"Ilse Burnley, how dare you do such a thing!"
"No use squizzling your eyebrows up at me like that, beloved demon," retorted Ilse. "Hasn't no effect on me a-tall. Couldn't endure that picture no-how. And Stovepipe Town in the background."
"What you've done is on a level with Stovepipe Town."
"Well, he asked for it. Smirking there. 'Behold ME. I am a Person In The Public Eye.' Never had such satisfaction as boring your scissors through those conceited orbs gave me. Two seconds more of looking at them and I'd have flung up my head and howled. Oh, how I hate Perry Miller! Puffed up like a poisoned pup!"
"I thought you told me you loved him," said Emily rather rudely.
"It's the same thing," said Ilse morosely. "Emily, why can't I get that creature out of my mind? It's too Victorian to say heart. I haven't any heart. I don't love him - I do hate him. But I can't keep from thinking about him. That's just a state of mind. Oh, I could yell at the moon. But the real reason I dug his eyes out was his turning Grit after having been born and raised Conservative."
"You are Conservative yourself?"
"True but unimportant. I hate turncoats. I've never forgiven Henry IV for turning Catholic. Not because he was a Protestant but just because he was a turncoat. I would have been just as implacable if he had been Catholic and turned Protestant. Perry has changed his politics just for the sake of getting into partnership with Leonard Abel. There's Stovepipe Town for you. Oh, he'll be Judge Miller - and rich as wedding-cake - but -! I wish he had had a hundred eyes so that I could have bored them all out! This is one of the times I feel it would be handy to have been a bosom friend of Lucrezia Borgia."
"Who was an excellent and rather stupid woman beloved for her good works."
"Oh, I know the modern whitewashers are determined to rob history of anything that is picturesque. No matter, I shall cling to my faith in Lucrezia and William Tell. Put that picture out of my sight. Please, Emily."
Emily put the maltreated picture away in a drawer of her desk. Her brief anger had gone. She understood. At least she understood why the eyes had been cut out. It was harder to understand just why Ilse could care so much and so incurably for Perry Miller. And there was just a hint of pity in her heart as well - condescending pity for Ilse who cared so much for a man who didn't care for her.
"I think this will cure me," said Ilse savagely. "I can't - I won't love a turncoat. Blind bat - congenital idiot that he is! Pah, I'm through with him. Emily, I wonder I don't hate you. Rejecting with scorn what I want so much. Ice-cold thing, did you ever really care for anything or any creature except that pen of yours?"
"Perry has never really loved me," evaded Emily. "He only imagines he does."
"Well, I'd be content if he would only just imagine he loved me. How brazen I am about it. You're the one person in the world I can have the relief of saying such things to. That's why I can't let myself hate you, after all. I daresay I'm not half as unhappy as I think myself. One never knows what may be around the next corner. After this I mean to bore Perry Miller out of my life and thoughts just as I bored his eyes out. Emily," with an abrupt change of tone and posture, "do you know I like Teddy Kent better this summer than I ever did before."
"Oh." The monosyllable was eloquent, but Ilse was deaf to all its implications.
"Yes. He's really charming. Those years in Europe have done something to him. Perhaps it's just that they've taught him to hide his selfishness better."
"Teddy Kent isn't selfish. Why do you call him selfish? Look at his devotion to his mother."
"Because she adores him. Teddy likes to be adored. That's why he's never fallen in love with any one, you know. That - and because the girls chased him so, perhaps. It was sickening in Montreal. They made such asses of themselves - waiting on him with their tongues hanging out - that I wanted to dress in male attire and swear I wasn't of their sex. No doubt it was the same in Europe. No man alive can stand six years of that without being spoiled - and contemptuous. Teddy is all right with us - he knows we're old pals who can see through him and will stand no nonsense. But I've seen him accepting tribute - graciously bestowing a smile - a look - a touch as a reward. Saying to every one just what he thought she'd like to hear. When I saw it I always felt I'd love to say something to him that he'd think of for years whenever he woke up at three o'clock o'night."
The sun had dropped into a bank of purple cloud behind the Delectable Mountain and a chill and shadow swept down the hill and across the dewy clover-fields to New Moon. The little room darkened and the glimpse of Blair Water through the gap in Lofty John's bush changed all at once to livid grey.
Emily's evening was spoiled. But she felt - knew - that Ilse was mistaken about many things. There was one comfort, too - evidently she had kept her secret well. Not even Ilse suspected it. Which was agreeable to both the Murray and the Starr.
IV
But Emily sat long at her window looking into the black night that turned slowly to pale silver as the moon rose. So the girls had "chased" Teddy.
She wished she had not run quite so quickly when he had called from Lofty John's bush. "Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad" was all very well in song. But one was not living in a Scotch ballad. And that change in Ilse's voice - that almost confidential note. Did Ilse mean -? How pretty Ilse had looked to-night. In that smart, sleeveless dress of green sprinkled with tiny golden butterflies - with the green necklace that circled her throat and fell to her hips like a long green snake - with her green, gold-buckled shoes - Ilse always wore such ravishing shoes. Did Ilse mean -? And if she did -?
After breakfast Aunt Laura remarked to Cousin Jimmy that she felt sure something was on the dear child's mind.
FOURTEEN
I
"The early bird catches - the desire of his heart," said Teddy, slipping down beside Emily on the long, silken, pale-green grasses on the bank of Blair Water.
He had come so silently that Emily had not heard him until she saw him and she could not repress a start and blush - which she hoped wildly he did not see. She had wakened early and been seized with what her clan would doubtless have considered a temperamental desire to see the sunrise and make new acquaintances with Eden. So she had stolen down New Moon stairs and through the expectant garden and Lofty John's bush to the Blair Water to meet the mystery of the dawn. It had never occurred to her that Teddy would be prowling too.
"I like to come down here at sunrise, now and then," he said. "It's about the only chance I have of being alone for a few minutes. Our evenings and afternoons are all given over to mad revelry - and Mother likes me to be with her every moment of the forenoons. She's had six such horribly lonesome years."
"I'm sorry I've intruded on your precious solitude," said Emily stiffly, possessed of a horrible fear that he might think she knew of his habit and had come purposely to meet him.
Teddy laughed.
"Don't put on New Moon airs with me, Emily Byrd Starr. You know perfectly well that finding you here is the crown of the morning for me. I've always had a wild hope that it might happen. And now it has. Let's just sit here and dream together. God made this morning for us - just us two. Even talking would spoil it."
Emily agreed silently. How dear it was to sit here with Teddy on the banks of Blair Water, under the coral of the morning sky, and dream - just dream - wild, sweet, secret, unforgettable, foolish dreams. Alone with Teddy while all their world was sleeping. Oh, if this exquisite stolen moment could last! A line from some poem of Marjorie Pickthall quivered in her thought like a bar of music -
"Oh, keep the world forever at the dawn."
She said it like a prayer under her breath.
Everything was so beautiful in this magical moment before sunrise. The wild blue irises around the pond, the violet shadows in the curves of the dunes, the white, filmy mist hanging over the buttercup valley across the pond, the cloth of gold and silver that was called a field of daisies, the cool, delicious gulf breeze, the blue of far lands beyond the h
arbour, plumes of purple and mauve smoke going up on the still, golden air from the chimneys of Stovepipe Town where the fishermen rose early. And Teddy lying at her feet, his slim brown hands clasped behind his head. Again she felt inescapably the magnetic attraction of his personality. Felt it so strongly that she dared not meet his eyes. Yet she was admitting to herself with a secret candour which would have horrified Aunt Elizabeth that she wanted to run her fingers through his sleek black hair - feel his arms about her - press her face against his dark tender one - feel his lips on her lips -
Teddy took one of his hands from under his head and put it over hers.
For a moment of surrender she left it there. Then Ilse's words flashed into memory, searing her consciousness like a dagger of flame. "I've seen him accepting tribute" - "graciously bestowing a touch as a reward" - "saying to each one just what he thought she wanted to hear." Had Teddy guessed what she had been thinking? Her thoughts had seemed so vivid to her that she felt as if any one must see her thinking. Intolerable. She sprang up abruptly, shaking off his fingers.
"I must be going home."
So blunt. Somehow, she could not make it smoother. He must not - should not think - Teddy rose, too. A change in his voice and look. Their marvellous moment was over.
"So must I. Mother will be missing me. She's always up early. Poor little Mother. She hasn't changed. She isn't proud of my success - she hates it. She thinks it has taken me from her. The years have not made it any easier for her. I want her to come away with me, but she will not. I think that is partly because she cannot bear to leave the old Tansy Patch and partly because she can't endure seeing me shut up in my studio working - something that would bar her out. I wonder what made her so. I've never known her any other way, but I think she must have been different once. It's odd for a son to know as little of his mother's life as I do. I don't even know what made that scar on her face. I know next to nothing of my father - absolutely nothing of his people. She will never talk of anything in the years before we came to Blair Water."
"Something hurt her once - hurt her so terribly she has never got over it," said Emily.
"My father's death, perhaps?"
"No. At least, not if it were just death. There was something else - something poisonous. Well - bye-bye."
"Going to Mrs. Chidlaw's dinner-dance to-morrow night?"
"Yes. She is sending her car for me."
"Whew! No use after that asking you to go with me in a one-hoss buggy - borrowed at that. Well, I must take Ilse then. Perry to be there?"
"No. He wrote me he couldn't come - had to prepare for his first case. It's coming up next day."
"Perry is forging ahead, isn't he? That bulldog tenacity of his never lets go of an objective once he gets his teeth into it. He'll be rich when we're still as poor as church mice. But then, we're chasing rainbow gold, aren't we?"
She would not linger - he might think she wanted to linger - "waiting with her tongue hanging out" - she turned away almost ungraciously. He had been so unregretfully ready to "take Ilse then." As if it really didn't matter much. Yet she was still conscious of his touch on her hand - it burned there yet. In that fleeting moment, in that brief caress, he had made her wholly his, as years of wifehood could never have made her Dean's. She could think of nothing else all day. She lived over and over again that moment of surrender. It seemed to her so inadequate that everything should be the same at New Moon and that Cousin Jimmy should be worrying over red spiders on his asters.
II
A tack on the Shrewsbury road made Emily fifteen minutes late for Mrs. Chidlaw's dinner. She flung a hasty glance into the mirror before she went down and turned away satisfied. An arrow of rhinestones in her dark hair - she had hair that wore jewels well - lent the necessary note of brilliance to the new dress of silvery-green lace over a pale-blue slip that became her so well. Miss Royal had picked it for her in New York - and Aunts Elizabeth and Laura had looked askance at it. Green and blue was such an odd combination. And there was so little of it. But it did something to Emily when she put it on. Cousin Jimmy looked at the exquisite, shimmering young thing with stars in her eyes, in the old candlelighted kitchen and said ruefully to Aunt Laura after she had gone, "She doesn't belong to us in that dress."
"It made her look like an actress" said Aunt Elizabeth freezingly
Emily did not feel like an actress as she ran down Mrs. Chidlaw's stairs and across the sun-room to the wide veranda where Mrs. Chidlaw had elected to hold her dinner party. She felt real, vital, happy, expectant. Teddy would be there - their eyes would meet significantly across the table - there would be the furtive sweetness of watching him secretly when he talked to some one else - and thought of her - they would dance together afterwards. Perhaps he would tell her - what she was longing to hear -
She paused for a second in the open doorway, her eyes soft and dreamy as a purple mist, looking out on the scene before her - one of those scenes which are always remembered from some subtle charm of their own.
The table was spread in the big rounded alcove at the corner of the vine-hung veranda. Beyond it tall, dark firs and Lombardies stood out against the after-sunset sky of dull rose and fading yellow. Through their stems she caught glimpses of the bay, dark and sapphire. Great masses of shadow beyond the little island of light - the gleam of pearls on Ilse's white neck. There were other guests - Professor Robins of McGill with his long, melancholy face made still longer by his odd spade-shaped beard; Lisette Chidlaw's round, cream-coloured, kissable face with its dark hair heaped high over it and her round, dark eyes; Jack Glenlake, dreamy and handsome; Annette Shaw, a sleepy, gold-and-white thing, always affecting a Mona Lisa smile; stocky little Tom Hallam with his humorous Irish face; Aylmer Vincent. Quite fat. Beginning to be bald. Still making pretty speeches to the ladies. How absurd to recall that she had once thought him Prince Charming! Solemn-looking Gus Rankin, with a vacant chair beside him, evidently for her. Elise Borland, young and chubby, showing off her lovely hands a little in the candlelight. But of all the party Emily only saw Teddy and Ilse. The rest were puppets.
They were sitting together just opposite her. Teddy sleek and well-groomed as usual, his black head close to Ilse's golden one. Ilse, a glorified shining creature in turquoise-blue taffeta, looking the queen with a foam of laces on her full bosom and rose-and-silver nosegays at her shoulder. Just as Emily looked at them Ilse lifted her eyes to Teddy's face and asked some question - some intimate, vital question, Emily felt sure, from the expression of her face. She did not recall ever having seen just that look on Ilse's face before. There was some sort of definite challenge in it. Teddy looked down and answered her. Emily knew or felt that the word "love" was in his answer. Those two looked long into each other's eyes - at least it seemed long to Emily, beholding that interchange of rapt glances. Then Ilse blushed and looked away. When had Ilse ever blushed before? And Teddy threw up his head and swept the table with eyes that seemed exultant and victorious.
Emily went out into the circle of radiance from that terrible moment of disillusion. Her heart, so gay and light a moment before, seemed cold and dead. In spite of the lights and laughter a dark, chill night seemed to be coming towards her. Everything in life seemed suddenly ugly. It was for her a dinner of bitter herbs and she never remembered anything Gus Rankin said to her. She never looked at Teddy, who seemed in wonderful spirits and was keeping up a stream of banter with Ilse, and she was chilly and unresponsive through the whole meal. Gus Rankin told all his favourite stories but, like Queen Victoria of blessed memory, Emily was not amused. Mrs. Chidlaw was provoked and repented of having sent her car for so temperamental a guest. Annoyed probably over being paired with Gus Rankin, who had been asked at the last minute to fill Perry Miller's place. And looking like an outraged duchess over it. Yet you had to be civil to her. She might put you in a book if you weren't. Remember that time she wrote the review of our play! In reality, poor Emily was thanking whatever gods there be that she was beside Gus Rankin, who n
ever wanted or expected any one to talk.
The dance was a ghastly affair for Emily. She felt like a ghost moving among revellers she had suddenly outgrown. She danced once with Teddy and Teddy, realising that it was only her slim, silvery-green form he held, while her soul had retreated into some aloof impregnable citadel, did not ask her again. He danced several dances with Ilse and then sat out several more with her in the garden. His devotion to her was noticed and commented upon. Millicent Chidlaw asked Emily if the report that Ilse Burnley and Frederick Kent were engaged were true.
"He was always crazy about her, wasn't he?" Millicent wanted to know.
Emily, in a cool and impertinent voice, supposed so. Was Millicent watching her to see if she would flinch?
Of course he was in love with Ilse. What wonder? Ilse was so beautiful. What chance could her own moonlit charm of dark and silver have against that gold and ivory loveliness? Teddy liked her as a dear old pal and chum. That was all. She had been a fool again. Always deceiving herself. That morning by Blair Water - when she had almost let him see - perhaps he had seen - the thought was unbearable. Would she ever learn wisdom? Oh, yes, she had learned it to-night. No more folly. How wise and dignified and unapproachable she would be henceforth.
Wasn't there some wretched, vulgar old proverb about locking a stable door after the horse was stolen?
And just how was she to get through the rest of the night?
FIFTEEN
I
Emily, just home from an interminable weeks' visit at Uncle Oliver's, where a cousin had been getting married, heard at the post-office that Teddy Kent had gone.
"Left at an hour's notice," Mrs. Crosby told her. "Got a wire asking if he would take the vice-principalship of the College of Art in Montreal and had to go at once to see about it. Isn't that splendid? Hasn't he got on? It's really quite wonderful. Blair Water should be very proud of him, shouldn't it? Isn't it a pity his mother is so odd?"
Fortunately Mrs. Crosby never took time to await any answer to her questions. Emily knew she was turning pale and hated herself for it. She clutched her mail and hastened out of the post-office. She passed several people on the way home and never realised it. As a consequence her reputation for pride went up dangerously. But when she reached New Moon Aunt Laura handed her a letter.