Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"I wondered if it occurred to Teddy that I might need a little comforting too. A queer silence fell between us. We walked along the To-morrow Road... it has grown so beautiful that one wonders if any to-morrow can make it more beautiful... until we reached the fence of the pond-pasture and stood there under the grey-green gloom of the firs. I felt suddenly very happy and in those few minutes part of me planted a garden and laid out beautiful closets and bought a dozen solid silver teaspoons and arranged my attic and hemstitched a double damask table-cloth... and the other part of me just WAITED. Once I said it was a lovely evening... it wasn't... and a few minutes later I said it looked like rain... it didn't.

"But one HAD to say something.

"'I'm going to work hard... I'm going to get everything possible out of those two years,' Teddy said at last, staring at Blair Water and at the sky and at the sandhills, and at the green leisurely meadows, and at everything but me. 'Then, perhaps, when they're up I'll manage to get to Paris. To go abroad... to see the masterpieces of great artists... to live in their atmosphere... to see the scenes their genius immortalized... all I've been hungry for all my life. And when I come back... '

"Teddy stopped abruptly and turned to me. From the look in his eyes I thought he was going to kiss me... I really did. I don't know what I would have done if I couldn't have shut my own eyes.

"'And when I come back... ' he repeated... stopped again.

"'Yes?' I said. I don't deny to this my journal that I said it a trifle expectantly.

"'I'll make the name of Frederick Kent mean something in Canada!' said Teddy.

"I opened my eyes.

"Teddy was looking at the dim gold of Blair Water and scowling. Again I had a feeling that night air was not good for me. I shivered, said a few polite commonplaces, and left him there scowling. I wonder if he was too shy to kiss me... or just didn't want to.

"I COULD care tremendously for Teddy Kent if I let myself... if he wanted me to. It is evident he doesn't want me to. He is thinking of nothing but success and ambition and a career. He has forgotten our exchange of glances in the old John house... he has forgotten that he told me three years ago, on George Horton's tombstone, that I was the sweetest girl in the world. He will meet hundreds of wonderful girls out in the world... he will never think of me again.

"So be it.

"If Teddy doesn't want me I won't want him. That is a Murray tradition. But then I'm only half Murray. There is the Starr half to be considered. Luckily I have a career and an ambition also to think about, and a jealous goddess to serve, as Mr. Carpenter once told me. I think she might not tolerate a divided allegiance.

"I am conscious of three sensations.

"On top I am sternly composed and traditional.

"Underneath that, something that would hurt horribly if I let it is being kept down.

"And underneath that again is a queer feeling of relief that I still have my freedom.

"June 26, 19...

"All Shrewsbury is laughing over Ilse's last exploit and half Shrewsbury is disapproving. There is a certain very pompous young Senior who acts as usher in St. John's Church on Sundays, who takes himself very seriously and whom Ilse hates. Last Sunday she dressed herself up as an old woman, borrowing the toggery from a poor relation of Mrs. Adamson's who boards with her... a long, full, black skirt, bordered with crape, a widow's bonnet, and a heavy crape widow's veil. Arrayed thus, she tottered down the street and paused wistfully at the church steps as if she couldn't possibly climb them. Young Pomposity saw her, and, having some decent instincts behind his pomposity, went gallantly to her assistance. He took her shaking, mittened hand... it WAS shaking all right... Ilse was in spasms of laughter behind her veil... and assisted her frail, trembling feet up the steps, through the porch, up the aisle and into a pew. Ilse murmured a broken blessing on him, handed him a tract, sat through the service and then tottered home. Next day, of course, the story was all through the school and the poor lad was so guyed by the other boys that all his pomposity oozed out... temporarily at least... under the torture. Perhaps the incident may do him a world of good.

"Of course I scolded Ilse. She is a glad, daring creature and counts no cost. She will always do whatever she takes it into her head to do, even if it were to turn a somersault in the church aisle. I love her... love her... love her; and what I will do without her next year I do not know. Our to-morrows will always be separated after this... and grow apart... and when we meet occasionally it will be as strangers. Oh, I know... I know.

"Ilse was furious over what she called Perry's 'presumption' in thinking I could ever marry him.

"'Oh, it was not presumption... it was condescension,' I said, laughing. 'Perry belongs to the great ducal house of Carabas.'

"'Oh, he'll succeed, of course. But there'll always be a flavour of Stovepipe Town about him,' retorted Ilse.

"'Why have you always been so hard on Perry, Ilse?' I protested.

"'He's such a cackling oaf,' said Ilse morosely.

"'Oh, well, he's just at the age when a boy knows everything,' I said, feeling quite wise and elderly. 'He will grow more ignorant and endurable after a while,' I went on, feeling epigrammatic. 'And he has improved in these Shrewsbury years,' I concluded, feeling smug.

"'You talk as if he were a cabbage,' fumed Ilse. 'For heaven's sake, Emily, don't be so superior and patronizing!'

"There are times when Ilse is good for me. I know I deserved that.

"June 27, 19...

"Last night I dreamed I stood in the old summer-house at New Moon and saw the Lost Diamond sparkling on the floor at my feet. I picked it up in delight. It lay in my hand for a moment... then it seemed to elude my grasp, flash through the air, leaving a long, slender trail of brilliance behind it, and become a star in the western sky, just above the edge of the world. 'It is my star... I must reach it before it sets,' I thought, and started out. Suddenly Dean was beside me... and he, too, was following the star. I felt I must go slowly because he was lame and could not go fast... and all the time the star sank lower and lower. Yet I felt I couldn't leave Dean. Then just as suddenly... things DO happen like that in dreams... so nice... without a bit of trouble... Teddy was beside me, too, holding out his hands to me, with the look in his eyes I had seen twice before. I put my hands in his... and he drew me towards him... I was holding up my face... then Dean gave a bitter cry, 'My star has set.' I turned my head for just a glance... the star was gone... and I woke up in a dull, ugly, rainy dawn with no star... no Teddy... no kiss.

"I wonder what the dream meant... if it meant anything. I must not think it did. It is a Murray tradition not to be superstitious.

"June 28, 19...

"This is my last night in Shrewsbury. 'Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home'... to-morrow, when Cousin Jimmy is coming for me and my trunk in the old express waggon and I will ride back in that chariot of state to New Moon.

"These three Shrewsbury years seemed so long to me when I looked ahead to them. And now, looking back, they seem as yesterday when it has passed. I think I've won something in them. I don't use so many italics... I've acquired a little poise and self-control... I've got a bit of bitter worldly wisdom... and I've learned to smile over a rejection slip. I think that has been the hardest lesson of all to learn... and doubtless the most necessary.

"As I look back over these three years some things stand out so much more clearly and significantly than others, as if they had a special meaning all their own. And not always the things one might expect either. For instance, Evelyn's enmity and even that horrible moustache incident seem faded and unimportant. But the moment I saw my first poem in Garden and Woodland... oh, that WAS a moment... my walk to New Moon and back the night of the play... the writing of that queer little poem of mine that Mr. Carpenter tore up... my night on the haystack under the September moon... that splendid old woman who spanked the King... the moment in class when I discovered Keats' lines about the 'airy voices'... and that other moment in the old John house when Teddy looked into my eyes... oh, it seems to me these are the things I will remember in the halls of Eternity when Evelyn Blake's sneers and the old John house scandal and Aunt Ruth's nagging and the routine of lessons and examinations have been for ever forgotten. And my promise to Aunt Elizabeth HAS helped me, as Mr. Carpenter predicted. Not in my diary perhaps... I just let myself GO here... one must have a 'vent'... but in my stories and Jimmy-books.