Impulse
By Laura Schiller
Based on: The Emily trilogy
Copyright: The heirs of L. M. Montgomery
Emily closed the door gently as she left the room, leaving it just the slightest bit ajar. Her voice still echoed in Ilse's ears: Don't think me hopelessly Victorian if I say I hope you'll be 'happy ever after'. No, Emily was not being Victorian – only sweet and caring and mercifully blind. Ilse felt dimly grateful that her bridesmaid's uncanny sixth sense did not seem to be working; otherwise, Emily would never have voiced such an absurd hope as that.
Ilse took a deep breath, smoothed her white silken skirts with hands she refused to admit were trembling, and let out a deep sigh of relief. She was alone at last, free to drop her pretense of being a happy bride and instead – what? Throw herself on the floor and scream?
She smiled crookedly at her own folly. What good would that do? This – situation she found herself in was entirely her own doing. She had made up her mind to marry Teddy and she would stick to it, that she would. A Burnley did not change her mind. Besides, even she was not so inconsiderate as to jilt a man at the altar, when the cake was already baked and the presents wrapped and her rose-point veil came all the way from Scotland.
She picked up her wedding bouquet and sniffed, as if the scent of the orchids could blow some sense into her woolly head. White orchids with flaming purple hearts, smelling like the incarnation of a hundred tropic springs. Wasn't that sweet of Teddy? Didn't that prove how lucky she was to have him?
He was handsome, wealthy, good-natured, and had just wit enough to come up with interesting counter-remarks when they argued. Even if he was just a shade too sleek and cool, looking down his classical nose at her every time she raised her voice. Even Dusty, the chow dog Teddy had given her, was more passionate. Perry, now...but she would not think of Perry. She absolutely refused to think of Perry, who came from the slums of Stovepipe Town and had a raw directness to his demeanor that none of his social climbing could ever tame, a fierce vitality to match her own. He was an oaf and a jackass and he'd never look at her anyway – only at Emily, with her night-dark hair and dreamy orchid eyes. Ilse fired her bouquet into a corner. She must not think of him now, on her wedding-day of all days!
How dare he send her a kitschy set of china and sign his card 'your old friend', when by rights he should be the bridegroom waiting downstairs?
She could call it hate all she wanted; she could scream and call him names until her throat gave out and it wouldn't go away. But surely – once she was living with Teddy in faraway Montreal and Perry became nothing more than a memory – surely then, she would escape his hold on her?
In all her thinking, Ilse had not noticed the hubbub of voices in the corridor. Now, all of a sudden, one voice came sharply into focus above the others – and as it spoke, Ilse felt the blood drain from her face in utter horror.
"That poor Perry Miller – you know him, don't you? Such a clever young chap – was killed in a motor collision about an hour ago."
It was only Aunt Ida speaking, but at the moment Ilse felt it was the voice of the devil himself. Her familiar bed with its long pink curtains, the old vanity table with the crack in the mirror, the splashy cabbage roses on the carpet – everything blurred and flickered alarmingly in front of her, and it took several moments before she made the connection to her aching throat and scorching eyes.
A gasp of shock, probably Emily's, was heard outside the door, followed by a loud exclamation from Ilse's father: "Perry Miller killed! Good God, how horrible!"
He had no business to shout like that, Ilse thought dully. Nobody ought to make a noise at a moment like this – the clocks should stop ticking, the folks downstairs should stop gabbling, the damn sun should stop glaring through the blinds like that. But, incredibly, everything stayed as it was.
"Well, as good as killed," Aunt Ida went on. "He must be dead by this time – he was unconscious when they dragged him out of the wreck. They took him to the Charlottetown hospital and..."
Whatever she said next was blotted out by the wild emotion seizing Ilse by the throat – a sickening jumble of terror and unreasonable hope. If he was still alive – if he should die without ever knowing how she felt – !
All her life, Ilse had lived by her impulses. If she took it into her head to drive away the girls who had bullied Emily, swim in the lake with just her petticoats on, smash a vase in the school principal's office or accept Teddy's spur-of-the-moment proposal in the middle of a thunderstorm, she simply did it. The good people of Blair Water found it shocking; her father found it delightful; Ilse herself knew it was inevitable. Therefore, upon hearing the news that the love of her life was dying in Charlottetown Hospital, she did not stop to think about the wedding reception, the impatient Burnley clan waiting below, or even Teddy himself. She simply flung the train of her dress over her shoulders and climbed out through the open window.
She had to see him one last time – before it was too late.
3
Perry's first thought on regaining consciousness was that he must be dead.
There was an angel bending over him, a shimmering, golden-haired lady in white with eyes like amber jewels. As she slowly came into focus, however, he noticed that something was odd – the expression on her face was not at all as serene as one would expect an angel's to be. In fact, her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red, and red blotches of fury or fear burned in her face.
A tear splashed onto his cheek, much to his surprise. Did angels ever cry? And come to think of it, his face – and his ribs – ached awfully. This was not his idea of heaven.
Then he realized what she was saying, and everything became clear. He would know that stream of invective anywhere.
"...what the devil you were thinking to drive so fast, or did you think at all, you brainless nincompoop? Aunt Ida said you were dying, and if your skull weren't so thick you bloody well might be! Ooh, if you weren't all banged up already, I swear I'd smash your stupid face in! Are you listening? Perry, you numbskull, just wake up so I can tell you - "
"I'm already awake," he said, interrupting her diatribe the moment she drew breath. His voice came out rather less loudly than usual, but to his relief, it still worked.
"Hello, Ilse. Nice to see you too."
She flushed crimson, let out an unarticulated gasp of relief, let the train of her dress stream carelessly over the floor, and kissed him.
In all his life, Perry had only made one attempt to kiss a girl – the girl in question being Emily, who had turned her face away, and whose Aunt Ruth had interrupted the scene looking like a plump avenging angel. For years, he had made it his goal to win Emily, going about it with the same cool determination he used to pursue his career, because she was witty and interesting and the only girl who didn't sneer at him because of his origins. "You're not really in love with me," she had told him once. "You only like to think you are."
He knew now that she had been right.
It was only during the past few months that he had given up on her – mainly out of frustration over not achieving his goal, rather than any severe heartache over Emily herself. He had been quite content to live life as a bachelor, until – until that strange evening in the New Moon garden when a flustered, distracted Emily had inadvertently blurted out Ilse's secret.
You goose!...Did you think Ilse would have you as best man – when she hoped for years you would be the groom?
Me! Why, Emily, she always seemed to despise me –
Do you think, if she hadn't liked you, she would have cared what grammar you used or what etiquette you smashed?
And now here was Ilse, kissing him with as much fire and passion as was possible without damaging him further, and Perry found he had to revise his opinion once again.
There was an angel by his bed – an exceptionally sharp-tongued, hot-tempered, beautiful guardian angel named Ilse Burnley.
"We should have done this much earlier," he said, once they broke apart to breathe.
"You bet your boots, honey," said Ilse, borrowing the very slang phrase she used to shout at him for using, and kissed him again.