Chapter 12 Emily Climbs by Lucy Montgomery
At the Sign of the Haystack
"Why do you want to do a thing like that?" said Aunt Ruth--sniffing, of course. A sniff may always be taken for granted with each of Aunt Ruth's remarks, even when the present biographer omits mention of it.
"To poke some dollars into my slim purse," said Emily.
Holidays were over--the Garden Book had been written and read in instalments to Cousin Jimmy, in the dusks of July and August, to his great delight; and now it was September, with its return to school and studies, the Land of Uprightness, and Aunt Ruth. Emily, with skirts a fraction longer and her hair clubbed up so high in the "Cadogan Braid" of those days, that it really was almost "up," was back in Shrewsbury for her Junior year; and she had just told Aunt Ruth what she meant to do on her Shrewsbury Saturdays, for the autumn.
The editor of the Shrewsbury Times was planning a special illustrated Shrewsbury edition and Emily was going to canvass as much of the country as she could cover for subscriptions to it. She had wrung a rather reluctant consent from Aunt Elizabeth--a consent which could never have been extorted if Aunt Elizabeth had been paying all Emily's expenses at school. But there was Wallace paying for her books and tuition fees, and occasionally hinting to Elizabeth that he was a very fine, generous fellow to do so. Elizabeth, in her secret heart, was not overfond of her brother Wallace and resented his splendid airs over the little help he was extending to Emily. So, when Emily pointed out that she could easily earn, during the fall, at least half enough to pay for her books for the whole year, Elizabeth yielded. Wallace would have been offended, if she, Elizabeth, had insisted on paying Emily's expenses when he took a notion to do it, but he could not reasonably resent Emily earning part for herself. He was always preaching that girls should be self-reliant, and able to earn their own way in life.
Aunt Ruth could not refuse when Elizabeth had assented, but she did not approve.
"The idea of your wandering over the country alone!"
"Oh, I'll not be alone. Ilse is going with me," said Emily.
Aunt Ruth did not seem to consider this much of an improvement.
"We're going to begin Thursday," said Emily. "There is no school Friday, owing to the death of Principal Hardy's father, and our classes are over at three on Thursday afternoon. We are going to canvass the Western Road that evening."
"May I ask if you intend to camp on the side of the road?"
"Oh, no. We'll spend the night with Ilse's aunt at Wiltney. Then, on Friday, we'll cut back to the Western Road, finish it that day and spend Friday night with Mary Carswell's people at St. Clair--then work home Saturday by the River Road."
"It's perfectly absurd," said Aunt Ruth. "No Murray ever did such a thing. I'm surprised at Elizabeth. It simply isn't decent for two young girls like you and Ilse to be wandering alone over the country for three days."
"What do you suppose could happen to us?' asked Emily.
"A good many things might happen," said Aunt Ruth severely.
She was right. A good many things might--and did--happen in that excursion; but Emily and Ilse set off in high spirits Thursday afternoon, two graceless schoolgirls with an eye for the funny side of everything and a determination to have a good time. Emily especially was feeling uplifted. There had been another thin letter in the mail that day, with the address of a third-rate magazine in the corner, offering her three subscriptions to the said magazine for her poem Night in the Garden, which had formed the conclusion of her Garden Book and was considered both by herself and Cousin Jimmy to be the gem of the volume. Emily had left the Garden Book locked up in the mantel cupboard of her room at New Moon, but she meant to send copies of its "tail pieces" to various publications during the fall. It augured well that the first one sent had been accepted so promptly.
"Well, we're off," she said, "'over the hills and far away'--what an alluring old phrase! Anything may be beyond those hills ahead of us."
"I hope we'll get lots of material for our essays," said Ilse practically.
Principal Hardy had informed the Junior English class that he would require several essays from them during the fall term and Emily and Ilse had decided that one at least of their essays should recount their experiences in canvassing for subscriptions, from their separate points of view. Thus they had two strings to their bow.
"I suggest we work along the Western Road and its branches as far as Hunter's Creek, to-night," said Emily. "We ought to get there by sunset. Then we can hit the gypsy trail across the country, through the Malvern woods and come out on the other side of them, quite near Wiltney. It's only half an hour's walk, while around by the Malvern Road it's an hour. What a lovely afternoon this is!"
It was a lovely afternoon--such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour. Harvest fields drenched in sunshine lay all around them: the austere charm of northern firs made wonderful the ways over which they walked: goldenrod beribboned the fences and the sacrificial fires of willow-herb were kindled on all the burnt lands along the sequestered roads back among the hills. But they soon discovered that canvassing for subscriptions was not all fun--though, to be sure, as Ilse said, they found plenty of human nature for their essays.
There was the old man who said "Humph" at the end of every remark Emily made. When finally asked for a subscription he gruffly said "No."
"I'm glad you didn't say 'Humph' this time," said Emily. "It was getting monotonous."
The old fellow stared--then chuckled.
"Are ye any relation to the proud Murrays? I worked at a place they call New Moon when I was young and one of the Murray gals--Elizabeth her name was--had a sort of high-and-lofty way o' looking at ye, just like yours."
"My mother was a Murray."
"I was thinkin' so--ye bear the stamp of the breed. Well, here's two dollars an' ye kin put my name down. I'd ruther see the special edition 'fore I subscribe. I don't favour buying bearskins afore I see the bear. But it's worth two dollars to see a proud Murray coming down to askin' old Billy Scott fer a subscription."
"Why didn't you slay him with a glance?" asked Ilse as they walked away.
Emily was walking savagely, with her head held high and her eyes snapping.
"I'm out to get subscriptions, not to make widows. I didn't expect it would be all plain sailing."
There was another man who growled all the way through Emily's explanations--and then, when she was primed for refusal, gave her five subscriptions.
"He likes to disappoint people," she told Ilse, as they went down the lane. "He would rather disappoint them agreeably than not at all."
One man swore volubly--"not at anything in particular, but just at large," as Ilse said; and another old man was on the point of subscribing when his wife interfered.
"I wouldn't if I was you, Father. The editor of that paper is an infidel."
"Very impident of him, to be sure," said "Father," and put his money back in his wallet.
"Delicious!" murmured Emily when she was out of ear-shot. "I must jot that down in my Jimmy-book." As a rule the women received them more politely than the men, but the men gave them more subscriptions. Indeed, the only woman who subscribed, was an elderly dame whose heart Emily won by listening sympathetically to a long account of the beauty and virtues of the said elderly lady's deceased pet Thomas-cat--though it must be admitted that she whispered aside to Ilse at its conclusion,
"Charlottetown papers please copy."
Their worst experience was with a man who treated them to a tirade of abuse because his politics differed from the politics of the Times and he seemed to hold them responsible for it. When he halted for breath Emily stood up.
"Kick the dog--then you'll feel better," she said calmly, as she stalked out. Ilse was white with rage. "Could you have believed people could be so detestable?" she exploded. "To rate us as if we were responsible for the politics of the Times! Well--Human Nature from a Canvasser's Point of View is to be the subject of my essay. I'll describe that man and picture myself telling him all the things I wanted to and didn't!"
Emily broke into laughter--and found her temper again.
"You can. I can't even take that revenge--my promise to Aunt Elizabeth binds me. I shall have to stick to facts. Come, let's not think of the brute. After all, we've got quite a lot of subscriptions already--and there's a clump of white birches in which it is reasonably certain a dryad lives--and that cloud over the firs looks like the faint, golden ghost of a cloud."
"Nevertheless, I should have liked to reduce that old vampire to powder," said Ilse.
At the next place of call, however, their experience was pleasant and they were asked to stay for supper. By sunset they had done reasonably well in the matter of subscriptions and had accumulated enough private jokes and by-words to furnish fun for many moons of reminiscence. They decided to canvass no more that night. They had not got quite as far as Hunter's Creek but Emily thought it would be safe to make a cross-cut from where they were. The Malvern woods were not so very extensive and no matter where they came out on the northern side of them, they would be able to see Wiltney.
They climbed a fence, went up across a hill pasture-field feathered with asters, and were swallowed up by the Malvern woods, crossed and recrossed by dozens of trails. The world disappeared behind them and they were alone in a realm of wild beauty. Emily thought the walk through the woods all too short, though tired Ilse, whose foot had turned on a pebble earlier in the day, found it unpleasantly long. Emily liked everything about it--she liked to see that shining gold head of Ilse's slipping through the grey-green trunks, under the long, swaying boughs--she liked the faint dream-like notes of sleepy birds--she liked the little wandering, whispering, tricksy wind o' dusk among the tree crests--she liked the incredibly delicate fragrance of wood flowers and growths--she liked the little ferns that brushed Ilse's silken ankles--she liked that slender, white, tantalizing thing which gleamed out for a moment adown the dim vista of a winding path--was it a birch or a wood-nymph? No matter--it had given her that stab of poignant rapture she called "the flash"--her priceless thing whose flitting, uncalculated moments were worth cycles of mere existence. Emily wandered on, thinking all of the loveliness of the road and nothing of the road itself, absently following limping Ilse, until at last the trees suddenly fell away before them and they found themselves in the open, with a wild sort of little pasture before them, and beyond, in the clear afterlight, a long, sloping valley, rather bare and desolate, where the farmsteads had no great appearance of thrift or comfort.
"Why--where are we?" said Ilse blankly. "I don't see anything like Wiltney."
Emily came abruptly out of her dreams and tried to get her bearings. The only landmark visible was a tall spire on a hill ten miles away.
"Why, there's the spire of the Catholic church at Indian Head," she said flatly. "And that must be Hardscrabble Road down there. We must have taken a wrong turning somewhere, Ilse--we've come out on the east side of the woods instead of the north."
"Then we're five miles from Wiltney," said Ilse despairingly. "I can never walk that far--and we can't go back through those woods--it will be pitch dark in a quarter of an hour. What on earth can we do?"
"Admit we're lost and make a beautiful thing of it," said Emily, coolly.
"Oh, we're lost all right, to all intents and purposes," moaned Ilse, climbing feebly up on the tumbledown fence and sitting there, "but I don't see how we're going to make it beautiful. We can't stay here all night. The only thing to do is to go down and see if they'll put us up at any of those houses. I don't like the idea. If that's Hardscrabble Road the people are all poor--and dirty. I've heard Aunt Net tell weird tales of Hardscrabble Road."
"Why can't we stay here all night?" said Emily. Ilse looked at Emily to see if she meant it--saw that she did.
"Where can we sleep? Hang ourselves over this fence?"
"Over on that haystack," said Emily. "It's only half finished--Hardscrabble fashion. The top is flat--there's a ladder leaning against it--the hay is dry and clean--the night is summer warm--there are no mosquitoes this time of year--we can put our raincoats over us to keep off the dew. Why not?"
Ilse looked at the haystack in the corner of the little pasture--and began to laugh assentingly.
"What will Aunt Ruth say?"
"Aunt Ruth need never know it. I'll be sly for once with a vengeance. Besides, I've always longed to sleep out in the open. It's been one of the secret wishes I believed were for ever unattainable, hedged about as I am with aunts. And now it has tumbled into my lap like a gift thrown down by the gods. It's really such good luck as to be uncanny."
"Suppose it rains," said Ilse, who, nevertheless, found the idea very alluring
"It won't rain--there isn't a cloud in sight except those great fluffy rose-and-white ones piling up over Indian Head. They're the kind of clouds that always make me feel that I'd love to soar up on wings as eagles and swoop right down into the middle of them."
It was easy to ascend the little haystack. They sank down on its top with sighs of content, realizing that they were tireder than they had thought. The stack was built of the wild, fragrant grasses of the little pasture, and yielded an indescribably alluring aroma, such as no cultivated clover can give. They could see nothing but a great sky of faint rose above them, pricked with early stars, and the dim fringe of tree-tops around the field. Bats and swallows swooped darkly above them against the paling western gold--delicate fragrances exhaled from the mosses and ferns just over the fence under the trees--a couple of aspen poplars in the corner talked in silvery whispers, of the gossip of the woods. They laughed together in sheer lawless pleasure. An ancient enchantment was suddenly upon them, and the white magic of the sky and the dark magic of the woods wove the final spell of a potent incantation.
"Such loveliness as this doesn't seem real," murmured Emily. "It's so wonderful it hurts me. I'm afraid to speak out loud for fear it will vanish. Were we vexed with that horrid old man and his beastly politics to-day, Ilse? Why, he doesn't exist--not in this world, anyway. I hear the Wind Woman running with soft, soft footsteps over the hill. I shall always think of the wind as a personality. She is a shrew when she blows from the north--a lonely seeker when she blows from the east--a laughing girl when she comes from the west--and to-night from the south a little grey fairy."
"How do you think of such things?" asked Ilse. This was a question which, for some mysterious reason, always annoyed Emily.
"I don't think of them--they come," she answered rather shortly.
Ilse resented the tone.
"For heaven's sake, Emily, don't be such a crank!" she exclaimed.
For a second the wonderful world in which Emily was at the moment living, trembled and wavered like a disturbed reflection in water. Then--
"Don't let's quarrel here," she implored. "One of us might push the other off the haystack."
Ilse burst out laughing. Nobody can really laugh and keep angry. So their night under the stars was not spoiled by a fight. They talked for a while in whispers, of schoolgirl secrets and dreams and fears. They even talked of getting married some time in the future. Of course they shouldn't have, but they did. Ilse, it appeared, was slightly pessimistic in regard to her matrimonial chances.
"The boys like me as a pal but I don't believe any one will ever really fall in love with me."
"Nonsense," said Emily reassuringly. "Nine out of ten men will fall in love with you."
"But it will be the tenth I'll want," persisted Ilse gloomily.
And then they talked of almost everything else in the world. Finally, they made a solemn compact that whichever one of them died first was to come back to the other if it were possible. How many such compacts have been made! And has even one ever been kept?
Then Ilse grew drowsy and fell asleep. But Emily did not sleep--did not want to sleep. It was too dear a night to go to sleep, she felt. She wanted to lie awake for the pleasure of it and think over a thousand things.
Emily always looked back to that night spent under the stars as a sort of milestone. Everything in it and of it ministered to her. It filled her with its beauty, which she must later give to the world. She wished that she could coin some magic word that might express it.
The round moon rose. Did an old witch in a high-crowned hat ride past it on a broomstick? No, it was only a bat and the little tip of a hemlock-tree by the fence. She made a poem on it at once, the lines singing themselves through her consciousness without effort. With one side of her nature she liked writing prose best--with the other she liked writing poetry. This side was uppermost to-night and her very thoughts ran into rhyme. A great, pulsating star hung low in the sky over Indian Head. Emily gazed on it and recalled Teddy's old fancy of his previous existence in a star. The idea seized on her imagination and she spun a dream-life, lived in some happy planet circling round that mighty, far-off sun. Then came the northern lights--drifts of pale fire over the sky--spears of light, as of empyrean armies--pale, elusive hosts retreating and advancing. Emily lay and watched them in rapture. Her soul was washed pure in that great bath of splendour. She was a high priestess of loveliness assisting at the divine rites of her worship--and she knew her goddess smiled.
She was glad Ilse was asleep. Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful--as if the finite were for a second infinity--as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity--as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty. Oh--beauty--Emily shivered with the pure ecstasy of it. She loved it--it filled her being to-night as never before. She was afraid to move or breathe lest she break the current of beauty that was flowing through her. Life seemed like a wonderful instrument on which to play supernal harmonies.
"Oh, God, make me worthy of it--oh, make me worthy of it," she prayed. Could she ever be worthy of such a message--could she dare try to carry some of the loveliness of that "dialogue divine" back to the everyday world of sordid market-place and clamorous street? She must give it--she could not keep it to herself. Would the world listen--understand--feel? Only if she were faithful to the trust and gave out that which was committed to her, careless of blame or praise. High priestess of beauty--yes, she would serve at no other shrine!
She fell asleep in this rapt mood--dreamed that she was Sappho springing from the Leucadian rock--woke to find herself at the bottom of the haystack with Ilse's startled face peering down at her. Fortunately so much of the stack had slipped down with her that she was able to say cautiously,
"I think I'm all in one piece still."