“How has she heard the story?” said Laura.
“I don’t know — oh, some one has told her, of course — perhaps that old demon of a Nancy Priest. It doesn’t matter who. She has heard it and the thing is to keep her quiet. It isn’t so much of a job to put ladders in the well and get some one to go down it. The thing that matters is the absurdity of it.”
“We’ll be laughed at for a pair of fools,” protested Laura, whose share of Murray pride was in hot revolt. “And besides, it will open up all the old scandal again.”
“No matter. I’ll keep my word to the child,” said Elizabeth stubbornly.
Allan Burnley came to New Moon at sunset, on his way home from town. He was tired, for he had been going night and day for over a week; he was more worried than he had admitted over Emily; he looked old and rather desolate as he stepped into the New Moon kitchen.
Only Cousin Jimmy was there. Cousin Jimmy did not seem to have much to do, although it was a good hay-day and Jimmy Joe Belle and Perry were hauling in the great fragrant, sun-dried loads. He sat by the western window with a strange expression on his face.
“Hello, Jimmy, where are the girls? And how is Emily?”
“Emily is better,” said Cousin Jimmy. “The rash is out and her fever has gone down. I think she’s asleep.”
“Good. We couldn’t afford to lose that little girl, could we, Jimmy?”
“No,” said Jimmy. But he did not seem to want to talk about it. “Laura and Elizabeth are in the sitting-room. They want to see you.” He paused a minute and then added in an eerie way. “There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.”
It occurred to Allan Burnley that Jimmy was acting mysteriously. And if Laura and Elizabeth wanted to see him why didn’t they come out? It wasn’t like them to stand on ceremony in this fashion. He pushed open the sitting-room door impatiently.
Laura Murray was sitting on the sofa, leaning her head on its arm. He could not see her face but he felt that she was crying. Elizabeth was sitting bolt upright on a chair. She wore her second-best black silk and her second-best lace cap. And she, too, had been crying. Dr Burnley never attached much importance to Laura’s tears, easy as those of most women, but that Elizabeth Murray should cry — had he ever seen her cry before?
The thought of Ilse flashed into his mind — his little neglected daughter. Had anything happened to Ilse? In one dreadful moment Allan Burnley paid the price of his treatment of his child.
“What is wrong?” he exclaimed in his gruffest manner.
“Oh, Allan,” said Elizabeth Murray. “God forgive us — God forgive us all!”
“It — is — Ilse,” said Dr Burnley, dully.
“No — no — not Ilse.”
Then she told him — she told him what had been found at the bottom of the old Lee well — she told him what had been the real fate of the lovely, laughing young wife whose name for twelve bitter years had never crossed his lips.
It was not until the next evening that Emily saw the doctor. She was lying in bed, weak and limp, red as a beet with the measles rash, but quite herself again. Allan Burnley stood by the bed and looked down at her.
“Emily — dear little child — do you know what you have done for me? God knows how you did it.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Emily, wonderingly.
“You have given me back my faith in Him, Emily.”
“Why, what have I done?”
Dr Burnley saw that she had no remembrance of her delirium. Laura had told him that she had slept long and soundly after Elizabeth’s promise and had awakened with fever gone and the eruption fast coming out. She had asked nothing and they had said nothing.
“When you are better we will tell you all,” he said, smiling down at her. There was something very sorrowful in the smile — and yet something very sweet.
“He is smiling with his eyes as well as his mouth now,” thought Emily.
“How — how did she know?” whispered Laura Murray to him when he went down. “I — can’t understand it, Allan.”
“Nor I. These things are beyond us, Laura,” he answered gravely. “I only know this child has given Beatrice back to me, stainless and beloved. It can be explained rationally enough perhaps. Emily has evidently been told about Beatrice and worried over it — her repeated ‘she couldn’t have done it’ shows that. And the tales of the old Lee well naturally made a deep impression on the mind of a sensitive child keenly alive to dramatic values. In her delirium she mixed this all up with the well-known fact of Jimmy’s tumble into the New Moon well — and the rest was coincidence. I would have explained it all so myself once — but now — now, Laura, I only say humbly, ‘A little child shall lead them.’”
“Our stepmother’s mother was a Highland Scotchwoman. They said she had the second sight,” said Elizabeth. “I never believed in it — before.”
The excitement of Blair Water had died away before Emily was deemed strong enough to hear the story. That which had been found in the old Lee well had been buried in the Mitchell plot at Shrewsbury and a white marble shaft, “Sacred to the memory of Beatrice Burnley, beloved wife of Allan Burnley,” had been erected. The sensation caused by Dr Burnley’s presence every Sunday in the old Burnley pew had died away. On the first evening that Emily was allowed to sit up Aunt Laura told her the whole story. Her manner of telling stripped it for ever of the taint and innuendo left by Aunt Nancy.
“I knew Ilse’s mother couldn’t have done it,” said Emily triumphantly.
“We blame ourselves now for our lack of faith,” said Aunt Laura. “We should have known too — but it did seem black against her at the time, Emily. She was a bright, beautiful, merry creature — we thought her close friendship with her cousin natural and harmless. We know now it was so — but all these years since her disappearance we have believed differently. Mr James Lee remembers clearly that the well was open the night of Beatrice’s disappearance. His hired man had taken the old rotten planks off it that evening, intending to put the new ones on at once. Then Robert Greerson’s house caught fire and he ran with everybody else to help save it. By the time it was out it was too dark to finish the well, and the man said nothing about it until the morning. Mr Lee was angry with him — he said it was a scandalous thing to leave a well uncovered like that. He went right down and put the new planks in place himself. He did not look down in the well — had he looked he could have seen nothing, for the ferns growing out from the sides screened the depths. It was just after harvest. No one was in the field again before the next spring. He never connected Beatrice’s disappearance with the open well — he wonders now that he didn’t. But you see — dear — there had been much malicious gossip — and Beatrice was known to have gone on board The Lady of Winds. It was taken for granted she never came off again. But she did — and went to her death in the old Lee field. It was a dreadful ending to her bright young life — but not so dreadful, after all, as what we believed. For twelve years we have wronged the dead. But — Emily — how could you know?”
“I — don’t — know. When the doctor came in that day I couldn’t remember anything — but now it seems to me that I remember something — just as if I’d dreamed it — of seeing Ilse’s mother coming over the fields, singing. It was dark — and yet I could see the ace of hearts — oh, Aunty, I don’t know — I don’t like to think of it, some way.”
“We won’t talk of it again,” said Aunt Laura gently. “It is one of the things best not talked of — one of God’s secrets.”
“And Ilse — does her father love her now?” asked Emily eagerly.
“Love her! He can’t love her enough. It seems as if he were pouring out on her at once all the shut-up love of those twelve years.”
“He’ll likely spoil her now as much with indulgence as he did before with neglect,” said Elizabeth, coming in with Emily’s supper in time to hear Laura’s reply.
“It will take a lot of love to spoil Ilse,” laughed Laura. “She’s
drinking it up like a thirsty sponge. And she loves him wildly in return. There isn’t a trace of grudge in her over his long neglect.”
“All the same,” said Elizabeth grimly, tucking pillows behind Emily’s back with a very gentle hand, oddly in contrast with her severe expression, “he won’t get off so easily. Ilse has run wild for twelve years. He won’t find it so easy to make her behave properly now — if he ever does.”
“Love will do wonders,” said Aunt Laura softly. “Of course, Ilse is dying to come and see you, Emily. But she must wait until there is no danger of infection. I told her she might write — but when she found I would have to read it because of your eyes she said she’d wait till you could read it yourself. Evidently” — Laura laughed again—”evidently Ilse has much of importance to tell you.”
“I didn’t know anybody could be so happy as I am now,” said Emily. “And oh, Aunt Elizabeth, it is so nice to feel hungry again and to have something to chew.”
Emily’s Great Moment
Emily’s convalescence was rather slow. Physically she recovered with normal celerity but a certain spiritual and emotional langour persisted for a time. One cannot go down to the depths of hidden things and escape the penalty. Aunt Elizabeth said she “moped.” But Emily was too happy and contented to mope. It was just that life seemed to have lost its savour for a time, as if some spring of vital energy had been drained out of it and refilled slowly.
She had, just then, no one to play with. Perry, Ilse and Teddy had all come down with measles the same day. Mrs Kent at first declared bitterly that Teddy had caught them at New Moon, but all three had contracted them at a Sunday-school picnic where Derry Pond children had been. That picnic infected all Blair Water. There was a perfect orgy of measles. Teddy and Ilse were only moderately ill, but Perry, who had insisted on going home to Aunt Tom at the first symptoms, nearly died. Emily was not allowed to know his danger until it had passed, lest it worry her too much. Even Aunt Elizabeth worried over it. She was surprised to discover how much they missed Perry round the place.
It was fortunate for Emily that Dean Priest was in Blair Water during this forlorn time. His companionship was just what she needed and helped her wonderfully on the road to complete recovery. They went for long walks together all over Blair Water, with Tweed woofing around them, and explored places and roads Emily had never seen before. They watched a young moon grow old, night by night; they talked in dim scented chambers of twilight over long red roads of mystery; they followed the lure of hill winds; they saw the stars rise and Dean told her all about them — the great constellations of the old myths. It was a wonderful month; but on the first day of Teddy’s convalescence Emily was off to the Tansy Patch for the afternoon and Jarback Priest walked — if he walked at all — alone.
Aunt Elizabeth was extremely polite to him, though she did not like the Priests of Priest Pond overmuch, and never felt quite comfortable under the mocking gleam of “Jarback’s” green eyes and the faint derision of his smile, which seemed to make Murray pride and Murray traditions seem much less important than they really were.
“He has the Priest flavour,” she told Laura, “though it isn’t as strong in him as in most of them. And he’s certainly helping Emily — she has begun to spunk up since he came.”
Emily continued to “spunk up” and by September, when the measles epidemic was spent and Dean Priest had gone on one of his sudden swoops over to Europe for the autumn, she was ready for school again — a little taller, a little thinner, a little less childlike, with great grey shadowy eyes that had looked into death and read the riddle of a buried thing, and henceforth would hold in them some haunting, elusive remembrance of that world behind the veil. Dean Priest had seen it — Mr Carpenter saw it when she smiled at him across her desk at school.
“She’s left the childhood of her soul behind, though she is still a child in body,” he muttered.
One afternoon amid the golden days and hazes of October he asked her gruffly to let him see some of her verses.
“I never meant to encourage you in it,” he said. “I don’t mean it now. Probably you can’t write a line of real poetry and never will. But let me see your stuff. If it’s hopelessly bad I’ll tell you so. I won’t have you wasting years striving for the unattainable — at least I won’t have it on my conscience if you do. If there’s any promise in it, I’ll tell you so just as honestly. And bring some of your stories, too — they’re trash yet, that’s certain, but I’ll see if they show just and sufficient cause for going on.”
Emily spent a very solemn hour that evening, weighing, choosing, rejecting. To the little bundle of verse she added one of her Jimmy-books which contained, as she thought, her best stories. She went to school next day, so secret and mysterious that Ilse took offence, started in to call her names — and then stopped. Ilse had promised her father that she would try to break herself of the habit of calling names. She was making fairly good headway and her conversation, if less vivid, was beginning to approximate to New Moon standards.
Emily made a sad mess of her lessons that day. She was nervous and frightened. She had a tremendous respect for Mr Carpenter’s opinion. Father Cassidy had told her to keep on — Dean Priest had told her that some day she might really write — but perhaps they were only trying to be encouraging because they liked her and didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Emily knew Mr Carpenter would not do this. No matter if he did like her he would nip her aspirations mercilessly if he thought the root of the matter was not in her. If, on the contrary, he bade her God-speed, she would rest content with that against the world and never lose heart in the face of any future criticism. No wonder the day seemed fraught with tremendous issues to Emily.
When school was out Mr Carpenter asked her to remain. She was so white and tense that the other pupils thought she must have been found out by Mr Carpenter in some especially dreadful behaviour and knew she was going to “catch it.” Rhoda Stuart flung her a significantly malicious smile from the porch — which Emily never even saw. She was, indeed, at a momentous bar, with Mr Carpenter as supreme judge, and her whole future career — so she believed — hanging on his verdict.
The pupils disappeared and a mellow, sunshiny stillness settled over the old schoolroom. Mr Carpenter took the little packet she had given him in the morning out of his desk, came down the aisle and sat in the seat before her, facing her. Very deliberately he settled his glasses astride his hooked nose, took out her manuscripts and began to read — or rather to glance over them, flinging scraps of comments, mingled with grunts, sniffs and hoots, at her as he glanced. Emily folded her cold hands on her desk and braced her feet against the legs of it to keep her knees from trembling. This was a very terrible experience. She wished she had never given her verses to Mr Carpenter. They were no good — of course they were no good. Remember the editor of the Enterprise.
“Humph!” said Mr Carpenter. “Sunset — Lord, how many poems have been written on ‘Sunset’ —
The clouds are massed in splendid state
At heaven’s unbarred western gate
Where troops of star-eyed spirits wait —
By gad, what does that mean?”
“I — I — don’t know,” faltered startled Emily, whose wits had been scattered by the sudden swoop of his spiked glance.
Mr Carpenter snorted.
“For heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write what you can’t understand yourself. And this — To Life—’Life, as thy gift I ask no rainbow joy’ — is that sincere? Is it, girl? Stop and think. Do you ask ‘no rainbow joy’ of life?”
He transfixed her with another glare. But Emily was beginning to pick herself up a bit. Nevertheless, she suddenly felt oddly ashamed of the very elevated and unselfish desires expressed in that sonnet.
“No — o,” she answered reluctantly, “I do want rainbow joy — lots of it.”
“Of course you do. We all do. We don’t get it — you won’t get it — but don’t be hypocrite enough to pretend you don�
��t want it, even in a sonnet. Lines to a Mountain Cascade—’On its dark rocks like the whiteness of a veil around a bride’ — Where did you see a mountain cascade in Prince Edward Island?”
“Nowhere — there’s a picture of one in Dr Burnley’s library.”
“A Wood Stream —
The threading sunbeams quiver,
The bending bushes shiver,
O’er the little shadowy river —
There’s only one more rhyme that occurs to me and that’s ‘liver.’ Why did you leave it out?”
Emily writhed.
“Wind Song —
I have shaken the dew in the meadows
From the clover’s creamy gown —
Pretty, but weak. June — June, for heaven’s sake, girl, don’t write poetry on June. It’s the sickliest subject in the world. It’s been written to death.”
“No, June is immortal,” cried Emily suddenly, a mutinous sparkle replacing the strained look in her eyes. She was not going to let Mr Carpenter have it all his own way.
But Mr Carpenter had tossed June aside without reading a line of it.
“‘I weary of the hungry world’ — what do you know of the hungry world? — you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids — but it is hungry. Ode to Winter — the seasons are a sort of disease all young poets must have, it seems — ha! ‘Spring will not forget’ — that’s a good line — the only good line in it. H’m’m — Wanderings —
I’ve heard the secret of the rune
That the somber pines on the hillside croon —
Have you — have you learned that secret?”
“I think I’ve always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and gone. “Aim and Endeavour — too didactic — too didactic. You’ve no right to try to teach until you’re old — and then you won’t want to —
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 249