CHAPTER II

I

“NEW MOON.
“NOVEMBER 18, 19—

“To-day the December number of _Marchwood’s_ came with my verses
_Flying Gold_ in it. I consider the occasion worthy of mention
in my diary because they were given a whole page to themselves
and illustrated—the first time ever any poem of mine was so
honoured. It is trashy enough in itself, I suppose—Mr.
Carpenter only sniffed when I read it to him and refused to make
any comment whatever on it. Mr. Carpenter never ‘damns with
faint praise’ but he can damn with silence in a most smashing
manner. But my poem _looked_ so dignified that a careless reader
might fancy there was something in it. Blessings on the good
editor who was inspired to have it illustrated. He has bolstered
up my self-respect considerably.

“But I did not care overmuch for the illustration itself. The
artist did not catch my meaning at all. Teddy would have done
better.

“Teddy is doing splendidly at the School of Design. And Vega
shines brilliantly every night. I wonder if he really does
always think of me when he sees it. Or if he ever does see it.
Perhaps the electric lights of Montreal blot it out. He seems to
see a good bit of Ilse. It’s awfully nice for them to know each
other in that big city of strangers.”

II

“NOVEMBER 26, 19—

“To-day was a glamorous November afternoon—summer-mild and
autumn-sweet. I sat and read a long while in the pond
burying-ground. Aunt Elizabeth thinks this a most gruesome place
to sit in and tells Aunt Laura that she is afraid there’s a
morbid streak in me. I can’t see anything morbid about it. It’s
a beautiful spot where wild, sweet odours are always coming
across Blair Water on the wandering winds. And so quiet and
peaceful, with the old graves all about me—little green
hillocks with small frosted ferns sprinkled over them. Men and
women of my house are lying there. Men and women who had been
victorious—men and women who had been defeated—and their
victory and defeat are now one. I never can feel either much
exalted or much depressed there. The sting and the tang alike go
out of things. I like the old, old red sandstone slabs,
especially the one for Mary Murray with its ‘Here I Stay’—the
inscription into which her husband put all the concealed venom
of a lifetime. His grave is right beside hers and I feel sure
they have forgiven each other long ago. And perhaps they come
back sometimes in the dark o’ the moon and look at the
inscription and laugh at it. It is growing a little dim with
tiny lichens. Cousin Jimmy has given up scraping them away. Some
day they will overgrow it so that it will be nothing but a
green-and-red-and-silver smear on the old red stone.”

“DEC. 20, 19—

“Something nice happened to-day. I feel pleasantly exhilarated.
_Madison’s_ took my story, _A Flaw in the Indictment_!!!! Yes,
it deserves some exclamation-points after it to a certainty. If
it were not for Mr. Carpenter I would write it in italics.
Italics! Nay, I’d use capitals. It is very hard to get in there.
Don’t I know! Haven’t I tried repeatedly and gained nothing for
my pains but a harvest of ‘we-regrets’—And at last it has
opened its doors to me. To be in _Madison’s_ is a clear and
unmistakable sign that you’re getting somewhere on the Alpine
path. The dear editor was kind enough to say it was a charming
story.

“Nice man!

“He sent me a check for fifty dollars. I’ll soon be able to
begin to repay Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wallace what they spent on me
in Shrewsbury. Aunt Elizabeth as usual looked at the check
suspiciously but for the first time forebore to wonder if the
bank would really cash it. Aunt Laura’s beautiful blue eyes
beamed with pride. Aunt Laura’s eyes really do beam. She is one
of the Victorians. Edwardian eyes glitter and sparkle and allure
but they never beam. And somehow I do like beaming
eyes—especially when they beam over my success.

“Cousin Jimmy says that _Madison’s_ is worth all the other
Yankee magazines put together in _his opinion_.

“I wonder if Dean Priest will like _A Flaw in the Indictment_.
And if he will say so. He _never_ praises anything I write
nowadays. And I feel such a craving to _compel_ him to. I feel
that his is the only commendation, apart from Mr. Carpenter’s,
that is worth anything.

“It’s odd about Dean. In some mysterious way he seems to be
growing younger. A few years ago I thought of him as quite old.
Now he seems only middle-aged. If this keeps up he’ll soon be a
mere youth. I suppose the truth is that my mind is beginning to
mature a bit and I’m catching up with him. Aunt Elizabeth
doesn’t like my friendship with him any more than she ever did.
Aunt Elizabeth has a well-marked antipathy to any Priest. But I
don’t know what I’d do without Dean’s friendship. It’s the very
salt of life.”

“JANUARY 15, 19—

“To-day was stormy. I had a white night last night after four
rejections of MSS. I had thought especially good. As Miss Royal
predicted, I felt that I had been an awful idiot not to have
gone to New York with her when I had the chance. Oh, I don’t
wonder babies always cry when they wake up in the night. So
often I want to do it, too. Everything presses on my soul then
and no cloud has a silver lining. I was blue and disgruntled all
the forenoon and looked forward to the coming of the mail as the
one possible rescue from the doldrums. There is always such a
fascinating expectancy and uncertainty about the mail. What
would it bring me? A letter from Teddy—Teddy writes the most
delightful letters. A nice thin envelope with a check? A fat one
woefully eloquent of more rejected MSS? One of Ilse’s
fascinating scrawls? Nothing of the sort. Merely an irate
epistle from Second-cousin-once-removed Beulah Grant of Derry
Pond, who is furious because she thinks I ‘put her’ into my
story _Fools of Habit_, which has just been copied into a widely
circulated Canadian farm paper. She wrote me a bitterly
reproachful letter which I received to-day. She thinks I ‘might
have spared an old friend who has always wished me well.’ She is
‘not accustomed to being ridiculed in the newspapers’ and will
I, in future, be so kind as to refrain from making her the butt
of my supposed wit in the public press.
Second-cousin-once-removed Beulah wields a facile pen of her
own, when it comes to that, and while certain things in her
letter hurt me other parts infuriated me. I never once even
_thought_ of Cousin Beulah when I wrote that story. The
character of _Aunt Kate_ is purely imaginary. And if I _had_
thought of Cousin Beulah I most certainly wouldn’t have put
_her_ in a story. She is too stupid and commonplace. And she
isn’t a bit like _Aunt Kate_, who is I flattered myself, a
vivid, snappy, humorous old lady.

“But Cousin Beulah wrote to Aunt Elizabeth too, and we have had
a family ruction. Aunt Elizabeth won’t believe I am
guiltless—she declares _Aunt Kate_ is an exact picture of
Cousin Beulah and she politely requests me—Aunt Elizabeth’s
polite requests are awesome things—_not_ to caricature my
relatives in my future productions.

“‘It is not,’ said Aunt Elizabeth in her stateliest manner, ‘a
thing _any_ Murray should do—make money out of the
peculiarities of her friends.’

“It was just another of Miss Royal’s predictions fulfilled. Oh,
was she as right about everything else? If she was—

“But the worst slam of all came from Cousin Jimmy, who had
chuckled over _Fools of Habit_.

“‘Never mind old Beulah, pussy,’ he whispered. ‘That was fine.
You certainly did her up brown in _Aunt Kate_. I recognised her
before I’d read a page. Knew her by her nose.’ There you are! I
unluckily happened to dower _Aunt Kate_ with a ‘long, drooping
nose.’ Nor can it be denied that Cousin Beulah’s nose is long
_and_ drooping. People have been hanged on no clearer
circumstantial evidence. It was of no use to wail despairingly
that I had never even thought of Cousin Beulah. Cousin Jimmy
just nodded and chuckled again.

“‘Of course. Best to keep it quiet. Best to keep anything like
that pretty quiet.’

“The worst sting in all this is, that if _Aunt Kate_ is really
like Cousin Beulah Grant then I failed egregiously in what I was
trying to do.

“However, I feel much better now than when I began this entry.
I’ve got quite a bit of resentment and rebellion and
discouragement out of my system.

“That’s the chief use of a diary, I believe.”

III

“FEB. 3, 19—

“This was a ‘big day.’ I had three acceptances. And one editor
asked me to send him some stories. To be sure, I hate having an
editor ask me to send a story, somehow. It’s far worse than
sending them unasked. The humiliation of having them returned
after all is far deeper than when one just sends off a MS. to
some dim impersonality behind an editorial desk a thousand miles
away.

“And I have decided that I can’t write a story ‘to order.’ ’Tis
a diabolical task. I tried to lately. The editor of _Young
People_ asked me to write a story along certain lines. I wrote
it. He sent it back, pointing out some faults and asking me to
rewrite it. I tried to. I wrote and rewrote and altered and
interlined until my MS. looked like a crazy patchwork of black
and blue and red inks. Finally I lifted one of the covers of the
kitchen stove and dumped in the original yarn and all my
variations thereof.

“After this I’m just going to write what I want to. And the
editors can be—canonised!

“There are northern lights and a misty new moon to-night.”

IV

“FEB. 16, 19—

“My story _What the Jest Was Worth_ was in _The Home Monthly_
to-day. But I was only one of ‘others’ on the cover. However, to
balance that I have been listed by name as ‘one of the
well-known and popular contributors for the coming year’ in
_Girlhood Days_. Cousin Jimmy has read this editor’s foreword
over half a dozen times and I heard him murmuring ‘_well-known
and popular_’ as he split the kindlings. Then he went to the
corner store and bought me a new Jimmy-book. Every time I pass a
new milestone on the Alpine path Cousin Jimmy celebrates by
giving me a new Jimmy-book. I never buy a notebook for myself.
It would hurt his feelings. He always looks at the little pile
of Jimmy-books on my writing table with awe and reverence,
firmly believing that all sorts of wonderful literature is
locked up in the hodge-podge of description and characters and
‘bits’ they contain.

“I always give Dean my stories to read. I can’t help doing it,
although he always brings them back with no comment, or, worse
than no comment—faint praise. It has become a sort of obsession
with me to _make_ Dean admit I _can_ write something worth while
in its line. _That_ would be triumph. But unless and until he
does, everything will be dust and ashes. Because—he _knows_.”

V

“APRIL 2, 19—

“The spring has affected a certain youth of Shrewsbury who comes
out to New Moon occasionally. He is not a suitor of whom the
House of Murray approves. Nor, which is more important, one of
whom E. B. Starr approves. Aunt Elizabeth was very grim because
I went to a concert with him. She was sitting up when I came
home.

“‘You see I haven’t eloped, Aunt Elizabeth,’ I said. ‘I promise
you I won’t. If I ever want to marry any one I’ll tell you so
and marry him in spite of your teeth.’

“I don’t know whether Aunt Elizabeth went to bed with an easier
mind or not. Mother eloped—thank goodness!—and Aunt Elizabeth
is a firm believer in heredity.”

VI

“APRIL 15, 19—

“This evening I went away up the hill and prowled about the
Disappointed House by moonlight. The Disappointed House was
built thirty-seven years ago—partly built, at least—for a
bride who never came to it. There it has been ever since,
boarded up, unfinished, heartbroken, haunted by the timid,
forsaken ghosts of things that should have happened but never
did. I always feel so sorry for it. For its poor blind eyes that
have never seen—that haven’t even memories. No homelight ever
shone out through them—only once, long ago, a gleam of
firelight. It might have been such a nice little house, snuggled
against that wooded hill, pulling little spruces all around it
to cover it. A warm, friendly little house. And a good-natured
little house. Not like the new one at the Corner that Tom Semple
is putting up. _It_ is a bad-tempered house. Vixenish, with
little eyes and sharp elbows. It’s odd how much personality a
house can have even before it is ever lived in at all. Once long
ago, when Teddy and I were children, we pried a board off the
window and climbed in and made a fire in the fireplace. Then we
sat there and planned out our lives. We meant to spend them
together in that very house. I suppose Teddy has forgotten all
about that childish nonsense. He writes often and his letters
are full and jolly and Teddy-like. And he tells me all the
little things I want to know about his life. But lately they
have become rather impersonal, it seems to me. They might just
as well have been written to Ilse as to me.

“Poor little Disappointed House. I suppose you will always be
disappointed.”

VII

“MAY 1, 19—

“Spring again! Young poplars with golden, ethereal leaves.
Leagues of rippling gulf beyond the silver-and-lilac sand-dunes.

“The winter has gone with a swiftness incredible, in spite of
some terrible, black three-o’clocks and lonely, discouraged
twilights. Dean will soon be home from Florida. But neither
Teddy nor Ilse is coming home this summer. This gave me a white
night or two recently. Ilse is going to the coast to visit an
aunt—a mother’s sister who never took any notice of her before.
And Teddy has got the chance of illustrating a series of
Northwest Mounted Police stories for a New York firm and must
spent his holidays making sketches for it in the far North. Of
course it’s a splendid chance for him and I wouldn’t be a bit
sorry—if _he_ seemed a bit sorry because he wasn’t coming to
Blair Water. But he didn’t.

“Well, I suppose Blair Water and the old life here are to him as
a tale that is told now.

“I didn’t realise how much I had been building on Ilse and Teddy
being here for the summer or how much the hope of it had helped
me through a few bad times in the winter. When I let myself
remember that not once this summer will I hear Teddy’s signal
whistle in Lofty John’s bush—not once happen on him in our
secret, beautiful haunts of lane and brookside—not once
exchange a thrilling, significant glance in a crowd when
something happened which had a special meaning for us, all the
colour seems to die out of life, leaving it just a drab, faded
thing of shreds and patches.

“Mrs. Kent met me at the post-office yesterday and stopped to
speak—something she very rarely does. She hates me as much as
ever.

“‘I suppose you have heard that Teddy is not coming home this
summer?’

“‘Yes,’ I said briefly.

“There was a certain odd, aching triumph in her eyes as she
turned away—a triumph I understood. She is very unhappy because
Teddy will not be home for _her_ but she is exultant that he
will not be home for _me_. This shows, she is almost sure, that
he cares nothing about me.

“Well, I daresay she is right. Still, one can’t be altogether
gloomy in spring.

“And Andrew is engaged! To a girl of whom Aunt Addie entirely
approves. ‘I could not be more pleased with Andrew’s choice if I
had chosen her myself,’ she said this afternoon to Aunt
Elizabeth. _To_ Aunt Elizabeth and _at_ me. Aunt Elizabeth was
coldly glad—or said she was. Aunt Laura cried a little—Aunt
Laura always cries a bit when any one she knows is born or dead
or married or engaged or come or gone or polling his first vote.
She couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Andrew would
have been such a _safe_ husband for me. Certainly there is no
dynamite in Andrew.”