"I'm out to get subscriptions, not to make widows. I didn't expect it would be all plain sailing."
There was another man who growled all the way through Emily's explanations... and then, when she was primed for refusal, gave her five subscriptions.
"He likes to disappoint people," she told Ilse, as they went down the lane. "He would rather disappoint them agreeably than not at all."
One man swore volubly... "not at anything in particular, but just at large," as Ilse said; and another old man was on the point of subscribing when his wife interfered.
"I wouldn't if I was you, Father. The editor of that paper is an infidel."
"Very impident of him, to be sure," said "Father," and put his money back in his wallet.
"Delicious!" murmured Emily when she was out of ear-shot. "I must jot that down in my Jimmy-book." As a rule the women received them more politely than the men, but the men gave them more subscriptions. Indeed, the only woman who subscribed, was an elderly dame whose heart Emily won by listening sympathetically to a long account of the beauty and virtues of the said elderly lady's deceased pet Thomas-cat... though it must be admitted that she whispered aside to Ilse at its conclusion,
"Charlottetown papers please copy."
Their worst experience was with a man who treated them to a tirade of abuse because his politics differed from the politics of the Times and he seemed to hold them responsible for it. When he halted for breath Emily stood up.
"Kick the dog... then you'll feel better," she said calmly, as she stalked out. Ilse was white with rage. "Could you have believed people could be so detestable?" she exploded. "To rate US as if we were responsible for the politics of the Times! Well... Human Nature from a Canvasser's Point of View is to be the subject of my essay. I'll describe that man and picture myself telling him all the things I wanted to and didn't!"
Emily broke into laughter... and found her temper again.
"YOU can. I can't even take that revenge... my promise to Aunt Elizabeth binds me. I shall have to stick to facts. Come, let's not think of the brute. After all, we've got quite a lot of subscriptions already... and there's a clump of white birches in which it is reasonably certain a dryad lives... and that cloud over the firs looks like the faint, golden ghost of a cloud."
"Nevertheless, I should have liked to reduce that old vampire to powder," said Ilse.
At the next place of call, however, their experience was pleasant and they were asked to stay for supper. By sunset they had done reasonably well in the matter of subscriptions and had accumulated enough private jokes and by-words to furnish fun for many moons of reminiscence. They decided to canvass no more that night. They had not got quite as far as Hunter's Creek but Emily thought it would be safe to make a cross-cut from where they were. The Malvern woods were not so very extensive and no matter where they came out on the northern side of them, they would be able to see Wiltney.
They climbed a fence, went up across a hill pasture-field feathered with asters, and were swallowed up by the Malvern woods, crossed and recrossed by dozens of trails. The world disappeared behind them and they were alone in a realm of wild beauty. Emily thought the walk through the woods all too short, though tired Ilse, whose foot had turned on a pebble earlier in the day, found it unpleasantly long. Emily liked everything about it... she liked to see that shining gold head of Ilse's slipping through the grey- green trunks, under the long, swaying boughs... she liked the faint dream-like notes of sleepy birds... she liked the little wandering, whispering, tricksy wind o' dusk among the tree crests... she liked the incredibly delicate fragrance of wood flowers and growths... she liked the little ferns that brushed Ilse's silken ankles... she liked that slender, white, tantalizing thing which gleamed out for a moment adown the dim vista of a winding path... was it a birch or a wood-nymph? No matter... it had given her that stab of poignant rapture she called "the flash"... her priceless thing whose flitting, uncalculated moments were worth cycles of mere existence. Emily wandered on, thinking all of the loveliness of the road and nothing of the road itself, absently following limping Ilse, until at last the trees suddenly fell away before them and they found themselves in the open, with a wild sort of little pasture before them, and beyond, in the clear afterlight, a long, sloping valley, rather bare and desolate, where the farmsteads had no great appearance of thrift or comfort.
"Why... where are we?" said Ilse blankly. "I don't see anything like Wiltney."
Emily came abruptly out of her dreams and tried to get her bearings. The only landmark visible was a tall spire on a hill ten miles away.
"Why, there's the spire of the Catholic church at Indian Head," she said flatly. "And that must be Hardscrabble Road down there. We must have taken a wrong turning somewhere, Ilse... we've come out on the east side of the woods instead of the north."
"Then we're five miles from Wiltney," said Ilse despairingly. "I can never walk that far... and we can't go back through those woods... it will be pitch dark in a quarter of an hour. What on earth can we do?"
"Admit we're lost and make a beautiful thing of it," said Emily, coolly.
"Oh, we're lost all right, to all intents and purposes," moaned Ilse, climbing feebly up on the tumbledown fence and sitting there, "but I don't see how we're going to make it beautiful. We can't stay here all night. The only thing to do is to go down and see if they'll put us up at any of those houses. I don't like the idea. If that's Hardscrabble Road the people are all poor... and DIRTY. I've heard Aunt Net tell weird tales of Hardscrabble Road."
"Why can't we stay here all night?" said Emily. Ilse looked at Emily to see if she meant it... saw that she did.
"Where can we sleep? Hang ourselves over this fence?"
"Over on that haystack," said Emily. "It's only half finished... Hardscrabble fashion. The top is flat... there's a ladder leaning against it... the hay is dry and clean... the night is summer warm... there are no mosquitoes this time of year... we can put our raincoats over us to keep off the dew. Why not?"
Ilse looked at the haystack in the corner of the little pasture... and began to laugh assentingly.
"What will Aunt Ruth say?"
"Aunt Ruth need never know it. I'll be sly for once with a vengeance. Besides, I've always longed to sleep out in the open. It's been one of the secret wishes I believed were for ever unattainable, hedged about as I am with aunts. And now it has tumbled into my lap like a gift thrown down by the gods. It's really such good luck as to be uncanny."
"Suppose it rains," said Ilse, who, nevertheless, found the idea very alluring.
"It won't rain... there isn't a cloud in sight except those great fluffy rose-and-white ones piling up over Indian Head. They're the kind of clouds that always make me feel that I'd love to soar up on wings as eagles and swoop right down into the middle of them."
It was easy to ascend the little haystack. They sank down on its top with sighs of content, realizing that they were tireder than they had thought. The stack was built of the wild, fragrant grasses of the little pasture, and yielded an indescribably alluring aroma, such as no cultivated clover can give. They could see nothing but a great sky of faint rose above them, pricked with early stars, and the dim fringe of tree-tops around the field. Bats and swallows swooped darkly above them against the paling western gold... delicate fragrances exhaled from the mosses and ferns just over the fence under the trees... a couple of aspen poplars in the corner talked in silvery whispers, of the gossip of the woods. They laughed together in sheer lawless pleasure. An ancient enchantment was suddenly upon them, and the white magic of the sky and the dark magic of the woods wove the final spell of a potent incantation.