"I've never written in this journal since the night I burned my book and fell downstairs - and died. Coming back to life to find everything changed and all things made new. And unfamiliar and dreadful. It seems a life-time ago. As I turn over the pages and glance at those gay, light-hearted entries I wonder if they were really written by me, Emily Byrd Starr.
"Night is beautiful when you are happy - comforting when you are in grief - terrible when you are lonely and unhappy. And to-night I have been horribly lonely. Misery overwhelmed me. I seem never to be able to stop halfway in any emotion and when loneliness does seize hold on me it takes possession of me body and soul and wrings me in its blank pain until all strength and courage go out of me. To-night I am lonely - lonely. Love will not come to me - friendship is lost to me - most of all, as I verily feel, I cannot write. I have tried repeatedly and failed. The old creative fire seems to have burned out into ashes and I cannot rekindle it. All the evening I tried to write a story - a wooden thing in which wooden puppets moved when I jerked the strings. I finally tore it into a thousand pieces and felt that I did God service.
"These past weeks have been bitter ones. Dean has gone - where I know not. He has never written - never will, I suppose. Not to be getting letters from Dean when he is away seems strange and unnatural.
"And yet it is terribly sweet to be free once more.
"Ilse writes me that she is to be home for July and August. Also that Teddy will be, too. Perhaps this latter fact partly accounts for my white night. I want to run away before he comes.
"I have never answered the letter he wrote me after the sinking of the Flavian. I could not. I could not write of that. And if when he comes he speaks of it - I shall not be able to bear it. Will he guess that it is because I love him that I was able to set at naught the limitations of time and space to save him? I am ready to die of shame at thought of it. And at thought of what I said to Mrs. Kent. Yet somehow I have never been able to wish that unsaid. There was a strange relief in the stark honesty of it. I am not afraid she will ever tell him what I said. She would never have him know I cared if she could prevent it.
"But I'd like to know how I am to get through the summer.
"There are times when I hate life. Other times again when I love it fiercely with an agonised realisation of how beautiful it is - or might be - if -
"Before Dean went away he boarded up all the windows of the Disappointed House. I never go where I can see it. But I do see it for all that. Waiting there on its hill - waiting - dumb - blind. I have never taken my things out of it - which Aunt Elizabeth thinks a sure indication of insanity. And I don't think Dean did either. Nothing has been touched. Mona Lisa is still mocking in the gloom and Elizabeth Bas is tolerantly contemptuous of temperamental idiots and the Lady Giovanna understands it all. My dear little house! And it is never to be a home. I feel as I felt that evening years ago when I followed the rainbow - and lost it. 'There will be other rainbows' I said then. But will there be?
II
"May 15, 19-
"This has been a lyric spring day - and a miracle has happened. It happened at dawn - when I was leaning out of my window, listening to a little, whispering tricksy wind o' morning blowing out of Lofty John's bush. Suddenly - the flash came - again - after these long months of absence - my old inexpressible glimpse of eternity. And all at once I knew I could write. I rushed to my desk and seized my pen. All the hours of early morning I wrote; and when I heard Cousin Jimmy going downstairs I flung down my pen and bowed my head over my desk in utter thankfulness that I could work again.
"'Get leave to work -
In this world 'tis the best you get at all,
For God in cursing gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction.'
"So wrote Elizabeth Barret Browning - and truly It is hard to understand why work should be called a curse - until one remembers what bitterness forced or uncongenial labour is. But the work for which we are fitted - which we feel we are sent into the world to do - what a blessing it is and what fulness of joy it holds. I felt this to-day as the old fever burned in my finger-tips and my pen once more seemed a friend.
"'Leave to work' - one would think any one could obtain so much. But sometimes anguish and heartbreak forbid us the leave. And then we realise what we have lost and know that it is better to be cursed by God than forgotten by Him. If He had punished Adam and Eve by sending them out to idleness, then indeed they would have been outcast and accursed. Not all the dreams of Eden 'whence the four great rivers flow' could have been as sweet as those I am dreaming to-night, because the power to work has come back to me.
"Oh, God, as long as I live give me 'leave to work.' Thus pray I. Leave and courage."
III
"MAY 25, 19-
"Dear sunshine, what a potent medicine you are. All day I revelled in the loveliness of the wonderful white bridal world. And to-night I washed my soul free from dust in the aerial bath of a spring twilight. I chose the old hill road over the Delectable Mountain for its solitude and wandered happily along, pausing every few moments to think out fully some thought or fancy that came to me like a winged spirit. Then I prowled about the hill fields till long after dark, studying the stars with my field-glass. When I came in I felt as if I had been millions of miles away in the blue ether and all my old familiar surroundings seemed momentarily forgotten and strange.
"But there was one star at which I did not look. Vega of the Lyre."
IV
"May 30, 19-
"This evening, just when I was in the middle of a story Aunt Elizabeth said she wanted me to weed the onion-bed. So I had to lay down my pen and go out to the kitchen garden. But one can weed onions and think wonderful things at the same time, glory be. It is one of the blessings that we don't always have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing, praise the gods - for otherwise who would have any soul left? So I weeded the onion-bed and roamed the Milky Way in imagination.
V
"June 10, 19-
"Cousin Jimmy and I felt like murderers last night. We were. Baby-killers at that!
"It is one of the springs when there is a crop of maple-trees. Every key that fell from a maple this year seems to have grown. All over the lawn and garden and old orchard tiny maple-trees have sprung up by the hundreds. And of course they have to be rooted out. It would never do to let them grow. So we pulled them up all day yesterday and felt so mean and guilty over it. The dear, tiny, baby things. They have a right to grow - a right to keep on growing into great, majestic, splendid trees. Who are we to deny it to them? I caught Cousin Jimmy in tears over the brutal necessity.
"'I sometimes think,' he whispered, 'that it's wrong to prevent anything from growing. I never grew up - not in my head.'
"And last night I had a horrible dream of being pursued by thousands of indignant young maple-tree ghosts. They crowded around me - tripped me up - thrashed me with their boughs - smothered me with their leaves. And I woke gasping for breath and nearly frightened to death, but with a splendid idea for a story in my head - The Vengeance of the Tree."
VI
"June 15, 19-
"I picked strawberries on the banks of Blair Water this afternoon among the windy, sweet-smelling grasses. I love picking strawberries. The occupation has in it something of perpetual youth. The gods might have picked strawberries on high Olympus without injuring their dignity. A queen - or a poet - might stoop to it; a beggar has the privilege.
"And to-night I've been sitting here in my dear old room, with my dear books and dear pictures and dear little window of the kinky panes, dreaming in the soft, odorous summer twilight, while the robins are calling to each other in Lofty John's bush and the poplars are talking eerily of old, forgotten things.
"After all, it's not a bad old world - and the folks in it are not half bad either. Even Emily Byrd Starr is decent in spots. Not altogether the false, fickle, ungrateful perversity she thinks she is in the wee sma's - not altogether the friendless, forg
otten maiden she imagines she is on white nights - not altogether the failure she supposes bitterly when three MSS. are rejected in succession. And not altogether the coward she feels herself to be when she thinks of Frederick Kent's coming to Blair Water in July."
THIRTEEN
I
Emily was reading by the window of her room when she heard it - reading Alice Meynell's strange poem, "Letter From A Girl To Her Own Old Age," and thrilling mystically to its strange prophecies. Outside dusk falling over the old New Moon garden; and clear through the dusk came the two high notes and the long low one of Teddy's old whistle in Lofty John's bush - the old, old call by which he had so often summoned her in the twilight of long ago.
Emily's book fell unheeded to the floor. She stood up, mist-pale, her eyes dilating into darkness. Was Teddy there? He had not been expected till the next week, though Ilse was coming that night. Could she have been mistaken? Could she have fancied it? Some chance robin call -
It came again. She knew as she had known at first that it was Teddy's whistle. There was no sound like it in the world. And it had been so long since she had heard it. He was there - waiting for her - calling for her. Should she go? She laughed under her breath. Go? She had no choice. She must go. Pride could not hold her back - bitter remembrance of the night she had waited for his call and it had not come could not halt her hurrying footsteps. Fear - shame - all were forgotten in the mad ecstasy of the moment. Without giving herself time to reflect that she was a Murray - only snatching a moment to look in the glass and assure herself that her ivory crepe dress was very becoming - how lucky it was that she had happened to put on that dress! - she flew down the stairs and through the garden. He was standing under the dark glamour of the old firs where the path ran through Lofty John's bush - bare-headed, smiling.
"Teddy."
"Emily."
Her hands were in his - her eyes were shining into his. Youth had come back - all that had once made magic made it again. Together once more after all those long weary years of alienation and separation. There was no longer any shyness - any stiffness - any sense or fear of change. They might have been children together again. But childhood had never known this wild, insurgent sweetness - this unconsidered surrender. Oh, she was his. By a word - a look - an intonation, he was still her master. What matter if, in some calmer mood, she might not quite like it - to be helpless - dominated like this? What matter if to-morrow she might wish she had not run so quickly, so eagerly, so unhesitatingly to meet him? To-night nothing mattered except that Teddy had come back.
Yet, outwardly, they did not meet as lovers - only as old, dear friends. There was so much to talk of-so much to be silent over as they paced up and down the garden walks, while the stars laughed through the dark at them - hinting - hinting -
Only one thing was not spoken of between them - the thing Emily had dreaded. Teddy made no reference to the mystery of that vision in the London station. It was as if it had never been. Yet Emily felt that it had drawn them together again after long misunderstanding. It was well not to speak of it - it was one of those mystic things - one of the gods' secrets - that must not be spoken of. Best forgotten now that its work was done. And yet - so unreasonable are we mortals! - Emily felt a ridiculous disappointment that he didn't speak of it. She didn't want him to speak of it. But if it had meant anything to him must he not have spoken of it?
"It's good to be here again," Teddy was saying. "Nothing seems changed here. Time has stood still in this Garden of Eden. Look, Emily, how bright Vega of the Lyre is. Our star. Have you forgotten it?"
Forgotten? How she had wished she could forget.
"They wrote me you were going to marry Dean," said Teddy abruptly.
"I meant to - but I couldn't," said Emily.
"Why not?" asked Teddy as if he had a perfect right to ask it.
"Because I didn't love him," answered Emily, conceding his right.
Laughter - golden, delicious laughter that made you suddenly want to laugh too. Laughter was so safe - one could laugh without betraying anything. Ilse had come - Ilse was running down the walk. Ilse in a yellow silk gown the colour of her hair and a golden-brown hat the colour of her eyes, giving you the sensation that a gorgeous golden rose was at large in the garden.
Emily almost welcomed her. The moment had grown too vital. Some things were terrible if put into words. She drew away from Teddy almost primly - a Murray of New Moon once more.
"Darlings," said Ilse, throwing an arm around each of them. "Isn't it divine - all here together again? Oh, how much I love you! Let's forget we are old and grown-up and wise and unhappy and be mad, crazy, happy kids again for just one blissful summer."
II
A wonderful month followed. A month of indescribable roses, exquisite hazes, silver perfection of moonlight, unforgettable amethystine dusks, march of rains, bugle-call of winds, blossoms of purple and star-dust, mystery, music, magic. A month of laughter and dance and joy, of enchantment infinite. Yet a month of restrained, hidden realisation. Nothing was ever said. She and Teddy were seldom ever alone together. But one felt - knew. Emily fairly sparkled with happiness. All the old restlessness that had worried Aunt Laura had gone from her eyes. Life was good. Friendship - love - joy of sense and joy of spirit - sorrow - loveliness - achievement - failure - longing - all were part of life and therefore interesting and desirable.
Every morning when she awakened the new day seemed to her like some good fairy who would bring her some beautiful gift of joy. Ambition was, for the time at least, forgotten. Success - power - fame. Let those who cared for them pay the price and take them. But love is not bought and sold. It is a gift.
Even the memory of her burned book ceased to ache. What did one book more or less matter in this great universe of life and passion? How pale and shadowy was any pictured life beside this throbbing, scintillant existence! Who cared for laurel, after all? Orange blossoms would make a sweeter coronet. And what star of destiny was ever brighter and more alluring than Vega of the Lyre? Which, being interpreted, simply meant that nothing mattered any more in this world or any other except Teddy Kent.
III
"If I had a tail I'd lash it," groaned Ilse, casting herself on Emily's bed and hurling one of Emily's treasured volumes - a little old copy of the Rubaiyat Teddy had given her in high school days - across the room. The back came off and the leaves flew every which way for a Sunday. Emily was annoyed.
"Were you ever in a state that you could neither cry nor pray nor swear?" demanded Ilse.
"Sometimes," agreed Emily dryly. "But I don't take it out on books that never harmed me. I just go and bite off somebody's head."
"There wasn't anybody's head handy to bite off, but I did something that was just as effective," said Ilse, casting a malevolent glance at Perry Miller's photograph which was propped up on Emily's desk.
Emily glanced at it too, and her face Murrayfied, as Ilse expressed it. The photograph was still there but where Perry's intent and unabashed eyes had gazed out at her were now only jagged, unsightly holes.
Emily was furious. Perry had been so proud of those photographs. They were the first he had had taken in his life. "Never could afford any before," he had said frankly. He looked very handsome in them, though his pose was a bit truculent and aggressive with his wavy hair brushed back sleekly, and his firm mouth and chin showing to excellent advantage. Aunt Elizabeth had gazed at it, secretly wondering how she had ever dared make such a fine-looking young man as that eat in the kitchen. And Aunt Laura had wiped her eyes sentimentally and thought that perhaps - after all - Emily and Perry - a lawyer would be quite a thing to have in the family, coming in a good third to minister and doctor. Though, to be sure, Stovepipe Town -
Perry had rather spoiled the gift for Emily by proposing to her again. It was very hard for Perry Miller to get it into his head that anything he wanted he couldn't get. And he had always wanted Emily.
"I've got the whole world by the tail now," he said proudly. "E
very year'll find me higher up. Why can't you make up your mind to have me, Emily?"
"Is it just a question of making up one's mind?" asked Emily satirically.
"Of course. What else?"
"Listen, Perry," said Emily decidedly. "You're a good old pal. I like you - I'll always like you. But I'm tired of this nonsense and I'm going to put a stop to it. If you ever again ask me to marry you I'll never speak to you as long as I live. Since you are good at making up your mind make up yours which you want - my friendship or my nonexistence."
"Oh, well." Perry shrugged his shoulders philosophically. He had about come to the conclusion anyhow that he might as well give up dangling after Emily Starr and getting nothing but snubs for his pains. Ten years was long enough to be a rejected but faithful swain. There were other girls, after all. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Too faithful and persistent. If he had wooed by fits and starts, blowing hot and cold like Teddy Kent, he might have had better luck. Girls were like that. But Perry did not say this. Stovepipe Town had learned a few things. All he said was:
"If you'd only stop looking at me in a certain way I might get over hankering for you. Anyhow, I'd never have got this far along if I hadn't been in love with you. I'd just have been a hired boy somewhere or a fisherman at the harbour. So I'm not sorry. I haven't forgotten how you believed in me and helped me and stood up for me to your Aunt Elizabeth. It's been - been" - Perry's handsome face flushed suddenly and his voice shook a little - "it's been - sweet - to dream about you all these years. I guess I'll have to give it up now. No use, I see. But don't take your friendship from me too, Emily."
"Never," said Emily impulsively, putting out her hands. "You're a brick, Perry dear. You've done wonders and I'm proud of you."
And now to find the picture he had given her ruined. She flashed on Ilse eyes like a stormy sea.