But Emily was too happy and contented to mope. It was just that life seemed to have lost its savour for a time, as if some spring of vital energy had been drained out of it and refilled slowly.
She had, just then, no one to play with. Perry, Ilse and Teddy had all come down with measles the same day. Mrs Kent at first declared bitterly that Teddy had caught them at New Moon, but all three had contracted them at a Sunday-school picnic where Derry Pond children had been. That picnic infected all Blair Water.
There was a perfect orgy of measles. Teddy and Ilse were only moderately ill, but Perry, who had insisted on going home to Aunt Tom at the first symptoms, nearly died. Emily was not allowed to know his danger until it had passed, lest it worry her too much.
Even Aunt Elizabeth worried over it. She was surprised to discover how much they missed Perry round the place.
It was fortunate for Emily that Dean Priest was in Blair Water during this forlorn time. His companionship was just what she needed and helped her wonderfully on the road to complete recovery.
They went for long walks together all over Blair Water, with Tweed woofing around them, and explored places and roads Emily had never seen before. They watched a young moon grow old, night by night; they talked in dim scented chambers of twilight over long red roads of mystery; they followed the lure of hill winds; they saw the stars rise and Dean told her all about them — the great constellations of the old myths. It was a wonderful month; but on the first day of Teddy's convalescence Emily was off to the Tansy Patch for the afternoon and Jarback Priest walked — if he walked at all — alone.
Aunt Elizabeth was extremely polite to him, though she did not like the Priests of Priest Pond overmuch, and never felt quite comfortable under the mocking gleam of "Jarback's" green eyes and the faint derision of his smile, which seemed to make Murray pride and Murray traditions seem much less important than they really were.
"He has the Priest flavour," she told Laura, "though it isn't as strong in him as in most of them. And he's certainly helping Emily — she has begun to spunk up since he came.”
Emily continued to "spunk up" and by September, when the measles epidemic was spent and Dean Priest had gone on one of his sudden swoops over to Europe for the autumn, she was ready for school again — a little taller, a little thinner, a little less childlike, with great grey shadowy eyes that had looked into death and read the riddle of a buried thing, and henceforth would hold in them some haunting, elusive remembrance of that world behind the veil.
Dean Priest had seen it — Mr Carpenter saw it when she smiled at him across her desk at school.
"She's left the childhood of her soul behind, though she is still a child in body," he muttered.
One afternoon amid the golden days and hazes of October he asked her gruffly to let him see some of her verses.
"I never meant to encourage you in it," he said. "I don't mean it now. Probably you can't write a line of real poetry and never will. But let me see your stuff. If it's hopelessly bad I'll tell you so. I won't have you wasting years striving for the unattainable — at least I won't have it on my conscience if you do.
If there's any promise in it, I'll tell you so just as honestly.
And bring some of your stories, too — THEY'RE trash yet, that's certain, but I'll see if they show just and sufficient cause for going on.”
Emily spent a very solemn hour that evening, weighing, choosing, rejecting. To the little bundle of verse she added one of her Jimmy-books which contained, as she thought, her best stories. She went to school next day, so secret and mysterious that Ilse took offence, started in to call her names — and then stopped. Ilse had promised her father that she would try to break herself of the habit of calling names. She was making fairly good headway and her conversation, if less vivid, was beginning to approximate to New Moon standards.
Emily made a sad mess of her lessons that day. She was nervous and frightened. She had a tremendous respect for Mr Carpenter's opinion. Father Cassidy had told her to keep on — Dean Priest had told her that some day she might really write — but perhaps they were only trying to be encouraging because they liked her and didn't want to hurt her feelings. Emily knew Mr Carpenter would not do this. No matter if he did like her he would nip her aspirations mercilessly if he thought the root of the matter was not in her. If, on the contrary, he bade her God-speed, she would rest content with that against the world and never lose heart in the face of any future criticism. No wonder the day seemed fraught with tremendous issues to Emily.
When school was out Mr Carpenter asked her to remain. She was so white and tense that the other pupils thought she must have been found out by Mr Carpenter in some especially dreadful behaviour and knew she was going to "catch it." Rhoda Stuart flung her a significantly malicious smile from the porch — which Emily never even saw. She was, indeed, at a momentous bar, with Mr Carpenter as supreme judge, and her whole future career — so she believed — hanging on his verdict.
The pupils disappeared and a mellow, sunshiny stillness settled over the old schoolroom. Mr Carpenter took the little packet she had given him in the morning out of his desk, came down the aisle and sat in the seat before her, facing her. Very deliberately he settled his glasses astride his hooked nose, took out her manuscripts and began to read — or rather to glance over them, flinging scraps of comments, mingled with grunts, sniffs and hoots, at her as he glanced. Emily folded her cold hands on her desk and braced her feet against the legs of it to keep her knees from trembling. This was a very terrible experience. She wished she had never given her verses to Mr Carpenter. They were no good — of course they were no good. Remember the editor of the Enterprise.
"Humph!" said Mr Carpenter. "Sunset — Lord, how many poems have been written on 'Sunset' — The clouds are massed in splendid state At heaven's unbarred western gate Where troops of star-eyed spirits wait — By gad, what does that mean?”
"I — I — don't know," faltered startled Emily, whose wits had been scattered by the sudden swoop of his spiked glance.
Mr Carpenter snorted.
"For heaven's sake, girl, don't write what you can't understand yourself. And this — To Life — 'Life, as thy gift I ask no rainbow joy' — is that sincere? Is it, girl? Stop and think. DO you ask 'no rainbow joy' of life?”
He transfixed her with another glare. But Emily was beginning to pick herself up a bit. Nevertheless, she suddenly felt oddly ashamed of the very elevated and unselfish desires expressed in that sonnet.
"No — o," she answered reluctantly, "I DO want rainbow joy — lots of it.”
"Of course you do. We all do. We don't get it — you won't get it — but don't be hypocrite enough to pretend you don't want it, even in a sonnet. Lines to a Mountain Cascade — 'On its dark rocks like the whiteness of a veil around a bride' — Where did you see a mountain cascade in Prince Edward Island?”
"Nowhere — there's a picture of one in Dr Burnley's library.”
"A Wood Stream — The threading sunbeams quiver, The bending bushes shiver, O'er the little shadowy river — There's only one more rhyme that occurs to me and that's 'liver.' Why did you leave it out?”
Emily writhed.
"Wind Song — I have shaken the dew in the meadows From the clover's creamy gown — Pretty, but weak. June — June, for heaven's sake, girl, don't write poetry on June. It's the sickliest subject in the world. It's been written to death.”
"No, June is immortal," cried Emily suddenly, a mutinous sparkle replacing the strained look in her eyes. She was not going to let Mr Carpenter have it all his own way.
But Mr Carpenter had tossed June aside without reading a line of it.