Emily of New Moon
I guess--that’s where all the Mitchells are buried.”
Emily wrung her slim hands together. She was as sensitive to ugliness
and pain as she was to beauty and pleasure, and this thing was both
hideous and agonizing. Yet she could not keep from thinking about it,
day and night. Life at Wyther Grange suddenly went stale. Aunt Nancy
and Caroline all at once gave up talking family history, even harmless
history, before her. And as it was painful repression for them, they
did not encourage her hanging round. Emily began to feel that they
were glad when she was out of hearing, so she kept away and spent
most of her days wandering on the bay shore. She could not compose
any poetry--she could not write in her Jimmy-book--she could not even
write to her father. Something seemed to hang between her and her old
delights. There was a drop of poison in every cup. Even the filmy
shadows on the great bay, the charm of its fir-hung cliffs and its
little purple islets that looked like outposts of fairyland, could not
bring to her the old “fine, careless rapture.” She was afraid she could
never be happy again--so intense had been her reaction to her first
revelation of the world’s sin and sorrow. And under it all, persisted
the same incredulity--Ilse’s mother _couldn’t_ have done it--and the
same helpless longing to prove she couldn’t have done it. But how could
it be proved? It couldn’t. She had solved one “mystery” but she had
stumbled into a darker one--the reason why Beatrice Burnley had never
come back on that summer twilight of long ago. For, all the evidence of
facts to the contrary notwithstanding, Emily persisted in her secret
belief that whatever the reason _was_, it was _not_ that she had gone
away in _The Lady of Winds_ when that doomed ship sailed out into the
starlit wonder of the gulf beyond Blair Harbour.
CHAPTER XXVI
ON THE BAY SHORE
“I wonder,” thought Emily, “how much longer I have to live.”
She had prowled that evening further down the bay shore than she had
ever gone before. It was a warm, windy evening; the air was resinous
and sweet; the bay a misty turquoise. That part of the shore whereon
she found herself seemed as lonely and virgin as if no human foot had
ever trodden it, save for a tiny, tricksy path, slender as red thread
and bordered by great, green, velvety sheets of moss, that wound in
and out of the big firs and scrub spruces. The banks grew steeper and
rockier as she went on and finally the little path vanished altogether
in a plot of bracken. Emily was just turning to go back when she caught
sight of a magnificent spray of farewell summer, growing far out on the
edge of the bank. She must get it--she had never seen farewell-summers
of so dark and rich a purple. She stepped out to reach them--the
treacherous mossy soil gave way under her feet and slid down the steep
slope. Emily made a frantic attempt to scramble back but the harder she
tried, the faster went the landslide, carrying her with it. In a moment
it would pass the slope and go over the brink of the rocks, straight
to the boulder-strewn shore thirty feet below. Emily had one dreadful
moment of terror and despair; and then she found that the clump of
mossy earth which had broken away had held on a narrow ledge of rock,
half hanging over it; and she was lying on the clump. It seemed to her
that the slightest movement on her part would send it over, straight to
the cruel boulders underneath.
She lay very still, trying to think--trying not to be afraid. She was
far, far away from any house--nobody could hear her if she screamed.
And she did not even dare to scream lest the motion of her body
dislodge the fragment on which she lay. How long could she lie there
motionless? Night was coming on. Aunt Nancy would grow anxious when
the dark fell and would send Caroline to look for her. But Caroline
would never find her here. Nobody would ever think of looking here for
her, so far away from the Grange, in the spruce barrens of the Lower
Bay. To lie there alone all night--to fancy the earth was slipping
over--waiting for help that would never come--Emily could hardly
restrain a shudder that might have been ruinous.
She had faced death once before, or thought she had, on the night when
Lofty John had told her she had eaten a poisoned apple--but this was
even harder. To die here, all alone, far away from home! They might
never know what had become of her--never find her. The crows or the
gulls would pick her eyes out. She dramatized the thing so vividly that
she almost screamed with the horror of it. She would just disappear
from the world as Ilse’s mother had disappeared.
_What had become of Ilse’s mother?_ Even in her own desperate plight
Emily asked herself that question. And she would never see dear New
Moon again and Teddy and the dairy and the Tansy Patch and Lofty
John’s bush and the mossy old sundial and her precious little heap of
manuscripts on the sofa shelf in the garret.
“I must be very brave and patient,” she thought. “My only chance is to
lie still. And I can pray in my mind--I’m sure God can hear thoughts as
well as words. It is nice to think He can hear me if nobody else can.
O God--Father’s God--please work a miracle and save my life, because I
don’t think I’m fit to die yet. Excuse my not being on my knees--You
can see I can’t move. And if I die please don’t let Aunt Elizabeth find
my letter-bills ever. Please let Aunt Laura find them. And please don’t
let Caroline move out the wardrobe when she house-cleans because then
she would find my Jimmy-book and read what I wrote about her. Please
forgive all my sins, especially not being grateful enough and cutting a
bang, and please don’t let Father be very far away. Amen.”
Then, characteristically she thought of a postscript. “And oh, _please_
let somebody find out that Ilse’s mother didn’t do _that_.”
She lay very still. The light on the water began to turn warm gold and
rose. A great pine on a bluff in front of her overflowed in a crest of
dark boughs against the amber splendour behind it--a part of the beauty
of the beautiful world that was slipping away from her. The chill of
the evening gulf breeze began to creep over her. Once a bit of earth
broke off at her side and went down--Emily heard the thud of the little
pebbles in it on the boulders below. The portion upon which one of her
legs lay was quite loose and pendent also. She knew it might break off,
too, at any moment. It would be very dreadful to be there when it got
dark. She could see the big spray of farewell-summer that had lured her
to her doom, waving unplucked above her, wonderfully purple and lovely.
Then, beside it, she saw a man’s face looking down at her!
She heard him say, “My God!” softly to himself. She saw that he was
slight and that one shoulder was a trifle higher than the other. This
must be Dean Priest--Jarback Priest. Emily dared not call to him. She
lay still and her great, grey-purple eyes said, “Save me.”
“How can I help you?” said Dean Priest hoarsely, as if to himself. “I
cannot reach you--and it looks as if the slightest touch or jar would
send that broken earth over the brink. I must go for a rope--and to
leave you here alone--like this. Can you wait, child?”
“Yes,” breathed Emily. She smiled at him to encourage him--the little
soft smile that began at the corners of her mouth and spread over her
face. Dean Priest never forgot that smile--and the steadfast child-eyes
looking out through it from the little face that seemed so perilously
near the brink.
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” he said. “I can’t go very fast--I’m a bit
lame, you see. But don’t be frightened--I’ll save you. I’ll leave my
dog to keep you company. Here, Tweed.”
He whistled--a great, tawny-gold dog came in sight.
“Sit right there, Tweed, till I come back. Don’t stir a paw--don’t wag
a tail--talk to her only with your eyes.”
Tweed sat down obediently and Dean Priest disappeared.
Emily lay there and dramatized the whole incident for her Jimmy-book.
She was a little frightened still, but not too frightened to see
herself writing it all out the next day. It would be quite a thrilling
bit.
She liked to know the big dog was there. She was not so learned in
lore of dogs as in lore of cats. But he looked very human and trusty
watching her with great kindly eyes. A grey kitten was an adorable
thing--but a grey kitten would not have sat there and encouraged her.
“I believe,” thought Emily, “that a dog is better than a cat when
you’re in trouble.”
It was half an hour before Dean Priest returned.
“Thank God you haven’t gone over,” he muttered. “I hadn’t to go as far
as I feared--I found a rope in an empty boat up-shore and took it. And
now--if I drop the rope down to you, are you strong enough to hold it
while the earth goes and then hang on while I pull you up?”
“I’ll try,” said Emily.
Dean Priest knotted a loop at the end and slid it down to her. Then he
wound the rope around the trunk of a heavy fir.
“Now,” he said.
Emily said inwardly, “Dear God, _please_--” and caught the swaying
loop. The next moment the full weight of her body swung from it, for at
her first movement the broken soil beneath her slipped down--slipped
over. Dean Priest sickened and shivered. Could she cling to the rope
while he drew her up?
Then he saw she had got a little knee-hold on the narrow shelf.
Carefully he drew on the rope. Emily, full of pluck, helped him by
digging her toes into the crumbling bank. In a moment she was within
his reach. He grasped her arms and pulled her up beside him into
safety. As he lifted her past the farewell-summer Emily reached out her
hand and broke off the spray.
“I’ve got it, anyhow,” she said jubilantly. Then she remembered her
manners. “I’m much obliged to you. You saved my life. And--and--I think
I’ll sit down a moment. My legs feel funny and trembly.”
Emily sat down, all at once more shaky than she had been through all
the danger. Dean Priest leaned against the gnarled old fir. He seemed
“trembly” too. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Emily
looked curiously at him. She had learned a good deal about him from
Aunt Nancy’s casual remarks--not always good-natured remarks, for
Aunt Nancy did not wholly like him, it seemed. She always called him
“Jarback” rather contemptuously, while Caroline scrupulously called him
Dean. Emily knew he had been to college, that he was thirty-six years
old--which to Emily seemed a venerable age--and well-off; that he had a
malformed shoulder and limped slightly; that he cared for nothing save
books nor ever had; that he lived with an older brother and travelled
a great deal; and that the whole Priest clan stood somewhat in awe of
his ironic tongue. Aunt Nancy had called him a “cynic.” Emily did not
know what a cynic was but it sounded interesting. She looked him over
carefully and saw that he had delicate, pale features and tawny-brown
hair. His lips were thin and sensitive, with a whimsical curve. She
liked his mouth. Had she been older she would have known why--because
it connoted strength and tenderness and humour.
In spite of his twisted shoulder there was about him a certain aloof
dignity of presence which was characteristic of many of the Priests and
which was often mistaken for pride. The green Priest eyes, that were
peering and uncanny in Caroline’s face and impudent in Jim Priest’s,
were remarkably dreamy and attractive in his.
“Well, do you think me handsome?” he said, sitting down on another
stone and smiling at her. His voice was beautiful--musical and
caressing.
Emily blushed. She knew staring was not etiquette, and she did not
think him at all handsome, so she was very thankful that he did not
press his question, but asked another.
“Do you know who your knightly rescuer is?”