"I am Emily Byrd Starr of New Moon," said Emily rather coldly. She was beginning to be sensitive about her ears. Father Cassidy had remarked on them--and now Jarback Priest. Was there really something uncanny about them?
And yet there was a flavor about the said Jarback that she liked--liked decidedly. Emily never was long in doubt about anyone she met. In a few minutes she always knew whether she liked, disliked, or was indifferent to them. She had a queer feeling that she had known Jarback Priest for years--perhaps because it had seemed so long when she was lying on that crumbling earth waiting for him to return. He was not handsome but she liked that lean, clever face of his with its magnetic green eyes.
"So you're the young lady visitor at the Grange!" said Dean Priest, in some astonishment. "Then my dear Aunt Nancy should look after you better--my very dear Aunt Nancy."
"You don't like Aunt Nancy, I see," said Emily coolly.
"What is the use of liking a lady who won't like me? You have probably discovered by this time that my Lady Aunt detests me."
"Oh, I don't think it's as bad as that," said Emily. "She must have some good opinions about you--she says you're the only Priest who will ever go to heaven."
"She doesn't mean that as a compliment, whatever you in your innocence believe it to be. And you are Douglas Starr's daughter? I knew your father. We were boys together at Queen's Academy--we drifted apart after we left it--he went into journalism, I to McGill. But he was the only friend I had at school--the only boy who would bother himself about Jarback Priest, who was lame and hunchbacked and couldn't play football or hockey. Emily Byrd Starr--Starr should be your first name. You look like a star--you have a radiant sort of personality shining through you--your proper habitat should be the evening sky just after sunset--or the morning sky just before sunrise. Yes. You'd be more at home in the morning sky. I think I shall call you Star."
"Do you mean that you think me pretty?" asked Emily directly.
"Why, it hadn't occurred to me to wonder whether you were pretty or not. Do you think a star should be pretty?"
Emily reflected.
"No," she said finally, "the word doesn't suit a star."
"I perceive you are an artist in words. Of course it doesn't. Stars are prismatic--palpitating--elusive. It is not often we find one made flesh and blood. I think I'll wait for you."
"Oh, I'm ready to go now," said Emily, standing up.
"H'm. That wasn't what I meant. Never mind. Come along, Star--if you don't mind walking a bit slowly. I'll take you back from the wilderness at least--I don't know that I'll venture to Wyther Grange tonight. I don't want Aunt Nancy to take the edge off you. And so you don't think me handsome?"
"I didn't say so," cried Emily.
"Not in words. But I can read your thoughts, Star--it won't ever do to think anything you don't want me to know. The gods gave me that gift--when they kept back everything else I wanted. You don't think me handsome but you think me nice. Do you think you are pretty yourself?"
"A little--since Aunt Nancy lets me wear my bang," said Emily frankly.
Jarback Priest made a grimace.
"Don't call it by such a name. It's a worse name even than bustle. Bangs and bustles--they hurt me. I like that black wave breaking on your white brows--but don't call it a bang--ever again."
"It is a very ugly word. I never use it in my poetry, of course."
Whereby Dean Priest discovered that Emily wrote poetry. He also discovered pretty nearly everything else about her in that charming walk back to Priest Pond in the fir-scented dusk, with Tweed walking between them, his nose touching his master's hand softly every now and then, while the robins in the trees above them whistled blithely in the afterlight.
With nine out of ten people Emily was secretive and reserved, but Dean Priest was sealed of her tribe and she divined it instantly. He had a right to the inner sanctuary and she yielded it unquestioningly. She talked to him freely.
Besides, she felt alive again--she felt the wonderful thrill of living again, after that dreadful space when she had seemed to hang between life and death. She felt, as she wrote to her father afterwards, "as if a little bird was singing in her heart." And oh, how good the green sod felt under her feet!
She told him all about herself and her doings and beings. Only one thing she did not tell him--her worry over Ilse's mother. That she could not speak of to anyone. Aunt Nancy need not have been frightened that she would carry tales to New Moon.
"I wrote a whole poem yesterday when it rained and I couldn't get out," she said. "It began,
I sit by the western window
That looks on Malvern Bay--"
"Am I not to hear the whole of it?" asked Dean, who knew perfectly well that Emily was hoping that he would ask it.
Emily delightedly repeated the whole poem. When she came to the two lines she liked best in it,
Perhaps in those wooded islands
That gem the proud bay's breast--
she looked up sidewise at him to see if he admired them. But he was walking with eyes cast down and an absent expression on his face. She felt a little disappointed.
"H'm," he said when she had finished. "You're twelve, didn't you say? When you're ten years older I shouldn't wonder--but let's not think of it."
"Father Cassidy told me to keep on," cried Emily.
"There was no need of it. You would keep on anyhow--you have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?"
"I think I shall be either a great poetess or a distinguished novelist," said Emily reflectively.
"Having only to choose," remarked Dean dryly. "Better be a novelist--I hear it pays better."
"What worries me about writing novels," confided Emily, "is the love talk in them. I'm sure I'll never be able to write it. I've tried," she concluded candidly, "and I can't think of anything to say."
"Don't worry about that. I'll teach you some day," said Dean.
"Will you--will you really?" Emily was very eager. "I'll be so obliged if you will. I think I could manage everything else very nicely."
"It's a bargain then--don't forget it. And don't go looking for another teacher, mind. What do you find to do at the Grange besides writing poetry? Are you never lonesome with only those two old survivals?"
"No. I enjoy my own company," said Emily gravely.
"You would. Stars are said to dwell apart, anyhow, sufficient unto themselves--ensphered in their own light. Do you really like Aunt Nancy?"
"Yes, indeed. She is very kind to me. She doesn't make me wear sunbonnets and she lets me go barefooted in the forenoons. But I have to wear my buttoned boots in the afternoons and I hate buttoned boots."
"Naturally. You should be shod with sandals of moonshine and wear a scarf of sea-mist with a few fireflies caught in it over your hair. Star, you don't look like your father, but you suggest him in several ways. Do you look like your mother? I never saw her."
All at once Emily smiled demurely. A real sense of humor was born in her at that moment. Never again was she to feel quite so unmixedly tragic over anything.
"No," she said, "it's only my eyelashes and smile that are like Mother's. But I've got Father's forehead, and Grandma Starr's hair and eyes, and Great-Uncle George's nose, and Aunt Nancy's hands, and Cousin Susan's elbows, and Great-great-Grandmother Murray's ankles, and Grandfather Murray's eyebrows."
Dean Priest laughed.
"A rag-bag--as we all are," he said. "But your soul is your own, and fire-new, I'll swear to that."
"Oh, I'm so glad I like you," said Emily impulsively. "It would be hateful to think anyone I didn't like had saved my life. I don't mind your saving it a bit."
"That's good. Because you see your life belongs to me henceforth. Since I saved it it's mine. Never forget that."
Emily felt an odd sensation of rebellion. She didn't fancy the idea of her life belonging to anybody but herself--not even to anybody she liked as much as she liked Dean Priest. Dean, watching her
, saw it and smiled his whimsical smile that always seemed to have so much more in it than mere smiling.
"That doesn't quite suit you? Ah, you see one pays a penalty when one reaches out for something beyond the ordinary. Take your wonderful aster home and keep it as long as you can. It has cost you your freedom."
He was laughing--he was only joking, of course--yet Emily felt as if a cobweb fetter had been flung round her. Yielding to a sudden impulse she flung the big aster on the ground and set her foot on it.
Dean Priest looked on amusedly. His strange eyes were very kindly as he met hers.
"You rare thing--you vivid thing--you starry thing! We are going to be good friends--we are good friends. I'm coming up to Wyther Grange tomorrow to see those descriptions you've written of Caroline and my venerable Aunt in your Jimmy-book. I feel sure they're delicious. Here's your path--don't go roaming again so far from civilization. Good-night, my Star of the Morning."
He stood at the crossroad and watched her out of sight.
"What a child!" he muttered. "I'll never forget her eyes as she lay there on the edge of death--the dauntless little soul--and I've never seen a creature who seemed so full of sheer joy in existence. She is Douglas Starr's child--he never called me Jarback."
He stooped and picked up the broken aster. Emily's heel had met it squarely and it was badly crushed. But he put it away that night between the leaves of an old volume of Jane Eyre, where he had marked a verse--
All glorious rose upon my sight
That child of shower and gleam.
CHAPTER 27
The Vow of Emily
In Dean Priest Emily found, for the first time since her father had died, a companion who could fully sympathize. She was always at her best with him, with a delightful feeling of being understood. To love is easy and therefore common--but to understand--how rare it is! They roamed wonderlands of fancy together in the magic August days that followed upon Emily's adventure on the bay shore, talked together of exquisite, immortal things, and were at home with "nature's old felicities" of which Wordsworth so happily speaks.
Emily showed him all the poetry and "descriptions" in her "Jimmy-book" and he read them gravely, and, exactly as Father had done, made little criticisms that did not hurt her because she knew they were just. As for Dean Priest, a certain secret well-spring of fancy that had long seemed dry bubbled up in him sparklingly again.
"You make me believe in fairies, whether I will or no," he told her, "and that means youth. As long as you believe in fairies you can't grow old."
"But I can't believe in fairies myself," protested Emily sorrowfully. "I wish I could."
"But you are a fairy yourself--or you wouldn't be able to find fairyland. You can't buy a ticket there, you know. Either the fairies themselves give you your passport at your christening--or they don't. That is all there is to it."
"Isn't 'Fairyland' the loveliest word?" said Emily dreamily.
"Because it means everything the human heart desires," said Dean.
When he talked to her Emily felt as if she were looking into some enchanted mirror where her own dreams and secret hopes were reflected back to her with added charm. If Dean Priest were a cynic he showed no cynicism to Emily. But in her company he was not a cynic; he had shed his years and become a boy again with a boy's untainted visions. She loved him for the world he opened to her view.
There was such fun in him, too,--such sly, surprising fun. He told her jokes--he made her laugh. He told her strange old tales of forgotten gods who were very beautiful--of court festivals and the bridals of kings. He seemed to have the history of the whole world at his fingers' ends. He described things to her in unforgettable phrases as they walked by the bay shore or sat in the overgrown, shadowy old garden of Wyther Grange. When he spoke of Athens as "the City of the Violet Crown" Emily realized afresh what magic is made when the right words are wedded; and she loved to think of Rome as "the City of the Seven Hills." Dean had been in Rome and Athens--and almost everywhere else.
"I didn't know anyone ever talked as you do except in books," she told him.
Dean laughed--with a little note of bitterness that was so often present in his laughter--though less often with Emily than with other people. It was really his laughter that had won Dean his reputation for cynicism. People so often felt that he was laughing at them instead of with them.
"I've had only books for companions most of my life," he said. "Is it any wonder I talk like them?"
"I'm sure I'll like studying history after this," said Emily; "except Canadian History. I'll never like it--it's so dull. Not just at the first, when we belonged to France and there was plenty of fighting, but after that it's nothing but politics."
"The happiest countries, like the happiest women, have no history," said Dean.
"I hope I'll have a history," cried Emily. "I want a thrilling career."
"We all do, foolish one. Do you know what makes history? Pain--and shame--and rebellion--and bloodshed and heartache. Star, ask yourself how many hearts ached--and broke--to make those crimson and purple pages in history that you find so enthralling. I told you the story of Leonidas and his Spartans the other day. They had mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. If they could have fought a bloodless battle at the polls wouldn't it have been better--if not so dramatic."
"I--can't--feel--that way," said Emily confusedly. She was not old enough to think or say, as she would say ten years later, "The heroes of Thermopylae have been an inspiration to humanity for centuries. What squabble around a ballot-box will ever be that?"
"And, like all female creatures, you form your opinions by your feelings. Well, hope for your thrilling career--but remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you--then someone else."
"Oh, no, I wouldn't like that."
"Then be content with fewer thrills. What about your tumble over the bank down there? That came near being a tragedy. What if I hadn't found you?"
"But you did find me," cried Emily. "I like near escapes--after they're over," she added. "If everybody had always been happy there'd be nothing to read about."
Tweed made a third in their rambles and Emily grew very fond of him, without losing any of her loyalty to the pussy folk.
"I like cats with one part of my mind and dogs with another part," she said.
"I like cats but I never keep one," Dean said. "They're too exacting--they ask too much. Dogs want only love but cats demand worship. They have never got over the Bubastis habit of godship."
Emily understood this--he had told her all about old Egypt and the goddess Pasht--but she did not quite agree with him.
"Kittens don't want to be worshipped," she said. "They just want to be cuddled."
"By their priestesses--yes. If you had been born on the banks of the Nile five thousand years ago, Emily, you would have been a priestess of Pasht--an adorable, slim, brown creature with a fillet of gold around your black hair and bands of silver on those ankles Aunt Nancy admires, with dozens of sacred little god-lings frisking around you under the palms of the temple courts."
"Oh," gasped Emily rapturously, "that gave me the flash. And," she added wonderingly, "just for a moment it made me homesick, too. Why?"
"Why? Because I haven't a doubt you were just such a priestess in a former incarnation and my words reminded your soul of it. Do you believe in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, Star? But of course not--brought up by the true-blue Calvinists of New Moon."
"What does it mean?" asked Emily, and when Dean explained it to her she thought it a very delightful belief but was quite sure Aunt Elizabeth would not approve of it.
"So I won't believe it--yet," she said gravely.
Then it all came to an end quite suddenly. It had been taken for granted by all concerned that Emily was to stay at Wyther Grange until the end of August. But in mid-August Aunt Nancy said suddenly to her one day,
"Go home, Emily. I'm tired of you. I like you
very well--you're not stupid and you're passably pretty and you've behaved exceedingly well--tell Elizabeth you do the Murrays credit--but I'm tired of you. Go home."
Emily's feelings were mixed. It hurt her to be told Aunt Nancy was tired of her--it would hurt anyone. It rankled in her for several days until she thought of a sharp answer she might have made Aunt Nancy and wrote it down in her Jimmy-book. She felt quite as relieved then as if she had really said it.
And she was sorry to leave Wyther Grange; she had grown to love the old beautiful house, with its flavor of hidden secrets--a flavor that was wholly a trick of its architecture, for there had never been anything in it but the simple tale of births and deaths and marriages and everyday living that most houses have. She was sorry to leave the bay shore and the quaint garden and the gazing-ball and the chessy-cat and the Pink Room bed of freedom; and most of all she was sorry to leave Dean Priest. But on the other hand it was delightful to think of going back to New Moon and all the loved ones there--Teddy and his dear whistle, Ilse and her stimulating comradeship, Perry with his determined reaching up for higher things, Saucy Sal and the new kitten that must be needing proper training now, and the fairy world of the Midsummer Night's Dream. Cousin Jimmy's garden would be in its prime of splendor, the August apples would be ripe. Suddenly, Emily was very ready to go. She packed her little black box jubilantly and found it an excellent chance to work in neatly a certain line from a poem Dean had recently read to her which had captured her fancy.
"'Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home,'" she declaimed feelingly, standing at the top of the long, dark, shining staircase and apostrophizing the row of grim Priest photographs hanging on the wall.
But she was much annoyed over one thing. Aunt Nancy would not give her back the picture Teddy had painted.
"I'm going to keep it," Aunt Nancy said, grinning and shaking her gold tassels. "Some day that picture will be worth something as the early effort of a famous artist."