"Such loveliness as this doesn't seem real," murmured Emily. "It's so wonderful it HURTS me. I'm afraid to speak out loud for fear it will vanish. Were we vexed with that horrid old man and his beastly politics to-day, Ilse? Why, he doesn't exist... not in THIS world, anyway. I hear the Wind Woman running with soft, soft footsteps over the hill. I shall always think of the wind as a personality. She is a shrew when she blows from the north... a lonely seeker when she blows from the east... a laughing girl when she comes from the west... and to-night from the south a little grey fairy."
"How do you think of such things?" asked Ilse. This was a question which, for some mysterious reason, always annoyed Emily.
"I don't think of them... they COME," she answered rather shortly.
Ilse resented the tone.
"For heaven's sake, Emily, don't be such a crank!" she exclaimed.
For a second the wonderful world in which Emily was at the moment living, trembled and wavered like a disturbed reflection in water. Then...
"Don't let's quarrel HERE," she implored. "One of us might push the other off the haystack."
Ilse burst out laughing. Nobody can really laugh and keep angry. So their night under the stars was not spoiled by a fight. They talked for a while in whispers, of schoolgirl secrets and dreams and fears. They even talked of getting married some time in the future. Of course they shouldn't have, but they DID. Ilse, it appeared, was slightly pessimistic in regard to her matrimonial chances.
"The boys like me as a pal but I don't believe any one will ever really fall in love with me."
"Nonsense," said Emily reassuringly. "Nine out of ten men will fall in love with you."
"But it will be the tenth I'll want," persisted Ilse gloomily.
And then they talked of almost everything else in the world. Finally, they made a solemn compact that whichever one of them died first was to come back to the other if it were possible. How many such compacts have been made! And has even one ever been kept?
Then Ilse grew drowsy and fell asleep. But Emily did not sleep... did not want to sleep. It was too dear a night to go to sleep, she felt. She wanted to lie awake for the pleasure of it and think over a thousand things.
Emily always looked back to that night spent under the stars as a sort of milestone. Everything in it and of it ministered to her. It filled her with its beauty, which she must later give to the world. She wished that she could coin some magic word that might express it.
The round moon rose. Did an old witch in a high-crowned hat ride past it on a broomstick? No, it was only a bat and the little tip of a hemlock-tree by the fence. She made a poem on it at once, the lines singing themselves through her consciousness without effort. With one side of her nature she liked writing prose best... with the other she liked writing poetry. This side was uppermost to-night and her very thoughts ran into rhyme. A great, pulsating star hung low in the sky over Indian Head. Emily gazed on it and recalled Teddy's old fancy of his previous existence in a star. The idea seized on her imagination and she spun a dream-life, lived in some happy planet circling round that mighty, far-off sun. Then came the northern lights... drifts of pale fire over the sky... spears of light, as of empyrean armies... pale, elusive hosts retreating and advancing. Emily lay and watched them in rapture. Her soul was washed pure in that great bath of splendour. She was a high priestess of loveliness assisting at the divine rites of her worship... and she knew her goddess smiled.
She was glad Ilse was asleep. Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful... as if the finite were for a second infinity... as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity... as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty. Oh... beauty... Emily shivered with the pure ecstasy of it. She loved it... it filled her being to-night as never before. She was afraid to move or breathe lest she break the current of beauty that was flowing through her. Life seemed like a wonderful instrument on which to play supernal harmonies.
"Oh, God, make me worthy of it... oh, make me worthy of it," she prayed. Could she ever be worthy of such a message... could she dare try to carry some of the loveliness of that "dialogue divine" back to the everyday world of sordid market-place and clamorous street? She MUST give it... she could not keep it to herself. Would the world listen... understand... feel? Only if she were faithful to the trust and gave out that which was committed to her, careless of blame or praise. High priestess of beauty... yes, she would serve at no other shrine!
She fell asleep in this rapt mood... dreamed that she was Sappho springing from the Leucadian rock... woke to find herself at the bottom of the haystack with Ilse's startled face peering down at her. Fortunately so much of the stack had slipped down with her that she was able to say cautiously,
"I think I'm all in one piece still."
CHAPTER 13. HAVEN
When you have fallen asleep listening to the hymns of the gods it is something of an anti-climax to be awakened by an ignominious tumble from a haystack. But at least it had aroused them in time to see the sunrise over Indian Head, which was worth the sacrifice of several hours of inglorious ease.
"Besides, I might never have known what an exquisite thing a spider's web beaded with dew is," said Emily. "LOOK at it... swung between those two tall, plumy grasses."
"Write a poem on it," jeered Ilse, whose alarm made her fleetingly cross.
"How's your foot?"
"Oh, it's all right. But my hair is sopping wet with dew."
"So is mine. We'll carry our hats for a while and the sun will soon dry us. It's just as well to get an early start. We can get back to civilization by the time it's safe for us to be seen. Only we'll have to breakfast on the crackers in my bag. It won't do for us to be looking for breakfast, with no rational account to give of where we spent the night. Ilse, swear you'll never mention this escapade to a living soul. It's been beautiful... but it will remain beautiful just as long as only we two know of it. Remember the result of your telling about our moonlit bath."
"People have such beastly minds," grumbled Ilse, sliding down the stack.
"Oh, LOOK at Indian Head. I could be a sun worshipper this very moment."
Indian Head was a flaming mount of splendour. The far-off hills turned beautifully purple against the radiant sky. Even the bare, ugly Hardscrabble Road was transfigured and luminous in hazes of silver. The fields and woods were very lovely in the faint pearly lustre.
"The world is always young again for just a few moments at the dawn," murmured Emily.
Then she pulled her Jimmy-book out of her bag and wrote the sentence down!
They had the usual experiences of canvassers the world over that day. Some people refused to subscribe, ungraciously: some subscribed graciously: some refused to subscribe so pleasantly that they left an agreeable impression: some consented to subscribe so unpleasantly that Emily wished they had refused. But on the whole they enjoyed the forenoon, especially when an excellent early dinner in a hospitable farmhouse on the Western Road filled up the aching void left by a few crackers and a night on a haystack.
"S'pose you didn't come across any stray children to-day?" asked their host.
"No. Have any been lost?"
"Little Allan Bradshaw... Will Bradshaw's son, down-river at Malvern Point... has been missing ever since Tuesday morning. He walked out of the house that morning, singing, and hasn't been seen or heard of since."
Emily and Ilse exchanged shocked glances.