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.
II
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?"
EIGHT
I
There was a tremendous sensation in the Murray clan when Emily announced that she was going to marry Dean Priest. At New Moon the situation was very tense for a time. Aunt Laura cried and Cousin Jimmy went about shaking his head and Aunt Elizabeth was exceedingly grim. Yet in the end they made up their minds to accept it. What else could they do? By this time even Aunt Elizabeth realised that when Emily said she was going to do a thing she would do it.
"You would have made a worse fuss if I had told you I was going to marry Perry of Stovepipe Town," said Emily when she heard all Aunt Elizabeth had to say.
"Of course that is true enough," admitted Aunt Elizabeth when Emily had gone out. "And, after all, Dean is well-off- and the Priests are a good family."
"But so - so Priesty" sighed Laura. "And Dean is far, far too old for Emily. Besides, his great-great grandfather went insane."
"Dean won't go insane."
"His children might."
"Laura," said Elizabeth rebukingly, and dropped the subject.
"Are you very sure you love him, Emily?" Aunt Laura asked that evening.
"Yes - in a way," said Emily.
Aunt Laura threw out her hands and spoke with a sudden passion utterly foreign to her.
"But there's only one way of loving."
"Oh, no, dearest of Victorian aunties," answered Emily gaily. "Ther
e are a dozen different ways. You know I've tried one or two ways already. And they failed me. Don't worry about Dean and me. We understand each other perfectly."
"I only want you to be happy, dear."
"And I will be happy - I am happy. I'm not a romantic little dreamer any longer. Last winter took that all out of me. I'm going to marry a man whose companionship satisfies me absolutely and he's quite satisfied with what I can give him - real affection and comradeship. I am sure that is the best foundation for a happy marriage. Besides, Dean needs me. I can make him happy. He has never been happy. Oh, it is delightful to feel that you hold happiness in your hand and can hold it out, like a pearl beyond price, to one who longs for it."
"You're too young," reiterated Aunt Laura.
"It's only my body that's young. My soul is a hundred years old. Last winter made me feel so old and wise. You know."
"Yes, I know." But Laura also knew that this very feeling old and wise merely proved Emily's youth. People who are old and wise never feel either. And all this talk of aged souls didn't do away with the fact that Emily, slim, radiant, with eyes of mystery, was not yet twenty, while Dean Priest was forty-two. In fifteen years - but Laura would not think of it.
And, after all, Dean would not take her away There had been happy marriages with just as much disparity of age.
II
Nobody, it must be admitted, seemed to regard the match with favour. Emily had a rather abominable time of it for a few weeks. Dr. Burnley raged about the affair and insulted Dean. Aunt Ruth came over and made a scene.
"He's an infidel, Emily."
"He isn't!" said Emily indignantly.
"Well, he doesn't believe what we believe," declared Aunt Ruth as if that ought to settle the matter for any true Murray.
Aunt Addie, who had never forgiven Emily for refusing her son, even though Andrew was now happily and suitably most suitably, married, was very hard to bear. She contrived to make Emily feel a most condescending pity. She had lost Andrew, so must console herself with lame Jarback Priest. Of course Aunt Addie did not put it in so many blunt words but she might as well have. Emily understood her implications perfectly.
"Of course, he's richer than a young man could be," conceded Aunt Addie.
"And interesting," said Emily. "Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers."
So honours were about even there.
The Priests did not like it any too well either. Perhaps because they did not care to see a rich uncle's possessions thus slipping through the fingers of hope. They said Emily Starr was just marrying Dean for his money, and the Murrays took care that she should hear they had said it. Emily felt that the Priests were continually and maliciously discussing her behind her back.
"I'll never feel at home in your clan," she told Dean rebelliously
"Nobody will ask you to. You and I, Star, are going to live unto ourselves. We are not going to walk or talk or think or breathe according to any clan standard, be it Priest or Murray. If the Priests disapprove of you as a wife for me the Murrays still more emphatically disapprove of me as a husband for you. Never mind. Of course the Priests find it hard to believe that you are marrying me because you care anything for me. How could you? I find it hard to believe myself."
"But you do believe it, Dean? Truly I care more for you than any one in the world. Of course - I told you - I don't love you like a silly, romantic girl."
"Do you love any one else?" asked Dean quietly. It was the first time he had ventured to ask the question.
"No. Of course - you know - I've had one or two broken-backed love affairs - silly schoolgirl fancies. That is all years behind me. Last winter seems like a lifetime - dividing me by centuries from those old follies. I'm all yours, Dean."
Dean lifted the hand he held and kissed it. He had never yet touched her lips.
"I can make you happy, Star. I know it. Old - lame as I am, I can make you happy. I've been waiting for you all my life, my star. That's what you've always seemed to me, Emily. An exquisite, unreachable star. Now I have you - hold you - wear you on my heart. And you will love me yet - some day you will give me more than affection."
The passion in his voice startled Emily a little. It seemed in some way to demand more of her than she had to give. And Ilse, who had graduated from the School of Oratory and had come home for a week before going on a summer concert tour, struck another note of warning that disturbed faintly for a time.
"In some ways, honey, Dean is just the man for you. He's clever and fascinating and not so horribly conscious of his own importance as most of the Priests. But you'll belong to him body and soul. Dean can't bear any one to have any interest outside of him. He must possess exclusively. If you don't mind that -"
"I don't think I do."
"Your writing -"
"Oh, I'm done with that. I seem to have no interest in it since my illness. I saw - then - how little it really mattered - how many more important things there were -"
"As long as you feel like that you'll be happy with Dean. Heigh-ho." Ilse sighed and pulled the blood-red rose that was pinned to her waist to pieces. "It makes me feel fearfully old and wise to be talking like this of your getting married, Emily. It seems so - absurd in some ways. Yesterday we were schoolgirls. To-day you're engaged. To-morrow - you'll be a grandmother."
"Aren't you - isn't there anybody in your own life, Ilse?"
"Listen to the fox that lost her tail. No, thank you. Besides - one might as well be frank. I feel an awful mood of honest confession on me. There's never been anybody for me but Perry Miller. And you've got your claws in him."
Perry Miller. Emily could not believe her ears.
"Ilse Burnley! You've always laughed at him - raged at him -"
"Of course I did. I liked him so much that it made me furious to see him making a fool of himself. I wanted to be proud of him and he always made me ashamed of him. Oh, there were times when he made me mad enough to bite the leg off a chair. If I hadn't cared, do you suppose it would have mattered what kind of a donkey he was? I can't get over it - the 'Burnley softness,' I suppose. We never change. Oh, I'd have jumped at him - would yet - herring-barrels, Stovepipe Town and all. There you have it. But never mind. Life is very decent without him."
"Perhaps - some day -"
"Don't dream it. Emily, I won't have you setting about making matches for me. Perry never gave me two thoughts - never will. I'm not going to think of him. What's that old verse we laughed over once that last year in high school - thinking it was all nonsense?
"'Since ever the world was spinning
And till the world shall end
You've your man in the beginning
Or you have him in the end,
But to have him from start to finish
And neither to borrow nor lend
Is what all of the girls are wanting
And none of the gods can send.'
"Well, next year I'll graduate. For years after that a career. Oh, I daresay I'll marry some day."
"Teddy?" said Emily, before she could prevent herself She could have bitten her tongue off the moment the word escaped it.
Ilse gave her a long, keen look, which Emily parried successfully with all the Murray pride - too successfully, perhaps.
"No, not Teddy. Teddy never thought about me. I doubt if he thinks of any one but himself. Teddy's a duck but he's selfish, Emily, he really is."
"No, no," indignantly. She could not listen to this.
"Well, we won't quarrel over it. What difference does it make if he is? He's gone out of our lives anyway. The cat can have him. He's going to climb to the top - they thought him a wow in Montreal. He'll make a wonderful portrait painter - if he can only cure himself of his old trick of putting you into all the faces he paints."
"Nonsense. He doesn't -"
"He does. I've raged at him about it times without number. Of course he denies it. I really thin
k he's quite unconscious of it himself. It's the hang-over from some old unconscious emotion, I suppose - to use the jargon of modern psychologists. Never mind. As I said, I mean to marry sometime. When I'm tired of a career. It's very jolly now - but some day. I'll make a sensible wedding o't, just as you're doing, with a heart of gold and a pocket of silver. Isn't it funny to be talking of marrying some man you've never even seen? What is he doing at this very moment? Shaving - swearing - breaking his heart over some other girl? Still, he's to marry me. Oh, we'll be happy enough, too. And we'll visit each other, you and I - and compare our children - call your first girl Ilse, won't you, friend of my heart - and - and what a devilish thing it is to be a woman, isn't it Emily!"
Old Kelly, the tin peddler, who had been Emily's friend of many years, had to have his say about it, too. One could not suppress Old Kelly.
"Gurrl dear, is it true that ye do be after going to marry Jarback Praste?"
"Quite true." Emily knew it was of no use to expect Old Kelly to call Dean anything but Jarback. But she always winced.
Old Kelly crabbed his face.
"Ye're too young at the business of living to be marrying any one - laste of all a Praste."
"Haven't you been twitting me for years with my slowness in getting a beau?" asked Emily slyly.
"Gurrl dear, a joke is a joke. But this is beyond joking. Don't be pig-headed now, there's a jewel. Stop a bit and think it over. There do be some knots mighty aisy to tie but the untying is a cat of a different brade. I've always been warning ye against marrying a Praste. 'Twas a foolish thing - I might av known it. I should've towld ye to marry one."
"Dean isn't like the other Priests, Mr. Kelly. I'm going to be very happy."