He flushed. “I note, Miss Webster, that you’re changing the subject.”
“I know you have to hurry back, and I want you to know I’m happy about your engagement.”
“It isn’t exactly an engagement.”
“Well, practically,” she said and rose. “I really think you had better go back now.”
He emptied his pipe and put it in his pocket, stood up and pulled on his coat, looking tragic. Emily wanted to laugh.
He couldn’t bear it, she thought, because she wasn’t tortured by his engagement. He was probably in love with Annette, and he was most certainly not in love with her. But it was more than he could bear to have her take the matter so calmly.
She was smiling so perceptively that he asked with annoyance, “May I know the joke?”
“There isn’t any joke.”
“I meant to tell you, speaking of this so-called engagement, to read your Browning. Remember ‘The Lost Duchess?’” He quoted:
“Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! Some women do so…”
Emily interrupted.
“Don,” she said. “Would you mind going home?”
He pulled his soft hat violently down over his forehead. “I suppose you think that I’m a cad.”
“I just don’t think about you. Good-by,” Emily said, and closed the door firmly behind him.
21
Under the Locust Tree Again
GRANDPA WEBSTER LOOKED UP at Emily from beneath his bushy brows.
“Emmy,” he asked. “Is Jed courting you?”
They were sitting at dinner on a day in early May. Emily had just come from the telephone to say casually that it was Jed; he wanted her to go to hear the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra which was coming to Deep Valley—when her grandfather interrupted with his astonishing question.
“Why, Grandpa!” Emily cried. “What makes you say a thing like that?”
“Well,” he answered defiantly, “it looks that way to me. It’s flowers, flowers, flowers! And candy, candy, candy! And books! And shows! And a picture of Abraham Lincoln for me, although he’s a rebel and he admits it. By Jingo, I know courting when I see it! I went courting once myself.”
Emily sat and stared at him. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “Why, Grandpa!” she protested again. “I thought you liked Jed.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t, did I?”
“No, not exactly. But…”
“I only asked a simple question,” said Grandpa Webster crossly. “Is he courting you, or isn’t he?”
Emily looked through the bay window at the slough which was one golden sheet of marigolds.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“You mean he hasn’t popped the question?”
She shook her head. “But Grandpa, supposing he did pop the question? What would you do if you were me?”
He looked important. “Why, grab him! Grab him!”
“You would?”
“Certainly, I would! They don’t come any better than Jed.”
“But, Grandpa, just a minute ago you were saying…”
“I know! I know! I just wanted to know how things stood. But you’re hard to suit if you don’t take Jed. Your mother would have liked him! Your grandmother would have liked him! And I like him!”
Emily jumped up. Her eyes were shining. “Don’t say any more! He hasn’t asked me, and maybe he doesn’t intend to.”
“You’re old enough,” said her grandfather. “You’re a year older than your grandmother was.”
“I know, Grandpa. But maybe Jed doesn’t.”
“What do you suppose is holding him up?”
Emily laughed and started to clear the table. She wondered herself.
She continued to wonder as May progressed. They saw each other almost every day. He helped her and her grandfather with their spring raking and burning. He helped them with the gardening. He kept old shoes and an old coat in the woodshed and came over after school to shovel.
“Is it too early to set out tomato plants, Grandpa Webster?”
“I judge not.”
“Then I’ll bring some tomorrow.”
He set them out, whistling like the blackbirds in the slough, and set Emily to work cutting paper collars for them—to keep the cutworms off.
“Jed’s a pretty good gardener,” Grandpa Webster said.
Jed wanted Emily to come to the high school whenever his team debated. Miss Bangeter, Gwen Fowler and the rest looked at them approvingly. He wanted her to go with him on research trips to Little Syria. They took tea with Mr. Meecham, and afterward they climbed the hill beyond the settlement and brought home violets and white boughs of blooming wild plum which were dizzily sweet, but no sweeter than the homeward walk at twilight with birds singing in the newly leaved trees.
“We’re certainly congenial,” Emily thought, her brows drawn together. “We’re very well suited to each other—at least, he’s well suited to me.”
He was always so happy, and she was sometimes depressed, although not so often as she used to be. And he was so completely unselfconscious, so untroubled by perplexities and doubts of the sort which had always beset her. But they beset her less and less. He was always confident, without being at all vain, and he was building that same confidence in her.
“He’d be perfect for me,” she thought. “But he’d be perfect for anyone. Would I be right for him?”
He had never, since that night when she talked to the school board, acted loverlike. When they walked he held her arm in a firm protective clasp. And she thought he felt what she did when their hands touched. But she couldn’t be sure.
Grandpa Webster looked at her hopefully every morning, but she had no news.
He became less intent on the problem as Decoration Day approached. He began to examine the snowball bush. Tulips were in bloom all around the house. Lilacs were out, flooding the dooryard with fragrance. But nothing would do except snowballs for an old soldier’s chest on Decoration Day.
“Take a look at this bush, Emmy! Aren’t those buds slower’n time?”
She brought down his uniform and pressed it. He shined his medal, and his shoes. The Mayor came to call, and the question came up again as to whether the Civil War soldiers would march or ride in the parade. The Mayor, Uncle Chester, Jed and Emily all strongly urged riding, but Grandpa and the Judge opposed it. Grandpa Webster was emphatic.
“Let those Spanish American cubs think we’re too old to march? Not on your tintype! If the South acted up again, the Judge and I’d be handier with our muskets than they would. Of course, the Judge didn’t get the practise at Nashville that we got at Gettysburg.”
He told the Wrestling Champs about the First Minnesota’s famous charge until they knew the story by heart. Bobby Sibley never failed to say: “My Uncle Aaron was there; wasn’t he, Grandpa Webster?”
“You bet he was! He was a friend of mine.”
The Wrestling Champs decided to decorate Uncle Aaron’s grave. They went further and voted to spend the money in the treasury for the project. Kalil favored an artificial wreath; he showed them with his hands how big it ought to be, gigantic, with trailing ribbons. Grandpa Webster was touched.
“I think Aaron would like it better, though, if you kept out enough for all-day suckers.”
Several times, with all her tact, Emily brought up the question of the marching. “It’s going to be hot this year, Grandpa. It’s hot already. More like June than May.”
“Shucks! We’re just going to march past the reviewing stand. It wouldn’t hurt a baby. Emmy, you pressed my uniform, didn’t you?”
“Oh yes, Grandpa! And you shined the medal. Don’t you remember?”
“That’s right. Have you gone up to the cemetery yet to clean up the graves?”
“Not yet. I go the day before, you know.”
“And this year,” put in Jed, “I’m going with her. You can be sure there’ll be a good job done. I’ll come straight from school, Emily.
”
“Don’t hurry,” she smiled. “It will be cooler to work in the late afternoon.”
She was ready when he reached the little house at four, wearing a workaday sailor suit and a ribbon in her hair. She had cut the flowers—snowballs, which had bloomed at last, iris, painted daisies, the last of the lilacs. The ends of the bouquets were wrapped in wet paper.
Jed carried the pail in which she had placed gardening tools and three empty quart jars.
“What are they for?” he asked as they walked across the slough.
“To hold the bouquets. We sink them in the graves and fill them with water.”
“How many graves are there?”
“Three. My grandmother, father and mother.”
The sun was glittering on the Indian paintbrush which colored the meadows of Cemetery Hill. All the way up the long road they met people descending with empty pails and hands.
“Everybody’s up tidying graves for tomorrow,” Emily said.
But when they passed through the tall arched gate the cemetery was empty. It was green and quiet with late afternoon sunshine touching the crosses and angels.
Emily led him to the Webster plot and showed him the graves—her grandmother’s with the clasped hands, her father’s with the open book, her mother’s with the cherub.
“You sit on that bench and talk to me,” said Jed. “There isn’t work enough for two.”
He dropped to the grass and began to rake and clip with swift efficiency. She looked at his broad shoulders as he bent over the graves.
“Jed,” she said, “I’m so much happier than I was a year ago.”
“What was the matter then?” he asked.
“It was just before I graduated. I felt lonely because I had six tickets, and no one to give them to but Grandpa. And I wished my father and mother could see me graduate, and I felt badly because I couldn’t go to college. I’m so much happier now.”
“Your mother would be glad of that,” he answered gently.
“She’s closer to me, too,” said Emily. “Last year she was just that stiff picture on my bureau—I’ve shown it to you. But now…
“She got this locket for her graduation, and I wore it for mine. And I’ve found out that she liked the sort of work I’ve been doing with the Syrians. And when Kalil sold me the frogs’ legs, and I wanted a recipe, hers was there!”
“Do you look like her?”
“I have her laugh, Grandpa says. She was awfully full of fun, and so am I when I have a chance…” Emily stopped. “I can’t explain it, but she’s been close to me all winter.”
Jed was digging holes for the jars now, spading earth out briskly. “Do you think she’d approve of me?” he asked.
Emily’s heart tightened. “Why—yes! As a matter of fact, Grandpa said the other day that she would like you.”
“He did?”
“Yes.” Emily’s laugh, which was said to be her mother’s, came suddenly. “He said she would have liked you, and my grandmother would have liked you, and he liked you.”
“What was the argument about? Don’t you like me?” He turned abruptly, brushing away a fallen lock of hair with a dirty hand so that dirt streaked his cheek. His brown eyes were questioning.
“Of course I do,” said Emily. She more than liked him, she thought. She wished she could push that hair back, and touch his dirty cheek, and put her arms around him.
He went back to the digging. “Let’s plant more things up here,” he said. “I like plants better than cut flowers on a grave.”
“So do I. Grandpa likes an old-fashioned bleeding heart.”
“Let’s plant an old-fashioned bleeding heart then.”
He sunk the jars and went to the pump for water and filled them. As Emily arranged the flowers, he asked more questions about the family history.
“You know all this. Grandpa’s told it to you.”
“But I like to hear it again. I want to get acquainted with your people, and I want you to meet mine. You’ll love my father and mother, Emily.”
“I’m sure I will,” she said. Her heart tightened again.
They were silent going down hill in the sunset. The past seemed to fill the valley like a mist. Her grandmother’s school in a parlor, her father falling in the quarry, her mother buried in her wedding dress—they were all things she had been telling to Jed. And she saw last Decoration Day with the flags along the street, and the crowds, and the jaunty fife and drum corps leading the old soldiers:
“When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!”
“I hope that marching won’t be too much for Grandpa tomorrow,” she thought.
The moment seemed significant somehow, as though it marked an end and a beginning.
“You were kind to go with me,” she said, crossing the slough where the frogs were croaking and the marsh hens were cackling and the bitterns were making that noise like her own dooryard pump. “And you did all the work! Won’t you come in for supper?”
“Thanks! I’d love to! Your grandfather will be in high feather.”
But to their surprise Grandpa Webster had retired. He put his head, clothed in a nightcap, through his bedroom door.
“I thought I’d get a good night’s rest on account of tomorrow,” he said.
“Did you have any supper?” Emily asked.
“Yep! Bread and milk.”
“Do you feel all right, Grandpa?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” he replied.
She fried bacon for herself and Jed, and made tea, and opened choke-cherry jelly. They ate in the bay window. The sky was colored by the afterglow.
“Let’s go outside,” she said when the dishes were washed. And they went out to the bench beneath the honey locust.
The sky changed from rose to peach color and then to gray. The air grew cooler, and the evening star came out.
“Kalil says every person has a star of his own. You have one and I have one and Grandpa has—I was sitting on this bench when Kalil first came with the frogs’ legs.”
And when Don came, she added in her thoughts. Don! That spoiled child! Jed was a man. Someone to respect, to look up to. Big and warm and protective and loving. Her feeling for him seemed to soar like that last bird against the evening sky. She spoke quickly.
“I took Layla to Miss Cobb last week. Did I tell you? Miss Cobb loved her, and she said she’d give her lessons if I should ever go away…”
Her hand was lying on the bench, and he took it. She thought swiftly that it must be rough. She rubbed and rubbed cream into her hands, but after she and Grandpa took the stove down, they had started making the garden—
Jed didn’t seem to mind it being rough. He put it to his lips, and then suddenly he had taken her into his arms and was saying over and over, “Oh, Emily, I love you so!”
“I love you, too!” cried Emily.
She began to cry for she knew that now she would never be lonely again.
After a time they talked. It was dark by then. Fireflies were blossoming and fading all around them. Across the slough they could see the lights of Deep Valley.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked.
“You’re so young. And I knew how much you wanted to go to college. And you know, Emily, your grandfather won’t live many more years. It may be so you can go to college.”
“But I don’t want to!” she cried. “As long as Grandpa is alive I want to be right here in Deep Valley. I want to learn right here, the way I have been learning. And I want to work with the Syrians.
“And after we’re married. I won’t stop learning. I’ll learn with you. I’ll be learning all my life.”
Jed took her hand and kissed it again.
When he had gone she ran into the house. She pounded on her grandfather’s bedroom door. “Grandpa! Grandpa!”
“What is it?” he asked sleepily.
“I just wanted you to know. I’m engaged to marry Jed.”
“Well!” he answered.
She could hear him sit up in bed. She could hear his satisfied chuckle. “That’s good news, Emmy! I told you he was courting.”
“He was!” Emily said. “Oh, Grandpa! He was!”
About the Author
MAUD HART LOVELACE (1892–1980) based her Betsy-Tacy series on her own childhood. Her series still boasts legions of fans, many of whom are members of the Betsy-Tacy Society, a national organization based in Mankato, Minnesota.
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About Emily of Deep Valley
Emily Webster, an orphan living with her grandfather, is not like the other girls her age in Deep Valley, Minnesota. After graduation, she longs to join the Crowd and go off to college—but she can’t leave her grandfather alone at home. Resigning herself to a “lost winter,” Emily nonetheless throws herself into a new program of study and a growing interest in the local Syrian community, and when she meets a handsome new teacher at the high school, Emily gains more than she ever dreamed possible.
Maud Hart Lovelace’s only young adult stand-alone novel, Emily of Deep Valley is considered by fans of her beloved Betsy-Tacy series to be one of the author’s finest works.
About Illustrator Vera Neville
Vera Neville
Collection of Patricia Neville-Downe
VERA NEVILLE was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 2, 1904. A year later, her family moved to Interlaken, New Jersey, where her father worked as a real estate developer. As a young girl, Vera took ballet, piano, and horseback riding lessons. She spent summers on her grandmother’s farm in Canada, where she fell in love with animals and began to craft little drawings of horses, cats, and mice.
The Neville family returned to Detroit in 1916, and Vera began to study art in earnest, taking lessons from Paul Honoré, an American artist known for colorful murals. After high school graduation, Vera moved to New York City and began her studies at the Art Students League. At the League, Vera sharpened her skills and talent, training under renowned American artists George Bridgman and Cecilia Beaux.