Presently, however, she got a grip on herself and began to reflect that she was not living up to Murray traditions. Murrays were not supposed to go to pieces like this. Murrays were not foolishly panicky in thunder-storms. Those old Murrays sleeping in the private graveyard across the pond would have scorned her as a degenerate descendant. Aunt Elizabeth would have said that it was the Starr coming out in her. She must be brave: after all, she had lived through worse hours than this — the night she had eaten of Lofty John’s poisoned apple* — the afternoon she had fallen over the rocks of Malvern Bay. This had come so suddenly on her that she had been in the throes of terror before she could brace herself against it. She must pick up. Nothing dreadful was going to happen to her — nothing worse than staying all night in the church. In the morning she could attract the attention of some one passing. She had been here over an hour now, and nothing had happened to her — unless indeed her hair had turned white, as she understood hair sometimes did. There had been such a funny, crinkly, crawly feeling at the roots of it at times. Emily held out her long braid, ready for the next flash. When it came she saw that her hair was still black. She sighed with relief and began to chirk up. The storm was passing. The thunder-peals were growing fainter and fewer, though the rain continued to fall and the wind to drive and shriek around the church, whining through the big keyhole eerily.
* See Emily of New Moon.
Emily straightened her shoulders and cautiously let down her feet to a lower step. She thought she had better try to get back into the church. If another cloud came up, the steeple might be struck — steeples were always getting struck, she remembered: it might come crashing down on the, porch right over her. She would go in and sit down in the Murray pew: she would be cool and sensible and collected: she was ashamed of her panic — but it had been terrible.
All around her now was a soft, heavy darkness, still with that same eerie sensation of something you could touch, born perhaps of the heat and humidity of the July night. The porch was so small and narrow — she would not feel so smothered and oppressed in the church.
She put out her hand to grasp a stair rail and pull herself to her cramped feet. Her hand touched — not the stair rail — merciful heavens, what was it? — something hairy — Emily’s shriek of horror froze on her lips — padding footsteps passed down the steps beside her; a flash of lightning came and at the bottom of the steps was a huge black dog, which had turned and was looking up at her before he was blotted out in the returning darkness. Even then for a moment she saw his eyes blazing redly at her, like a fiend’s.
Emily’s hair roots began to crawl and crinkle again — a very large, very cold caterpillar began to creep slowly up her spine. She could not have moved a muscle had life depended on it. She could not even cry out. The only thing she could think of at first was the horrible demon hound of the Manx Castle in Peveril of the Peak. For a few minutes her terror was so great that it turned her physically sick. Then, with an effort which was unchild-like in its determination — I think it was at that moment Emily wholly ceased to be a child — she recovered her self-control. She would not yield to fear — she set her teeth and clenched her trembling hands; she would be brave — sensible. That was only a commonplace Blair Water dog which had followed its owner — some rapscallion boy — into the gallery, and got itself left behind. The thing had happened before. A flash of lightning showed her that the porch was empty. Evidently the dog had gone into the church. Emily decided that she would stay where she was. She had recovered from her panic, but she did not want to feel the sudden touch of a cold nose or a hairy flank in the darkness. She could never forget the awfulness of the moment when she had touched the creature.
It must be all of twelve o’clock now — it had been ten when the meeting came out. The noise of the storm had for the most part died away. The drive and shriek of the wind came occasionally, but between its gusts there was a silence, broken only by the diminishing raindrops. Thunder still muttered faintly and lightning came at frequent intervals, but of a paler, gentler flame — not the rending glare that had seemed to wrap the very building in intolerable blue radiance, and scorch her eye. Gradually her heart began to beat normally. The power of rational thought returned. She did not like her predicament, but she began to find dramatic possibilities in it. Oh, what a chapter for her diary — or her Jimmy-book — and, beyond it, for that novel she would write some day! It was a situation expressly shaped for the heroine — who must, of course, be rescued by the hero. Emily began constructing the scene — adding to it — intensifying it — hunting for words to express it. This was rather — interesting — after all. Only she wished she knew just where the dog was. How weirdly the pale lightning gleamed on the gravestones which she could see through the porch window opposite her! How strange the familiar valley beyond looked in the recurrent illuminations! How the wind moaned and sighed and complained — but it was her own Wind Woman again. The Wind Woman was one of her childish fancies that she had carried over into maturity, and it comforted her now, with a sense of ancient companionship. The wild riders of the storm were gone — her fairy friend had come back. Emily gave a sigh that was almost of contentment. The worst was over — and really, hadn’t she behaved pretty well? She began to feel quite self-respecting again.
All at once Emily knew she was not alone!
How she knew it she could not have told. She had heard nothing — seen nothing — felt nothing: and yet she knew, beyond all doubt or dispute, that there was a Presence in the darkness above her on the stairs.
She turned and looked up. It was horrible to look, but it was less horrible to feel that — Something — was in front of you than that it was behind you. She stared with wildly dilated eyes into the darkness, but she could see nothing. Then — she heard a low laugh above her — a laugh that almost made her heart stop beating — the very dreadful, inhuman laughter of the unsound in mind. She did not need the lightning flash that came then to tell her that Mad Mr. Morrison was somewhere on the stairs above her. But it came — she saw him — she felt as if she were sinking in some icy gulf of coldness — she could not even scream.
The picture of him, etched on her brain by the lightning, never left her. He was crouched five steps above her, with his gray head thrust forward. She saw the frenzied gleam of his eyes — the fang-like yellow teeth exposed in a horrible smile — the long, thin, blood-red hand outstretched towards her, almost touching her shoulder.
Sheer panic shattered Emily’s trance. She bounded to her feet with a piercing scream of terror.
“Teddy! Teddy! Save me!” she shrieked madly.
She did not know why she called for Teddy — she did not even realize that she had called him — she only remembered it afterwards, as one might recall the waking shriek in a nightmare — she only knew that she must have help — that she would die if that awful hand touched her. It must not touch her.
She made a mad spring down the steps, rushed into the church, and up the aisle. She must hide before the next flash came — but not in the Murray pew. He might look for her there. She dived into one of the middle pews and crouched down in its corner on the floor. Her body was bathed in an ice-cold perspiration. She was wholly in the grip of uncontrollable terror. All she could think of was that it must not touch her — that blood-red hand of the mad old man.
Moments passed that seemed like years. Presently she heard footsteps — footsteps that came and went yet seemed to approach her slowly. Suddenly she knew what he was doing. He was going into every pew, not waiting for the lightning, to feel about for her. He was looking for her, then — she had heard that sometimes he followed young girls, thinking they were Annie. If he caught them he held them with one hand and stroked their hair and faces fondly with the other, mumbling foolish, senile endearments. He had never harmed anyone, but he had never let anyone go until she was rescued by some other person. It was said that Mary Paxton of Derry Pond had never been quite the same again; her nerves never recovered from the shoc
k.
Emily knew that it was only a question of time before he would reach the pew where she crouched — feeling about with those hands! All that kept her senses in her frozen body was the thought that if she lost consciousness those hands would touch her — hold her — caress her. The next lightning flash showed him entering the adjoining pew. Emily sprang up and out and rushed to the other side of the church. She hid again: he would search her out, but she could again elude him: this might go on all night: a madman’s strength would outlast hers: at last she might fall exhausted and he would pounce on her.
For what seemed hours to Emily, this mad game of hide-and-seek lasted. It was in reality about half an hour. She was hardly a rational creature at all, any more than her demented pursuer. She was merely a crouching, springing, shrieking thing of horror. Time after time he hunted her out with his cunning, implacable patience. The last time she was near one of the porch doors, and in desperation she sprang through it and slammed it in his face. With the last ounce of her strength she tried to hold the knob from turning in his grasp. And as she strove she heard — was she dreaming? — Teddy’s voice calling to her from the steps outside the outer door.
“Emily — Emily — are you there?”
She did not know how he had come — she did not wonder — she only knew he was there!
“Teddy, I’m locked in the church!” she shrieked—”and Mad Mr. Morrison is here — oh — quick — quick — save me — save me!”
“The key of the door is hanging up in there on a nail at the right side!” shouted Teddy. “Can you get it and unlock the door? If you can’t I’ll smash the porch window.”
The clouds broke at that moment and the porch was filled with moonlight. In it she saw plainly the big key, hanging high on the wall beside the front door. She dashed at it and caught it as Mad Mr. Morrison wrenched upon the door and sprang into the porch, his dog behind him. Emily unlocked the outer door and stumbled out into Teddy’s arms just in time to elude that outstretched, blood-red hand. She heard Mad Mr. Morrison give a wild, eerie shriek of despair as she escaped him.
Sobbing, shaking, she clung to Teddy.
“Oh, Teddy, take me away — take me quick — oh, don’t let him touch me, Teddy — don’t let him touch me!”
Teddy swung her behind him and faced Mad Mr. Morrison on the stone step.
“How dare you frighten her so?” he demanded angrily.
Mad Mr. Morrison smiled deprecatingly in the moonlight. All at once he was not wild or violent — only a heart-broken old man who sought his own.
“I want Annie,” he mumbled. “Where is Annie? I thought I had found her in there. I only wanted to find my beautiful Annie.”
“Annie isn’t here,” said Teddy, tightening his hold on Emily’s cold little hand.
“Can you tell me where Annie is?” entreated Mad Mr. Morrison, wistfully. “Can you tell me where my dark-haired Annie is?”
Teddy was furious with Mad Mr. Morrison for frightening Emily, but the old man’s piteous entreaty touched him — and the artist in him responded to the values of the picture presented against the background of the white, moonlit church. He thought he would like to paint Mad Mr. Morrison as he stood there, tall and gaunt, in his gray “duster” coat, with his long white hair and beard, and the ageless quest in his hollow, sunken eyes.
“No — no — I don’t know where she is,” he said gently, “but I think you will find her sometime.”
Mad Mr. Morrison sighed.
“Oh, yes. Sometime I will overtake her. Come, my dog, we will seek her.”
Followed by his old black dog he went down the steps, across the green and down the long, wet, tree-shadowed road. So going, he passed out of Emily’s life. She never saw Mad Mr. Morrison again. But she looked after him understandingly, and forgave him. To himself he was not the repulsive old man he seemed to her; he was a gallant young lover seeking his lost and lovely bride. The pitiful beauty of his quest intrigued her, even in the shaking reaction from her hour of agony.
“Poor Mr. Morrison,” she sobbed, as Teddy half led, half carried her to one of the old flat gravestones at the side of the church.
They sat there until Emily recovered composure and managed to tell her tale — or the outlines of it. She felt she could never tell — perhaps not even write in a Jimmy-book — the whole of its racking horror. That was beyond words.
“And to think,” she sobbed, “that the key was there all the time. I never knew it.”
“Old Jacob Banks always locks the front door with its big key on the inside, and then hangs it up on that nail,” said Teddy. “He locks the choir door with a little key, which he takes home. He has always done that since the time, three years ago, when he lost the big key and was weeks before he found it.”
Suddenly Emily awoke to the strangeness of Teddy’s coming.
“How did you happen to come, Teddy?”
“Why, I heard you call me,” he said. “You did call me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Emily, slowly, “I called for you when I saw Mad Mr. Morrison first. But, Teddy, you couldn’t have heard me — you couldn’t. The Tansy Patch is a mile from here.”
“I did hear you,” said Teddy, stubbornly. “I was asleep and it woke me up. You called ‘Teddy, Teddy, save me’ — it was your voice as plain as I ever heard it in my life. I got right up and hurried on my clothes and came here as fast as I could.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Why — I don’t know,” said Teddy confusedly. “I didn’t stop to think — I just seemed to know you were in the church when I heard you calling me, and I must get here as quick as I could. It’s — it’s all — funny,” he concluded lamely.
“It’s — it’s — it frightens me a little.” Emily shivered. “Aunt Elizabeth says I have second sight — you remember Ilse’s mother? Mr. Carpenter says I’m psychic — I don’t know just what that means, but think I’d rather not be it.”
She shivered again. Teddy thought she was cold and, having nothing else to put around her, put his arm — somewhat tentatively, since Murray pride and Murray dignity might be outraged. Emily was not cold in body, but a little chill had blown over her soul. Something supernatural — some mystery she could not understand — had brushed too near her in that strange summoning. Involuntarily she nestled a little closer to Teddy, acutely conscious of the boyish tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his boyish shyness. Suddenly she knew that she liked Teddy better than anybody — better even than Aunt Laura or Ilse or Dean.
Teddy’s arm tightened a little.
“Anyhow, I’m glad I got here in time,” he said. “If I hadn’t that crazy old man might have frightened you to death.”
They sat so for a few minutes in silence. Everything seemed very wonderful and beautiful — and a little unreal. Emily thought she must be in a dream, or in one of her own wonder tales. The storm had passed, and the moon was shining clearly once more. The cool fresh air was threaded with beguiling voices — the fitful voice of raindrops falling from the shaken boughs of the maple woods behind them — the freakish voice of the Wind Woman around the white church — the far-off, intriguing voice of the sea — and, still finer and rarer, the little, remote, detached voices of the night. Emily heard them all, more with the ears of her soul than of her body, it seemed, as she had never heard them before. Beyond were fields and groves and roads, pleasantly suggestive and elusive, as if brooding over elfish secrets in the moonlight. Silver-white daisies were nodding and swaying all over the graveyard above graves remembered and graves forgotten. An owl laughed delightfully to itself in the old pine. At the magical sound Emily’s mystic flash swept over her, swaying her like a strong wind. She felt as if she and Teddy were all alone in a wonderful new world, created for themselves only out of youth and mystery and delight. They seemed, themselves, to be part of the faint, cool fragrance of the night, of the owl’s laughter, of the daisies blowing in the shadowy air.
As for Teddy, he w
as thinking that Emily looked very sweet in the pale moonshine, with her fringed, mysterious eyes and the little dark love-curls clinging to her ivory neck. He tightened his arm a little more — and still Murray pride and Murray dignity made not a particle of protest.
“Emily,” whispered Teddy, “you’re the sweetest girl in the world.”
The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so many millions of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters. But when you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life. Emily thrilled, from the crown of her head to the toes of her slippered feet, with a sensation of hitherto unknown and almost terrifying sweetness — a sensation that was to sense what her “flash” was to spirit. It is quite conceivable and not totally reprehensible that the next thing that happened might have been a kiss. Emily thought Teddy was going to kiss her: Teddy knew he was: and the odds are that he wouldn’t have had his face slapped as Geoff North had had.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 255