"I just got back from the coast in time to see the last day of its exhibition here," wrote Ilse. "And it's you - Emily - it's you. Just that old sketch he made of you years ago completed and glorified - the one your Aunt Nancy made you so mad by keeping - remember? There you were smiling down from Teddy's canvas. The critics had a great deal to say about his colouring and technique and 'feeling' and all that sort of jargon. But one said, 'The smile on the girl's face will become as famous as Mona Lisa's.' I've seen that very smile on your face a hundred times, Emily - especially when you were seeing that unseeable thing you used to call your flash. Teddy has caught the very soul of it - not a mocking, challenging smile like Mona Lisa's - but a smile that seems to hint at some exquisitely wonderful secret you could tell if you liked - some whisper eternal - a secret that would make every one happy if they could only get you to tell it. It's only a trick, I suppose -you don't know that secret any more than the rest of us. But the smile suggests that you do - suggests it marvellously. Yes, your Teddy has genius - that smile proves it. What does it feel like, Emily, to realise yourself the inspiration of a genius? I'd give years of my life for such a compliment."
Emily didn't quite know what it felt like. But she did feel a certain small, futile anger with Teddy. What right had he who scorned her love and was indifferent to her friendship to paint her face - her soul - her secret vision - and hang it up for the world to gaze at? To be sure, he had told her in childhood that he meant to do it - and she had agreed then. But everything had changed since then. Everything.
Well, about this story, regarding which Aunt Elizabeth had such an Oliver Twist complex. Suppose she were to write another one - suddenly the idea came. Suppose she were to expand it into a book. Not like A Seller of Dreams, of course. That old glory could come back no more. But Emily had an instantaneous vision of the new book, as a whole - a witty, sparkling rill of human comedy. She ran down to Aunt Elizabeth.
"Aunty, how would you like me to write a book for you about those people in my story? Just for you - a chapter every day."
Aunt Elizabeth carefully hid the fact that she was interested.
"Oh, you can if you want to. I wouldn't mind hearing about them. But mind, you are not to put any of the neighbours in."
Emily didn't put any of the neighbours in - she didn't need to. Characters galore trooped into her consciousness, demanding a local habitation and a name. They laughed and scowled and wept and danced - and even made a little love. Aunt Elizabeth tolerated this, supposing you couldn't have a novel without some of it. Emily read a chapter every evening, and Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy were allowed to hear it along with Aunt Elizabeth. Cousin Jimmy was in raptures. He was sure it was the most wonderful story ever written.
"I feel young again when I'm listening to you," he said.
"Sometimes I want to laugh and sometimes I want to cry," confessed Aunt Laura. "I can't sleep for wondering what is going to happen to the Applegaths in the next chapter."
"It might be worse," conceded Aunt Elizabeth. "But I wish you'd cut out what you said about Gloria Applegaths greasy dish-towels. Mrs. Charlie Frost, of Derry Pond, will think you mean her. Her towels are always greasy."
"Chips are bound to light somewhere," said Cousin Jimmy. "Gloria is funny in a book, but she'd be awful to live with. Too busy saving the world. Somebody ought to tell her to read her Bible."
"I don't like Cissy Applegath, though," said Aunt Laura apologetically. "She has such a supercilious way of speaking."
"A shallow-pated creature," said Aunt Elizabeth.
"It's old Jesse Applegath I can't tolerate," said Cousin Jimmy fiercely. "A man who would kick a cat just to relieve his feelings! I'd go twenty miles to slap the old he-devil's face. But" - hopefully - "maybe he'll die before long."
"Or reform," suggested Aunt Laura mercifully.
"No, no, don't let him reform," said Cousin Jimmy anxiously. "Kill him off, if necessary, but don't reform him. I wish, though, you'd change the colour of Peg Applegath's eyes. I don't like green eyes - never did."
"But I can't change them. They are green," protested Emily.
"Well, then, Abraham Applegath's whiskers," pleaded Cousin Jimmy. "I like Abraham. He's a gay dog. Can't he help his whiskers, Emily?"
"No" - firmly - "he can't."
Why couldn't they understand? Abraham had whiskers -wanted whiskers - was determined to have whiskers. She couldn't change him.
"It's time we remembered that these people have no real existence," rebuked Aunt Elizabeth.
But once - Emily counted it her greatest triumph -Aunt Elizabeth laughed. She was so ashamed of it she would not even smile all the rest of the reading.
"Elizabeth thinks God doesn't like to hear us laugh," Cousin Jimmy whispered behind his hand to Laura. If Elizabeth had not been lying there with a broken leg Laura would have smiled. But to smile under the circumstances seemed like taking an unfair advantage of her.
Cousin Jimmy went downstairs shaking his head and murmuring, "How does she do it? How does she do it! I can write poetry - but this. Those folks are alive!"
One of them was too much alive in Aunt Elizabeth's opinion.
"That Nicholas Applegath is too much like old Douglas Courcy, of Shrewsbury," she said. "I told you not to put any people we knew in it."
"Why, I never saw Douglas Courcy."
"It's him to the life. Even Jimmy noticed it. You must cut him out, Emily."
But Emily obstinately refused to "cut him out." Old Nicholas was one of the best characters in her book. She was very much absorbed in it by this time. The composition of it was never the ecstatic rite the creation of A Seller of Dreams had been, but it was very fascinating. She forgot all vexing and haunting things while she was writing it. The last chapter was finished the very day the splints were taken off Aunt Elizabeth's leg and she was carried down to the kitchen lounge.
"Well, your story has helped," she admitted. "But I'm thankful to be where I can keep my eye on things once more. What are you going to do with your book? What are you going to call it?"
" The Moral of the Rose."
"I don't think that is a good title at all. I don't know what it means - nobody will know."
"No matter. That is the book's name."
Aunt Elizabeth sighed.
"I don't know where you get your stubbornness from, Emily I'm sure I don't. You never would take advice. And I know the Courcys will never speak to us again, after the book is published."
"The book hasn't any chance of being published," said Emily gloomily. "They'll send it back, 'damned with faint praise.'"
Aunt Elizabeth had never heard this expression before and she thought Emily had originated it and was being profane.
"Emily," she said sternly," don't let me ever hear such a word from your lips again. I've more than suspected Ilse of such language - that poor girl never got over her early bringing up - she's not to be judged by our standards. But Murrays of New Moon do not swear."
"It was only a quotation, Aunt Elizabeth," said Emily wearily.
She was tired - a little tired of everything. It was Christmas now and a long, dreary winter stretched before her - an empty, aimless winter. Nothing seemed worth while - not even finding a publisher for The Moral of the Rose.
IV
However, she typewrote it faithfully and sent it out. It came back. She sent it out again, three times. It came back. She retyped it - the MS. was getting dog-eared - and sent it out again. At intervals all that winter and summer she sent it out, working doggedly through a list of possible publishers. I forget how many times she retyped it. It became a sort of a joke - a bitter joke.
The worst of it was that the New Moon folk knew of all these rejections and their sympathy and indignation were hard to bear. Cousin Jimmy was so angry over every rejection of this masterpiece that he could not eat for a day afterwards and she gave up telling him of the journeys. Once she thought of sending it to Miss Royal and asking her if she had any influence to use. But the
Murray pride would not brook the idea. Finally in the autumn when it returned from the last publisher on her list Emily did not even open the parcel. She cast it contemptuously into a compartment of her desk.
"Too sick at heart to war
With failure any more."
"That's the end of it - and of all my dreams. I'll use it up for scribbling paper. And now I'll settle down to a tepid existence of pot-boiling."
At least magazine editors were more appreciative than book publishers - as Cousin Jimmy indignantly said, they appeared to have more sense. While her book was seeking vainly for its chance her magazine clientele grew daily. She spent long hours at her desk and enjoyed her work after a fashion. But there was a little consciousness of failure under it all. She could never get much higher on the Alpine path. The glorious city of fulfilment on its summit was not for her. Pot-boiling! That was all. Making a living in what Aunt Elizabeth thought was a shamefully easy way.
Miss Royal wrote her frankly that she was falling off.
"You're getting into a rut, Emily," she warned. "A self-satisfied rut. The admiration of Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy is a bad thing for you. You should be here - we would keep you up to the scratch."
Suppose she had gone to New York with Miss Royal when she had the chance six years ago. Would she not have been able to get her book published? Was it not the fatal Prince Edward Island postmark that condemned it - the little out-of-the-world province from which no good thing could ever come?
Perhaps! Perhaps Miss Royal had been right. But what did it matter?
No one came to Blair Water that summer. That is - Teddy Kent did not come. Ilse was in Europe again. Dean Priest seemed to have taken up his residence permanently at the Pacific Coast. Life at New Moon went on unchanged. Except that Aunt Elizabeth limped a little and Cousin Jimmy's hair turned white quite suddenly, overnight as it seemed. Now and then Emily had a quick, terrible vision that Cousin Jimmy was growing old. They were all growing old. Aunt Elizabeth was nearly seventy. And when she died New Moon went to Andrew. Already there were times when Andrew seemed to be putting on proprietary airs in his visits to New Moon. Not that he would ever live there himself, of course. But it ought to be kept in good shape against the day when it would be necessary to sell it.
"It's time those old Lombardies were cut down," said Andrew to Uncle Oliver one day. "They're getting frightfully ragged at the tops. Lombardies are so out of date now. And that field with the young spruces should be drained and ploughed."
"That old orchard should be cleared out," said Uncle Oliver. "It's more like a jungle than an orchard. The trees are too old for any good anyhow. They should all be chopped down. Jimmy and Elizabeth are too old-fashioned. They don't make half the money out of this farm they should."
Emily, overhearing this, clenched her fists. To see New Moon desecrated - her old, intimate, beloved trees cut down - the spruce field where wild strawberries grew improved out of existence - the dreamy beauty of the old orchard destroyed - the little dells and slopes that kept all the ghostly joys of her past changed - altered. It was unbearable.
"If you had married Andrew New Moon would have been yours," said Aunt Elizabeth bitterly, when she found Emily crying over what they had said.
"But the changes would have come just the same," said Emily. "Andrew wouldn't have listened to me. He believes that the husband is the head of the wife."
"You will be twenty-four your next birthday," said Aunt Elizabeth. Apropos of what?
* See Emily of New Moon.
NINETEEN
I
"Oct. 1, 19-
"This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately I wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk earnestly for a few moments, then spring back and look at each other, throwing up their hands comically in horror and amazement over their mutual revelations. I wonder what new scandal is afoot in Treeland."
II
"Oct. 10, 19-
"This evening was lovely. I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy. I held a series of conversations with imaginary comrades and thought out so many epigrams that I was agreeably surprised at myself"
III
"Oct. 28, 19-
"To-night I was out for one of my long walks. In a weird, purple, shadowy world, with great, cold clouds piling up above a yellow sky, hills brooding in the silence of forsaken woods, ocean tumbling on a rocky shore. The whole landscape seemed
"'As those who wait
Till judgment speak the doom of fate.'
"It made me feel - horribly, alone
"What a creature of moods I am!
"'Fickle,' as Aunt Elizabeth says? 'Temperamental,' as Andrew says?"
IV
"Nov. 5, 19-
"What a fit of bad temper the world has indulged in! Day before yesterday she was not unbeautiful - a dignified old dame in fitting garb of brown and ermine. Yesterday she tried to ape juvenility, putting on all the airs and graces of spring, with scarfs of blue hazes. And what a bedraggled and uncomely old hag she was, all tatters and wrinkles. She grew peevish then over her own ugliness and has raged all night and day. I awakened up in the wee sma's and heard the wind shrieking in the trees and tears of rage and spite sleeting against the pane.
V
"Nov. 23, 19-
"This is the second day of a heavy, ceaseless autumn rain. Really, it has rained almost every day this November. We had no mail to-day. The outside world is a dismal one, with drenched and dripping trees and sodden fields. And the damp and gloom have crept into my soul and spirit and sapped out all life and energy.
"I could not read, eat, sleep, write or do anything, unless I drove myself to do it and then I felt as if I were trying to do it with somebody else's hands or brain and couldn't work very well with them. I feel lustreless, dowdy and uninviting - I even bore myself.
"I shall grow mossy in this existence!
"There! I feel better for that little outburst of discontent. It has ejected something from my system. I know that into everybody's life must come some days of depression and discouragement when all things in life seem to lose savour. The sunniest day has its clouds; but one must not forget that the sun is there all the time.
"How easy it is to be a philosopher - on paper!
"(Item: - If you are out in a cold, pouring rain, does it keep you dry to remember that the sun is there just the same?) "Well, thank heaven no two days are ever exactly alike!"
VI
"There was a stormy, unrestful sunset to-night, behind the pale, blanched hills, gleaming angrily through the Lombardies and the dark fir-boughs in Lofty John's bush, that were now and again tossed suddenly and distressfully in a fitful gust of wind. I sat at my window and watched it. Below in the garden it was quite dark and I could only see dimly the dead leaves that were whirling and dancing uncannily over the flowerless paths. The poor dead leaves - yet not quite dead, it seemed. There was still enough unquiet life left in them to make them restless and forlorn. They harkened yet to every call of the wind, which cared for them no longer but only played freakishly with them and broke their rest. I felt sorry for the leaves as I watched them in the dull, weird twilight, and angry - in a petulant fashion that almost made me laugh - with the wind that would not leave them in peace. Why should they - and I - be vexed with these transient, passionate breaths of desire for a life which has passed us by?
"I have not heard even from Ilse for a long time. She has forgotten me, too."
VII
"Jan. 10, 19-
"As I came home from the post-office this evening - with three acceptances - I revelled in the winter loveliness around me. It was so very calm and still; the low sun cast such pure, pale tints of pink and heliotrope over the snow; and the gr
eat, pale-silver moon peeping over the Delectable Mountain was such a friend of mine.
"How much difference in one's outlook three acceptances make!"
VIII
"Jan. 20, 19-
"The nights are so dreary now and there is such a brief space of grey, sunless day. I work and think all day and, when night comes down early, gloom settles on my soul. I can't describe the feeling. It is dreadful - worse than any actual pain. In so far as I can express it in words I feel a great and awful weariness - not of body or brain but of feeling, coupled with a haunting dread of the future - any future - even a happy one - nay, a happy one most of all, for in this strange mood it seems to me that to be happy would require more effort - more buoyancy than I shall possess. The fantastic shape my fear assumes is that it would be too much trouble to be happy - require too much energy.
"Let me be honest - in this journal if nowhere else. I know quite well what is the matter with me. This afternoon I was rummaging in my old trunk in the garret and found a packet of the letters Teddy wrote the first year he was in Montreal. I was foolish enough to sit down and read them all.
"It was a mad thing to do. I am paying for it now. Such letters have a terrible resurrective power. I am surrounded by bitter fancies and unbidden ghosts - the little spectral joys of the past."
IX
"Feb. 5, 19-
"Life never seems the same to me as it used to. Something is gone. I am not unhappy. But life seems a sort of negative affair. I enjoy it on the whole and have many beautiful moments. I have success - at least a sort of success - in growing measure and a keen appreciation of all the world and the times offer for delight and interest. But underneath it all is the haunting sense of emptiness.
"This is all because 'full knee-deep lies the winter snow' and I can't go a-prowling. Wait till a thaw comes, when I can get out to the balm of the fir-trees and the peace of the white places and the 'strength of the hills' - what a beautiful old Biblical phrase that is! - and I shall be made whole once more."
Emily's Quest Page 14