The delight of the spell that had been suddenly laid on her was so intolerable that she must break it. She sprang up and went over to the window. The little hissing whisper of snow against the blue- white frost crystals on the pane seemed softly to scorn her bewilderment. The three big haystacks, thatched with snow, dimly visible at the corner of the barn, seemed to be shaking their shoulders with laughter over her predicament. The fire in the stove reflected out in the clearing seemed like a mocking goblin bonfire under the firs. Beyond it, through the woods, were unfathomable spaces of white storm. For a moment Emily wished she were out in them... there would be freedom there from this fetter of terrible delight that had so suddenly and inexplicably made her a prisoner... her, who hated bonds.
"Am I falling in love with Teddy?" she thought. "I won't... I won't."
Perry, quite unconscious of all that had happened in the wink of an eye to Teddy and Emily, yawned and stretched.
"Guess we'd better hit the hay... the candles are about done. I guess that straw will make a real good bed for us, Ted. Let's carry enough out and pile it on the bedstead in there to make a comfortable roost for the girls. With one of the fur rugs over it, it won't be so bad. We ought to have some high old dreams to- night... Ilse especially. Wonder if she's sober yet?"
"I've a pocket full of dreams to sell," said Teddy, whimsically, with a new, unaccountable gaiety of voice and manner. "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? A dream of success... a dream of adventure... a dream of the sea... a dream of the woodland... any kind of a dream you want at reasonable prices, including one or two unique little nightmares. What will you give me for a dream?"
Emily turned around... stared at him for a moment... then forgot thrills and pells and everything else in a wild longing for a Jimmy-book. As if his question, "What will you give me for a dream?" had been a magic formula opening some sealed chamber in her brain, she saw unrolling before her a dazzling idea for a story... complete even to the title... A Seller of Dreams. For the rest of that night Emily thought of nothing else.
The boys went off to their straw couch, and Emily, after deciding to leave Ilse, who seemed comfortable, on the sofa as long as she slept, lay down on the bed in the small room. But not to sleep. She had never felt less like sleeping. She did not want to sleep. She had forgotten that she had been falling in love with Teddy... she had forgotten everything but her wonderful idea; chapter by chapter, page by page, it unrolled itself before her in the darkness. Her characters lived and laughed and talked and did and enjoyed and suffered... she saw them on the background of the storm. Her cheeks burned, her heart beat, she tingled from head to foot with the keen rapture of creation... a joy that sprang fountain-like from the depths of being and seemed independent of all earthly things. Ilse had got drunk on Malcolm Shaw's forgotten Scotch whisky, but Emily was intoxicated with immortal wine.
CHAPTER 21. THICKER THAN WATER
Emily did not sleep until nearly morning. The storm had ceased and the landscape around the old John house had a spectral look in the light of the sinking moon when she finally drifted into slumber, with a delightful sense of accomplishment... for she had finished thinking out her story. Nothing remained now except to jot its outlines down in her Jimmy-book. She would not feel safe until she had them in black and white. She would not try to write it yet... oh, not for years. She must wait until time and experience had made of her pen an instrument capable of doing justice to her conception... for it is one thing to pursue an idea through an ecstatic night and quite another to get it down on paper in a manner that will reproduce a tenth of its original charm and significance.
Emily was wakened by Ilse, who was sitting on the side of her bed, looking rather pale and seedy, but with amber eyes full of unconquerable laughter.
"Well, I've slept off my debauch, Emily Starr. And my tummy's all right this morning. Malcolm's whisky DID settle it... though I think the remedy is worse than the disease. I suppose you wondered why I wouldn't talk last night."
"I thought you were too drunk to talk," said Emily candidly.
Ilse giggled.
"I was too drunk NOT to talk. When I got to that sofa, Emily, my giddiness passed off and I WANTED to talk... oh, golly, but I wanted to talk! And I wanted to say the silliest things and tell everything I ever knew or thought. I'd just enough sense left to know I mustn't say those things or I'd make a fool of myself for ever... and I felt that if I said ONE word it would be like taking a cork out of a bottle... EVERYTHING would gurgle out. So I just buttoned my mouth up and wouldn't say the one word. It gives me a chill to think of the things I COULD have said... and before Perry. You'll never catch your little Ilse going on a spree again. I'm a reformed character from this day forth."
"What I can't understand," said Emily, "is how such a small dose of ANYTHING could have turned your head like that."
"Oh, well, you know Mother was a Mitchell. It's a notorious fact that the Mitchells can't take a teaspoonful of booze without toppling. It's one of their family kinks. Well, rise up, my love, my fair one. The boys are getting a fire on and Perry says we can dope up a fair meal from the pork and beans and crackers. I'm hungry enough to eat the cans."
It was while Emily was rummaging in the pantry in search of some salt that she made a great discovery. Far back on the top shelf was a pile of dusty old books... dating back probably to the days of John and Almira Shaw... old, mildewed diaries, almanacs, account books. Emily knocked the pile down and when she was picking it up discovered that one of the books was an old scrap-book. A loose leaf had fallen out of it. As Emily replaced it, her eyes fell on the title of a poem pasted on it. She caught it up, her breath coming quickly. A Legend of Abegweit... the poem with which Evelyn had won the prize! Here it was in this old, yellowed scrap-book of twenty years' vintage... word for word, except that Evelyn had cut out two verses to shorten it to the required length.