"Oh, if I could only put things into words as I SEE them! Mr. Carpenter says, 'Strive... strive... keep on... words are your medium... make them your slaves... until they will say for you what you want them to say.' That is true... and I do try... but it seems to me there is something BEYOND words... any words... all words... something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it... and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn't have had if you hadn't reached for it.
"I remember one day last fall when Dean and I walked over the Delectable Mountain to the woods beyond it... fir woods mostly, but with one corner of splendid old pines. We sat under them and Dean read Peveril of the Peak and some of Scott's poems to me; and then he looked up into the big, plumy boughs and said,
"'The gods are talking in the pines... gods of the old northland... of the viking sagas. Star, do you know Emerson's lines?'
"And then he quoted them... I've remembered and loved them ever since.
"The gods talk in the breath of the wold, They talk in the shaken pine, And they fill the reach of the old seashore With dialogue divine; And the poet who overhears One random word they say Is the fated man of men Whom the ages must obey.
"Oh, that 'random word'... that is the Something that escapes me. I'm always listening for it... I know I can never hear it... my ear isn't attuned to it... but I am sure I hear at times a little, faint, far-off echo of it... and it makes me feel a delight that is like pain and a despair of ever being able to translate its beauty into any words I know.
"Still, it IS a pity I made such a goose of myself immediately after that wonderful experience.
"If I had just floated up behind Mr. Johnson, as velvet-footedly as darkness herself, and poured his tea gracefully from Great- grandmother Murray's silver teapot, like my shadow-woman pouring night into the white cup of Blair Valley, Aunt Elizabeth would be far better pleased with me than if I could write the most wonderful poem in the world.
"Cousin Jimmy is so different. I recited my poem to him this evening after we had finished with the catalogue and he thought it was beautiful. (HE couldn't know how far it fell short of what I had seen in my mind.) Cousin Jimmy composes poetry himself. He is very clever in spots. And in other spots, where his brain was hurt when Aunt Elizabeth pushed him into our New Moon well, he isn't ANYTHING. There's just BLANKNESS there. So people call him simple, and Aunt Ruth dares to say he hasn't sense enough to shoo a cat from cream. And yet if you put all his clever spots together there isn't anybody in Blair Water has half as much real cleverness as he has... not even Mr. Carpenter. The trouble is you can't put his clever spots together... there are always those gaps between. But I love Cousin Jimmy and I'm never in the least afraid of him when his queer spells come on him. Everybody else is... even Aunt Elizabeth, though perhaps it is remorse with her, instead of fear... except Perry. Perry always brags that he is never afraid of anything... doesn't know what fear is. I think that is very wonderful. I wish I could be so fearless. Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.
"'Cast it out, Jade,' he says... 'cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn't be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson... "always do what you are afraid to do."'
"But that is a counsel of perfection, as Dean says, and I don't believe I'll ever be able to attain to it. To be honest, I am afraid of a good many THINGS, but there are only two people in the world I'm truly afraid of. One is Mrs. Kent, and the other is Mad Mr. Morrison. I'm terribly afraid of him and I think almost every one is. His home is in Derry Pond, but he hardly ever stays there... he roams over the country looking for his lost bride. He was married only a few weeks when his young wife died, many years ago, and he has never been right in his mind since. He insists she is not dead, only lost, and that he will find her some time. He has grown old and bent, looking for her, but to him she is still young and fair.
"He was here one day last summer, but would not come in... just peered into the kitchen wistfully and said, 'Is Annie here?' He was quite gentle that day, but sometimes he is very wild and violent. He declares he always hears Annie calling to him... that her voice flits on before him... always before him, like my random word. His face is wrinkled and shrivelled and he looks like an old, old monkey. But the thing I hate most about him is his right hand... it is a deep blood-red all over... birth-marked. I can't tell why, but that hand fills me with horror. I could not bear to touch it. And sometimes he laughs to himself very horribly. The only living thing he seems to care for is his old black dog that always is with him. They say he will never ask for a bite of food for himself. If people do not offer it to him he goes hungry, but he will beg for his dog.
"Oh, I am terribly afraid of him, and I was so glad he didn't come into the house that day. Aunt Elizabeth looked after him, as he went away with his long, gray hair streaming in the wind, and said,
"'Fairfax Morrison was once a fine, clever, young man, with excellent prospects. Well, God's ways are very mysterious.'
"'That is why they are interesting,' I said.
"But Aunt Elizabeth frowned and told me not to be irreverent, as she always does when I say anything about God. I wonder why. She won't let Perry and me talk about Him, either, though Perry is really very much interested in Him and wants to find out all about Him. Aunt Elizabeth overheard me telling Perry one Sunday afternoon what I thought God was like, and she said it was scandalous.
"It wasn't! The trouble is, Aunt Elizabeth and I have different Gods, that is all. Everybody has a different God, I think. Aunt Ruth's, for instance, is one that punishes her enemies... sends 'judgments' on them. That seems to me to be about all the use He really is to her. Jim Cosgrain uses his to swear by. But Aunt Janey Milburn walks in the light of her God's countenance, every day, and shines with it.
"I have written myself out for to-night, and am going to bed. I know I have 'wasted words' in this diary... another of my literary faults, according to Mr. Carpenter.
"'You waste words, Jade... you spill them about too lavishly. Economy and restraint... that's what you need.
"He's right, of course, and in my essays and stories I try to practise what he preaches. But in my diary, which nobody sees but myself, or ever will see until after I'm dead, I like just to let myself go."
Emily looked at her candle... it, too, was almost burned out. She knew she could not have another that night... Aunt Elizabeth's rules were as those of Mede and Persian: she put away her diary in the little right-hand cupboard above the mantel, covered her dying fire, undressed and blew out her candle. The room slowly filled with the faint, ghostly snow-light of a night when a full moon is behind the driving storm-clouds. And just as Emily was ready to slip into her high black bedstead a sudden inspiration came... a splendid new idea for a story. For a minute she shivered reluctantly: the room was getting cold. But the idea would not be denied. Emily slipped her hand between the feather tick of her bed and the chaff mattress and produced a half-burned candle, secreted there for just such an emergency.
It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor ever will pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.