Emily's Quest (6 page)

Aunt Elizabeth walked in with her usual calm disregard of any useless formality such as knocking.

“Emily,” she said severely, “have you been sitting up all night
again
?”

Emily came back to earth with that abominable mental jolt which can only be truly described as a thud – a “sickening thud” at that. Very sickening. She stood like a convicted
schoolgirl. And
A Seller of Dreams
became instantly a mere heap of scribbled paper.

“I – I didn't realise how time was passing, Aunt Elizabeth,” she stammered.

“You are old enough to have better sense,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “I don't mind your writing – now. You seem to be able to earn a living by it in a very ladylike way. But you will wreck your health if you keep this sort of thing up. Have you forgotten that your mother died of consumption? At any rate, don't forget that you must pick those beans to-day. It's high time they were picked.”

Emily gathered up her manuscript with all her careless rapture gone. Creation was over; remained now the sordid business of getting her book published. Emily typewrote it on the little third-hand machine Perry had picked up for her at an auction sale – a machine that wrote only half of any capital letter and wouldn't print the “m's” at all. She put the capitals and the “m's” in afterwards with a pen and sent the MS. away to a publishing firm. The publishing firm sent it back with a type-written screed stating that “their readers had found some merit in the story but not enough to warrant an acceptance.”

This “damning with faint praise” flattened Emily out as not even a printed slip could have done. Talk about three o'clock that night! No, it is an act of mercy not to talk about it – or about many successive three o'clocks.

“Ambition!” wrote Emily bitterly in her diary. “I could laugh? Where is my ambition now? What is it like to be ambitious? To feel that life is before you, a fair, unwritten white page where you may inscribe your name in letters of success? To feel that you have the wish and power to win your crown? To feel that the coming years are crowding to meet you and lay their largess at your feet? I
once
knew what it was to feel so.”

All of which goes to show how very young Emily still was. But agony is none the less real because in later years when we have learned that everything passes, we wonder what we agonised about. She had a bad three weeks of it. Then she recovered enough to send her story out again. This time the publisher wrote to her that he might consider the book if she would make certain changes in it. It was too “quiet.” She must “pep it up.” And the ending must be changed entirely. It would never do.

Emily tore his letter savagely into bits. Mutilate and degrade her story? Never! The very suggestion was an insult.

When a third publisher sent it back with a printed slip Emily's belief in it died. She tucked it away and took up her pen grimly.

“Well, I can write short stories at least. I must continue to do that.”

Nevertheless, the book haunted her. After a few weeks she took it out and reread it – coolly, critically, free alike from the delusive glamour of her first rapture and from the equally delusive depression of rejection slips. And still it seemed to her good. Not quite the wonder-tale she had fancied it, perhaps; but still a good piece of work. What then? No writer, so she had been told, was ever capable of judging his own work correctly. If only Mr. Carpenter were alive! He would tell her the truth. Emily made a sudden terrible resolution. She would show it to Dean. She would ask for his calm, unprejudiced opinion and abide by it. It would be hard. It was always hard to show her stories to any one, most of all to Dean, who knew so much and had read everything in the world. But she must
know
. And she knew Dean would tell her the truth, good or bad. He thought nothing of her stories. But
this
was different. Would he not see something worth while in this? If not –

“Dean, I want your candid opinion about this story. Will you read it carefully and tell me exactly what you think of it? I don't want flattery – or false encouragement – I want the truth – the naked truth.”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Dean dryly. “Very few people can endure seeing the naked truth. It has to have a rag or two to make it presentable.”

“I
do
want the truth,” said Emily stubbornly. “This book has been” – she choked a little over the confession – “refused three times. If you find any good in it I'll keep on trying to find a publisher for it. If you condemn it I'll burn it.”

Dean looked inscrutably at the little packet she held out to him. So
this
was what had wrapped her away from him all summer – absorbed her – possessed her. The one black drop in his veins – that Priest jealousy of being first – suddenly made its poison felt.

He looked into her cold, sweet face and starry eyes, grey-purple as a lake at dawn, and hated whatever was in the packet, but he carried it home and brought it back three nights later. Emily met him in the garden, pale and tense.

“Well,” she said.

Dean looked at her, guilty. How ivory white and exquisite she was in the chill dusk!

“‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend.' I should be less than your friend if I told you falsehoods about this, Emily.”

So – its no good.

“It's a pretty little story, Emily. Pretty and flimsy and ephemeral as a rose-tinted cloud. Cobwebs – only cobwebs. The whole conception is too far-fetched. Fairy tales are out of the fashion. And this one of yours makes overmuch of a demand on the credulity of the reader. And your characters are only
puppets. How could you write a real story? You've never
lived
.”

Emily clenched her hands and bit her lips. She dared not trust her voice to say a single word. She had not felt like this since the night Ellen Greene had told her her father must die. Her heart, that had beaten so tumultuously a few minutes ago, was like lead, heavy and cold. She turned and walked away from him. He limped softly after her and touched her shoulder.

“Forgive me, Star. Isn't it better to know the truth? Stop reaching for the moon. You'll never get it. Why try to write, anyway? Everything has already been written.”

“Some day,” said Emily, compelling herself to speak steadily, “I may be able to thank you for this. To-night I hate you.”

“Is that just?” asked Dean quietly.

“No, of course it isn't just,” said Emily wildly. “Can you expect me to be just when you've just killed me? Oh, I know I asked for it – I know it's good for me. Horrible things always are good for you, I suppose. After you've been killed a few times you don't mind it. But the first time one does – squirm. Go away, Dean. Don't come back for a week at least. The funeral will be over then.”

“Don't you believe I know what this means to you, Star?” asked Dean pityingly.

“You can't – altogether. Oh, I know you're sympathetic. I don't want sympathy. I only want time to bury myself decently.”

Dean, knowing it would be better to go, went. Emily watched him out of sight. Then she took up the little dogeared, discredited manuscript he had laid on the stone bench and went up to her room. She looked it over by her window in the fading light. Sentence after sentence leaped out at her – witty, poignant, beautiful. No, that was only her fond, foolish, material delusion. There was nothing of that sort in the book.
Dean had said so. And her book people. How she loved them. How real they seemed to her. It was terrible to think of destroying them. But they were
not
real. Only “puppets.” Puppets would not mind being burned. She glanced up at the starlit sky of the autumn night. Vega of the Lyre shone bluely down upon her. Oh, life was an ugly, cruel, wasteful thing!

Emily crossed over to her little fireplace and laid
A Seller of Dreams
in the grate. She struck a match, knelt down and held it to a corner with a hand that did not tremble. The flame seized on the loose sheets eagerly, murderously. Emily clasped her hands over her heart and watched it with dilated eyes, remembering the time she had burned her old “account book” rather than let Aunt Elizabeth see it. In a few moments the manuscript was a mass of writhing fires – in a few more seconds it was a heap of crinkled ashes, with here and there an accusing ghost-word coming out whitely on a blackened fragment, as if to reproach her.

Repentance seized upon her. Oh, why had she done it? Why had she burned her book? Suppose it was no good. Still, it was hers. It was wicked to have burned it. She had destroyed something incalculably precious to her. What did the mothers of old feel when their children had passed through the fire to Moloch – when the sacrificial impulse and excitement had gone? Emily thought she knew.

Nothing of her book, her dear book that had seemed so wonderful to her, but ashes – a little, pitiful heap of black ashes. Could it be so? Where had gone all the wit and laughter and charm that had seemed to glimmer in its pages – all the dear folks who had lived in them – all the secret delight she had woven into them as moonlight is woven among pines? Nothing left but ashes. Emily sprang up in such an anguish of regret that she could not endure it. She must get
out – away – anywhere. Her little room, generally so dear and beloved and cosy, seemed like a prison. Out – somewhere – into the cold, free autumn night with its grey ghost-mists – away from walls and boundaries – away from that little heap of dark flakes in the grate – away from the reproachful ghosts of her murdered book folks. She flung open the door of the room and rushed blindly to the stair.

Aunt Laura never to the day of her death forgave herself for leaving that mending-basket at the head of the stair. She had never done such a thing in her life before. She had been carrying it up to her room when Elizabeth called peremptorily from the kitchen asking where something was. Laura set her basket down on the top step and ran to get it. She was away only a moment. But that moment was enough for predestination and Emily. The tear-blinded girl stumbled over the basket and fell – headlong down the long steep staircase of New Moon. There was a moment of fear – a moment of wonderment – she felt plunged into deadly cold – she felt plunged into burning heat – she felt a soaring upward – a falling into unseen depth – a fierce stab of agony in her foot – then nothing more. When Laura and Elizabeth came running in there was only a crumpled silken heap lying at the foot of the stairs with balls and stockings all around it and Aunt Laura's scissors bent and twisted under the foot they had so cruelly pierced.

F
rom October to April Emily Starr lay in bed or on the sitting-room lounge watching the interminable windy drift of clouds over the long white hills or the passionless beauty of winter trees around quiet fields of snow, and wondering if she would ever walk again – or walk only as a pitiable cripple. There was some obscure injury to her back upon which the doctors could not agree. One said it was negligible and would right itself in time. Two others shook their heads and were afraid. But all were agreed about the foot. The scissors had made two cruel wounds – one by the ankle, one on the sole of the foot. Blood-poisoning set in. For days Emily hovered between life and death, then between the scarcely less terrible alternative of death and amputation. Aunt Elizabeth prevented that. When all the doctors agreed that it was the only way to save Emily's life she said grimly that it was not the Lord's will, as understood by the Murrays, that people's limbs should be cut off. Nor could she be removed from this position. Laura's tears and Cousin Jimmy's pleadings and Dr. Burnley's execrations and Dean Priest's agreements
budged her not a jot. Emily's foot should not be cut off. Nor was it. When she recovered unmaimed Aunt Elizabeth was triumphant and Dr. Burnley confounded.

The danger of amputation was over, but the danger of lasting and bad lameness remained. Emily faced that all winter.

“If I only
knew
one way or the other,” she said to Dean. “If I
knew
, I could make up my mind to bear it – perhaps. But to lie here – wondering – wondering if I'll ever be well.”

“You will be well,” said Dean savagely.

Emily did not know what she would have done without Dean that winter. He had given up his invariable winter trip and stayed in Blair Water that he might be near her. He spent the days with her, reading, talking, encouraging, sitting in the silence of perfect companionship. When he was with her Emily felt that she might even be able to face a lifetime of lameness. But in the long nights when everything was blotted out by pain she could not face it. Even when there was no pain her nights were often sleepless and very terrible when the wind wailed drearily about the old New Moon eaves or chased flying phantoms of snow over the hills. When she slept she dreamed, and in her dreams she was forever climbing stairs and could never get to the top of them, lured upward by an odd little whistle – two higher notes and a low one – that ever retreated as she climbed. It was better to lie awake than to have that terrible, recurrent dream. Oh, those bitter nights! Once Emily had not thought that the Bible verse declaring that there would be no night in heaven contained an attractive promise. No night? No soft twilight enkindled with stars? No white sacrament of moonlight? No mystery of velvet shadow and darkness? No ever-amazing miracle of dawn? Night was as beautiful as day and heaven would not be perfect without it.

But now in these dreary weeks of pain and dread she shared the hope of the Patmian seer. Night was a dreadful thing.

People said Emily Starr was very brave and patient and uncomplaining. But she did not seem so to herself. They did not know of the agonies of rebellion and despair and cowardice behind her outward calmness of Murray pride and reserve. Even Dean did not know – though perhaps he suspected.

She smiled gallantly when smiling was indicated, but she never laughed. Not even Dean could make her laugh, though he tried with all the powers of wit and humour at his command.

“My days of laughter are done,” Emily said to herself And her days of creation as well. She could never write again. The “flash” never came. No rainbow spanned the gloom of that terrible winter. People came to see her continuously. She wished they would stay away. Especially Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ruth, who were sure she would never walk again and said so every time they came. Yet they were not so bad as the callers who were cheerfully certain she would be all right in time and did not believe a word of it themselves. She had never had any intimate friends except Dean and Ilse and Teddy. Ilse wrote weekly letters in which she rather too obviously tried to cheer Emily up. Teddy wrote once when he heard of her accident. The letter was very kind and tactful and sincerely sympathetic. Emily thought it was the letter any indifferent friendly acquaintance might have written and she did not answer it though he had asked her to let him know how she was getting on. No more letters came. There was nobody but Dean. He had never failed her – never would fail her. More and more as the interminable days of storm and gloom passed she turned to him. In that winter of pain she seemed to herself to grow so old and wise that they met on equal ground at last. Without
him life was a bleak, grey desert devoid of colour or music. When he came the desert would – for a time at least – blossom like the rose of joy and a thousand flowerets of fancy and hope and illusion would fling their garlands over it.

When spring came Emily got well – got well so suddenly and quickly that even the most optimistic of the three doctors was amazed. True, for a few weeks she had to limp about on a crutch, but the time came when she could do without it – could walk alone in the garden and look out on the beautiful world with eyes that could not be satisfied with seeing. Oh, how good life was again! How good the green sod felt beneath her feet! She had left pain and fear behind her like a cast-off garment and felt gladness – no, not gladness exactly, but the possibility of being glad once more sometime.

It was worth while to have been ill to realise the savour of returning health and well-being on a morning like this, when a sea-wind was blowing up over the long, green fields. There was nothing on earth like a sea-wind. Life might, in some ways, be a thing of shreds and tatters, everything might be changed or gone; but pansies and sunset clouds were still fair. She felt again her old joy in mere existence.

“Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eye to behold the sun,” she quoted dreamily.

Old laughter came back. On the first day that Emily's laughter was heard again in New Moon Laura Murray, whose hair had turned from ash to snow that winter, went to her room and knelt down by her bed to thank God. And while she knelt there Emily was talking about God to Dean in the garden
on one of the most beautiful spring twilights imaginable, with a little, growing moon in the midst of it.

“There have been times this past winter when I felt God hated me. But now again I feel sure He loves me,” she said softly.

“So sure?” questioned Dean dryly, “/think God is interested in us but He doesn't love us. He likes to watch us to see what we'll do. Perhaps it amuses Him to see us squirm.”

“What a horrible conception of God!” said Emily with a shudder. “You don't really believe that about Him, Dean.”

“Why not?”

“Because He would be worse than a devil then – a God who thought only about his own amusement, without even the devil's justification of hating us.”

“Who tortured you all winter with bodily pain and mental anguish?” asked Dean.

“Not God. And He – sent
me you
,” said Emily steadily. She did not look at him; she lifted her face to the Three Princesses, in their Maytime beauty – a white-rose face now, pale from its winter's pain. Beside her the big spirea, which was the pride of Cousin Jimmy's heart, banked up in its June-time snow, making a beautiful background for her. “Dean, how can I ever thank you for what you've done for me – been to me – since last October? I can never put it in words. But I want you to know how I feel about it.”

“I've done nothing except snatch at happiness. Do you know what happiness it was to me to do something for you, Star – help you in some way – to see you turning to me in your pain for something that only I could give – something I had learned in my own years of loneliness? And to let myself dream something that couldn't come true – that I knew ought not to come true –”

Emily trembled and shivered slightly Yet why hesitate – why put off that which she had fully made up her mind to do?

“Are you so sure, Dean,” she said in a low tone, “that your dream – can't come true?”