Chapter 26 Emily’s Quest by Lucy Montgomery
I
Ilse did not look as if she wanted excuses made for her when, two days later, she walked unannounced into Emily's room. She looked rosy, audacious, triumphant.
Emily stared at her.
"Well, I suppose the earthquake is over. What is left standing?"
"Ilse! How could you!"
Ilse pulled a notebook out of her handbag and pretended to consult it.
"I wrote down a list of the things you'd say. That was the first one. You've said it. The next is, 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself?' I'm not, you know,' added Ilse impudently.
"I know you're not. That's why I don't ask it."
"I'm not ashamed--and I'm not sorry. I'm only a little bit sorry that I'm not sorry. And I'm shamelessly happy. But I suppose I spoiled the party. No doubt the old meows are having the time of their lives. They've got their craws full for once."
"How do you suppose Teddy is feeling?" asked Emily sternly.
"Is he feeling any worse than Dean did? There's an old proverb about glass houses."
Emily crimsoned.
"I know--I used Dean badly--but I didn't--
"Jilt him at the altar! True. But I didn't think about Teddy at all when I heard Aunt Ida say Perry was killed. I was quite mad. My one thought was to see Perry once before he died. I had to. And I found when I got there that, as Mark Twain said, the report of his death was greatly exaggerated. He wasn't even badly hurt--was sitting up in bed, his face all bruised and bandaged--looking like the devil. Want to hear what happened, Emily?"
Ilse dropped on the floor at Emily's feet--and looked coaxingly up into Emily's face.
"Honey, what's the use of disapproving a thing that was foreordained? That won't alter anything. I got a glimpse of Aunt Laura in the sitting-room as I sneaked upstairs. She was looking like something that had been left out overnight. But you have a streak in you that isn't Murray. You should understand. Don't waste your sympathy on Teddy. He doesn't love me--I've always known it. It's only his conceit that will suffer. Here--give him his sapphire for me, will you?" Ilse saw something in Emily's face she didn't like. "It can go to join Dean's emerald."
"Teddy left for Montreal the day after--after--"
"After the wedding that wasn't," finished Ilse. "Did you see him, Emily?"
"No."
"Well, if he'd go and shoot big game in Africa for awhile he'd get over it very quickly. Emily, I'm going to marry Perry--next year. It's all settled. I fell on his neck and kissed him as soon as I saw him. I let go my train and it streamed magnificently over the floor. I knew the nurse thought I had just got out of Dr. Percy's private asylum. But I turned her out of the room. And I told Perry I loved him and that I would never, never marry Teddy Kent no matter what happened--and then he asked me if I'd marry him--or I told him he must marry me--or neither of us asked--we just understood. I honestly don't remember which--and I don't care. Emily, if I were dead and Perry came and looked at me I'd live again. Of course I know he's always been after you--but he's going to love me as he never loved you. We were made for each other."
"Perry was never really in love with me," said Emily. "He liked me tremendously, that was all. He didn't know the difference--then." She looked down into Ilse's radiant face--and all her old, old love for this perverse, adorable friend rushed to eyes and lips.
"Dearest, I hope you'll be happy--always."
"How blessedly Victorian that sounds!" said Ilse contentedly. "Oh, I can be quiet now, Emily. For weeks I've been afraid that if I let myself be quiet for a moment I'd bolt. And I don't even mind if Aunt Janie is praying for me. I believe I rather hope she is."
"What does your father say?"
"Oh, Dad." Ilse shrugged her shoulders. "He's still in the clutches of his old ancestral temper. Won't speak to me. But he'll come round. He's really as much to blame as I am for what I've done. You know I've never asked anyone in my life if I could do a thing. I just did it. Father never prevented me. At first because he hated me--then because he wanted to make up for hating me."
"I think you'll have to ask Perry sometimes if you can do things."
"I won't mind that. You'll be surprised to see what a dutiful wife I'll make. Of course I'm going right away--back to work. And in a year's time people will have forgotten--and Perry and I will be married quietly somewhere. No more rose-point veils and Oriental trains and clan weddings for me. Lord, what an escape! Then minutes later I'd have been married to Teddy. Think what a scandal there'd have been then when Aunt Ida arrived. Because I'd have gone just the same, you know."
II
That summer was a hard time for Emily. The very anguish of her suffering had filled life and now that it was over she realized its emptiness. Then, too, to go anywhere meant martyrdom. Everyone talking about the wedding, asking, wondering, surmising. But at last the wild gossip and clatter over Ilse's kididoes had finally died away and people found something else to talk about. Emily was left alone.
Alone? Ay, that was it. Always alone. Love--friendship gone forever. Nothing left but ambition. Emily settled herself resolutely down to work. Life ran again in its old accustomed grooves. Year after year the seasons walked by her door. Violet-sprinkled valleys of spring--blossom-script of summer--minstrel-firs of autumn--pale fires of the Milky Way on winter nights--soft, new-mooned skies of April--gnomish beauty of dark Lombardies against a moonrise--deep of sea calling to deep of wind--lonely yellow leaves falling in October dusks--woven moonlight in the orchard. Oh, there was beauty in life still--always would be. Immortal, indestructible beauty beyond all the stain and blur of mortal passion. She had some very glorious hours of inspiration and achievement. But mere beauty which had once satisfied her soul could not wholly satisfy it now. New Moon was unchanged, undisturbed by the changes that came elsewhere. Mrs. Kent had gone to live with Teddy. The old Tansy Patch was sold to some Halifax man for a summer home. Perry went to Montreal one autumn and brought Ilse back with him. They were living happily in Charlottetown, where Emily often visited them, astutely evading the matrimonial traps Ilse was always setting for her. It was becoming an accepted thing in the clan that Emily would not marry.
"Another old maid at New Moon," as Uncle Wallace said gracefully.
"And to think of all the men she might have had," said Aunt Elizabeth bitterly. "Mr. Wallace--Aylmer Vincent--Andrew--"
"But if she didn't--love--them," faltered Aunt Laura.
"Laura, you need not be indelicate."
Old Kelly, who still went his rounds--"and will till the crack of doom," declared Ilse--had quite given up teasing Emily about getting married, though he occasionally made regretful, cryptic allusions to "toad ointment." There was none of his significant nods and winks. Instead, he always gravely asked her what book she did be working on now, and drove off shaking his spiky gray head. "What do the men be thinking of, anyway? Get up, my nag, get up."
Some men were still thinking of Emily, it appeared. Andrew, now a brisk young widower, would have come at the beck of a finger Emily never lifted. Graham Mitchell, of Shrewsbury, unmistakably had intentions. Emily wouldn't have him because he had a slight cast in one eye. At least, that was what the Murrays supposed. They could think of no other reason for her refusal of so good a match. Shrewsbury people declared that he figured in her next novel and that she had only been "leading him on" to "get material." A reputed Klondike "millionaire" pursued her for a winter, but disappeared as briefly in the spring.
"Since she has published those books she thinks no one good enough for her," said Blair Water folks.
Aunt Elizabeth did not regret the Klondike man--he was only a Derry Pond Butterworth, to begin with, and what were the Butterworths? Aunt Elizabeth always contrived to give the impression that Butterworths did not exist. They might imagine they did, but the Murrays knew better. But she did not see why Emily could not take Mooresby, of the firm of Mooresby and Parker, Charlottetown. Emily's explanation that Mr. Mooresby could never live down the fact that he had once had his picture in the papers as a Perkins' Food Baby struck Aunt Elizabeth as very inadequate. But Aunt Elizabeth at last admitted that she could not understand the younger generation.
III
Of Teddy Emily never heard, save from occasional items in newspapers which represented him as advancing steadily in his career. He was beginning to have an international reputation as a portrait painter. The old days of magazine illustrations were gone and Emily was never now confronted with her own face--or her own smile--or her own eyes--looking out at her from some casual page.
One winter Mrs. Kent died. Before her death she sent Emily a brief note--the only word Emily had ever had from her.
"I am dying. When I am dead, Emily, tell Teddy about the letter. I've tried to tell him, but I couldn't. I couldn't tell my son I had done that. Tell him for me."
Emily smiled sadly as she put the letter away. It was too late to tell Teddy. He had long since ceased to care for her. And she--she would love him for ever. And even though he knew it not, surely such love would hover around him all his life like an invisible benediction, not understood but dimly felt, guarding him from ill and keeping from him all things of harm and evil.
IV
That same winter it was bruited abroad that Jim Butterworth, of Derry Pond, had bought or was about to buy the Disappointed House. He meant, so rumour said, to haul it away, rebuild and enlarge it; and doubtless when this was done he would install therein as mistress a certain buxom, thrifty damsel of Derry Pond known as "Geordie Bridge's Mabel." Emily heard the report with anguish. She slipped out that evening in the chill spring dusk and went up the dim overgrown path over the spruce hill to the front gate of the little house like an unquiet ghost. Surely it couldn't be true that Dean had sold it. The house belonged to the hill. One couldn't imagine the hill without it.
Once Emily had got Aunt Laura to see about bringing her own belongings from it--all but the gazing-ball. She could not bear to see that. It must be still hanging there, reflecting in its silver gloom by the dim light that fell through the slits of the shutters, the living-room just as it was when she and Dean had parted. Rumour said Dean had taken nothing from it. All he had put in it was still there.
The little house must be very cold. It was so long since there was a fire in it. How neglected--how lonely--how heartbroken it looked. No light in the window--grass growing thickly over the paths--rank weeds crowding around the long-unopened door.
Emily stretched out her arms as if she wanted to put them around the house. Daff rubbed against her ankles and purred pleadingly. He did not like damp, chilly prowls--the fireside at New Moon was better for a pussy not so young as he once was. Emily lifted the old cat and set him on the crumbling gatepost.
"Daff," she said, "there is an old fireplace in that house--with the ashes of a dead fire in it--a fireplace where pussies should bask and children dream. And that will never happen now, Daff, for Mabel Geordie doesn't like open fireplaces--dirty, dusty things--a Quebec heater is so much warmer and more economical. Don't you wish--or do you!--Daff, that you and I had been born sensible creatures, alive to the superior advantages of Quebec heaters!"