"I have to love him," defended Emily. "He's growing old. You have all the years before us. And I must always have a cat about. A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion. And you must have a dog."
"I've never cared to have a dog since Tweed died. But perhaps I'll get one - an altogether different kind of a one. We'll need a dog to keep your cats in order. Oh, isn't it nice to feel that a place belongs to you?"
"It's far nicer to feel that you belong to a place," said Emily, looking about her affectionately.
"Our house and we are going to be good friends," agreed Dean.
V
They hung their pictures one day. Emily brought her favourites up, including the Lady Giovanna and Mona Lisa. These two were hung in the corner between the windows.
"Where your writing desk will be," said Dean. "And Mona Lisa will whisper to you the ageless secret of her smile and you shall put it in a story."
"I thought you didn't want me to write any more stories," said Emily. "You've never seemed to like the fact of my writing."
"That was when I was afraid it would take you away from me. Now, it doesn't matter. I want you to do just as pleases you."
Emily felt indifferent. She had never cared to take up her pen since her illness. As the days passed she felt a growing distaste to the thought of ever taking it up. To think of it meant to think of the book she had burned; and that hurt beyond bearing. She had ceased to listen for her "random word" - she was an exile from her old starry kingdom.
"I'm going to hang old Elizabeth Bas by the fireplace," said Dean. "Engraving from a portrait by Rembrandt. Isn't she a delightful old woman, Star, in her white cap and tremendous white ruff collar? And did you ever see such a shrewd, humorous, complacent, slightly contemptuous old face?"
"I don't think I should want to have an argument with Elizabeth," reflected Emily. "One feels that she is keeping her hands folded under compulsion and might box your ears if you disagreed with her."
"She has been dust for over a century," said Dean dreamily "Yet here she is living on this cheap reprint of Rembrandt's canvas. You are expecting her to speak to you. And I feel, as you do, that she wouldn't put up with any nonsense."
"But likely she has a sweetmeat stored away in some pocket of her gown for you. That fine, rosy, wholesome old woman. She ruled her family - not a doubt of it. Her husband did as she told him - but never knew it."
"Had she a husband?" said Dean doubtfully. "There's no wedding-ring on her finger."
"Then she must have been a most delightful old maid," averred Emily.
"What a difference between her smile and Mona Lisa's," said Dean, looking from one to the other. "Elizabeth is tolerating things - with just a hint of a sly, meditative cat about her. But Mona Lisa's face has that everlasting lure and provocation that drives men mad and writes scarlet pages on dim historical records. La Gioconda would be a more stimulating sweetheart. But Elizabeth would be nicer for an aunt."
Dean hung a little old miniature of his mother up over the mantelpiece. Emily had never seen it before. Dean Priest's mother had been a beautiful woman.
"But why does she look so sad?"
"Because she was married to a Priest," said Dean.
"Will I look sad?" teased Emily.
"Not if it rests with me," said Dean.
But did it? Sometimes that question forced itself on Emily, but she would not answer it. She was very happy two-thirds of that summer - which she told herself was a high average. But in the other third were hours of which she never spoke to any one - hours in which her soul felt caught in a trap - hours when the great, green emerald winking on her finger seemed like a fetter. And once she even took it off just to feel free for a little while - a temporary escape for which she was sorry and ashamed the next day, when she was quite sane and normal again, contented with her lot and more interested than ever in her little grey house, which meant so much to her - "more to me than Dean does," she said to herself once in a three-o'clock moment of stark, despairing honesty; and then refused to believe it next morning.
VI
Old Great-aunt Nancy of Priest Pond died that summer, very suddenly. "I'm tired of living. I think I'll stop," she said one day - and stopped. None of the Murrays benefited by her will; everything she had was left to Caroline Priest; but Emily got the gazing-ball and the brass chessy-cat knocker and the gold ear-rings - and the picture Teddy had done of her in water-colours years ago. Emily put the chessy-cat on the front porch door of the Disappointed House and hung the great silvery gazing-ball from the Venetian lantern and wore the quaint old ear-rings to many rather delightful pomps and vanities. But she put the picture away in a box in the New Moon attic - a box that held certain sweet - old, foolish letters full of dreams and plans.
VII
They had glorious minutes of fun when they stopped to rest occasionally. There was a robin's nest in the fir at the north corner which they watched and protected from Daffy.
"Think of the music penned in this fragile, pale blue wall," said Dean, touching an egg one day. "Not the music of the moon perhaps, but an earthlier, homelier music, full of wholesome sweetness and the joy of living. This egg will some day be a robin, Star, to whistle us blithely home in the afterlight."
They made friends with an old rabbit that often came hopping out of the woods into the garden. They had a game as to who could count the most squirrels in the daytime and the most bats in the evening. For they did not always go home as soon as it got too dark to work. Sometimes they sat out on their sandstone steps listening to the melancholy loveliness of night-wind on the sea and watching the twilight creep up from the old valley and the shadows waver and flicker under the fir-trees and the Blair Water turning to a great grey pool tremulous with early stars. Daff sat beside them, watching everything with his great moonlight eyes, and Emily pulled his ears now and then.
"One understands a cat a little better now. At all other times he is inscrutable, but in the time of dusk and dew we can catch a glimpse of the tantalising secret of his personality."
"One catches a glimpse of all kinds of secrets now," said Dean. "On a night like this I always think of the 'hills where spices grow.' That line of the old hymn Mother used to sing has always intrigued me - though I can't 'fly like a youthful hart or roe.' Emily, I can see that you are getting your mouth in the proper shape to talk about the colour we'll paint the woodshed. Don't you do it. No one should talk paint when she's expecting a moonrise. There'll be a wonderful one presently-I've arranged for it. But if we must talk of furniture let's plan for a few things we haven't got yet and must have - a canoe for our boating trips along the Milky Way, for instance - a loom for the weaving of dreams and a jar of pixy-brew for festal hours. And can't we arrange to have the spring of Ponce de Leon over in that corner? Or would you prefer a fount of Castaly? As for your trousseau, have what you like in it but there must be a gown of grey twilight with an evening star for your hair. Also trimmed with moonlight and a scarf of sunset cloud."
Oh, she liked Dean. How she liked him. If she could only love him!
One evening she slipped up alone to see her little house by moonlight. What a dear place it was. She saw herself there in the future - flitting through the little rooms - laughing under the firs - sitting hand in hand with Teddy at the fireplace - Emily came to herself with a shock. With Dean, of course, with Dean. A mere trick of the memory.
VIII
There came a September evening when everything was done - even to the horseshoe over the door to keep the witches out - even to the candles Emily had struck all about the living-room - a little, jolly, yellow candle - a full, red, pugnacious candle - a dreamy, pale blue candle - a graceless candle with aces of hearts and diamonds all over it - a slim, dandyish candle.
And the result was good. There was a sense of harmony in the house. The things in it did not have to become acquainted but were good friends from the very start
. They did not shriek at each other. There was not a noisy room in the house.
"There's absolutely nothing more we can do," sighed Emily. "We can't even pretend there's anything more to do."
"I suppose not," agreed Dean regretfully. Then he looked at the fireplace where kindlings and pine wood were laid.
"Yes, there is," he cried. "How could we have forgotten it? We've got to see if the chimney will draw properly. I'm going to light that fire."
Emily sat down on the settee in the corner and when the fire began to burn Dean came and sat beside her. Daffy lay stretched out at their feet, his little striped flanks moving peacefully up and down.
Up blazed the merry flames. They shimmered over the old piano - they played irreverent hide-and-seek with Elizabeth Bas' adorable old face - they danced on the glass doors of the cupboard where the willow-ware dishes were; they darted through the kitchen door and the row of brown and blue bowls Emily had ranged on the dresser winked back at them.
"This is home," said Dean softly. "It's lovelier than I've ever dreamed of its being. This is how we'll sit on autumn evenings all our lives, shutting out the cold misty nights that come in from the sea - just you and I alone with the firelight and the sweetness. But sometimes we'll let a friend come in and share it - sip of our joy and drink of our laughter. We'll just sit here and think about it all - till the fire burns out."
The fire crackled and snapped. Daffy purred. The moon shone down through the dance of the fir-boughs straight on them through the windows. And Emily was thinking - could not help thinking - of the time she and Teddy had sat there. The odd part was that she did not think of him longingly or lovingly. She just thought of him. Would she, she asked herself, in mingled exasperation and dread, find herself thinking of Teddy when she was standing up to be married to Dean?
When the fire had died down into white ashes Dean got up.
"It was worth while to have lived long dreary years for this - and to live them again, if need be, looking back to it," he said, holding out his hand. He drew her nearer. What ghost came between the lips that might have met? Emily turned away with a sigh.
"Our happy summer is over, Dean."
"Our first happy summer," corrected Dean. But his voice suddenly sounded a little tired.
TEN
I
They locked the door of the Disappointed House one November evening and Dean gave the key to Emily. "Keep it till spring," he said, looking out over the quiet, cold, grey fields across which a chilly wind was blowing. "We won't come back here till then."
In the stormy winter that followed, the cross-lots path to the little house was so heaped with drifts that Emily never went near it. But she thought about it often and happily, waiting amid its snows for spring and life and fulfilment. That winter was, on the whole, a happy time. Dean did not go away and made himself so charming to the older ladies of New Moon that they almost forgave him for being Jarback Priest. To be sure, Aunt Elizabeth never could understand more than half of his remarks and Aunt Laura put down to his debit account the change in Emily. For she was changed. Cousin Jimmy and Aunt Laura knew that, though no one else seemed to notice it. Often there was an odd restlessness in her eyes. And something was missing from her laughter. It was not so quick - so spontaneous as of old. She was a woman before her time, thought Aunt Laura with a sigh. Was that dreadful fall down the New Moon stairs the only cause? Was Emily happy? Laura dared not ask. Did she love Dean Priest whom she was going to marry in June? Laura did not know; but she did know that love is something that cannot be generated by an intellectual rule o' thumb. Also that a girl who is as happy as an engaged girl should be does not spend so many hours when she should be sleeping pacing up and down her room. This was not to be explained away on the ground that Emily was thinking out stories. Emily had given up writing. In vain Miss Royal wrote pleading and scolding letters from New York. In vain Cousin Jimmy slyly laid a new Jimmy-book at intervals on her desk. In vain Laura timidly hinted that it was a pity not to keep on when you had made such a good start. Even Aunt Elizabeth's contemptuous assertion that she had always known Emily would get tired of it -"the Starr fickleness, you see" - failed to sting Emily back to her pen. She could not write - she would never try to write again.
"I've paid my debts and I've enough in the bank to get what Dean calls my wedding doo-dabs. And you've crocheted two filet spreads for me," she told Aunt Laura a little wearily and bitterly. "So what does it matter?"
"Was it - your fall that took away your - your ambition?" faltered poor Aunt Laura, voicing what had been her haunting dread all winter.
Emily smiled and kissed her.
"No, darling. That had nothing to do with it. Why worry over a simple, natural thing? Here I am, going to be married, with a prospective house and husband to think about. Doesn't that explain why I've ceased to care about - other things?"
It should have, but that evening Emily went out of the house after sunset. Her soul was pining for freedom and she went out to slip its leash for a little while. It had been an April day, warm in the sun, cold in the shadow. You felt the coldness even amid the sunlight warmth. The evening was chill. The sky was overcast with wrinkled, grey clouds, save along the west where a strip of yellow sky gleamed palely and in it, sad and fair, a new moon setting behind a dark hill. No living creature but herself seemed abroad and the cold shadows settling down over the withered fields lent to the landscape of too-early spring an aspect inexpressibly dreary and mournful. It made Emily feel hopeless, as if the best of life already lay in the past. Externals always had a great influence upon her - too great perhaps. Yet she was glad it was a dour evening. Anything else would have insulted her mood. She heard the sea shuddering beyond the dunes. An old verse from one of Roberts' poems came into her head:
"Grey rocks and greyer sea
And surf along the shore,
And in my heart a name
My lips shall speak no more."
Nonsense! Weak, silly, sentimental nonsense. No more of it!
II
But that letter from Ilse that day. Teddy was coming home. He was to sail on the Flavian. He was going to be home most of the summer.
"If it could only have been all over - before he came," muttered Emily.
Always to be afraid of to-morrow? Content - even happy with to-day - but always afraid of to-morrow. Was this to be her life? And why that fear of to-morrow?
She had brought the key of the Disappointed House with her. She had not been in it since November and she wanted to see it - beautiful, waiting, desirable. Her home. In its charm and sanity vague, horrible fears and doubts would vanish. The soul of that happy last summer would come back to her. She paused at the garden gate to look lovingly at it - the dear little house nestled under the old trees that sighed softly as they had sighed to her childhood visions. Below, Blair Water was grey and sullen. She loved Blair Water in all its changes - its sparkle of summer, its silver of dusk, its miracle of moonlight, its dimpled rings of rain. And she loved it now, dark and brooding. There was somehow a piercing sadness in that sullen, waiting landscape all around her - as if-the odd fancy crossed her mind - as if it were afraid of spring. How this idea of fear haunted her! She looked up beyond the spires of the Lombardies on the hill. And in a sudden pale rift between the clouds, a star shone down on her - Vega of the Lyre.
With a shiver Emily hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped in. The house seemed to be vacant - waiting for her. She fumbled through the darkness to the matches she knew were on the mantelpiece and lighted the tall, pale-green taper beside the clock. The beautiful room glimmered out at her in the flickering light - just as they had left it that last evening. There was Elizabeth Bas, who could never have known the meaning of fear - Mona Lisa, who mocked at it. But the Lady Giovanna, who never turned her saintly profile to look squarely at you. Had she ever known it - this subtle, secret fear that one could never put in words? - that would be so ridiculous if one could put it in words? Dean Priest's sad lovely mother. Y
es, she had known fear; it looked out of her pictured eyes now in that dim, furtive light.
Emily shut the door and sat down in the armchair beneath Elizabeth Bas' picture. She could hear the dead, dry leaves of a dead summer rustling eerily on the beach just outside the window. And the wind - rising - rising - rising. But she liked it. "The wind is free - not a prisoner like me." She crushed the unbidden thought down sternly. She would not think such things. Her fetters were of her own forging. She had put them on willingly, even desirously. Nothing to do but wear them gracefully.
How the sea moaned down there below the fields! But here in the little house what a silence there was! Something strange and uncanny about the silence. It seemed to hold some profound meaning. She would not have dared to speak lest something should answer her. Yet fear suddenly left her. She felt dreamy - happy - far away from life and reality. The walls of the shadowy room seemed slowly to fade from her vision. The pictures withdrew themselves. There seemed to be nothing before her but Great-aunt Nancy's gazing-ball hung from the old iron lantern - a big, silvery, gleaming globe. In it she saw the reflected room, like a shining doll's-house, with herself sitting in the old, low chair and the taper on the mantelpiece like a tiny, impish star. Emily looked at it as she leaned back in her chair - looked at it till she saw nothing but that tiny point of light in a great misty universe.
III
Did she sleep? Dream? Who knows? Emily herself never knew. Twice before in her life - once in delirium* - once in sleep+ - she had drawn aside the veil of sense and time and seen beyond. Emily never liked to remember those experiences. She forgot them deliberately. She had not recalled them for years. A dream - a fancy fever-bred. But this?
A small cloud seemed to shape itself within the gazing-ball. It dispersed - faded. But the reflected doll's-house in the ball was gone. Emily saw an entirely different scene - a long lofty room filled with streams of hurrying people - and among them a face she knew.