Emily's Quest (1927)

Chapter 22

I

Life, of course, went on in spite of its dreadfulness. The routine of existence doesn't stop because one is miserable. There were even some moments that were not altogether bad. Emily again measured her strength with pain and again conquered. With the Murray pride and the Starr reserve at her elbow she wrote Ilse a letter of good wishes with which nobody could have found fault. If that were only all she had to do! If only people wouldn't keep on talking to her about Ilse and Teddy.

The engagement was announced in the Montreal papers and then in the Island ones.

"Yes, they're engaged and heaven help every one concerned," said Dr. Burnley. But he could not hide his satisfaction in it.

"Thought at one time you and Teddy were going to make a match of it," he said jovially to Emily--who smiled gallantly and said something about the unexpected always happening.

"Anyhow we'll have a wedding that is a wedding," declared the doctor. "We haven't had a wedding in the clan for God knows how long. I thought they'd forgotten how. I'll show 'em. Ilse writes me you're to be bridesmaid. And I'll be wanting you to oversee things generally. Can't trust a wedding to a housekeeper."

"Anything I can do, of course," said Emily automatically. Nobody should suspect what she felt not if she died for it. She would even be bridesmaid.

If it had not been for that prospect ahead she thought she could have got through the winter not unhappily. For The Moral of the Rose was a success from the start. The first edition exhausted in ten days--three large editions in two weeks--five in eight weeks. Exaggerated reports of the pecuniary returns were circulated everywhere. For the first time Uncle Wallace looked at her with respect and Aunt Addie wished secretly that Andrew hadn't been consoled quite so soon. Old Cousin Charlotte, of Derry Pond, heard of the many editions and opined that Emily must be very busy if she had to put all the books together and sew them herself. The Shrewsbury people were furious because they imagined they were in the book. Every family believed they were the Applegaths.

"You were right not to come to New York," wrote Miss Royal. "You could never have written The Moral of the Rose here. Wild roses won't grow in city streets. And your story is like a wild rose, dear, all sweetness and unexpectedness with sly little thorns of wit and satire. It has power, delicacy, understanding. It's not just story-telling. There's some magicry in it. Emily Byrd Starr, where do you get your uncanny understanding of human nature--you infant?"

Dean wrote too--"good creative work, Emily. Your characters are natural and human and delightful. And I like the glowing spirit of youth that pervades the book."

II

"I had hoped to learn something from the reviews, but they are all too contradictory," said Emily. "What one reviewer pronounces the book's greatest merit another condemns as its worst fault. Listen to these--'Miss Starr never succeeds in making her characters convincing' and 'One fancies that some of the author's characters must have been copied from real life. They are so absolutely true to nature that they could hardly be the work of imagination.'"

"I told you people would recognize old Douglas Courcy," interjected Aunt Elizabeth.

"'A very tiresome book'--'a very delightful book'--'very undistinguished fiction' and 'on every page the work of the finished artist is apparent'--'a book of cheap and weak romanticism' and 'a classic quality in the book'--'a unique story of a rare order of literary workmanship' and 'a silly, worthless, colourless and desultory story'--'an ephemeral sort of affair' and a book destined to live.' What is one to believe?"