Читать книгу Emily's Quest - L. M. Montgomery - Страница 31

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Perhaps Emily was spinning out a plot. But as the shadows deepened she slipped out of the garden, through the dreamy peace of the old columbine orchard—along the Yesterday Road—over the green pasture field—past the Blair Water—up the hill beyond—past the Disappointed House—through the thick fir wood. There, in a clump of silver birches, one had an unbroken view of the harbour, flaming in lilac and rose-colour. Emily reached it a little breathlessly—she had almost run at the last. Would she be too late? Oh, what if she should be too late!

The Mira Lee was sailing out of the harbour, a dream vessel in the glamour of sunset, past purple headlands and distant, fairylike, misty coasts. Emily stood and watched her till she had crossed the bar into the gulf beyond. Stood and watched her until she had faded from sight in the blue dimness of the falling night, conscious only of a terrible hunger to see Teddy once more—just once more. To say good-bye as it should have been said.

Teddy was gone. To another world. There was no rainbow in sight. And what was Vega of the Lyre but a whirling, flaming, incredibly distant sun?

She slipped down among the grasses at her feet and lay there sobbing in the cold moonshine that had suddenly taken the place of the friendly twilight.

Mingled with her sharp agony was incredulity. This thing could not have happened. Teddy could not have gone away with only that soulless, chilly, polite good-bye. After all their years of comradeship, if nothing else. Oh, how could she ever get herself past three o’clock this night?

“I am a hopeless fool,” she whispered savagely. “He has forgotten. I am nothing to him. And I deserve it. Didn’t I forget him in those crazy weeks when I was imagining myself in love with Aylmer Vincent? Of course somebody has told him all about that. I’ve lost my chance of real happiness through that absurd affair. Where is my pride? To cry like this over a man who has forgotten me. But—but—it’s so nice to cry after having had to laugh for these hideous weeks.”