dr. Burnley was saying:
"Perry Miller killed. Good God, how horrible!"
"Well, as good as killed. He must be dead by this time--he was unconscious when they dragged him out of the wreck. They took him to the Charlottetown hospital and 'phoned for Bill, who dashed right off, of course. It's a mercy Ilse isn't marrying a doctor. Have I time to take off my things before the ceremony?"
Emily, crushing her anguish over Perry, showed Aunt Ida to the spare room and returned to Dr. Burnley.
"Don't let Ilse know about this," he cautioned needlessly. "It would spoil her wedding--she and Perry were old cronies. And hadn't you better hurry her up a little? It's past the time."
Emily, with more of a nightmare feeling than ever, went down the hall and knocked on Ilse's door. There was no answer. She opened the door. On the floor in a forlorn heap lay the bridal veil and the priceless bouquet of orchids which must have cost Teddy more than any Murray or Burnley bride had ever paid before for her whole trousseau, but Ilse was nowhere to be seen. A window was open, the one over the kitchen stoop.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Dr. Burnley impatiently, coming up behind Emily. "Where's Ilse?"
"She's--gone," said Emily stupidly
"Gone--gone where?"
"To Perry Miller." Emily knew it quite well. Ilse had heard Aunt Ida and--
"Damn!" said Dr. Burnley.
VIII
In a few moments the house was a scene of consternation and flabbergasted wedding guests, all exclaiming and asking questions. Dr. Burnley lost his head and turned himself loose, running through his whole repertoire of profanity, regardless of women-folks.
Even Aunt Elizabeth was paralysed. There was no precedent to go by. Juliet Murray, to be sure, had eloped. But she had got married. No clan bride had ever done anything like this. Emily alone retained some power of rational thought and action. It was she who found out from young Rob Mitchell how Ilse had gone. He had been parking his car in the barnyard when--
"I saw her spring out of that window with her train wrapped around her shoulders. She slid down the roof and jumped to the ground like a cat--tore out to the lane, jumped in Ken Mitchell's runabout and was off like the devil was after her. I thought she must have gone crazy."
"She has--in a way. Rob, you must go after her. Wait--I'll get Dr. Burnley to go with you. I must stay here to see to things. Oh, be as quick as you can. It's only fourteen miles to Charlottetown. You can go and come in an hour. You must bring her back--I'll tell the guests to wait--"
"You'll not make much out of this mess, Emily," prophesied Rob.
IX
Even an hour like that passed. But Dr. Burnley and Rob returned alone. Ilse would not come--that was all there was to it. Perry Miller was not killed--was not even seriously injured--but Ilse would not come. She told her father that she was going to marry Perry Miller and nobody else.
The doctor was the centre of a little group of dismayed and tearful women in the upper hall. Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Laura, Aunt Ruth, Emily.
"I suppose if her mother had lived this wouldn't have happened," said the doctor dazedly. "I never dreamed she cared for Miller. I wish somebody had wrung Ida Mitchell's neck in time. Oh, cry--cry--yes, cry"--fiercely to poor Aunt Laura. "What good will yelping do? What a devil of a mess! Somebody's got to tell Kent--I suppose I must. And those distracted fools down there have to be fed. That's what half of them came for, anyway. Emily, you seem to be the only creature left in the world with a grain of sense. See to things, there's a good girl."
Emily was not of an hysterical temperament, but for the second time in her life she was feeling that the only thing she could do would be to scream as loud and long as possible. Things had got to the point where only screaming would clear the air. But she got the guests marshalled to the tables. Excitement calmed down somewhat when they found they were not to be cheated out of everything. But the wedding-feast was hardly a success.
Even those who were hungry had an uneasy feeling that it wasn't the thing to eat heartily under such circumstances. Nobody enjoyed it except old Uncle Tom Mitchell, who frankly went to weddings for the spread and didn't care whether there was a ceremony or not. Brides might come and brides might go but a square meal was a feed. So he ate steadily away, only pausing now and then to shake his head solemnly and ask, "What air the women coming to?"
Cousin Isabella was set up on presentiments for life, but nobody listened to her. Most of the guests were afraid to speak, for fear of saying the wrong thing. Uncle Oliver reflected that he had seen many funeral repasts that were more cheerful. The waitresses were hurried and flurried and made ludicrous mistakes. Mrs. Derwent, the young and pretty wife of the new minister, looked to be on the point of tears--nay, actually had tears in her eyes. Perhaps she had been building on the prospective wedding fee. Perhaps its loss meant no new hat for her. Emily, glancing at her as she passed a jelly, wanted to laugh--a desire as hysterical as her wish to scream. But no desire at all showed itself on her cold white face. Shrewsbury people said she was as disdainful and indifferent as always. Could anything really make that girl feel?
And under it all she was keenly conscious of only one question. "Where was Teddy? What was he feeling--thinking--doing?" She hated Ilse for hurting him--shaming him. She did not see how anything could go on after this. It was one of those events which must stop time.
X
"What a day!" sobbed Aunt Laura as they walked home in the dusk. "What a disgrace! What a scandal!"
"Allan Burnley has only himself to blame," said Aunt Elizabeth. "He has let Ilse do absolutely as she pleases all her life. She was never taught any self-control. All her life she had done exactly as she wanted to do whenever the whim took her. No sense of responsibility whatever."
"But if she loved Perry Miller," pleaded Laura.
"Why did she promise to marry Teddy Kent then? And treat him like this? No, you need make no excuses for Ilse. Fancy a Burnley going to Stovepipe Town for a husband.
"Some one will have to see about sending the presents back," moaned Laura. "I locked the door of the room where they were. One never knows--at such a time--"
Emily found herself alone in her room at last--too dazed, stricken, exhausted, to feel much of anything. A huge, round, striped ball unrolled itself on her bed and opened wide pink jaws.
"Daff," said Emily wearily, "you're the only thing in the world that stays put."
She had a nasty sleepless night with a brief dawn slumber. From which she wakened to a new world where everything had to be readjusted. And she felt too tired to care for readjustment.