Emily Climbs (1925)

Chapter 5: Half a Loaf

One late August evening Emily heard Teddy's signal whistle from the To-morrow Road, and slipped out to join him. He had news--that was evident from his shining eyes.

"Emily," he cried excitedly, "I'm going to Shrewsbury after all! Mother told me this evening she had made up her mind to let me go!"

Emily was glad--with a queer sorriness underneath, for which she reproached herself. How lonesome it would be at New Moon when her three old pals were gone! She had not realized until that moment how much she had counted on Teddy's companionship. He had always been there in the background of her thoughts of the coming year. She had always taken Teddy for granted. Now there would be nobody--not even Dean, for Dean was going away for the winter as usual--to Egypt or Japan, as he might decide at the last moment. What would she do? Would all the Jimmy-books in the world take the place of her flesh-and-blood chums?

"If you were only going, too!" said Teddy, as they walked along the To-morrow Road--which was almost a To-day Road now, so fast and so tall had the leafy young maples grown.

"There's no use wishing it--don't speak of it--it makes me unhappy," said Emily jerkily.

"Well, we'll have week-ends anyhow. And it's you I have to thank for going. It was what you said to Mother that night in the graveyard that made her let me go. I know she's been thinking of it ever since, by things she would say every once in a while. One day last week I heard her muttering: 'It's awful to be a mother--awful to be a mother and suffer like this.' Yet she called me selfish!' And another time she said, 'Is it selfish to want to keep the only thing you have left in the world?' But she was lovely to-night when she told me I could go. I know folks say Mother isn't quite right in her mind--and sometimes she is a little queer. But it's only when other people are around. You've no idea, Emily, how nice and dear she is when we're alone. I hate to leave her. But I must get some education!"

"I'm very glad if what I said has made her change her mind, but she will never forgive me for it. She has hated me ever since--you know she has. You know how she looks at me whenever I'm at the Tansy Patch--oh, she's very polite to me. But her eyes, Teddy."

"I know," said Teddy, uncomfortably. "But don't be hard on Mother, Emily. I'm sure she wasn't always like that--though she has been ever since I can remember. I don't know anything of her before that. She never tells me anything--I don't know a thing about my father. She won't talk about him. I don't even know how she got that scar on her face."

"I don't think there's anything the matter with your mother's mind, really," said Emily slowly. "But I think there's something troubling it--always troubling it--something she can't forget or throw off. Teddy, I'm sure your mother is haunted. Of course, I don't mean by a ghost or anything silly like that. But by some terrible thought."

"She isn't happy, I know," said Teddy, "and, of course, we're poor. Mother said to-night she could only send me to Shrewsbury for three years--that was all she could afford. But that will give me a start--I'll get on somehow after that. I know I can. I'll make it up to her yet."

"You will be a great artist some day," said Emily dreamily.

They had come to the end of the To-morrow Road. Before them was the pond pasture, whitened over with a drift of daisies. Farmers hate the daisies as a pestiferous weed, but a field white with them on a summer twilight is a vision from the Land of Lost Delight. Beneath them Blair Water shone like a great golden lily. Up on the eastern hill the little Disappointed House crouched amid its shadows, dreaming, perhaps, of the false bride that had never come to it. There was no light at the Tansy Patch. Was lonely Mrs. Kent crying there in the darkness, with only her secret, tormenting heart-hunger for companion?