Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"The time will come... the time will come," said Cousin Jimmy encouragingly. "Wait a while... just wait a while. If we don't chase things... sometimes the things following us can catch up. 'Through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding is it established. And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches'... all precious and pleasant riches, Emily. Proverbs twenty-fourth, third and fifth."

He let Emily out and bolted the door. He put out all the candles but one. He glared at it for a few moments, then, satisfied that Elizabeth could not hear him, Cousin Jimmy said fervently,

"Ruth Dutton can go to... to... to... " Cousin Jimmy's courage failed him, "... to heaven!"

Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty... and Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.

As she walked along she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily's nature... a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own... the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.

The big fir-trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was ever anything so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean- limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them... of little children's dear hands folded in exquisite slumber... of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils... of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night... all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.

And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad... things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp... she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses... something frisked across her path... it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person; the trees put on half-pleasing, half- terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.

"One loses so much when one becomes incredulous," said Emily... and then thought that was a rather clever remark and wished she had a Jimmy-book to write it down.

So, having washed her soul free from bitterness in the aerial bath of the spring night and tingling from head to foot with the wild, strange, sweet life of the spirit, she came to Aunt Ruth's when the faint, purplish hills east of the harbour were growing clear under a whitening sky. She had expected to find the door still locked; but the knob turned as she tried it and she went in.

Aunt Ruth was up and was lighting the kitchen fire.

On the way from New Moon Emily had thought over a dozen different ways of saying what she meant to say... and now she used not one of them. At the last moment an impish inspiration came to her. Before Aunt Ruth could... or would... speak Emily said,

"Aunt Ruth, I've come back to tell you that I forgive you, but that this must not happen again."

To tell the truth, Mistress Ruth Dutton was considerably relieved that Emily HAD come back. She had been afraid of Elizabeth and Laura... Murray family rows were bitter things... and truly a little afraid of the results to Emily herself if she had really gone to New Moon in those thin shoes and that insufficient coat. For Ruth Dutton was not a fiend... only a rather stupid, stubborn little barnyard fowl trying to train up a skylark. She was honestly afraid that Emily might catch a cold and go into consumption. And if Emily took it into her head NOT to come back to Shrewsbury... well, that would "make talk" and Ruth Dutton hated "talk" when she or her doings was the subject. So, all things considered, she decided to ignore the impertinence of Emily's greeting.

"Did you spend the night on the streets?" she asked grimly.

"Oh, dear no... I went out to New Moon... had a chat with Cousin Jimmy and some lunch... then walked back."

"Did Elizabeth see you? Or Laura?"

"No. They were asleep."

Mrs. Dutton reflected that this was just as well.

"Well," she said coldly, "you have been guilty of great ingratitude, Em'ly, but I'll forgive you this time"... then stopped abruptly. Hadn't that been said already this morning? Before she could think of a substitute remark Emily had vanished upstairs. Mistress Ruth Dutton was left with the unpleasant sensation that, somehow or other, she had not come out of the affair quite as triumphantly as she should have.

"April 28, 19...

"This was my week-end at New Moon and I came back this morning. Consequently this is blue Monday and I'm homesick. Aunt Ruth, too, is always a little more UNLIVEABLE on Mondays... or seems so by contrast with Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth. Cousin Jimmy wasn't quite so nice this week-end as he usually is. He had several of his queer spells and was a bit grumpy for two reasons: in the first place, several of his young apple-trees are dying because they were girdled by mice in the winter; and in the second place he can't induce Aunt Elizabeth to try the new creamers that every one else is using. For my own part I am secretly glad that she won't. I don't want our beautiful old dairy and the glossy brown milk pans to be improved out of existence. I can't think of New Moon without a dairy.

"When I could get Cousin Jimmy's mind off his grievances we explored the Carlton catalogue and discussed the best selections to make for my two dollars' worth of owl's laughter. We planned a dozen different combinations and beds, and got several hundred dollars' worth of fun out of it, but finally settled on a long, narrow bed full of asters... lavender down the middle, white around it and a border of pale pink, with clumps of deep purple for sentinels at the four corners. I am sure it will be beautiful: and I shall look at its September loveliness and think, 'THIS came out of my head!'

"I have taken another step in the Alpine Path. Last week the Ladies' Own Journal accepted my poem, The Wind Woman, and gave me two subscriptions to the Journal for it. No cash... but that may come yet. I MUST make enough money before very long to pay Aunt Ruth every cent my living with her has cost her. Then she won't be able to twit me with the expense I am to her. She hardly misses a day without some hint of it... 'No, Mrs. Beatty, I feel I can't give quite as much to missions this year as usual... my expenses have been much heavier, you know'... 'Oh, no, Mr. Morrison, your new goods are beautiful but I can't afford a silk dress THIS spring'... 'This davenport should really be upholstered again... it's getting fearfully shabby... but it's out of the question now for a year or two.' So it goes.