Lucy Montgomery - Emily's Quest

She KNEW, beyond any doubt or cavil or mockery that she had seen Teddy... had saved, or tried to save him, from some unknown peril. And she knew, just as simply and just as surely that she loved him... had always loved him, with a love that lay at the very foundation of her being.

And in two months' time she was to be married to Dean Priest.

What could she do? To marry him now was unthinkable. She could not live such a lie. But to break his heart... snatch from him all the happiness possible to his thwarted life... that, too, was unthinkable.

Yes, as Ilse had said, it WAS a very devilish thing to be a woman.

"Particularly," said Emily, filled with bitter self-contempt, "a woman who seemingly doesn't know her own mind for a month at a time. I was so sure last summer that Teddy no longer meant anything to me... so sure that I really cared enough for Dean to marry him. And now to-night... and that horrible power or gift or curse coming again when I thought I had outgrown it... left it behind forever."

Emily walked on that eerie sandshore half the night and slipped guiltily and stealthily into New Moon in the wee sma's to fling herself on her bed and fall at last into the absolute slumber of exhaustion.

A very ghastly time followed. Fortunately Dean was away, having gone to Montreal on business. It was during his absence that the world was horrified by the tragedy of the Flavian's fatal collision with an iceberg. The headlines struck Emily in the face like a blow, Teddy was to have sailed on the Flavian... Had he... had he? Who could tell her? Perhaps his mother... his queer, solitary mother who hated her with a hatred that Emily always felt like a tangible thing between them. Hitherto Emily would have shrunk unspeakably from seeking Mrs. Kent. Now nothing mattered except finding out if Teddy were on the Flavian. She hurried to the Tansy Patch. Mrs Kent came to the door... unaltered in all the years since Emily had first known her... frail, furtive, with her bitter mouth and that disfiguring red scar across her paleness. Her face changed as it always did when she saw Emily. Hostility and fear contended in her dark, melancholy eyes.

"Did Teddy sail on the Flavian?" demanded Emily without circumlocution.

Mrs. Kent smiled... an unfriendly little smile.

"Does it matter to you?" she said.

"Yes." Emily was very blunt. The "Murray" look was on her face... the look few people could encounter undefeatedly. "If you know... tell me."

Mrs. Kent told her, unwillingly, hating her, shaking like a little dead leaf quivering with a semblance of life in a cruel wind.

"He did not. I had a cable from him to-day. At the last moment he was prevented from sailing."

"Thank you." Emily turned away, but not before Mrs. Kent had seen the joy and triumph that had leaped into her shadowy eyes. She sprang forward and caught Emily's arm.

"It is nothing to you," she cried wildly. "Nothing to you whether he is safe or not. You are going to marry another man. How dare you come here... demanding to know of my son... as if you had a right?"

Emily looked down at her pityingly, understandingly. This poor creature whose jealousy, coiled in her soul like a snake, had made life a vale of torment for her.

"No right perhaps... except the right of loving him," she said.

Mrs. Kent struck her hands together wildly.

"You... you dare to say that... you who are to marry another man?"

"I am not going to marry another man," Emily found herself saying. It was quite true. For days she had not known what to do... now quite unmistakably she knew what she must do. Dreadful as it would be, still something that must be done. Everything was suddenly clear and bitter and inevitable before her.

"I cannot marry another man, Mrs. Kent, because I love Teddy. But he does not love me. I know that quite well. So you need not hate me any longer."

She turned and went swiftly away from the Tansy Patch. Where was her pride, she wondered the pride of "the proud Murrays"... that she could so calmly acknowledge an unsought, unwanted love. But pride just then had no place in her.

When the letter came from Teddy... the first letter for so long... Emily's hand trembled so that she could hardly open it.

"I must tell you of a strange thing that has happened," he wrote. "Perhaps you know it already. And perhaps you know nothing and will think me quite mad. I don't know what to think of it myself. I know only what I saw... or thought I saw.

"I was waiting to buy my ticket for the boat-train to Liverpool... I was to sail on the Flavian. Suddenly I felt a touch on my arm... I turned and saw YOU. I swear it. You said, 'Teddy... come.' I was so amazed I could not think or speak. I could only follow you. You were running... no, NOT running. I don't know how you went... I only knew that you were retreating. How rotten this all sounds. WAS I crazy? And all at once you weren't there... though we were by now away from the crowd in an open space where nothing could have prevented me from seeing you. Yet I looked everywhere... and came to my senses to realize that the boat-train had gone and I had lost my passage on the Flavian. I was furious... ashamed... until the news came. Then... I felt my scalp crinkle.

"Emily... you're not in England? It can't be possible you are in England. But then... what was it I saw in that station?

"Anyhow, I suppose it saved my life. If I had gone on the Flavian... well, I didn't. Thanks to... what?

"I'll be home soon. Will sail on the Moravian... if you don't prevent me again. Emily, I heard a queer story of you long ago... something about Ilse's mother. I've almost forgotten. Take care. They don't burn witches nowadays, of course... but still... "

No, they didn't burn witches. But still... Emily felt that she could have more easily faced the stake than what was before her.

Emily went up the hill path to keep tryst with Dean at the Disappointed House. She had had a note from him that day, written on his return from Montreal, asking her to meet him there at dusk. He was waiting for her on the doorstep... eagerly, happily. The robins were whistling softly in the fir copse and the evening was fragrant with the tang of balsam. But the air all about them was filled with the strangest, saddest, most unforgettable sound in nature... the soft, ceaseless wash on a distant shore on a still evening of the breakers of a spent storm. A sound rarely heard and always to be remembered. It is even more mournful than the rain- wind of night... the heart-break and despair of all creation is in it. Dean took a quick step forward to meet her... then stopped abruptly. Her face... her eyes... what had happened to Emily in his absence? THIS was not Emily... this strange, white, remote girl of the pale twilight.

"Emily... what is it?" asked Dean... knowing before she told him.

Emily looked at him. If you had to deal a mortal blow why try to lighten it?

"I can't marry you after all, Dean," she said. "I don't love you."

That was all she could say. No excuses... no self-defence. There was none she could make. But it was shocking to see all the happiness wiped out of a human face like that.

There was a little pause... a pause that seemed an eternity with that unbearable sorrow of the sea throbbing through it. Then Dean said still quietly:

"I knew you didn't love me. Yet you were... content to marry me... before this. What has made it impossible?"

It was his right to know. Emily stumbled through her silly, incredible tale.

"You see," she concluded miserably, "when... I can call like that to him across space... I belong to him. He doesn't love me... he never will... but I belong to him. . . . Oh, Dean, don't look so. I HAD to tell you this... but if you wish it... I WILL marry you... only I felt you must know the whole truth... when I knew it myself."