"Oh, God, as long as I live give me 'leave to work.' Thus pray I. Leave and courage."
III
"MAY 25, 19...
"Dear sunshine, what a potent medicine you are. All day I revelled in the loveliness of the wonderful white bridal world. And to- night I washed my soul free from dust in the aerial bath of a spring twilight. I chose the old hill road over the Delectable Mountain for its solitude and wandered happily along, pausing every few moments to think out fully some thought or fancy that came to me like a winged spirit. Then I prowled about the hill fields till long after dark, studying the stars with my field-glass. When I came in I felt as if I had been millions of miles away in the blue ether and all my old familiar surroundings seemed momentarily forgotten and strange.
"But there was one star at which I did not look. Vega of the Lyre."
IV
"MAY 30, 19...
"This evening, just when I was in the middle of a story Aunt Elizabeth said she wanted me to weed the onion-bed. So I had to lay down my pen and go out to the kitchen garden. But one can weed onions and think wonderful things at the same time, glory be. It is one of the blessings that we don't always have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing, praise the gods... for otherwise who would have any soul left? So I weeded the onion-bed and roamed the Milky Way in imagination."
V
"JUNE 10, 19...
"Cousin Jimmy and I felt like murderers last night. We were. Baby-killers at that!
"It is one of the springs when there is a crop of maple-trees. Every key that fell from a maple this year seems to have grown. All over the lawn and garden and old orchard tiny maple-trees have sprung up by the hundreds. And of course they have to be rooted out. It would never do to let them grow. So we pulled them up all day yesterday and felt so mean and guilty over it. The dear, tiny, baby things. They have a right to grow... a right to keep on growing into great, majestic, splendid trees. Who are we to deny it to them? I caught Cousin Jimmy in tears over the brutal necessity.
"'I sometimes think,' he whispered, 'that it's wrong to prevent anything from growing. I never grew up... not in my head.'
"And last night I had a horrible dream of being pursued by thousands of indignant young maple-tree ghosts. They crowded around me... tripped me up... thrashed me with their boughs... smothered me with their leaves. And I woke gasping for breath and nearly frightened to death, but with a splendid idea for a story in my head... The Vengeance of the Tree."
VI
"JUNE 15, 19...
"I picked strawberries on the banks of Blair Water this afternoon among the windy, sweet-smelling grasses. I love picking strawberries. The occupation has in it something of perpetual youth. The gods might have picked strawberries on high Olympus without injuring their dignity. A queen... or a poet... might stoop to it; a beggar has the privilege.
"And to-night I've been sitting here in my dear old room, with my dear books and dear pictures and dear little window of the kinky panes, dreaming in the soft, odorous summer twilight, while the robins are calling to each other in Lofty John's bush and the poplars are talking eerily of old, forgotten things.
"After all, it's not a bad old world... and the folks in it are not half bad either. Even Emily Byrd Star is decent in spots. Not altogether the false, fickle, ungrateful perversity she thinks she is in the wee sma's... not altogether the friendless, forgotten maiden she imagines she is on white nights... not altogether the failure she supposes bitterly when three MSS. are rejected in succession. And NOT altogether the coward she feels herself to be when she thinks of Frederick Kent's coming to Blair Water in July."
Chapter XIII
I
Emily was reading by the window of her room when she heard it... reading Alice Meynell's strange poem, "Letter From A Girl To Her Own Old Age," and thrilling mystically to its strange prophecies. Outside dusk was falling over the old New Moon garden; and clear through the dusk came the two high notes and the long low one of Teddy's old whistle in Lofty John's bush... the old, old call by which he had so often summoned her in the twilights of long ago.
Emily's book fell unheeded to the floor. She stood up, mist-pale, her eyes dilating into darkness. Was Teddy there? He had not been expected till the next week, though Ilse was coming that night. Could she have been mistaken? Could she have fancied it? Some chance robin call...
It came again. She knew as she had known at first that it was Teddy's whistle. There was no sound like it in the world. And it had been so long since she had heard it. He was there... waiting for her... calling for her. Should she go? She laughed under her breath. Go? She had no choice. She must go. Pride could not hold her back... bitter remembrance of the night she had waited for his call and it had not come could not halt her hurrying footsteps. Fear... shame... all were forgotten in the mad ecstasy of the moment. Without giving herself time to reflect that she was a Murray... only snatching a moment to look in the glass and assure herself that her ivory crepe dress was very becoming... how lucky it was that she had happened to put on that dress!... she flew down the stairs and through the garden. He was standing under the dark glamour of the old firs where the path ran through Lofty John's bush... bareheaded, smiling.
"Teddy."
"Emily."
Her hands were in his... her eyes were shining into his. Youth had come back... all that had once made magic made it again. Together once more after all those long weary years of alienation and separation. There was no longer any shyness... any stiffness... any sense or fear of change. They might have been children together again. But childhood had never known this wild, insurgent sweetness... this unconsidered surrender. Oh, she was his. By a word... a look... an intonation, he was still her master. What matter if, in some calmer mood, she might not quite like it... to be helpless... dominated like this? What matter if to-morrow she might wish she had not run so quickly, so eagerly, so unhesitatingly to meet him? To-night nothing mattered except that Teddy had come back.
Yet, outwardly, they did not meet as lovers... only as old, dear friends. There was so much to talk of... so much to be silent over as they paced up and down the garden walks, while the stars laughed through the dark at them... hinting... hinting...
Only one thing was not spoken of between them... the thing Emily had dreaded. Teddy made no reference to the mystery of that vision in the London station. It was as if it had never been. Yet Emily felt that it had drawn them together again after long misunderstanding. It was well not to speak of it... it was one of those mystic things... one of the gods' secrets... that must not be spoken of. Best forgotten now that its work was done. And yet... so unreasonable are we mortals!... Emily felt a ridiculous disappointment that he didn't speak of it. She didn't want him to speak of it. But if it had meant anything to him must he not have spoken of it?
"It's good to be here again," Teddy was saying. "Nothing seems changed here. Time has stood still in this Garden of Eden. Look, Emily, how bright Vega of the Lyre is. Our star. Have you forgotten it?"
Forgotten? How she had wished she COULD forget.
"They wrote me you were going to marry Dean," said Teddy abruptly.