Lucy Montgomery: Emily's Quest

"Stay with me to-night, Emily," entreated Ilse. "I swear I won't talk you to death and I won't cry either. Though I admit if I could just be snuffed out to-night like a candle I wouldn't mind. Jean Askew was Milly Hyslop's bridesmaid and she spent the night before her wedding with her and they both cried all night. Fancy such an orgy of tears. Milly cried because she was going to be married... and I suppose Jean must have been crying because she wasn't. Thank heaven, Emily, you and I were never the miauling kind. We'll be more likely to fight than cry, won't we? I wonder if Mrs. Kent will come to-morrow? I don't suppose so. Teddy says she never mentions his marriage. Though he says she seem oddly changed... gentler... calmer... more like other women. Emily, do you realize that by this time to-morrow I'll be Ilse Kent?"

Yes, Emily realized THAT.

They said nothing more. But two hours later when wakeful Emily had supposed the motionless Ilse was sound asleep Ilse suddenly sat up in bed and grabbed Emily's hand in the darkness.

"Emily... if one could only go to sleep unmarried... and wake up married... how nice it would be."

It was dawn... the dawn of Ilse's wedding-day. Ilse was sleeping when Emily slipped out of bed and went to the window. Dawn. A cluster of dark pines in a trance of calm down by the Blair Water. The air tremulous with elfin music; the wind winnowing the dunes; dancing amber waves on the harbour; the eastern sky abloom; the lighthouse at the harbour pearl-white against the ethereal sky; beyond all the blue field of the sea with its foam blossoms and behind that golden haze that swathed the hill of the Tansy Patch, Teddy... wakeful... waiting... welcoming the day that gave him his heart's desire. Emily's soul was washed empty of every wish or hope or desire except that the day were over.

"It is," she thought, "comforting when a thing becomes irrevocable."

"Emily... Emily."

Emily turned from the window.

"It's a lovely day, Ilse. The sun will shine on you. Ilse... what is the matter? Ilse... you're crying!"

"I can't... help it," sniffed Ilse. "It seems to be the proper, inescapable caper after all. I beg Milly's pardon. But... I'm so beastly afraid. It's an infernal sensation. Do you think it would do any good if I threw myself on the floor and screamed?"

"What are you afraid of?" said Emily, a little impatiently.

"Oh,"... Ilse sprang defiantly out of bed... "afraid I'll stick my tongue out at the minister. What else?"

What a morning! It always seemed a sort of nightmare recollection to Emily. Guests of the clan came early... Emily welcomed them until she felt that the smile must be frozen on her face. There were endless wedding-gifts to unwrap and arrange. Ilse, before she dressed, came to look them over indifferently.

"Who sent in that afternoon tea-set?" she asked.

"Perry," said Emily. She had helped him choose it. A dainty service in a quaint old-fashioned rose design. A card with Perry's black forcible handwriting. "To Ilse with the best wishes of her old friend Perry."

Ilse deliberately picked up piece after piece and dashed it in fragments on the floor before the transfixed Emily could stop her.

"ILSE! Have you gone crazy?"

"There! What a glorious smash! Sweep up the fragments, Emily. That was just as good as screaming on the floor. Better. I can go through with it now."

Emily disposed of the fragments just in time... Mrs. Clarinda Mitchell came billowing in, in pale-blue muslin and cherry-hued scarf. A sonsy, smiling, good-hearted cousin-by-marriage. Interested in everything. Who gave this?... Who had sent that?

"She'll be SUCH a sweet bride, I'm sure," gushed Mrs. Clarinda. "And Teddy Kent is SUCH a splendid fellow. It's really an ideal marriage, isn't it? One of those you read about! I love weddings like this. I thank my stars I didn't lose my interest in youthful things when I lost my youth. I've lots of sentiment in me yet... and I'm not afraid to show it. And DID Ilse's wedding stockings really cost fourteen dollars?"

Aunt Isabella Hyslop, nee Mitchell, was gloomy. Offended because her costly present of cut sherbet glasses had been placed beside Cousin Annabel's funny set of old-fashioned crocheted doilies. Inclined to take a dark view of things.

"I hope everything will go off well. But I've got an uneasy feeling that trouble is coming... a presentiment, so to speak. Do you believe in signs? A big black cat ran right across the road in front of us down in the hollow. And right on that tree as we turned in at the lane was the fragment of an old election poster, 'Blue Ruin,' in black letters three inches long staring us in the face."

"That might mean bad luck for you, but hardly for Ilse."

Aunt Isabella shook her head. She would NOT be comforted.

"They say the wedding dress is like nothing ever seen on Prince Edward Island. DO you think such extravagance proper, Miss Starr!"

"The expensive part of it was a present from Ilse's old great-aunts in Scotland, Mrs. Mitchell. And most of us are married only once."

Whereupon Emily remembered that Aunt Isabella had been married three times and wondered if there wasn't something in black cat magic.

Aunt Isabella swept coldly off, and later on was heard to say that "that Starr girl is really intolerable since she got a book published. Thinks herself at liberty to insult any one."

Emily, before she had time to thank the Fates for her freedom, fell into the clutches of more Mitchell relatives. This aunt did not approve of another aunt's gift of a pair of ornate Bohemian glass vases.

"Bessie Jane never had much sense. A foolish choice. The children will be sure to unhook the prisms and lose them."

"What children?"

"Why, the children they will have, of course."

"Miss Starr will put that in a book, Matilda," warned her husband, chuckling. Then he chuckled again and whispered to Emily:

"Why aren't YOU the bride to-day? How come Ilse to cut you out, hey?"

Emily was thankful when she was summoned upstairs to help Ilse dress. Though even here aunts and cousins kept bobbing in and out, saying distracting things.

"Emily, do you remember the day of our first summer together when we fought over the honour of playing bride in one of our dramatic stunts? Well, I feel as if I were just playing bride. This isn't real."

Emily felt, too, as if it were not real. But soon... soon now... it would be all over and she could be blessedly alone. And Ilse when dressed was such an exquisite bride that she justified all the fuss of the wedding. How Teddy MUST love her!

"Doesn't she look just like a queen?" whispered Aunt Laura adoringly.

Emily having slipped into her own harebell blue kissed the flushed maiden face under the rose-point cap and pearls of its bridal veil.

"Ilse dear, don't think me hopelessly Victorian if I say I hope you'll be happy 'ever after.'"

Ilse squeezed her hand, but laughed a little too loudly.

"I hope it isn't Queen Victoria Aunt Laura thinks I resemble," she whispered. "And I have the most horrible suspicion that Aunt Janie Milburn is praying for me. Her face betrayed her when she came in to kiss me. It always makes me furious to suspect that people are praying for me. Now, Emily, do me one last favour. Herd everybody out of this room... everybody. I want to be alone, absolutely alone, for a few minutes."

Somehow Emily managed it. The aunts and cousins fluttered downstairs. Dr. Burnley was waiting impatiently in the hall.

"Won't you soon be ready? Teddy and Halsey are waiting for the signal to go into the drawing-room."

"Ilse wants a few minutes alone. Oh, Aunt Ida, I'm so glad you got here"... to a stout lady who was coming pantingly up the stairs. "We were afraid something had happened to prevent you."