Read Online Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery - Free Book Online Page A

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 open 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 heartbroken 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 grey “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,