"Oh... I'm sure I haven't second sight," protested Emily. "I must just have dreamed it... and got up in my sleep... but, then, I can't draw."
"Something used you as an instrument then," said Dr. McIntyre. "After all, Grandmother's explanation of second sight is just as reasonable as anything else, when one is compelled to believe an unbelievable thing."
"I'd rather not talk of it," said Emily, with a shiver. "I'm so glad Allan has been found... but PLEASE don't tell people about my part in it. Let them think it just occurred to you to search inside the Scobie house. I... I couldn't bear to have this talked of all over the country."
When they left the little white house on the windy hill the sun was breaking through the clouds and the harbour waters were dancing madly in it. The landscape was full of the wild beauty that comes in the wake of a spent storm and the Western Road stretched before them in loop and hill and dip of wet, red allurement; but Emily turned away from it.
"I'm going to leave it for my next trip," she said. "I can't go canvassing to-day, somehow. Friend of my heart, let's go to Malvern Bridge and take the morning train to Shrewsbury."
"It... was... awfully funny... about your dream," said Ilse. "It makes me a little afraid of you, Emily... somehow."
"Oh, don't be afraid of me," implored Emily. "It was only a coincidence. I was thinking of him so much... and the house took possession of me yesterday... "
"Remember how you found out about Mother?" said Ilse, in a low tone. "You HAVE some power the rest of us haven't."
"Perhaps I'll grow out of it," said Emily desperately. "I hope so... I don't WANT to have any such power... you don't know how I feel about it, Ilse. It seems to me a terrible thing... as if I were marked out in some uncanny way... I don't feel HUMAN. When Dr. McIntyre spoke about SOMETHING using me as an instrument, I went cold all over. It seemed to me that while I was asleep some OTHER intelligence must have taken possession of my body and drawn that picture."
"It was YOUR writing," said Ilse.
"Oh, I'm not going to talk of it... or THINK of it. I'm going to forget it. Don't ever speak of it to me again, Ilse."
CHAPTER 16. DRIFTWOOD
"Shrewsbury, "October 3, 19...
"I have finished canvassing my allotted portion of our fair province... I have the banner list of all the canvassers... and I have made almost enough out of my commissions to pay for my books for my whole Junior year. When I told Aunt Ruth this she did NOT sniff. I consider that a fact worth recording.
"To-day my story, The Sands of Time, came back from Merton's Magazine. But the rejection slip was typewritten, not printed. Typewriting doesn't seem QUITE as insulting as print, some way.
"We have read your story with interest, and regret to say that we cannot accept it for publication at the present time.
"If they meant that 'with interest,' it is a little encouragement. But were they only trying to soften the blow?
"Ilse and I were notified recently that there were nine vacancies in the Skull and Owl and that we had been put on the list of those who might apply for membership. So we did. It is considered a great thing in school to be a Skull and Owl.
"The Junior year is in full swing now, and I find the work very interesting. Mr. Hardy has several of our classes, and I like him as a teacher better than anyone since Mr. Carpenter. He was very much interested in my essay, The Woman Who Spanked the King. He gave it first place and commented on it specially in his class criticisms. Evelyn Blake is sure, naturally, that I copied it out of something, and feels certain she has read it somewhere before. Evelyn is wearing her hair in the new pompadour style this year and I think it is very unbecoming to her. But then, of course, the only part of Evelyn's anatomy I like is her back.
"I understand that the Martin clan are furious with me. Sally Martin was married last week in the Anglican church here, and the Times editor asked me to report it. Of course, I went... though I HATE reporting weddings. There are so many things I'd LIKE to say sometimes that can't BE said. But Sally's wedding was pretty and so was she, and I sent in quite a nice report of it, I thought, especially mentioning the bride's beautiful bouquet of 'roses and orchids'... the first bridal bouquet of orchids ever seen in Shrewsbury. I wrote as plain as print and there was no excuse whatever for that wretched typesetter on the Times turning 'orchids' into SARDINES. Of course, anybody with any sense would have known that it was only a printer's error. But the Martin clan have taken into their heads the absurd notion that I wrote SARDINES on purpose for a silly joke... because, it seems, it has been reported to them that I said once I was tired of the conventional reports of weddings and would like to write just one along different lines. I DID say it... but my craving for originality would hardly lead me to report the bride as carrying a bouquet of sardines! Nevertheless, the Martins DO think it, and Stella Martin didn't invite me to her thimble party... and Aunt Ruth says she doesn't wonder at it... and Aunt Elizabeth says I shouldn't have been so careless. I! Heaven grant me patience!
"October 5, 19...
"Mrs. Will Bradshaw came to see me this evening. Luckily Aunt Ruth was out... I say luckily, for I don't want Aunt Ruth to find out about my dream and its part in finding little Allan Bradshaw. This may be 'sly,' as Aunt Ruth would say, but the truth is that, sly or not sly, I could NOT bear to have Aunt Ruth sniffing and wondering and pawing over the incident.
"Mrs. Bradshaw came to thank me. It embarrassed me... because, after all, what had I to do with it? I don't want to think of or talk of it at all. Mrs. Bradshaw says little Allan is all right again, now, though it was a week after they found him before he could sit up. She was very pale and earnest.
"'He would have died there if you hadn't come, Miss Starr... and I would have died. I couldn't have gone on living... not knowing... oh, I shall never forget the horror of those days. I HAD to come and try to utter a little of my gratitude... you were gone when I came back that morning... I felt that I had been very inhospitable... '
"She broke down and cried... and so did I... and we had a good howl together. I am very glad and thankful that Allan was found, but I shall never like to think of the way it happened.
"New Moon, "October 7, 19...
"I had a lovely walk and prowl this evening in the pond graveyard. Not exactly a cheerful place for an evening's ramble, one might suppose. But I always like to wander over that little westward slope of graves in the gentle melancholy of a fine autumn evening. I like to read the names on the stones and note the ages and think of all the loves and hates and hopes and fears that lie buried there. It was beautiful... and not sad. And all around were the red ploughed fields and the frosted, ferny woodsides and all the old familiar things I have loved... and love more and more it seems to me, the older I grow. Every week-end I come home to New Moon these things seem dearer to me... more a part of me. I love THINGS just as much as PEOPLE. I think Aunt Elizabeth is like this, too. That is why she will not have anything changed at New Moon. I am beginning to understand her better. I believe she likes me now, too. I was only a duty at first, but now I am something more.
"I stayed in the graveyard until a dull gold twilight came down and made a glimmering spectral place of it. Then Teddy came for me and we walked together up the field and through the To-morrow Road. It is really a To-day Road now, for the trees along it are above our heads, but we still call it the To-morrow Road... partly out of habit and partly because we talk so much on it of OUR to-morrows and what we hope to do in them. Somehow, Teddy is the only person I like to talk to about my to-morrows and my ambitions. There is no one else. Perry scoffs at my literary aspirations. He says, when I say anything about writing books, 'What is the good of that sort of thing?' And of course if a person can't see 'the good' for himself you can't explain it to him. I can't even talk to Dean about them... not since he said so bitterly one evening, 'I hate to hear of your to-morrows... they cannot be MY tomorrows.' I think in a way Dean doesn't like to think of my growing up... I THINK he has a little of the Priest jealousy of sharing ANYTHING, especially friendship, with anyone else... or with the world. I feel thrown back on myself. Somehow, it has seemed to me lately that Dean isn't interested any longer in my writing ambitions. He even, it seems to me, ridicules them slightly. For instance, Mr. Carpenter was delighted with my Woman Who Spanked the King, and told me it was excellent; but when Dean read it he smiled and said, 'It will do very well for a school essay, but... ' and then he smiled again. It was not the smile I liked, either. It had 'too much Priest in it,' as Aunt Elizabeth would say. I felt... and feel... horribly cast down about it. It seemed to say, 'You can scribble amusingly, my dear, and have a pretty knack of phrase-turning; but I should be doing you an unkindness if I let you think that such a knack meant a very great deal.' If this is true... and it very likely is, for Dean is so clever and knows so much... then I can never accomplish anything worth while. I won't TRY to accomplish anything... I WON'T be just a 'pretty scribbler.'