The Books: “Emily’s Quest” (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

Emily’s Quest – by L.M. Montgomery

The whole ‘furnishing of the Disappointed House’ section is fantastically written. It’s so domestic, so SPECIFIC – Lucy Maud gets into the decorating details with exquisite details … the mirrors, the china, the knick knacks Dean brings in from all over the world, the pictures on the wall, the sofas … Elizabeth’s opinion on all of it … and it’s that very specificity that (to me) gives the whole section its eerie quality. Emily is putting all of her energy into furniture and wallpaper because what is WRONG is so wrong that to even look at it would seem like a betrayal. There’s a moment where she admits to herself, at 3 a.m., that the house means more to her than Dean does … but then Lucy Maud writes that she said that to herself and ‘then refused to believe it the next morning.’ Poor Emily. She knows the truth – her subconscious knows the truth – but she is REFUSING to look at it. And so she has moments of terrible haunting. Moments when she looks at the fireplace in the Disappointed House and remembers Teddy … moments when she feels trapped by her engagement ring and like she wants to fling it away …

It’s depressing, yes, but Lucy Maud is at her best. Seriously. She’s never been so successfully DARK as in this book. (She TRIED to be dark at points during Mistress Pat but by that point I am so annoyed at stupid freakin’ Pat that I think she deserves what she gets. You’re scared and haunted, Pat? Well, good. Maybe THAT will snap you out of your immature attachment to nothing ever changing. You need psychological HELP, Pat. Seriously. Get it, and soon. Ooooh, I can’t wait to excerpt THOSE 2 books! The only ones where Lucy Maud fails – that’s gonna be fun!!) But back to Emily: There are images from Emily’s Quest that just stay with me – Emily pacing up and down the seashore in the middle of the night, in psychic agony. Staring at the emerald ring on her finger, hating it, thinking of it as a “fetter”. Poor Dean – throwing himself into the fun of homemaking, for the first time in his life. And she sits beside him, staring into the fire, wondering if she will ever stop thinking of Teddy. Dean, now that he has captured her, relaxes a bit. He doesn’t realize that the price Emily has had to pay to get to this point is too high. Her writing is done. She has lost interest in it. This may have made Dean happy … but he didn’t realize that this will come back to “get” him in the end. Nobody can give up a dream like that without serious repercussions. It has to be dealt with openly. You cannot force someone to downgrade or give up their dear dreams. Emily is not at that point yet … she is just kind of listless and indifferent to the thought of all that ambition. The only thing she cares about is getting the right china for her house … the house she loves so much. It is all she CAN care about.

It’s an extremely eerie section.

And then it all culminates with Emily’s last (at least in the books!!) second-sight experience. Each book has some kind of paranormal event … where Emily is not just experiencing it, but changing the course of people’s lives. Ilse Burnley’s mother is found – after years of her whole family thinking she has run off with another man. Allan Bradshaw is found – he was trapped in an empty house for 4 days – he wouldn’t have lived much longer – and Emily saw where he was in a dream. And now … this moment. Where she reaches across the ocean – across the space-time continuum – to warn Teddy of impending disaster.

That’s the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Emily’s Quest – by L.M. Montgomery

II

But that letter from Ilse that day. Teddy was coming home. He was to sail on the Flavian. He was going to be home most of the summer.

“If it could have been all over – before he came,” muttered Emily.

Always to be afraid of to-morrow? Content – even happy with to-day – but always afraid of to-morrow. Was this to be her life? And why that fear of tomorrow?

She had brought the key of the Disappointed House with her. She had not been in it since November and she wanted to see it – beautiful, waiting, desirable. Her home. In its charm and sanity vague, horrible fears and doubts woudl vanish. The soul of that happy last summer would come back to her. She paused at the garden gate to look lovingly at it – the dear little house nestled under the old trees that sighed softly as they had sighed to her childhood visions. Below, Blair Water was grey and sullen. She loved Blair Water in all its changes – its sparkle of summer, its silver of dusk, its miracle of moonlight, its dimpled rings of rain. And she loved it now, dark and brooding. There was somehow a piercing sadness in that sullent, waiting landscape all around her – as if – the odd fancy crossed her mind – as if it were afraid of spring. How this idea of fear haunted her! She looked up beyond the spires of the Lombardies on the hill. And in a sudden pale rift between the clouds a star shone down on her – Vega of the Lyre.

With a shiver Emily hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped in. The house seemed to be vacant – waiting for her. She fumbled through the darkness to the matches she knew were on the mantelpiece and lighted the tall, pale-green taper beside the clock. The beautiful room glimmered out at her in the flickering light – just as they had left it that last evening. There was Elizabeth Bas, who could never have known the meaning of fear – Mona Lisa, who mocked at it. But the Lady Giovanna, who never turned her saintly profile to look squarely at you. Had she ever known it – this suble, secret fear that one could never put in words? – that would be so ridiculous if one could put it in words? Dean Priest’s sad lovely mother. Yes, she had known fear; it looked out of her pictured eyes now in that dim, furtive light.

Emily shut the door and sat down in the armchair beneath Elizabeth Bas’ picture. She could hear the dead, dry leaves of a dead summer rustling eerily on the beach just outside the window. And the wind – rising – rising – rising. But she liked it. “The wind is free – not a prisoner like me.” She crushed the unbidden thought down sternly. She would not think such things. Her fetters were of her own forging. She had put them on willingly, even desirously. Nothing to do but wear them gracefully.

How the sea moaned down there below the fields! But here in the little house what a silence there was! Something strange and uncanny about the silence. It seemed to hold some profound meaning. She would not have dared to speak lest something should answer her. Yet fear suddenly left her. She felt dreamy – happy – far away from life and reality. The walls of the shadowy room seemed slowly to fade from her vision. The pictures withdrew themselves. There seemed to be nothing before her but Great-aunt Nancy’s gazing-ball hung from the old iron lantern – a big, silvery, gleaming globe. In it she saw the reflected room, like a shining doll’s-house, with herself sitting in the old, low chair and the taper on the mantelpiece like a tiny, impish star. Emily looked at it as she leaned back in her chair – looked at it till she saw nothing but that tiny point of light in a great misty universe.

III

Did she sleep? Dream? Who knows? Emily herself never know. Twice before in her life – once in delirium – once in sleep she had drawn aside the veil of sense and time and seen beyond. Emily never liked to remember those experiences. She forgot them deliberately. She had not recalled them for years. A dream – a fancy fever-bred. But this?

A small cloud seemed to shape itself within the gazing-ball. It dispersed – faded. But the reflected doll’s-house in the ball was gone. Emily saw an entirely different scene – a long lofty room filled with streams of hurrying people – and among them a face she knew.

The gazing-ball was gone – the room in the Disappointed House was gone. She was no longer sitting in her chair looking on. She was in that strange, great room – she was among those throngs of people – she was standing by the man who was waiting impatiently before a ticket-window. As he turned his face and their eyes met she saw that it was Teddy – she saw the amazed recognition in his eyes. And she knew, indisputably, that he was in some terrible danger – and that she must save him.

“Teddy. Come.”

It seemed to her that she caught his hand and pulled him away from the window. Then she was drifting back from him – back – back – and he was following – running after her – heedless of the people he ran into – following – following – she was back on the chair – outside of the gazing-ball – in it she still saw the station-room shrunk again to play-size – and that one figure running – still running – the cloud again – filling the ball – whitening – wavering – thinning – clearning. Emily was lying back in her chair staring fixedly into Aunt Nancy’s gazing-ball, where the living-room was reflected calmly and silverly, with a dead-white spot that was her face and one solitary taper-light twinkling like an impish star.

IV

Emily, feeling as if she had died and come back to life, got herself out of the Disappointed House, and locked the door. The clouds had cleared away and the world was dim and unreal in starlight. Hardly realising what she was doing she turned her face seaward through the spruce wood – down the long, windy, pasture-field – over the dunes to the sandshore – along it like a haunted, driven creature in a weird, uncanny half-lit kingdom. The sea afar out was like grey satin half hidden in a creeping fog but it washed against the sands as she passed in little swishing, mocking ripples. She was shut in between the misty sea and the high, dark sand-dunes. If she could only go on so forever – never have to turn back and confront the unanswerable question the night had put to her.

She knew, beyond any doubt or cavil or mockery, that she had seen Teddy – had saved, or tried to save him, from some unknown peril. And she knew, just as simply and just as surely that she loved him – had always loved him, with a love that lay at the very foundation of her being.

And in two months’ time she was to be married to Dean Priest.

What could she do? To marry him now was unthinkable. She could not live such a lie. But to break his heart – snatch from him all the happiness possible to his thwarted life – that, too, was unthinkable.

Yes, as Ilse had said, it was a very devilish thing to be a woman.

“Particularly,” said Emily, filled with bitter self-contempt, “a woman who seemingly doesn’t know her own mind for a month at a time. I was so sure last summer that Teddy no longer meant anything to me – so sure that I really cared enough for Dean to marry him. And now to-night – and that horrible power or gift or curse coming again when I thought I had outgrown it – left it behind forever.”

Emily walked on that eerie sandshore half the night and slipped guiltily and stealthily into New Moon in the wee sma’s to fling herself on her bed and fall at last in the absolute slumber of exhaustion.