Besides, she felt alive again—she felt the wonderful thrill of living again, after that dreadful space when she had seemed to hang between life and death. She felt, as she wrote to her father afterwards, “as if a little bird was singing in my heart.” And oh, how good the green sod felt under her feet!
She told him all about herself and her doings and beings. Only one thing she did not tell him—her worry over Ilse’s mother. That she could not speak of to anyone. Aunt Nancy need not have been frightened that she would carry tales to New Moon.
“I wrote a whole poem yesterday when it rained and I couldn’t get out,” she said. “It began,
I sit by the western window
That looks on Malvern Bay—”
“Am I not to hear the whole of it?” asked Dean, who knew perfectly well that Emily was hoping that he would ask it.
Emily delightedly repeated the whole poem. When she came to the two lines she liked best in it,
Perhaps in those wooded islands
That gem the proud bay’s breast—
she looked up sidewise at him to see if he admired them. But he was walking with eyes cast down and an absent expression on his face. She felt a little disappointed.
“H’m,” he said when she had finished. “You’re twelve, didn’t you say? When you’re ten years older I shouldn’t wonder—but let’s not think of it.”
“Father Cassidy told me to keep on,” cried Emily.
“There was no need of it. You would keep on anyhow—you have the itch for writing born in you. It’s quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?”
“I think I shall be either a great poetess or a distinguished novelist,” said Emily reflectively.
“Having only to choose,” remarked Dean dryly. “Better be a novelist—I hear it pays better.”
“What worries me about writing novels,” confided Emily, “is the love talk in them. I’m sure I’ll never be able to write it. I’ve tried,” she concluded candidly, “and I can’t think of anything to say.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll teach you some day,” said Dean.
“Will you—will you really?” Emily was very eager. “I’ll be so obliged if you will. I think I could manage everything else very nicely.”
“It’s a bargain then—don’t forget it. And don’t go looking for another teacher, mind. What do you find to do at the Grange besides writing poetry? Are you never lonesome with only those two old survivals?”
“No. I enjoy my own company,” said Emily gravely.
“You would. Stars are said to dwell apart, anyhow, sufficient unto themselves—ensphered in their own light. Do you really like Aunt Nancy?”
“Yes, indeed. She is very kind to me. She doesn’t make me wear sunbonnets and she lets me go barefooted in the forenoons. But I have to wear my buttoned boots in the afternoons, and I hate buttoned boots.”
“Naturally. You should be shod with sandals of moonshine and wear a scarf of sea-mist with a few fireflies caught in it over your hair. Star, you don’t look like your father, but you suggest him in several ways. Do you look like your mother? I never saw her.”
All at once Emily smiled demurely. A real sense of humour was born in her at that moment. Never again was she to feel quite so unmixedly tragic over anything.
“No,” she said, “it’s only my eyelashes and smile that are like Mother’s. But I’ve got Father’s forehead, and Grandma Starr’s hair and eyes, and Great-Uncle George’s nose, and Aunt Nancy’s hands, and Cousin Susan’s elbows, and Great-great-Grandmother Murray’s ankles, and Grandfather Murray’s eyebrows.”
Dean Priest laughed.
“A ragbag—as we all are,” he said. “But your soul is your own, and fire-new, I’ll swear to that.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I like you,” said Emily impulsively. “It would be hateful to think anyone I didn’t like had saved my life. I don’t mind your saving it a bit.”
“That’s good. Because you see your life belongs to me henceforth. Since I saved it it’s mine. Never forget that.”
Emily felt an odd sensation of rebellion. She didn’t fancy the idea of her life belonging to anybody but herself—not even to anybody she liked as much as she liked Dean Priest. Dean, watching her, saw it and smiled his whimsical smile that always seemed to have so much more in it than mere smiling.
“That doesn’t quite suit you? Ah, you see one pays a penalty when one reaches out for something beyond the ordinary. One pays for it in bondage of some kind or other. Take your wonderful aster home and keep it as long as you can. It has cost you your freedom.”
He was laughing—he was only joking, of course—yet Emily felt as if a cobweb fetter had been flung round her. Yielding to a sudden impulse she flung the big aster on the ground and set her foot on it.
Dean Priest looked on amusedly. His strange eyes were very kindly as he met hers.
“You rare thing—you vivid thing—you starry thing! We are going to be good friends—we are good friends. I’m coming up to Wyther Grange tomorrow to see those descriptions you’ve written of Caroline and my venerable Aunt in your Jimmy-book. I feel sure they’re delicious. Here’s your path—don’t go roaming again so far from civilization. Good night, my Star of the Morning.”
He stood at the crossroad and watched her out of sight.
“What a child!” he muttered. “I’ll never forget her eyes as she lay there on the edge of death—the dauntless little soul—and I’ve never seen a creature who seemed so full of sheer joy in existence. She is Douglas Starr’s child—he never called me Jarback.”
He stooped and picked up the broken aster. Emily’s heel had met it squarely and it was badly crushed. But he put it away that night between the leaves of an old volume of Jane Eyre, where he had marked a verse—
All glorious rose upon my
