"I... don't... understand," gasped Emily.
DEAR MISS STARR:...
We take pleasure in advising you that our readers report favourably with regard to your story The Moral of the Rose and if mutually satisfactory arrangements can be made we shall be glad to add the book to our next season's lists. We shall also be interested in hearing of your plans with regard to future writing.
Very sincerely yours, etc.
"I don't understand... " said Emily again.
Cousin Jimmy could hold himself in no longer. He made a sound between a whoop and hurrah. Emily flew across the room and dragged him in.
"Cousin Jimmy, WHAT does this mean? You must know something about it... how did the House of Wareham ever get my book?"
"Have they really accepted it?" demanded Cousin Jimmy.
"Yes. And I never sent it to them. I wouldn't have supposed it was the least use... the WAREHAMS. AM I dreaming?"
"No. I'll tell you... don't be mad now, Emily. You mind Elizabeth asked me to tidy up the garret a month ago. I was moving that old cardboard box you keep a lot of stuff in and the bottom fell out. Everything went... so... all over the garret. I gathered 'em up... and your book manuscript was among 'em. I happened to look at a page... and then I set down... and Elizabeth came up an hour later and found me still a-sitting there on my hams reading. I'd forgot everything. My, but she was mad! The garret not half done and dinner ready. But I didn't mind what she said... I was thinking, 'If that book made me forget everything like that there's SOMETHING in it. I'LL send it somewhere.' And I didn't know anywhere to send it but to the Warehams. I'd always heard of them. And I didn't know HOW to send it... but I just stuffed it in an old cracker box and mailed it to them offhand."
"Didn't you even send stamps for its return?" gasped Emily, horrified.
"No, never thought of it. Maybe that's why they took it. Maybe the other firms sent it back because you sent stamps."
"Hardly." Emily laughed and found herself crying.
"Emily, you ain't mad at me, are you?"
"No... no... darling... I'm only so flabbergasted, as you say yourself, that I don't know what to say or do. It's all so... the WAREHAMS!"
"I've been watching the mails ever since," chuckled Cousin Jimmy. "Elizabeth has been thinking I've gone clear daft at last. If the story had come back I was going to smuggle it back to the garret... I wasn't going to let you know. But when I saw that thin envelope... I remembered you said once the thin envelopes always had good news... dear little Emily, don't cry!"
"I can't... help it... and oh, I'm sorry for what I called you, little Fourteen. You weren't silly... you were wise... you knew."
"It's gone to her head a little," said Cousin Jimmy to himself. "No wonder... after so many set-backs. But she'll soon be quite sensible again."
Chapter XXI
I
Teddy and Ilse were coming home for a brief ten days in July. How was it, wondered Emily, that they always came together? That couldn't be just a coincidence. She dreaded the visit and wished it were over. It would be good to see Ilse again... somehow she could never feel a stranger with Ilse. No matter how long she was away, the moment she came back you found the old Ilse. But she did not want to see Teddy. Teddy who had forgotten her. Who had never written since he went away last. Teddy who was already famous, as a painter of lovely women. So famous and so successful that... Ilse wrote... he was going to give up magazine work. Emily felt a certain relief when she read that. She would no longer dread to open a magazine lest she see her own face... or soul... looking at her out of some illustration... with "Frederick Kent" scrawled in the corner, as if to say "know all men by these presents that this girl is mine." Emily resented less the pictures which looked like her whole face than the ones in which only the eyes were hers. To be able to paint her eyes like that Teddy MUST know everything that was in her soul. The thought always filled her with fury and shame... and a sense of horrible helplessness. She would not... could not... tell Teddy to stop using her as a model. She had never stooped to acknowledge to him that she had noticed any resemblance to herself in his illustrations... she never WOULD stoop.
And now he was coming home... might be home any time. If only she could go away... on any pretence... for a few weeks. Miss Royal was wanting her to go to New York for a visit. But it would never do to go away when Ilse was coming.
Well... Emily shook herself. What an idiot she was! Teddy was coming home, a dutiful son, to see his mother... and he would doubtless be glad enough to see old friends when their actual presence recalled them to his memory; and why should there be anything difficult about it? She must get rid of this absurd self- consciousness. She would.
She was sitting at her open window. The night outside was like a dark, heavy, perfumed flower. An expectant night... a night when things intended to happen. Very still. Only the loveliest of muted sounds... the faintest whisper of trees, the airiest sigh of wind, the half-heard, half-felt moan of the sea.
"Oh, beauty!" whispered Emily, passionately, lifting her hands to the stars. "What would I have done without you all these years?"
Beauty of night... and perfume... and mystery. Her soul was filled with it. There was, just then, room for nothing else. She bent out, lifting her face to the jewelled sky... rapt, ecstatic.
Then she heard it. A soft, silvery signal in Lofty John's bush... two higher notes and one long, low one... the old, old call that would once have sent her with flying feet to the shadows of the firs.
Emily sat as if turned to stone, her white face framed in the vines that clustered round her window. He was there... Teddy was there... in Lofty John's bush... waiting for her... calling to her as of old. Expecting her!
Almost she had sprung to her feet... almost she had run downstairs and out to the shadows... the beautiful, perfumed shadows where he was waiting for her. But...
Was he only trying to see if he still had the old power over her?
He had gone away two years ago without even a written word of farewell. Would the Murray pride condone that? Would the Murray pride run to meet the man who had held her of so little account? The Murray pride would not. Emily's young face took on lines of stubborn determination in the dim light. She would not go. Let him call as he might. "Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad," indeed! No more of that for Emily Byrd Starr. Teddy Kent need not imagine that he could come and go as went the years and find her meekly waiting to answer his lordly signal.
Again the call came... twice. He was there... so close to her. In a moment if she liked, she could be beside him... her hands in his... his eyes looking into hers... perhaps...
He had gone away without saying good-bye to her!
Emily rose deliberately and lighted her lamp. She sat down at her desk near the window, took up her pen and fell to writing... or a semblance of writing. Steadily she wrote... next day she found sheets covered with aimless repetitions of old poems learned in school-days... and as she wrote she listened. Would the call come again? Once more? It did not. When she was quite sure it was not coming again she put out her light and lay down on her bed with her face in the pillow. Pride was quite satisfied. She had shown him she was not to be whistled off and on. Oh, how thankful she felt that she had been firm enough not to go. For which reason, no doubt, her pillow was wet with savage tears.
II
He came next night... with Ilse... in his new car. And there was handshaking and gaiety and laughter... oh, a great deal of laughter. Ilse was looking radiant in a big yellow hat trimmed with crimson roses. One of those preposterous hats only Ilse could get away with. How unlike the neglected, almost ragged Ilse of olden days. Yet just as lovable as ever. Nobody could help loving Ilse. Teddy was charming, too... with just the right amount of mingled interest and detachment an old resident coming back to childhood's home would naturally feel. Interested in everything and everybody. Oh, yes, indeed, hugely! Ilse tells me you're bringing out a book. Capital. What's it about? Must get a copy. Blair Water quite unchanged. Delightful to come back to a place where time seems to stand still.