"They haven't found the little boy?" asked Ilse.
Dr. McIntyre shook his head.
"No. They have given up the search. He cannot be living yet - after Tuesday night and last night. The swamp will not give up its dead - I feel sure that is where he is. My poor sister is broken-hearted. I am sorry your visit should have happened at such a sorrowful time, but I hope Mrs. Hollinger has made you comfortable. Grandmother McIntyre would be quite offended if you lacked for anything. She was very famous for her hospitality in her day. I suppose you haven't seen her. She does not often show herself to strangers."
"Oh, we have seen her," said Emily absently. "She came into our room this morning and told us how she spanked the King."
Dr. McIntyre laughed a little.
"Then you have been honoured. It is not to every one Grandmother tells that tale. She's something of an Ancient Mariner and knows her predestined listeners. She is a little bit strange. A few years ago her favourite son, my Uncle Neil, met his death in the Klondyke under sad circumstances. He was one of the Lost Patrol. Grandmother never recovered from the shock. She has never felt anything since - feeling seems to have been killed in her. She neither loves nor hates nor fears nor hopes - she lives entirely in the past and experiences only one emotion - a great pride in the fact that she once spanked the King. But I am keeping you from your breakfast - here comes Mrs. Hollinger to scold me."
"Wait a moment please, Dr. McIntyre," said Ilse hurriedly. "I - you - we - there is something I want to show you."
Dr. McIntyre bent a puzzled face over the Jimmy-book.
"What is this? I don't understand -"
"We don't understand it, either - Emily drew it in her sleep."
"In her sleep?" Dr. McIntyre was too bewildered to be anything but an echo.
"She must have. There was nobody else - unless your Grandmother can draw."
"Not she. And she never saw this house - it's the Scobie cottage below Malvern Bridge, isn't it?"
"Yes. We saw it yesterday."
"But Allan can't be there - it's been locked for a month - the carpenters went away in August."
"Oh - I know," stammered Emily. "I was thinking so much of Allan before I went to sleep - I suppose it's only a dream - I don't understand it at all - but we had to show it to you."
"Of course. Well, I won't say anything to Will or Clara about it. I'll get Rob Mason from over the hill and we'll run down and have a look around the cottage. It would be odd if-but it couldn't possibly be. I don't see how we can get into the cottage. It's locked and the windows are shuttered."
"This one - over the front door - isn't."
"No - but that's a closet window at the end of the upstairs hall. I was over the house one day in August when the painters were at work in it. The closet shuts with a spring lock, so I suppose that is why they didn't put a shutter on that window. It's high up, close to the ceiling, I remember. Well, I'll slip over to Rob's and see about this. It won't do to leave any stone unturned."
Emily and Ilse ate what breakfast they could, thankful that Mrs. Hollinger let them alone, save for a few passing remarks as she came and went at work.
"Tumble night last night - but the rain is over. I never closed an eye. Pore Clara didn't either, but she's quieter now - sorter despairing. I'm skeered for her mind - her Grandmother never was right after she heard of her son's death. When Clara heard they weren't going to search no more she screamed once and laid down on the bed with her face to the wall - hain't stirred since. Well, the world has to go on for other folks. Help yourselves to the toast. I'd advise ye not to be in too much of a hurry starting out till the wind dries the mud a bit."
"I'm not going to go until we find out if-" whispered Ilse inconclusively.
Emily nodded. She could not eat, and if Aunt Elizabeth or Aunt Ruth had seen her they would have sent her to bed at once with orders to stay there - and they would have been quite right. She had almost reached her breaking-point. The hour that passed after Dr. McIntyre's departure seemed interminable. Suddenly they heard Mrs. Hollinger, who was washing milk-pails at the bench outside the kitchen door, give a sharp exclamation. A minute later she rushed into the kitchen, followed by Dr. McIntyre, breathless from his mad run from Malvern Bridge.
"Clara must be told first," he said. "It is her right."
He disappeared into the inner room. Mrs. Hollinger dropped into a chair, laughing and crying.
"They've found him - they've found little Alan - on the floor of the hall closet - in the Scobie cottage!"
"Is - he - living?" gasped Emily.
"Yes, but no more - he couldn't even speak - but he'll come round with care, the doctor says. They carried him to the nearest house - that's all the doctor had time to tell me."
A wild cry of joy came from the bedroom - and Clara Bradshaw, with dishevelled hair and pallid lips, but with the light of rapture shining in her eyes, rushed through the kitchen - out and over the hill. Mrs. Hollinger caught up a coat and ran after her. Dr. McIntyre sank into a chair.
"I couldn't stop her - and I'm not fit for another run yet - but joy doesn't kill. It would have been cruel to stop her, even if I could."
"Is little Allan all right?" asked Ilse.
"He will be. The poor kid was at the point of exhaustion, naturally. He wouldn't have lasted for another day. We carried him right up to Dr. Matheson at the Bridge and left him in his charge. He won't be fit to be brought home before tomorrow."
"Have you any idea how he came to be there?"
"Well, he couldn't tell us anything, of course, but I think I know how it happened. We found a cellar window about half an inch open. I fancy that Allan was poking about the house, boy fashion, and found that this window hadn't been fastened. He must have got entrance by it, pushed it almost shut behind him and then explored the house. He had pulled the closet door tight in some way and the spring lock made him a prisoner. The window was too high for him to reach or he might have attracted attention from it. The white plaster of the closet wall is all marked and scarred with his vain attempts to get up to the window. Of course, he must have shouted, but nobody has ever been near enough the house to hear him. You know, it stands in that bare little cove with nothing near it where a child could be hidden, so I suppose the searchers did not pay much attention to it. They didn't search the river banks until yesterday, anyhow, because it was never thought he would have gone away down there alone, and by yesterday he was past calling for help."
"I'm so - happy - since he's found," said Ilse, winking back tears of relief.
Grandfather Bradshaw suddenly poked his head out of the sitting-room doorway.
"I told ye a child couldn't be lost in the nineteenth century," he chuckled.
"He was lost, though," said Dr. McIntyre, "and he wouldn't have been found - in time - if it were not for this young lady. It's a very extraordinary thing."
"Emily is - psychic," said Ilse, quoting Mr. Carpenter.
"Psychic! Humph! Well, it's curious - very. I don't pretend to understand it. Grandmother would say it was second sight, of course. Naturally, she's a firm believer in that, like all the Highland folk."
"Oh - I'm sure I haven't second sight," protested Emily. "I must just have dreamed it - and got up in my sleep - but, then, I can't draw."
"Something used you as an instrument then," said Dr. McIntyre. "After all, Grandmother's explanation of second sight is just as reasonable as anything else, when one is compelled to believe an unbelievable thing."
"I'd rather not talk of it," said Emily, with a shiver. "I'm so glad Allan has been found - but please don't tell people about my part in it. Let them think it just occurred to you to search inside the Scobie house. I - I couldn't bear to have this talked of all over the country."
When they left the little white house on the windy hill the sun was breaking through the clouds and the harbour waters were dancing madly in it. The landscape was full of the wild beauty that comes in the wake of a spent storm and the Western Road stretched
before them in loop and hill and dip of wet, red allurement; but Emily turned away from it.
"I'm going to leave it for my next trip," she said. "I can't go canvassing today, somehow. Friend of my heart, let's go to Malvern Bridge and take the morning train to Shrewsbury."
"It - was - awfully funny - about your dream," said Ilse. "It makes me a little afraid of you, Emily - somehow."
"Oh, don't be afraid of me," implored Emily. "It was only a coincidence. I was thinking of him so much - and the house took possession of me yesterday -"
"Remember how you found out about Mother?" said Ilse, in a low tone. "You have some power the rest of us haven't."
"Perhaps I'll grow out of it," said Emily desperately. "I hope so - I don't want to have any such power - you don't know how I feel about it, Ilse. It seems to me a terrible thing - as if I were marked out in some uncanny way - I don't feel human. When Dr. McIntyre spoke about something using me as an instrument, I went cold all over. It seemed to me that while I was asleep some other intelligence must have taken possession of my body and drawn that picture."
"It was your writing," said Ilse.
"Oh, I'm not going to talk of it - or think of it. I'm going to forget it. Don't ever speak of it to me again, Ilse."
DRIFTWOOD
"Shrewsbury,
"October 3, 19-
"I have finished canvassing my allotted portion of our fair province - I have the banner list of all the canvassers - and I have made almost enough out of my commissions to pay for my books for my whole Junior year. When I told Aunt Ruth this she did not sniff I consider that a fact worth recording.
"Today my story, The Sands of Time, came back from Merton's Magazine. But the rejection slip was typewritten, not printed. Typewriting doesn't seem quite as insulting as print, some way.
"'We have read your story with interest, and regret to say that we cannot accept it for publication at the present time.'
"If they meant that 'with interest,' it is a little encouragement. But were they only trying to soften the blow?
"Ilse and I were notified recently that there were nine vacancies in the Skull and Owl and that we had been put on the list of those who might apply for membership. So we did. It is considered a great thing in school to be a Skull and Owl.
"The Junior year is in full swing now, and I find the work very interesting. Mr. Hardy has several of our classes, and I like him as a teacher better than any one since Mr. Carpenter. He was very much interested in my essay, The Woman Who Spanked the King. He gave it first place and commented on it specially in his class criticisms. Evelyn Blake is sure, naturally that I copied it out of something, and feels certain she has read it somewhere before. Evelyn is wearing her hair in the new pompadour style this year and I think it is very unbecoming to her. But then, of course, the only part of Evelyn's anatomy I like is her back.
"I understand that the Martin clan are furious with me. Sally Martin was married last week in the Anglican church here, and the Times editor asked me to report it. Of course, I went - though I hate reporting weddings. There are so many things I'd like to say sometimes that can't be said. But Sally's wedding was pretty and so was she, and I sent in quite a nice report of it, I thought, specially mentioning the bride's beautiful bouquet of 'roses and orchids' - the first bridal bouquet of orchids ever seen in Shrewsbury. I wrote as plain as print and there was no excuse whatever for that wretched typesetter on the Times turning 'orchids' into sardines. Of course, anybody with any sense would have known that it was only a printer's error. But the Martin clan have taken into their heads the absurd notion that I wrote sardines on purpose for a silly joke - because, it seems, it has been reported to them that I said once I was tired of the conventional reports of weddings and would like to write just one along different lines. I did say it - but my craving for originality would hardly lead me to report the bride as carrying a bouquet of sardines! Nevertheless, the Martins do think it, and Stella Martin didn't invite me to her thimble party - and Aunt Ruth says she doesn't wonder at it - and Aunt Elizabeth says I shouldn't have been so careless. I! Heaven grant me patience!
"October 5, 19-
"Mrs. Will Bradshaw came to see me this evening. Luckily Aunt Ruth was out - I say luckily, for I don't want Aunt Ruth to find out about my dream and its part in finding little Allan Bradshaw. This may be 'sly' as Aunt Ruth would say, but the truth is that, sly or not sly, I could not bear to have Aunt Ruth sniffing and wondering and pawing over the incident.
"Mrs. Bradshaw came to thank me. It embarrassed me - because, after all, what had I to do with it? I don't want to think of or talk of it at all. Mrs. Bradshaw says little Allan is all right again, now, though it was a week after they found him before he could sit up. She was very pale and earnest.
"'He would have died there if you hadn't come, Miss Starr - and I would have died. I couldn't have gone on living - not knowing - oh, I shall never forget the horror of those days. I had to come and try to utter a little of my gratitude - you were gone when I came back that morning - I felt that I had been very inhospitable -'
"She broke down and cried - and so did I - and we had a good howl together. I am very glad and thankful that Allan was found, but I shall never like to think of the way it happened.
"New Moon,
"October 7, 19-
"I had a lovely walk and prowl this evening in the pond graveyard. Not exactly a cheerful place for an evening's ramble, one might suppose. But I always like to wander over that little westward slope of graves in the gentle melancholy of a fine autumn evening. I like to read the names on the stones and note the ages and think of all the loves and hates and hopes and fears that lie buried there. It was beautiful - and not sad. And all around were the red ploughed fields and the frosted, ferny woodsides and all the old familiar things I have loved - and love more and more it seems to me, the older I grow. Every week-end I come home to New Moon these things seem dearer to me - more a part of me. I love things just as much as people. I think Aunt Elizabeth is like this, too. That is why she will not have anything changed at New Moon. I am beginning to understand her better. I believe she likes me now, too. I was only a duty at first, but now I am something more.
"I stayed in the graveyard until a dull gold twilight came down and made a glimmering spectral place of it. Then Teddy came for me and we walked together up the field and through the Tomorrow Road. It is really a Today Road now, for the trees along it are above our heads, but we still call it the Tomorrow Road - partly out of habit and partly because we talk so much on it of our tomorrows and what we hope to do in them. Somehow, Teddy is the only person I like to talk to about my tomorrows and my ambitions. There is no one else. Perry scoffs at my literary aspirations. He says, when I say anything about writing books, 'What is the good of that sort of thing?' And of course if a person can't see 'the good' for himself you can't explain it to him. I can't even talk to Dean about them - not since he said so bitterly one evening, 'I hate to hear of your tomorrows - they cannot be my tomorrows.' I think in a way Dean doesn't like to think of my growing up - I think he has a little of the Priest jealousy of sharing anything, especially friendship, with any one else - or with the world. I feel thrown back on myself. Somehow, it has seemed to me lately that Dean isn't interested any longer in my writing ambitions. He even, it seems to me, ridicules them slightly. For instance, Mr. Carpenter was delighted with my Woman Who Spanked the King, and told me it was excellent; but when Dean read it he smiled and said, 'It will do very well for a school essay, but -' and then he smiled again. It was not the smile I liked, either. It had 'too much Priest in it,' as Aunt Elizabeth would say. I felt - and feel - horribly cast down about it. It seemed to say, 'You can scribble amusingly, my dear, and have a pretty knack of phrase-turning; but I should be doing you an unkindness if I let you think that such a knack meant a very great deal.' If this is true - and it very likely is, for Dean is so clever and knows so much - then I can never accomplish anything worth while. I won't try to accomplish anything
- I won't be just a 'pretty scribbler.'
"But it's different with Teddy.
"Teddy was wildly elated tonight - and so was I when I heard his news. He showed two of his pictures at the Charlottetown exhibition in September, and Mr. Lewes, of Montreal, has offered him fifty dollars apiece for them. That will pay his board in Shrewsbury for the winter and make it easier for Mrs. Kent: Although she wasn't glad when he told her. She said, 'Oh, yes, you think you are independent of me now' - and cried. Teddy was hurt, because he had never thought of such a thing. Poor Mrs. Kent. She must be very lonely. There is some strange barrier between her and her kind. I haven't been to the Tansy Patch for a long, long time. Once in the summer I went with Aunt Laura, who had heard Mrs. Kent was ill. Mrs. Kent was able to be up and she talked to Aunt Laura, but she never spoke to me, only looked at me now and then with a queer, smouldering fire in her eyes. But when we rose to come away, she spoke once - and said,
"'You are very tall. You will soon be a woman - and stealing some other woman's son from her.'
"Aunt Laura said, as we walked home, that Mrs. Kent had always been strange, but was growing stranger.
"'Some people think her mind is affected,' she said.
"'I don't think the trouble is in her mind. She has a sick soul,' I said.
"'Emily, dear, that is a dreadful thing to say,' said Aunt Laura.
"I don't see why. If bodies and minds can be sick, can't souls be, too? There are times when I feel as certain as if I had been told it that Mrs. Kent got some kind of terrible soul-wound some time, and it has never healed. I wish she didn't hate me. It hurts me to have Teddy's mother hate me. I don't know why this is. Dean is just as dear a friend as Teddy, yet I wouldn't care if all the rest of the Priest clan hated me.
"October 19, 19-
"Ilse and the other seven applicants were elected Skulls and Owls. I was black-beaned. We were notified to that effect Monday.
"Of course, I know it was Evelyn Blake who did it. There is nobody else who would do it. Ilse was furious: she tore into pieces the notification of her election and sent the scraps back to the secretary with a scathing repudiation of the Skull and Owl and all its works.
Emily Climbs Page 20