That child of shower and gleam.
XXVII
The Vow of Emily
In Dean Priest Emily found, for the first time since her father had died, a companion who could fully sympathize. She was always at her best with him, with a delightful feeling of being understood. To love is easy and therefore common—but to understand—how rare it is! They roamed wonderlands of fancy together in the magic August days that followed upon Emily’s adventure on the bay shore, talked together of exquisite, immortal things, and were at home with “nature’s old felicities” of which Wordsworth so happily speaks.
Emily showed him all the poetry and “descriptions” in her “Jimmy-book” and he read them gravely, and, exactly as Father had done, made little criticisms that did not hurt her because she knew they were just. As for Dean Priest, a certain secret wellspring of fancy that had long seemed dry bubbled up in him sparklingly again.
“You make me believe in fairies, whether I will or no,” he told her, “and that means youth. As long as you believe in fairies you can’t grow old.”
“But I can’t believe in fairies myself,” protested Emily sorrowfully. “I wish I could.”
“But you are a fairy yourself—or you wouldn’t be able to find fairyland. You can’t buy a ticket there, you know. Either the fairies themselves give you your passport at your christening—or they don’t. That is all there is to it.”
“Isn’t ’Fairyland’ the loveliest word?” said Emily dreamily.
“Because it means everything the human heart desires,” said Dean.
When he talked to her Emily felt as if she were looking into some enchanted mirror where her own dreams and secret hopes were reflected back to her with added charm. If Dean Priest were a cynic he showed no cynicism to Emily. But in her company he was not a cynic; he had shed his years and became a boy again with a boy’s untainted visions. She loved him for the world he opened to her view.
There was such fun in him, too—such sly, surprising fun. He told her jokes—he made her laugh. He told her strange old tales of forgotten gods who were very beautiful—of court festivals and the bridals of kings. He seemed to have the history of the whole world at his fingers’ ends. He described things to her in unforgettable phrases as they walked by the bay shore or sat in the overgrown, shadowy old garden of Wyther Grange. When he spoke of Athens as “the City of the Violet Crown” Emily realized afresh what magic is made when the right words are wedded; and she loved to think of Rome as “the City of the Seven Hills.” Dean had been in Rome and Athens—and almost everywhere else.
“I didn’t know anyone ever talked as you do except in books,” she told him.
Dean laughed—with a little note of bitterness that was so often present in his laughter—though less often with Emily than with other people. It was really his laughter that had won Dean his reputation for cynicism. People so often felt that he was laughing at them instead of with them.
“I’ve had only books for companions most of my life,” he said. “Is it any wonder I talk like them?”
“I’m sure I’ll like studying history after this,” said Emily; “except Canadian History. I’ll never like it—it’s so dull. Not just at the first, when we belonged to France and there was plenty of fighting, but after that it’s nothing but politics.”
“The happiest countries, like the happiest women, have no history,” said Dean.
“I hope I’ll have a history,” cried Emily. “I want a thrilling career.”
“We all do, foolish one. Do you know what makes history? Pain—and shame—and rebellion—and bloodshed and heartache. Star, ask yourself how many hearts ached—and broke—to make those crimson and purple pages in history that you find so enthralling. I told you the story of Leonidas and his Spartans the other day. They had mothers, sisters and sweethearts. If they could have fought a bloodless battle at the polls wouldn’t it have been better—if not so dramatic.”
“I—can’t—feel—that way,” said Emily confusedly. She was not old enough to think or say, as she would say ten years later, “The heroes of Thermopylæ have been an inspiration to humanity for centuries. What squabble around a ballot-box will ever be that?”
“And, like all female creatures, you form your opinions by your feelings. Well, hope for your thrilling career—but remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you—then someone else.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t like that.”
“Then be content with fewer thrills. What about your tumble over the bank down there? That came near being a tragedy. What if I hadn’t found you?”
“But you did find me,” cried Emily. “I like near escapes—after they’re over,” she added. “If everybody had always been happy there’d be nothing to read about.”
Tweed made a third in their rambles and Emily grew very fond of him, without losing any of her loyalty to the pussy folk.
“I like cats with one part of my mind and dogs with another part,” she said.
“I like cats but I never keep one,” Dean said. “They’re too exacting—they ask too much. Dogs want only love but cats demand worship. They have never got over the Bubastis habit of godship.”
Emily understood this—he had told her all about old Egypt and the goddess Pasht—but she did not quite agree with him.
“Kittens don’t want to be worshipped,” she said. “They just want to be cuddled.”
“By their priestesses—yes. If you had been born on the banks of the Nile five thousand years ago, Emily, you would have been a priestess of Pasht—an adorable, slim, brown creature with a fillet of gold around your black hair and bands of silver on those ankles Aunt Nancy admires, with dozens of sacred little godlings frisking around you under the palms of the temple courts.”
“Oh,” gasped Emily rapturously, “that gave me the flash. And,” she added
