Emily Climbs. Lucy M. Montgomery

slowly. Suddenly she knew what he was doing. He was going into every pew, not waiting for the lightning, to feel about for her. He was looking for her, then—she had heard that sometimes he followed young girls, thinking they were Annie. If he caught them he held them with one hand and stroked their hair and faces fondly with the other, mumbling foolish, senile endearments. He had never harmed anyone, but he had never let anyone go until she was rescued by some other person. It was said that Mary Paxton of Derry Pond had never been quite the same again; her nerves never recovered from the shock.

      Emily knew that it was only a question of time before he would reach the pew where she crouched—feeling about with those hands! All that kept her senses in her frozen body was the thought that if she lost consciousness those hands would touch her—hold her—caress her. The next lightning flash showed him entering the adjoining pew. Emily sprang up and out and rushed to the other side of the church. She hid again: he would search her out, but she could again elude him: this might go on all night: a madman’s strength would outlast hers: at last she might fall exhausted and he would pounce on her.

      For what seemed hours to Emily, this mad game of hide-and-seek lasted. It was in reality about half an hour. She was hardly a rational creature at all, any more than her demented pursuer. She was merely a crouching, springing, shrieking thing of horror. Time after time he hunted her out with his cunning, implacable patience. The last time she was near one of the porch doors, and in desperation she sprang through it and slammed it in his face. With the last ounce of her strength she tried to hold the knob from turning in his grasp. And as she strove she heard—was she dreaming?—Teddy’s voice calling to her from the steps outside the outer door.

      “Emily—Emily—are you there?”

      She did not know how he had come—she did not wonder—she only knew he was there!

      “Teddy, I’m locked in the church!” she shrieked—“and Mad Mr. Morrison is here—oh—quick—quick—save me—save me!”

      “The key of the door is hanging up in there on a nail at the right side!” shouted Teddy. “Can you get it and unlock the door? If you can’t I’ll smash the porch window.”

      The clouds broke at that moment and the porch was filled with moonlight. In it she saw plainly the big key, hanging high on the wall beside the front door. She dashed at it and caught it as Mad Mr. Morrison wrenched upon the door and sprang into the porch, his dog behind him. Emily unlocked the outer door and stumbled out into Teddy’s arms just in time to elude that outstretched, blood-red hand. She heard Mad Mr. Morrison give a wild, eerie shriek of despair as she escaped him.

      Sobbing, shaking, she clung to Teddy.

      “Oh, Teddy, take me away—take me quick—oh, don’t let him touch me, Teddy—don’t let him touch me!”

      Teddy swung her behind him and faced Mad Mr. Morrison on the stone step.

      “How dare you frighten her so?” he demanded angrily.

      Mad Mr. Morrison smiled deprecatingly in the moonlight. All at once he was not wild or violent—only a heart-broken old man who sought his own.

      “I want Annie,” he mumbled. “Where is Annie? I thought I had found her in there. I only wanted to find my beautiful Annie.”

      “Annie isn’t here,” said Teddy, tightening his hold on Emily’s cold little hand.

      “Can you tell me where Annie is?” entreated Mad Mr. Morrison, wistfully. “Can you tell me where my dark-haired Annie is?”

      Teddy was furious with Mad Mr. Morrison for frightening Emily, but the old man’s piteous entreaty touched him—and the artist in him responded to the values of the picture presented against the background of the white, moonlit church. He thought he would like to paint Mad Mr. Morrison as he stood there, tall and gaunt, in his gray “duster” coat, with his long white hair and beard, and the ageless quest in his hollow, sunken eyes.

      “No—no—I don’t know where she is,” he said gently, “but I think you will find her sometime.”

      Mad Mr. Morrison sighed.

      “Oh, yes. Sometime I will overtake her. Come, my dog, we will seek her.”

      Followed by his old black dog he went down the steps, across the green and down the long, wet, tree-shadowed road. So going, he passed out of Emily’s life. She never saw Mad Mr. Morrison again. But she looked after him understandingly, and forgave him. To himself he was not the repulsive old man he seemed to her; he was a gallant young lover seeking his lost and lovely bride. The pitiful beauty of his quest intrigued her, even in the shaking reaction from her hour of agony.

      “Poor Mr. Morrison,” she sobbed, as Teddy half led, half carried her to one of the old flat gravestones at the side of the church.

      They sat there until Emily recovered composure and managed to tell her tale—or the outlines of it. She felt she could never tell—perhaps not even write in a Jimmy-book—the whole of its racking horror. That was beyond words.

      “And to think,” she sobbed, “that the key was there all the time. I never knew it.”

      “Old Jacob Banks always locks the front door with its big key on the inside, and then hangs it up on that nail,” said Teddy. “He locks the choir door with a little key, which he takes home. He has always done that since the time, three years ago, when he lost the big key and was weeks before he found it.”

      Suddenly Emily awoke to the strangeness of Teddy’s coming.

      “How did you happen to come, Teddy?”

      “Why, I heard you call me,” he said. “You did call me, didn’t you?”

      “Yes,” said Emily, slowly, “I called for you when I saw Mad Mr. Morrison first. But, Teddy, you couldn’t have heard me—you couldn’t. The Tansy Patch is a mile from here.”

      “I did hear you,” said Teddy, stubbornly. “I was asleep and it woke me up. You called ‘Teddy, Teddy, save me’—it was your voice as plain as I ever heard it in my life. I got right up and hurried on my clothes and came here as fast as I could.”

      “How did you know I was here?”

      “Why—I don’t know,” said Teddy confusedly. “I didn’t stop to think—I just seemed to know you were in the church when I heard you calling me, and I must get here as quick as I could. It’s—it’s all—funny,” he concluded lamely.

      “It’s—it’s—it frightens me a little.” Emily shivered. “Aunt Elizabeth says I have second sight—you remember Ilse’s mother? Mr. Carpenter says I’m psychic—I don’t know just what that means, but think I’d rather not be it.”

      She shivered again. Teddy thought she was cold and, having nothing else to put around her, put his arm—somewhat tentatively, since Murray pride and Murray dignity might be outraged. Emily was not cold in body, but a little chill had blown over her soul. Something supernatural—some mystery she could not understand—had brushed too near her in that strange summoning. Involuntarily she nestled a little closer to Teddy, acutely conscious of the boyish tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his boyish shyness. Suddenly she knew that she liked Teddy better than anybody—better even than Aunt Laura or Ilse or Dean.

      Teddy’s arm tightened a little.

      “Anyhow, I’m glad I got here in time,” he said. “If I hadn’t that crazy old man might have frightened you to death.”

      They sat so for a few minutes in silence. Everything seemed very wonderful and beautiful—and a little unreal. Emily thought she must be in a dream, or in one of her own wonder tales. The storm had passed, and the moon was shining clearly once more. The cool fresh air was threaded with beguiling voices—the fitful voice of raindrops falling from the shaken boughs of the maple woods behind them—the freakish voice of the Wind Woman around the white church—the far-off, intriguing voice of the sea—and, still finer and rarer, the little, remote, detached voices of the night. Emily