The gazing-ball was gone... the room in the Disappointed House was gone. She was no longer sitting in her chair looking on. She was IN that strange, great room... she was among those throngs of people... she was standing by the man who was waiting impatiently before a ticket-window. As he turned his face and their eyes met she saw that it was Teddy... she saw the amazed recognition in his eyes. And she knew, indisputably that he was in some terrible danger... and that SHE must save him.
"Teddy. COME."
It seemed to her that she caught his hand and pulled him away from the window. Then she was drifting back from him... back... back... and he was following... running after her... heedless of the people he ran into... following... following... she was back on the chair... outside of the gazing-ball... in it she still saw the station-room shrunk again to play-size... and that one figure running... still running... the cloud again... filling the ball... whitening... wavering... thinning... clearing. Emily was lying back in her chair staring fixedly into Aunt Nancy's gazing-ball, where the living-room was reflected calmly and silverly, with a dead-white spot that was her face and one solitary taper-light twinkling like an impish star.
IV
Emily, feeling as if she had died and come back to life, got herself out of the Disappointed House somehow, and locked the door. The clouds had cleared away and the world was dim and unreal in starlight. Hardly realizing what she was doing she turned her face seaward through the spruce wood... down the long, windy, pasture- field... over the dunes to the sandshore... along it like a haunted, driven creature in a weird, uncanny half-lit kingdom. The sea afar out was like grey satin half hidden in a creeping fog but it washed against the sands as she passed in little swishing, mocking ripples. She was shut in between the misty sea and the high, dark sand-dunes. If she could only go on so forever... never have to turn back and confront the unanswerable question the night had put to her.
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.
V
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.
Chapter XI
I
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... "