Emily's Quest (14 page)

“I suppose,” she said, half hysterically, “that I ought to be thankful he did not throw the dish of strawberry preserves at me.”

Aunt Elizabeth came in.

“Emily, the rock-crystal goblet! Your Grandmother Murray's goblet! And you have broken it!”

“No, really, Aunty dear, I didn't. Mr. Greaves – Mr. Mark Delage Greaves did it. He threw it at the stove.”

“Threw it at the stove!” Aunt Elizabeth was staggered. “Why did he throw it at the stove?”

“Because I wouldn't marry him,” said Emily.

“Marry him! Did you ever see him before?”

“Never.”

Aunt Elizabeth gathered up the fragments of the crystal goblet and went out quite speechless. There was – there must be – something wrong with a girl when a man proposed marriage to her at first meeting. And hurled heirloom goblets at inoffensive stoves.

But it was the affair of the Japanese prince which really gave the Murrays their bad summer.

Second-cousin Louise Murray, who had lived in Japan for twenty years, came home to Derry Pond for a visit and brought with her a young Japanese prince, the son of a friend of her husband's, who had been converted to Christianity by her efforts and wished to see something of Canada. His mere coming made a tremendous sensation in the clan and the community. But that was nothing to the next sensation when they realised that the prince had evidently and unmistakably fallen terrifically in love with Emily Byrd Starr of New Moon.

Emily liked him – was interested in him – was sorry for him in his bewildered reactions to the Presbyterian atmosphere of Derry Pond and Blair Water. Naturally a Japanese prince, even a converted one, couldn't feel exactly at home. So she talked a great deal to him – he could talk English excellently – and walked with him at moonrise in the garden – and almost every evening that slant-eyed, inscrutable face, with the black hair brushed straight back from it as smooth as satin, might be seen in the parlour of New Moon.

But it was not until he gave Emily a little frog beautifully cut out of moss agate that the Murrays took alarm. Cousin Louise sounded it first. Tearfully.
She
knew what that
frog meant. Those agate frogs were heirlooms in the family of the prince. Never were they given away save as marriage and betrothal gifts. Was Emily engaged – to him? Aunt Ruth, looking as usual as if she thought every one had gone mad, came over to New Moon and made quite a scene. It annoyed Emily so much that she refused to answer any questions. She was a bit edgy to begin with over the unnecessary way her clan had heckled her all summer over suitors that were not of her choosing and whom there was not the slightest danger of her taking seriously.

“There are some things not good for you to know,” she told Aunt Ruth impertinently.

And the distracted Murrays despairingly concluded that she had decided to be a Japanese princess. And if she had – well, they knew what happened when Emily made up her mind. It was something inevitable – like a visitation of God; but it was a dreadful thing. His Princeship cast no halo about him in the Murray eyes. No Murray before her would ever have dreamed of marrying any foreigner, much less a Japanese. But then of course she was temperamental.

‘Always with some disreputable creature in tow,” said Aunt Ruth. “But this beats everything I ever feared. A pagan – a –”

“Oh, he isn't
that
, Ruth,” mourned Aunt Laura. “He is converted – Cousin Louise says she is sure he is sincere, but –”

“I tell you he's a pagan!” reiterated Aunt Ruth. “Cousin Louise could never convert anybody. Why, she's none too sound herself. And her husband is a modernist if he's
anything
. Don't tell me! A yellow pagan! Him and his agate frogs!”

“She seems to have such an attraction for extraordinary men,” said Aunt Elizabeth, thinking of the rock-crystal goblet.

Uncle Wallace said it was preposterous. Andrew said she might at least have picked on a white man. Cousin Louise, who
felt that the clan blamed
her
for it all, pleaded tearfully that he had beautiful manners when you really knew him.

“And she might have had the Reverend James Wallace,” said Aunt Elizabeth.

They lived through five weeks of this and then the prince went back to Japan. He had been summoned home by his family, Cousin Louise said – a marriage had been arranged for him with a princess of an old Samurai family. Of course he had obeyed; but he left the agate frog in Emily's possession and nobody ever knew just what he said to her one night at moonrise in the garden. Emily was a little white and strange and remote when she came in, but she smiled impishly at her aunts and Cousin Louise.

“So I'm not to be a Japanese princess after all,” she said, wiping away some imaginary tears.

“Emily, I fear you've only been flirting with that poor boy,” rebuked Cousin Louise. “You have made him very unhappy.”

“I wasn't flirting. Our conversations were about literature and history – mostly. He will never think of me again.”

“
I
know what he looked like when he read that letter,” retorted Cousin Louise. “And I know the significance of agate frogs.”

New Moon drew a breath of relief and thankfully settled down to routine again. Aunt Laura's old, tender eyes lost their troubled look, but Aunt Elizabeth thought sadly of the Rev. James Wallace. It had been a nerve-racking summer. Blair Water whispered about that Emily Starr had been “disappointed,” but predicted she would live to be thankful for it. You couldn't trust them foreigners. Not likely he was a prince at all.

O
ne day in the last week of October Cousin Jimmy began to plough the hill field, Emily found the lost legendary diamond of the Murrays,
*
and Aunt Elizabeth fell down the cellar steps and broke her leg.

Emily, in the warm amber of the afternoon, stood on the sandstone front steps of New Moon and looked about her with eyes avid for the mellow loveliness of the fading year. Most of the trees were leafless, but a little birch, still in golden array, peeped out of the young spruces – a birch Danaë in their shadows – and the Lombardies down the lane were like a row of great golden candles. Beyond was the sere hill field scarfed with three bright red ribbons – the “ridges” Cousin Jimmy had ploughed. Emily had been writing all day and she was tired. She went down the garden to the little vine-hung summer house – she poked dreamily about; deciding where the new tulip bulbs should be planted. Here – in this moist rich soil where Cousin Jimmy had recently pried out the mouldering old
sidesteps. Next spring it should be a banquet board laden with stately chalices. Emily's heel sank deeply into the moist earth and came out laden. She sauntered over to the stone bench and daintily scraped off the earth with a twig. Something fell and glittered on the grass like a dewdrop. Emily picked it up with a little cry. There in her hand was the Lost Diamond – lost over sixty years before, when Great-aunt Miriam Murray had gone into the summer house.

It had been one of her childish dreams to find the Lost Diamond – she and Ilse and Teddy had hunted for it scores of times. But of late years she had not thought about it. And here it was – as bright, as beautiful, as ever. It must have been hidden in some crevice of the old sidesteps and fallen to the earth when they had been torn away.

It made quite a sensation at New Moon. A few days later the Murrays had a conclave about Aunt Elizabeth's bed to decide what should be done with it. Cousin Jimmy said stoutly that finding was keeping in this case. Edward and Miriam Murray were long since dead. They had left no family. The diamond by rights was Emily's.

“We are all heirs to it,” said Uncle Wallace judicially. “It cost, I've heard, a thousand dollars sixty years ago. It's a beautiful stone. The fair thing is to sell it and give Emily her mother's share.”

“One shouldn't sell a family diamond,” said Aunt Elizabeth firmly.

This seemed to be the general opinion at bottom. Even Uncle Wallace acknowledged the sway of
noblesse oblige
. Eventually they all agreed that the diamond should be Emily's.

“She can have it set as a little pendant for her neck,” said Aunt Laura.

“It was meant for a ring,” said Aunt Ruth, just for the sake of disagreeing. “And she shouldn't wear it, in any case, until she is married. A diamond as big as that is in bad taste for a young girl.”

“Oh, married!” Aunt Addie gave a rather nasty little laugh. It conveyed her opinion that if Emily waited for that to wear the diamond it was just possible she might never wear it. Aunt Addie had never forgiven Emily for refusing Andrew. And here she was at twenty-three – well, nearly – with no eligible beau in sight.

“The Lost Diamond will bring you luck, Emily,” said Cousin Jimmy. “I'm glad they've left it with you. It's rightly yours. But will you let me hold it sometimes, Emily – just hold it and look into it? When I look into anything like that I – I – find myself. I'm not simple Jimmy Murray then – I'm what I would have been if I hadn't been pushed into a well. Don't say anything about it to Elizabeth, Emily, but just let me hold it and look at it once in awhile.”

“My favourite gem is the diamond, when all is said and done,” Emily wrote to Ilse that night. “But I love gems of all kinds – except turquoise. Them I loathe – the shallow, insipid, soulless things. The gloss of pearl, glow of ruby, tenderness of sapphire, melting violet of amethyst, moonlit glimmer of aquamarine, milk and fire of opal – I love them all.”

“What about emeralds?” Ilse wrote back – a bit nastily, Emily thought, not knowing that a Shrewsbury correspondent of Ilse's wrote her now and then some unreliable gossip about Perry Miller's visits to New Moon. Perry did come to New Moon occasionally. But he had given up asking Emily to marry him and seemed wholly absorbed in his profession. Already he was regarded as a coming man and shrewd politicians were
said to be biding their time until he should be old enough to “bring out” as a candidate for the Provincial House.

“Who knows? You may be ‘my lady' yet,” wrote Ilse. “Perry will be Sir Perry some day.”

Which Emily thought was even nastier than the scratch about the emerald.

At first it did not seem that the Lost Diamond had brought luck to any one at New Moon. The very evening of its finding Aunt Elizabeth broke her leg. Shawled and bonnetted for a call on a sick neighbour – bonnets had long gone out of fashion even for elderly ladies, but Aunt Elizabeth wore them still – she had started down cellar to get a jar of black currant jam for the invalid, had tripped in some way and fallen. When she was taken up it was found that her leg was broken and Aunt Elizabeth faced the fact that for the first time in her life she was to spend weeks in bed.

Of course New Moon got on without her, though she believed it couldn't. But the problem of amusing her was a more serious one than the running of New Moon. Aunt Elizabeth fretted and pined over her enforced inactivity – could not read much herself– didn't like to be read to – was sure everything was going to the dogs – was sure she was going to be lame and useless all the rest of her life – was sure Dr. Burnley was an old fool – was sure Laura would never get the apples packed properly – was sure the hired boy would cheat Cousin Jimmy.

“Would you like to hear the little story I finished today, Aunt Elizabeth?” asked Emily one evening. “It might amuse you.”

“Is there any silly love-making in it?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth ungraciously.

“No love-making of any kind. It's pure comedy.”

“Well, let me hear it. It may pass the time.”

Emily read the story. Aunt Elizabeth made no comment whatever. But the next afternoon she said, hesitatingly, “Is there – any more – of that story you read last night?”

“No.”

“Well, if there was – I wouldn't mind hearing it. It kind of took my thoughts away from myself. The folks seemed – sort of– real to me. I suppose that is why I feel as if I want to know what happens to them,” concluded Aunt Elizabeth as if apologising for her weakness.

“I'll write another story about them for you,” promised Emily.

When this was read Aunt Elizabeth remarked that she didn't care if she heard a third one.

“Those
Applegaths
are amusing,” she said. “I've known people like them. And that little chap,
Jerry Stowe
. What happens to him when he grows up, poor child?”

Emily's idea came to her that evening as she sat idly by her window looking rather drearily out on cold meadows and hills of grey, over which a chilly, lonesome wind blew. She could hear the dry leaves blowing over the garden wall. A few great white flakes were beginning to come down.

She had had a letter from Ilse that day. Teddy's picture,
The Smiling Girl
, which had been exhibited in Montreal and had made a tremendous sensation, had been accepted by the Paris
Salon
.

“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.