"A sick cow. Thought I'd better sit up and look after her."
"It was lucky for me you were. Oh, I'm in my proper senses again, Cousin Jimmy. Of course, I know you think I've been a little fool."
"Everybody's a fool in some particular," said Cousin Jimmy.
"Well, I'll go back and bite the sour apple without a grimace."
"Lie down on the sofa and have a nap. I'll hitch up the grey mare and drive you back as soon as it begins to be daylight."
"No, that won't do at all. Several reasons. In the first place, the roads aren't fit for wheels or runners. In the second place we couldn't drive away from here without Aunt Elizabeth hearing us, and then she'd find out all about it and I don't want her to. We'll keep my foolishness a dark and deadly secret between you and me, Cousin Jimmy."
"Then how are you going to get back to Shrewsbury?"
"Walk."
"Walk? To Shrewsbury? At this hour of the night?"
"Haven't I just walked from Shrewsbury at this hour? I can do it again and it won't be any harder than bumping over those awful roads behind the grey mare. Of course, I'll put something on my feet that will be a little more protection than kid slippers. I've ruined your Christmas present in my brain-storm. There is a pair of my old boots in the closet there. I'll put them on - and my old ulster. I'll be back in Shrewsbury by daylight. I'll start as soon as we finish the doughnuts. Let's lick the platter clean, Cousin Jimmy."
Cousin Jimmy yielded. After all, Emily was young and wiry, the night was fine, and the less Elizabeth knew about some things the better for all concerned. With a sigh of relief that the affair had turned out so well - he had really been afraid at first that Emily's underlying "stubbornness" had been reached and then, whew! - Cousin Jimmy settled down to doughnuts.
"How's the writing coming on?" he asked.
"I've written a good deal lately - though it's pretty cold in my room mornings, but I love it so - it's my dearest dream to do something worth while some day."
"So you will. You haven't been pushed down a well," said Cousin Jimmy.
Emily patted his hand. None realised better than she what Cousin Jimmy might have done if he had not been pushed down a well.
When the doughnuts were finished Emily donned her old boots and ulster. It was a very shabby garment but her young-moon beauty shone over it like a star in the old, dim, candle-lighted room.
Cousin Jimmy looked up at her. He thought that she was a gifted, beautiful, joyous creature and that some things were a shame.
"Tall and stately - tall and stately like all our women," he murmured dreamily. "Except Aunt Ruth," he added.
Emily laughed - and "made a face."
"Aunt Ruth will make the most of her inches in our forthcoming interview. This will last her the rest of the year. But don't worry, Cousin darling, I won't do any more foolish things for quite a long time now. This has cleared the air. Aunt Elizabeth will think it was dreadful of you to eat a whole crockful of doughnuts yourself, you greedy Cousin Jimmy."
"Do you want another blank-book?"
"Not yet. The last one you gave me is only half-full yet. A blank-book lasts me quite a while when I can't write stories. Oh, I wish I could, Cousin Jimmy."
"The time will come - the time will come," said Cousin Jimmy encouragingly. "Wait a while - just wait a while. If we don't chase things - sometimes the things following us can catch up. 'Through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding is it established. And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches' - all precious and pleasant riches, Emily. Proverbs twenty-fourth, third and fifth."
He let Emily out and bolted the door. He put out all the candles but one. He glared at it for a few moments, then, satisfied that Elizabeth could not hear him, Cousin Jimmy said fervently,
"Ruth Dutton can go to - to - to -" Cousin Jimmy's courage failed him. "- to heaven!"
Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty-and Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.
As she walked along she dramatised the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily's nature - a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own - the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.
The big fir trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was ever anything so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean-limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them - of little children's dear hands folded in exquisite slumber - of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils - of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night - all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.
And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad - things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp - she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses - something frisked across her path - it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person: the trees put on half pleasing, half terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.
"One loses so much when one becomes incredulous," said Emily - and then thought that was a rather clever remark and wished she had a Jimmy-book to write it down.
So, having washed her soul free from bitterness in the aerial bath of the spring night and tingling from head to foot with the wild, strange, sweet life of the spirit, she came to Aunt Ruth's when the faint, purplish hills east of the harbour were growing clear under a whitening sky She had expected to find the door still locked; but the knob turned as she tried it and she went in.
Aunt Ruth was up and was lighting the kitchen fire.
On the way from New Moon Emily had thought over a dozen different ways of saying what she meant to say - and now she used not one of them. At the last moment an impish inspiration came to her. Before Aunt Ruth could - or would - speak Emily said,
"Aunt Ruth, I've come back to tell you that I forgive you, but that this must not happen again."
To tell the truth, Mistress Ruth Dutton was considerably relieved that Emily had come back. She had been afraid of Elizabeth and Laura - Murray family rows were bitter things - and truly a little afraid of the results to Emily herself if she had really gone to New Moon in those thin shoes and that insufficient coat. For Ruth Dutton was not a fiend - only a rather stupid, stubborn little barnyard fowl trying to train up a skylark. She was honestly afraid that Emily might catch a cold and go into consumption. And if Emily took it into her head not to come back to Shrewsbury - well, that would "make talk" and Ruth Dutton hated "talk" when she or her doings was the subject. So, all things considered, she decided to ignore the impertinence of Emily's greeting.
"Did you spend the night on the streets?" she asked grimly.
"Oh, dear no - I went out to New Moon - had a chat with
Cousin Jimmy and some lunch - then walked back."
"Did Elizabeth see you? Or Laura?"
"No. They were asleep."
Mrs. Dutton reflected that this was just as well.
"Well," she said coldly, "you have been guilty of great ingratitude, Em'ly, but I'll forgive you this time" - then stopped abruptly. Hadn't that been said already this morning? Before she could think of a substitute remark Emily had vanished upstairs. Mistress Ruth Dutton was left with the unpleasant sensation that, somehow or other, she had not come out of the affair quite as triumphantly as she should have.
HEIGHTS AND HOLLOWS
"Shrewsbury,
"April 28, 19-
"This was my week-end at New Moon and I came back this morning. Consequently this is blue Monday and I'm homesick. Aunt Ruth, too, is always a little more unlivable on Mondays - or seems so by contrast with Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth. Cousin Jimmy wasn't quite so nice this week-end as he usually is. He had several of his queer spells and was a bit grumpy for two reasons: in the first place, several of his young apple trees are dying because they were girdled by mice in the winter; and in the second place he can't induce Aunt Elizabeth to try the new creamers that every one else is using. For my own part I am secretly glad that she won't. I don't want our beautiful old dairy and the glossy brown milk pans to be improved out of existence. I can't think of New Moon without a dairy.
"When I could get Cousin Jimmy's mind off his grievances we explored the Carlton catalogue and discussed the best selections to make for my two dollars' worth of owl's laughter. We planned a dozen different combinations and beds, and got several hundred dollars' worth of fun out of it, but finally settled on a long, narrow bed full of asters - lavender down the middle, white around it and a border of pale pink, with clumps of deep purple for sentinels at the four corners. I am sure it will be beautiful: and I shall look at its September loveliness and think, ' This came out of my head!'
"I have taken another step in the Alpine Path. Last week the Ladies' Own Journal accepted my poem, The Wind Woman, and gave me two subscriptions to the Journal for it. No cash - but that may come yet. I must make enough money before very long to pay Aunt Ruth every cent my living with her has cost her. Then she won't be able to twit me with the expense I am to her. She hardly misses a day without some hint of it - 'No, Mrs. Beatty, I feel I can't give quite as much to missions this year as usual - my expenses have been much heavier, you know' - 'Oh, no, Mr. Morrison, your new goods are beautiful but I can't afford a silk dress this spring' - 'This davenport should really be upholstered again - it's getting fearfully shabby - but it's out of the question for a year or two.' So it goes.
"But my soul doesn't belong to Aunt Ruth.
"Owl's Laughter was copied in the Shrewsbury Times - 'hunter's moan' and all. Evelyn Blake, I understand, says she doesn't believe I wrote it at all - she's sure she read something exactly like it somewhere some years ago.
"Dear Evelyn!
"Aunt Elizabeth said nothing at all about it, but Cousin Jimmy told me she cut it out and put it in the Bible she keeps on the stand by her bed. When I told her I was to get two dollars' worth of seeds for it she said I'd likely find when I sent for them that the firm had gone bankrupt!
"I have a notion to send that little story about the child that Mr. Carpenter liked to Golden Hours. I wish I could get it typewritten, but that is impossible, so I shall have to write it very plainly. I wonder if I dare. They would surely pay for a story.
"Dean will soon be home. How glad I will be to see him! I wonder if he will think I have changed much. I have certainly grown taller. Aunt Laura says I will soon have to have really long dresses and put my hair up, but Aunt Elizabeth says fifteen is too young for that. She says girls are not so womanly at fifteen nowadays as they were in her time. Aunt Elizabeth is really frightened, I know, that if she lets me grow up I'll be eloping - 'like Juliet.' But I'm in no hurry to grow up. It's nicer to be just like this - betwixt-and-between. Then, if I want to be childish I can be, none daring to make me ashamed; and if I want to behave maturely I have the authority of my extra inches.
"It's a gentle, rainy evening tonight. There are pussy willows out in the swamp and some young birches in the Land of Uprightness have cast a veil of transparent purple over their bare limbs. I think I will write a poem on A Vision of Spring.
"May 5, 19-
"There has been quite an outbreak of spring poetry in High School. Evelyn has one in the May Quill on Flowers. Very wobbly rhymes.
"And Perry! He also felt the annual spring urge, as Mr. Carpenter calls it, and wrote a dreadful thing called The Old Farmer Sows His Seed. He sent it to The Quill and The Quill actually printed it - in the 'jokes' column. Perry is quite proud of it and doesn't realise that he has made an ass of himself. Ilse turned pale with fury when she read it and hasn't spoken to him since. She says he isn't fit to associate with. Ilse is far too hard on Perry. And yet, when I read the thing, especially the verse,
"I've ploughed and harrowed and sown -
I've done my best,
Now I'll leave the crop alone
And let God do the rest.'
I wanted to murder him myself. Perry can't understand what is wrong with it.
"'It rhymes, doesn't it?'
"Oh, yes, it rhymes!
"Ilse has also been raging at Perry lately because he has been coming to school with all but one button off his coat. I couldn't endure it myself, so when we came out of class I whispered to Perry to meet me for five minutes by the Fern Pool at sunset. I slipped out with needle, thread and buttons and sewed them on. He didn't see why it wouldn't have done to wait till Friday night and have Aunt Tom sew them on. I said,
"'Why didn't you sew them on yourself, Perry?'
"'I've no buttons and no money to buy any' he said, 'but never mind, some day I will have gold buttons if I want them.'
"Aunt Ruth saw me coming in with thread and scissors, etc., and of course wanted to know where, what and why. I told her the whole tale and she said,
"'You'd better let Perry Miller's friends sew his buttons on for him.'
"'I'm the best friend he's got,' I said.
"'I don't know where you get your low tastes from,' said Aunt Ruth.
"May 7, 19-
"This afternoon after school Teddy rowed Ilse and me across the harbour to pick May-flowers in the spruce barrens up the Green River. We got basketfuls, and spent a perfect hour wandering about the barrens with the friendly murmur of the little fir trees all around us. As somebody said of strawberries so say I of May-flowers, 'God might have made a sweeter blossom, but never did.'
"When we left for home a thick white fog had come in over the bar and filled the harbour. But Teddy rowed in the direction of the train whistles, so we hadn't any trouble really and I thought the experience quite wonderful. We seemed to be floating over a white sea in an unbroken calm. There was no sound save the faint moan of the bar, the deep-sea call beyond, and the low dip of the oars in the glassy water. We were alone in a world of mist on a veiled, shoreless sea. Now and then, for just a moment, a cool air current lifted the mist curtain and dim coasts loomed phantom-like around us. Then the blank whiteness shut down again. It was as though we sought some strange, enchanted shore that ever receded farther and farther. I was really sorry when we got to the wharf, but when I reached home I found Aunt Ruth all worked up on account of the fog.
"'I knew I shouldn't have allowed you to go,' she said.
"'There wasn't any danger really, Aunt Ruth,' I protested, 'and look at my lovely May-flowers.'
"Aunt Ruth wouldn't look at the May-flowers.
"'No danger - in a white fog! Suppose you had got lost and a wind had come up before you reached land?'
"'How could one get lost on little Shrewsbury harbour, Aunt Ruth?' I said. 'The fog was wonderful - wonderful. It just seemed as if we were voyaging over the planet's rim into the depth of space.'
"I spoke enthusiastically and I suppose I looked a bit wild wi
th mist drops on my hair, for Aunt Ruth said coldly, pityingly,
"'It is unfortunate that you are so excitable, Emily.'
"It is maddening to be frozen and pitied, so I answered recklessly,
"'But think of the fun you miss when you're non-excitable, Aunt Ruth. There is nothing more wonderful than dancing around a blazing fire. What matter if it end in ashes?'
"'When you are as old as I am,' said Aunt Ruth, you will have more sense than to go into ecstasies over white fogs.'
"It seems to me impossible that I shall either grow old or die. I know I will, of course, but I don't believe it. I didn't make any answer to Aunt Ruth, so she started on another tack.
"'I was watching Ilse go past. Em'ly, does that girl wear any petticoats?'
"'Her clothing is silk and purple,' I murmured, quoting the Bible verse simply because there is something in it that charms me. One couldn't imagine a finer or simpler description of a gorgeously dressed woman. I don't think Aunt Ruth recognised the quotation: she thought I was just trying to be smart.
"'If you mean that she wears a purple silk petticoat, Em'ly, say so in plain English. Silk petticoats, indeed. If I had anything to do with her I'd silk petticoat her.'
"'Some day I am going to wear silk petticoats,' I said.
"'Oh, indeed, miss. And may I ask what you have got to get silk petticoats with?'
"'I've got a. future,' I said, as proudly as the Murrayest of all Murrays could have said it.
"Aunt Ruth sniffed.
"I have filled my room with May-flowers and even Lord Byron looks as if there might be a chance of recovery.
"May 13, 19-
"I have made the plunge and sent my story Something Different to Golden Hours. I actually trembled as I dropped it into the box at the Shoppe. Oh, if it should be accepted!
"Perry has set the school laughing again. He said in class that France exported fashions. Ilse walked up to him when class came out and said, 'You spawn!' She hasn't spoken to him since.
"Evelyn continues to say sweet cutting things and laugh. I might forgive her the cutting things but never the laugh.
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