It was quite true. Ilse was always good-tempered with Emily, presenting a baffling front of politeness unbroken by a single flash of her old wild spirit. Emily felt that nothing could have been more welcome than one of Ilse's stormy rages. It might break the ice that was forming so relentlessly between them, and release the pent-up flood of old affection.
One of the keenest stings in the situation was that Evelyn Blake was quite well aware of the state of affairs between Ilse and Emily. The mockery of her long brown eyes and the hidden sneer in her casual sentences betrayed her knowledge and her enjoyment of it. This was gall and wormwood to Emily, who felt that she had no defence against it. Evelyn was a girl whom intimacies between other girls annoyed, and the friendship between Ilse and Emily had annoyed her especially. It had been so complete... so absorbing. There had been no place in it for anyone else. And Evelyn did not like to feel that she was barred out... that there was some garden enclosed, into which she might not enter. She was therefore hugely delighted to think that this vexingly beautiful friendship between two girls she secretly hated was at an end.
CHAPTER 9. A SUPREME MOMENT
Emily came downstairs laggingly, feeling that all the colour and music had somehow gone out of life, and that it stretched before her in unbroken greyness. Ten minutes later she was encompassed by rainbows and the desert of her future had blossomed like the rose.
The cause of this miracle of transformation was a thin letter which Aunt Ruth handed to her with an Aunt Ruthian sniff. There was a magazine, too, but Emily did not at first regard it. She saw the address of a floral firm on the corner of the envelope, and sensed at touch the promising thinness of it... so different from the plump letters full of rejected verses.
Her heart beat violently as she tore it open and glanced over the typewritten sheet.
MISS EMILY B. STARR, Shrewsbury, P.E. Island, Can.
DEAR MISS STARR:
It gives us great pleasure to tell you that your poem, Owl's Laughter has been found available for use in Garden and Woodland. It appears in the current issue of our magazine, a copy of which we are sending you. Your verses have the true ring and we shall be glad to see more of your work.
It is not our custom to pay cash for our contributions but you may select two dollars' worth of seeds or plants from our catalogue to be sent to your address prepaid.
Thanking you, We remain, Yours truly,
THOS. E. CARLTON & CO.
Emily dropped the letter and seized upon the magazine with trembling fingers. She grew dizzy... the letters danced before her eyes... she felt a curious sensation of choking... for there on the front page, in a fine border of curlicues, was her poem... Owl's Laughter, by Emily Byrd Starr.
It was the first sweet bubble on the cup of success and we must not think her silly if it intoxicated her. She carried the letter and magazine off to her room to gloat over it, blissfully unconscious that Aunt Ruth was doing an extra deal of sniffing. Aunt Ruth felt very suspicious of suddenly crimsoned cheek and glowing eye and general air of rapture and detachment from earth.
In her room Emily sat down and read her poem as if she had never seen it before. There was, to be sure, a printer's error in it that made the flesh creep on her bones... it was awful to have HUNTER'S MOON come out as HUNTER'S MOAN... but it was her poem... HERS... accepted by and printed in a REAL magazine.
And PAID for! To be sure a cheque would have been more acceptable... two dollars all her own, earned by her own pen, would have seemed like riches to Emily. But what fun she and Cousin Jimmy would have selecting the seeds! She could see in imagination that beautiful flower-bed next summer in the New Moon garden... a glory of crimson and purple and blue and gold.
And what was it the letter said?
"Your verses have the true ring and we shall be glad to see more of your work."
Oh, bliss... oh, rapture! The world was hers... the Alpine Path was as good as climbed... what signified a few more scrambles to the summit?
Emily could not remain in that dark little room with its oppressive ceiling and unfriendly furniture. Lord Byron's funereal expression was an insult to her happiness. She threw on her wraps and hurried out to the Land of Uprightness.
As she went through the kitchen, Aunt Ruth, naturally more suspicious than ever, inquired with markedly bland sarcasm,
"Is the house on fire? Or the harbour?"
"Neither. It's my soul that's on fire," said Emily with an inscrutable smile. She shut the door behind her and at once forgot Aunt Ruth and every other disagreeable thing and person. How beautiful the world was... how beautiful life was... how wonderful the Land of Uprightness was! The young firs along the narrow path were lightly powdered with snow, as if, thought Emily, a veil of aerial lace had been tricksily flung over austere young Druid priestesses foresworn to all such frivolities of vain adornment. Emily decided she would write that sentence down in her Jimmy-book when she went back. On and on she flitted to the crest of the hill. She felt as if she were flying... her feet COULDN'T really be touching the earth. On the hill she paused and stood, a rapt, ecstatic figure with clasped hands and eyes of dream. It was just after sunset. Out, over the ice-bound harbour, great clouds piled themselves up in dazzling, iridescent masses. Beyond were gleaming white hills with early stars over them. Between the dark trunks of the old fir trees to her right, far away through the crystal evening air, rose a great, round, full moon.
"'It has the true ring,'" murmured Emily, tasting the incredible words anew. "They want to see more of my work! Oh, if only Father could see my verses in print!"
Years before, in the old house at Maywood, her father, bending over her as she slept had said, "She will love deeply... suffer terribly... she will have glorious moments to compensate."
This was one of her glorious moments. She felt a wonderful lightness of spirit... a soul-stirring joy in mere existence. The creative faculty, dormant through the wretched month just passed, suddenly burned in her soul again like a purifying flame. It swept away all morbid, poisonous, rankling things. All at once Emily KNEW that Ilse had never done THAT. She laughed joyously... amusedly.
"What a little fool I've been! Oh, SUCH a little fool! Of course, Ilse never did it. There's nothing between us now... it's gone... gone... gone. I'll go right to her and tell her so."
Emily hurried back adown her little path. The Land of Uprightness lay all about her, mysterious in the moonlight, wrapped in the exquisite reticence of winter woods. She seemed one with its beauty and charm and mystery. With a sudden sigh of the Wind Woman through the shadowy aisles came "the flash" and Emily went dancing to Ilse with the afterglow of it in her soul.
She found Ilse alone... threw her arms around her... hugged her fiercely.
"Ilse, do forgive me," she cried. "I shouldn't have doubted you... I DID doubt you... but now I know... I KNOW. You WILL forgive me?"
"You young goat," said Ilse.
Emily loved to be called a young goat. This was the old Ilse... HER Ilse.
"Oh, Ilse, I've been so unhappy."
"Well, don't bawl over it," said Ilse. "I haven't been very hilarious myself. Look here, Emily, I've got something to tell you. Shut up and listen. That day I met Evelyn at the Shoppe and we went back for some book she wanted and we found you sound asleep... so sound asleep that you never stirred when I pinched your cheek. Then, just for devilment I picked up a black crayon and said, 'I'm going to draw a moustache on her'... shut up! Evelyn pulled a long face and said, 'Oh, no! that would be MEAN, don't you think?' I hadn't had the slightest intention of doing it... I'd only spoken in fun... but that shrimp Evelyn's ungodly affectation of righteousness made me so mad that I decided I would do it... shut UP!... I meant to wake you right up and hold a glass before you, that was all. But before I could do it Kate Errol came in and wanted us to go along with her and I threw down the chalk and went out. That's all, Emily, honest to Caesar. But it made me feel ashamed and silly later on... I'd say a bit conscience-stricken if I had such a thing as a conscience, because I felt that I must have put the idea into the head of whoever did do it, and so was responsible in a way. And then I saw you distrusted me... and that made me mad... not tempery-mad, you see, but a nasty, cold, INSIDE sort of madness. I thought you had no business even to suspect that I could have done such a thing as let you go to class like that. And I thought, since you did, you could go on doing it... I wouldn't say one word to put matters straight. Golly, but I'm glad you're through with seein' things."