Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/308

“Of course I'll go,” she said aloud to herself. Perhaps the spoken word would settle things. “What would I do next year if I didn’t? Aunt Elizabeth will certainly never let me go anywhere else alone. Ilse will be away—and Perry—Teddy too, likely. He says he’s bound to go and do something to earn money for his art study. I must go.”

She said it fiercely as if arguing against some invisible opponent. When she reached home in the twilight, no one was there and she went restlessly all over the house. What charm and dignity and fineness the old rooms had, with their candles and their ladder-backed chairs and their braided rugs! How dear and entreating was her own little room with its diamond paper and its guardian angel, its fat black rose-jar and its funny, kinky window pane! Would Miss Royal’s flat be half so wonderful?

“Of course I’ll go,” she said again—feeling that if she could only have left off the “of course” the thing would have been settled.

She went out into the garden, lying in the remote, passionless beauty of early spring moonlight, and walked up and down its paths. From afar came the whistle of the Shrewsbury train—like a call from the alluring world beyond—a world full of interest, charm, drama. She paused by the old lichened sun-dial and traced the motto on its border, “So goes Time by.” Time did go by—swiftly, mercilessly, even at New Moon, unspoiled as it was by any haste or rush of modernity. Should she not take the current when it offered? The white June lilies waved in the faint breeze—she could almost see her old friend the Wind Woman bending over them to tilt their waxen chins. Would the Wind Woman come to her in the crowded city streets? Could she be like Kipling’s cat there?

“And I wonder if I'll ever have the flash in New York,” she thought wistfully.

How beautiful was this old garden which Cousin Jimmy loved! How beautiful was old New Moon farm!