because I knew she was disappointed. And I suppose my pride suffered a bit, but I never thought of being jealous of Ilse. I was proud of her—she does magnificently in a play.
“Yes, I contradict. I admit that is one of my faults. But people do say such outrageous things! And why isn’t it as bad for people to contradict me? They do it continually—and I am right just as often as they are.
“Sarcastic? Yes, I’m afraid that is another of my faults. Touchy—no, I’m not. I’m only sensitive. And proud? Well, yes, I am a little proud—but not nearly as proud as people think me. I can’t help carrying my head at a certain angle and I can’t help feeling it is a great thing to have a century of good, upright people with fine traditions and considerable brains behind you. Not like the Potters—upstarts of yesterday!
“Oh, how those women garbled things about poor Ilse. We couldn’t, I suppose, expect a Potter or the wife of a Potter to recognize the sleep-walking scene from Lady Macbeth. I have told Ilse repeatedly that she ought to see that all doors are shut when she tries it over. She is quite wonderful in it. She never was at that charivari—she only said she’d like to go. And as for the moonlight bathing—that was true enough except that we had some stitches on. There was nothing dreadful about it. It was perfectly beautiful—though now it is all spoiled and degraded by being dragged about in common gossip. I wish Ilse hadn’t told about it.
“We had gone away up the sandshore for a walk. It was a moonlit night and the sandshore was wonderful. The Wind Woman was rustling in the grasses on the dunes and there was a long, gentle wash of little gleaming waves on the shore. We wanted to bathe, but at first we thought we couldn’t because we didn’t have our bathing dresses. So we sat on the sands and we just talked. The great gulf stretched out before us, silvery, gleaming, alluring, going farther and farther into the mists of the northern sky. It was like an ocean in ‘fairylands forlorn.’
“I said:
“‘I would like to get into a ship and sail straight out there—out—out—where would I land?’
“‘Anticosti, I expect,’ said Ilse—a bit too prosaically, I thought.
“‘No—no—Ultima Thule, I think,’ I said dreamily. ‘Some beautiful unknown shore where “the rain never falls, and the wind never blows.” Perhaps the country back of the North Wind where Diamond went. One could sail to it over that silver sea on a night like this.’
“‘That was heaven, I think,’ said Ilse.
“Then we talked about immortality, and Ilse said she was afraid of it—afraid of living for ever and for ever; she said she was sure she would get awfully tired of herself. I said I thought I liked Dean’s idea of a succession of lives—I can’t make out from him whether he really believes that or not—and Ilse said that might be all very well if you were sure of being born again as a decent person, but how about it if you weren’t?
“‘Well, you have to take some risk in any kind of immortality,’ I said.
“‘Anyhow,’ said Ilse, ‘whether I am myself or somebody else next time, I do hope I won’t have such a dreadful temper. If I just go on being myself I’ll smash my harp and tear my halo to pieces and pull all the feathers out of the other angels’ wings half an hour after getting to heaven. You know I will, Emily. I can’t help it. I had a fiendish quarrel with Perry yesterday again. It was all my fault—but of course he vexed me by his boasting. I wish I could control my temper.’
“I don’t mind Ilse’s rages one bit now—I know she never means anything she says in them. I never say anything back. I just smile at her and if I’ve a bit of paper handy I jot down the things she says. This infuriates her so that she chokes with anger and can’t say anything more. At all other times Ilse is a darling and such good fun.
“‘You can’t control your rages because you like going into them,’ I said.
“Ilse stared at me.
“‘I don’t—I don’t.’
“‘You do. You enjoy them,’ I insisted.
“‘Well, of course,” said Ilse, grinning, “I do have a good time while they last. It’s awfully satisfying to say the most insulting things and call the worst names. I believe you’re right, Emily. I do enjoy them. Queer I never thought of it. I suppose if I really were unhappy in them I wouldn’t go into them. But after they’re over—I’m so remorseful. I cried for an hour yesterday after fighting with Perry.’
“‘Yes, and you enjoyed that, too—didn’t you?’
“Ilse reflected.
“‘I guess so, Emily; you’re an uncanny thing. I won’t talk about it any more. Let’s go bathing. No dresses? What does it matter. There isn’t a soul for miles. I can’t resist those waves. They’re calling me.’
“I felt just as she did, and bathing by moonlight seemed such a lovely, romantic thing—and it is, when the Potters of the world don’t know of it. When they do, they smudge it. We undressed in a little hollow among the dunes—that was like a bowl of silver in the moonlight—but we kept our petticoats on. We had the loveliest time splashing and swimming about in that silver-blue water and those creamy little waves, like mermaids or sea nymphs. It was like living in a poem or a fairy tale. And when we came out I held out my hands to Ilse and said:
“‘Come unto these yellow sands
Curtseyed when we have and kissed,
The wild winds whist,
Foot it featly here and there
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.’
“Ilse took my hands and we danced in rings over the moonlit sands, and then we went up to the silver bowl and dressed and went home perfectly happy. Only, of course, we had to carry our wet petticoats rolled up under our arms, so we looked rather slinky, but nobody saw us. And that is what Blair Water is so scandalized about.
“All the same, I hope Aunt Elizabeth won’t hear of it.
“It is too bad Mrs. Price lost so much sleep over Dean and me. We were not performing any weird incantations—we were simply walking over the Delectable Mountain and tracing pictures in the clouds. Perhaps it was childish—but it was great fun. That is one thing I like about Dean—he isn’t afraid of doing something harmless and pleasant just because it’s childish. One cloud he pointed out to me looked exactly like an angel flying along the pale, shining sky and carrying a baby in its arms. There was a filmy blue veil over its head with a faint, first star gleaming through it. Its wings were tipped with gold and its white robe flecked with crimson.
“‘There goes the Angel of the Evening Star with to-morrow in its arms,’ said Dean.
“It was so beautiful that it gave me one of my wonder moments. But ten seconds later it had changed into something that looked like a camel with an exaggerated hump!
“We had a wonderful half hour, even if Mrs. Price, who couldn’t see anything in the sky, did think us quite mad.
“Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I’m not so bad and silly as they think me, and I’m not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I’ve written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me—pitied by a Potter!
“I looked out of my window just now and saw Cousin Jimmy’s nasturtium bed—and suddenly the flash came—and Miss Potter and her pity, and her malicious tongue seemed to matter not at all. Nasturtiums, who coloured you, you wonderful, glowing things? You must have been fashioned out of summer sunsets.
“I help Cousin Jimmy a great deal with his garden this summer. I think I love it as much as he does. Every day we make new discoveries of bud and bloom.
“So Aunt Elizabeth won’t send me to Shrewsbury!