Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"I suggest we work along the Western Road and its branches as far as Hunter's Creek, to-night," said Emily. "We ought to get there by sunset. Then we can hit the gypsy trail across the country, through the Malvern woods and come out on the other side of them, quite near Wiltney. It's only half an hour's walk, while around by the Malvern Road it's an hour. What a lovely afternoon this is!"

It was a lovely afternoon... such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour. Harvest fields drenched in sunshine lay all around them: the austere charm of northern firs made wonderful the ways over which they walked: goldenrod beribboned the fences and the sacrificial fires of willow-herb were kindled on all the burnt lands along the sequestered roads back among the hills. But they soon discovered that canvassing for subscriptions was not all fun... though, to be sure, as Ilse said, they found plenty of human nature for their essays.

There was the old man who said "Humph" at the end of every remark Emily made. When finally asked for a subscription he gruffly said "No."

"I'm glad you didn't say 'Humph' this time," said Emily. "It was getting monotonous."

The old fellow stared... then chuckled.

"Are ye any relation to the proud Murrays? I worked at a place they call New Moon when I was young and one of the Murray gals... Elizabeth her name was... had a sort of high-and-lofty way o' looking at ye, just like yours."

"My mother was a Murray."

"I was thinkin' so... ye bear the stamp of the breed. Well, here's two dollars an' ye kin put my name down. I'd ruther see the special edition 'fore I subscribe. I don't favour buying bearskins afore I see the bear. But it's worth two dollars to see a proud Murray coming down to askin' old Billy Scott fer a subscription."

"Why didn't you slay him with a glance?" asked Ilse as they walked away.

Emily was walking savagely, with her head held high and her eyes snapping.

"I'm out to get subscriptions, not to make widows. I didn't expect it would be all plain sailing."

There was another man who growled all the way through Emily's explanations... and then, when she was primed for refusal, gave her five subscriptions.

"He likes to disappoint people," she told Ilse, as they went down the lane. "He would rather disappoint them agreeably than not at all."

One man swore volubly... "not at anything in particular, but just at large," as Ilse said; and another old man was on the point of subscribing when his wife interfered.

"I wouldn't if I was you, Father. The editor of that paper is an infidel."

"Very impident of him, to be sure," said "Father," and put his money back in his wallet.

"Delicious!" murmured Emily when she was out of ear-shot. "I must jot that down in my Jimmy-book." As a rule the women received them more politely than the men, but the men gave them more subscriptions. Indeed, the only woman who subscribed, was an elderly dame whose heart Emily won by listening sympathetically to a long account of the beauty and virtues of the said elderly lady's deceased pet Thomas-cat... though it must be admitted that she whispered aside to Ilse at its conclusion,

"Charlottetown papers please copy."

Their worst experience was with a man who treated them to a tirade of abuse because his politics differed from the politics of the Times and he seemed to hold them responsible for it. When he halted for breath Emily stood up.

"Kick the dog... then you'll feel better," she said calmly, as she stalked out. Ilse was white with rage. "Could you have believed people could be so detestable?" she exploded. "To rate US as if we were responsible for the politics of the Times! Well... Human Nature from a Canvasser's Point of View is to be the subject of my essay. I'll describe that man and picture myself telling him all the things I wanted to and didn't!"

Emily broke into laughter... and found her temper again.

"YOU can. I can't even take that revenge... my promise to Aunt Elizabeth binds me. I shall have to stick to facts. Come, let's not think of the brute. After all, we've got quite a lot of subscriptions already... and there's a clump of white birches in which it is reasonably certain a dryad lives... and that cloud over the firs looks like the faint, golden ghost of a cloud."

"Nevertheless, I should have liked to reduce that old vampire to powder," said Ilse.

At the next place of call, however, their experience was pleasant and they were asked to stay for supper. By sunset they had done reasonably well in the matter of subscriptions and had accumulated enough private jokes and by-words to furnish fun for many moons of reminiscence. They decided to canvass no more that night. They had not got quite as far as Hunter's Creek but Emily thought it would be safe to make a cross-cut from where they were. The Malvern woods were not so very extensive and no matter where they came out on the northern side of them, they would be able to see Wiltney.

They climbed a fence, went up across a hill pasture-field feathered with asters, and were swallowed up by the Malvern woods, crossed and recrossed by dozens of trails. The world disappeared behind them and they were alone in a realm of wild beauty. Emily thought the walk through the woods all too short, though tired Ilse, whose foot had turned on a pebble earlier in the day, found it unpleasantly long. Emily liked everything about it... she liked to see that shining gold head of Ilse's slipping through the grey- green trunks, under the long, swaying boughs... she liked the faint dream-like notes of sleepy birds... she liked the little wandering, whispering, tricksy wind o' dusk among the tree crests... she liked the incredibly delicate fragrance of wood flowers and growths... she liked the little ferns that brushed Ilse's silken ankles... she liked that slender, white, tantalizing thing which gleamed out for a moment adown the dim vista of a winding path... was it a birch or a wood-nymph? No matter... it had given her that stab of poignant rapture she called "the flash"... her priceless thing whose flitting, uncalculated moments were worth cycles of mere existence. Emily wandered on, thinking all of the loveliness of the road and nothing of the road itself, absently following limping Ilse, until at last the trees suddenly fell away before them and they found themselves in the open, with a wild sort of little pasture before them, and beyond, in the clear afterlight, a long, sloping valley, rather bare and desolate, where the farmsteads had no great appearance of thrift or comfort.

"Why... where are we?" said Ilse blankly. "I don't see anything like Wiltney."

Emily came abruptly out of her dreams and tried to get her bearings. The only landmark visible was a tall spire on a hill ten miles away.

"Why, there's the spire of the Catholic church at Indian Head," she said flatly. "And that must be Hardscrabble Road down there. We must have taken a wrong turning somewhere, Ilse... we've come out on the east side of the woods instead of the north."

"Then we're five miles from Wiltney," said Ilse despairingly. "I can never walk that far... and we can't go back through those woods... it will be pitch dark in a quarter of an hour. What on earth can we do?"

"Admit we're lost and make a beautiful thing of it," said Emily, coolly.

"Oh, we're lost all right, to all intents and purposes," moaned Ilse, climbing feebly up on the tumbledown fence and sitting there, "but I don't see how we're going to make it beautiful. We can't stay here all night. The only thing to do is to go down and see if they'll put us up at any of those houses. I don't like the idea. If that's Hardscrabble Road the people are all poor... and DIRTY. I've heard Aunt Net tell weird tales of Hardscrabble Road."

"Why can't we stay here all night?" said Emily. Ilse looked at Emily to see if she meant it... saw that she did.