Emily of New Moon (31 page)

“Ungrateful, thankless child!”

“I'm
not
thankless. I've tried to be good—I've tried to obey you and please you—I do all the chores I can to help pay for my keep. And you had
no
business
to read my letters to Father.”

“They are disgraceful letters—and must be destroyed,” said Aunt Elizabeth.

“No,” Emily clasped them tighter. “I'd sooner burn myself. You shall not have them, Aunt Elizabeth.”

She felt her brows drawing together—she felt the Murray look on her face—she knew she was conquering.

Elizabeth Murray turned paler, if that were possible. There were times when she could give the Murray look herself; it was not that which dismayed her—it was the uncanny something which seemed to peer out behind the Murray look that always broke her will. She trembled—faltered—yielded.

“Keep your letters,” she said bitterly, “and scorn the old woman who opened her home to you.”

She went out of the parlor. Emily was left mistress of the field. And all at once her victory turned to dust and ashes in her mouth.

She went up to her own room, hid her letters in the cupboard over the mantel, and then crept up on her bed, huddling down in a little heap with her face buried in her pillow. She was still sore with a sense of outrage—but underneath another pain was beginning to ache terribly.

Something in her was hurt because she had hurt Elizabeth—for she felt that Aunt Elizabeth, under all her anger, was
hurt
. This surprised Emily. She would have expected Aunt Elizabeth to be angry, of course, but she would never have supposed it would affect her in any other way. Yet she had seen something in Aunt Elizabeth's eyes when she had flung that last stinging sentence at her—something that spoke of bitter hurt.

“Oh! Oh!” gasped Emily. She began to cry chokingly into her pillow. She was so wretched that she could not get out of herself and watch her own suffering with a sort of enjoyment in its drama—set her mind to analyze her feelings—and when Emily was as wretched as that she was very wretched indeed and wholly comfortless. Aunt Elizabeth would not keep her at New Moon after a poisonous quarrel like this. She would send her away, of course. Emily believed this. Nothing was too horrible to believe just then. How could she live away from dear New Moon?

“And I may have to live eighty years,” Emily moaned.

But worse even than this was the remembrance of that look in Aunt Elizabeth's eyes.

Her own sense of outrage and sacrilege ebbed away under the remembrance. She thought of all the things she had written her father about Aunt Elizabeth—sharp, bitter things, some of them just, some of them unjust. She began to feel that she should not have written them. It was true enough that Aunt Elizabeth had not loved her—had not wanted to take her to New Moon. But she
had
taken her and though it had been done in duty, not in love, the fact remained. It was no use for her to tell herself that it wasn't as if the letters were written to anyone living, to be seen and read by others. While she was under Aunt Elizabeth's roof—while she owed the food she ate and the clothes she wore to Aunt Elizabeth—she should not say, even to her father, harsh things of her. A Starr should not have done it.

“I must go and ask Aunt Elizabeth to forgive me,” thought Emily at last, all the passion gone out of her and only regret and repentance left. “I suppose she never will—she'll hate me always now. But I must go.”

She turned herself about—and then the door opened and Aunt Elizabeth entered. She came across the room and stood at the side of the bed, looking down at the grieved little face on the pillow—a face that in the dim, rainy twilight, with its tear-stains and black shadowed eyes, looked strangely mature and chiseled.

Elizabeth Murray was still austere and cold. Her voice sounded stern; but she said an amazing thing.

“Emily, I had no right to read your letters. I admit I was wrong. Will you forgive me?”

“Oh!” The word was almost a cry. Aunt Elizabeth had at last discerned the way to conquer Emily. The latter lifted herself up, flung her arms about Aunt Elizabeth, and said chokingly,

“Oh—Aunt Elizabeth—I'm sorry—I'm sorry—I shouldn't have written those things—but I wrote them when I was vexed—and I didn't mean them
all
—truly, I didn't mean the worst of them. Oh, you'll believe
that
, won't you, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“I'd like to believe it, Emily.” An odd quiver passed through the tall, rigid form. “I—don't like to think you—
hate
me—my sister's child—little Juliet's child.”

“I don't—oh, I don't,” sobbed Emily. “And I'll
love
you, Aunt Elizabeth, if you'll let me—if you
want
me to. I didn't think you cared.
Dear
Aunt Elizabeth.”

Emily gave Aunt Elizabeth a fierce hug and a passionate kiss on the white, fine-wrinkled cheek. Aunt Elizabeth kissed her gravely on the brow in return and then said, as if closing the door on the whole incident.

“You'd better wash your face and come down to supper.”

But there was yet something to be cleared up.

“Aunt Elizabeth,” whispered Emily. “I can't burn those letters, you know—they belong to Father. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll go over them all and put a star by anything I said about you and then I'll add an explanatory footnote saying that I was mistaken.”

Emily spent her spare time for several days putting in her “explanatory footnotes,” and then her conscience had rest. But when she again tried to write a letter to her father she found that it no longer meant anything to her. The sense of reality—nearness—of close communion had gone. Perhaps she had been outgrowing it gradually, as childhood began to merge into girlhood—perhaps the bitter scene with Aunt Elizabeth had only shaken into dust something out of which the spirit had already departed. But, whatever the explanation, it was not possible to write such letters any more. She missed them terribly but she could not go back to them. A certain door of life was shut behind her and could not be re-opened.

When the Curtain Lifted

It would be pleasant to be able to record that after the reconciliation in the lookout Emily and Aunt Elizabeth lived in entire amity and harmony. But the truth was that things went on pretty much the same as before. Emily went softly, and tried to mingle serpent's wisdom and dove's harmlessness in practical proportions, but their points of view were so different that there were bound to be clashes; they did not speak the same language, so there was bound to be misunderstanding.

And yet there was a difference—a very vital difference. Elizabeth Murray had learned an important lesson—that there was not one law of fairness for children and another for grown-ups. She continued to be as autocratic as ever—but she did not do or say to Emily anything she would not have done or said to Laura had occasion called for it.

Emily, on her side, had discovered the fact that, under all her surface coldness and sternness, Aunt Elizabeth really had an affection for her; and it was wonderful what a difference this made. It took the sting out of Aunt Elizabeth's “ways” and words and healed entirely a certain little half-conscious sore spot that had been in Emily's heart ever since the incident of the drawn slips at Maywood.

“I don't believe I'm a duty to Aunt Elizabeth any more,” she thought exultantly.

Emily grew rapidly that summer in body, mind, and soul. Life was delightful, growing richer every hour, like an unfolding rose. Forms of beauty filled her imagination and were transferred as best as she could to paper, though they were never so lovely there, and Emily had the heartbreaking moments of the true artist who discovers that

“Never on painter's canvas lives

The charm of his fancy's dream.”

Much of her “old stuff” she burned; even the
Child
of
the
Sea
was reduced to ashes. But the little pile of manuscripts in the mantel cupboard of the lookout was growing steadily larger. Emily kept her scribblings there now; the sofa shelf in the garret was desecrated; and, besides, she felt somehow that Aunt Elizabeth would never meddle with her “private papers” again, no matter where they were kept. She did not go now to the garret to read or write or dream; her own dear lookout was the best place for that. She loved that quaint, little old room intensely; it was almost like a living thing to her—a sharer in gladness—a comforter in sorrow.

Ilse was growing, too, blossoming out into strange beauty and brilliance, knowing no law but her own pleasure, recognizing no authority but her own whim. Aunt Laura worried over her.

“She will be a woman so soon—and
who
will look after her? Allan won't.”

“I've no patience with Allan,” said Aunt Elizabeth grimly. “He is always ready to hector and advise other people. He'd better look at home. He'll come over here and order me to do this or that, or
not
to do it, for Emily; but if I say one word to him about Ilse he blows the roof off. The idea of a man turning against his daughter and neglecting her as he has neglected Ilse simply because her mother wasn't all she ought to be—as if the poor child was to blame for
that
.”

“S—s—sh,” said Aunt Laura, as Emily crossed the sitting-room on her way upstairs.

Emily smiled sadly to herself. Aunt Laura needn't be “s-s-sh'ing.” There was nothing left for her to find out about Ilse's mother—nothing, except the most important thing of all, which neither she nor anybody else living knew. For Emily had never surrendered her conviction that the whole truth about Beatrice Burnley was not known. She often worried about it when she lay curled up in her black walnut bed o'nights, listening to the moan of the gulf and the Wind Woman singing in the trees, and drifted into sleep wishing intensely that she could solve the dark old mystery and dissolve its legend of shame and bitterness.

Emily went rather languidly upstairs to the lookout. She meant to write some more of her story,
The
Ghost
of
the
Well
, wherein she was weaving the old legend of the well in the Lee field; but somehow interest was lacking; she put the manuscript back into the mantel cupboard; she read over a letter from Dean Priest which had come that day, one of his fat, jolly, whimsical, delightful letters wherein he had told her that he was coming to stay a month with his sister at Blair Water. She wondered why this announcement did not excite her more. She was tired—her head was aching. Emily couldn't remember ever having had a headache before. Since she could not write she decided to lie down and be
Lady
Trevanion
for awhile. Emily was
Lady
Trevanion
very often that summer, in one of the dream lives she had begun to build up for herself.
Lady
Trevanion
was the wife of an English earl and, besides being a famous novelist, was a member of the British House of Commons—where she always appeared in black velvet with a stately coronet of pearls on her dark hair. She was the only woman in the House and, as this was before the days of the suffragettes, she had to endure many sneers and innuendos and insults from the ungallant males around her. Emily's favorite dream scene was where she rose to make her first speech—a wonderfully thrilling event. As Emily found it difficult to do justice to the scene in any ideas of her own, she always fell back on “Pitt's reply to Walpole,” which she had found in her
Royal
Reader
, and declaimed it, with suitable variations. The insolent speaker who had provoked
Lady
Trevanion
into speech had sneered at her as a
woman
, and
Lady
Trevanion
, a magnificent creature in her velvet and pearls, rose to her feet, amid hushed and dramatic silence, and said,

“The atrocious crime of being a
woman
which the honorable member has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall attempt neither to palliate nor deny, but shall content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their
sex
and
not
one of that number who are ignorant in spite of
manhood
and experience.”

(Here she was always interrupted by thunders of applause.)

But the savor was entirely lacking in this scene today and by the time Emily had reached the line, “But
womanhood
, Sir, is not my only crime”—she gave up in disgust and fell to worrying over Ilse's mother again, mixed up with some uneasy speculations regarding the climax of her story about the ghost of the well, mingled with her unpleasant physical sensations.

Her eyes hurt her when she moved them. She was chilly, although the July day was hot. She was still lying there when Aunt Elizabeth came up to ask why she hadn't gone to bring the cows home from the pasture.

“I—I didn't know it was so late,” said Emily confusedly. “I—my head aches, Aunt Elizabeth.”

Aunt Elizabeth rolled up the white cotton blind and looked at Emily. She noted her flushed face—she felt her pulse. Then she bade her shortly to stay where she was, went down, and sent Perry for Dr. Burnley.

“Probably she's got the measles,” said the doctor as gruffly as usual. Emily was not yet sick enough to be gentle over. “There's an outbreak of them at Derry Pond. Has she had any chance to catch them?”

“Jimmy Joe Bell's two children were here one afternoon about ten days ago. She played with them—she's always playing round with people she's no business to associate with. I haven't heard that they were or have been sick though.”

Jimmy Joe Belle, when asked plainly, confessed that his “young ones” had come out with measles the very day after they had been at New Moon. There was therefore not much doubt as to Emily's malady.

“It's a bad kind of measles apparently,” the doctor said. “Quite a number of the Derry Pond children have died of it. Mostly French though—the kids would be out of bed when they had no business to be and caught cold. I don't think you need worry about Emily. She might as well have measles and be done with it. Keep her warm and keep the room dark. I'll run over in the morning.”

For three or four days nobody was much alarmed. Measles was a disease everybody had to have. Aunt Elizabeth looked after Emily well and slept on a sofa which had been moved into the lookout. She even left the window open at night. In spite of this—perhaps Aunt Elizabeth thought because of it—Emily grew steadily sicker, and on the fifth day a sharp change for the worse took place. Her fever went up rapidly, delirium set in; Dr. Burnley came, looked anxious, scowled, changed the medicine.

“I'm sent for to a bad case of pneumonia at White Cross,” he said, “and I have to go to Charlottetown in the morning to be present at Mrs. Jackwell's operation. I promised her I would go. I'll be back in the evening. Emily is very restless—that high-strung system of hers is evidently very sensitive to fever. What's that nonsense she's talking about the Wind Woman?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Aunt Elizabeth worriedly. “She's always talking nonsense like that, even when she's well. Allan, tell me plainly—is there any danger?”

“There's always danger in this type of measles. I don't like these symptoms—the eruption should be out by now and there's no sign of it. Her fever is very high—but I don't think we need to be alarmed yet. If I thought otherwise I wouldn't go to town. Keep her as quiet as possible—humor her whims if you can—I don't like that mental disturbance. She looks terribly distressed—seems to be worrying over something. Has she had anything on her mind of late?”

“Not that I know of,” said Aunt Elizabeth. She had a sudden bitter realization that she really did not know much about the child's mind. Emily would never have come to her with any of her little troubles and worries.

“Emily, what is bothering you?” asked Dr. Burnley softly—very softly. He took the hot, tossing, little hand gently, oh, so gently, in his big one.

Emily looked up with wild, fever-bright eyes.

“She couldn't have done it—she
couldn't
have done it.”

“Of course she couldn't,” said the doctor cheerily. “Don't worry—she didn't do it.”

His eyes telegraphed, “What does she mean?” to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth shook her head.

“Who are you talking about—dear?” she asked Emily. It was the first time she had called Emily “dear.”

But Emily was off on another tack. The well in Mr. Lee's field was open, she declared. Someone would be sure to fall into it. Why didn't Mr. Lee shut it up? Dr. Burnley left Aunt Elizabeth trying to reassure Emily on that point and hurried away to White Cross.

At the door he nearly fell over Perry who was curled up on the sandstone slab, hugging his sunburned legs desperately. “How is Emily?” he demanded, grasping the skirt of the doctor's coat.

“Don't bother me—I'm in a hurry,” growled the doctor.

“You tell me how Emily is or I'll hang on to your coat till the seams go,” said Perry stubbornly. “I can't get one word of sense out of them old maids.
You
tell me.”

“She's a sick child but I'm not seriously alarmed about her yet.” The doctor gave his coat another tug—but Perry held on for a last word.

“You've
got
to cure her,” he said. “If anything happens to Emily I'll drown myself in the pond—mind that.”

He let go so suddenly that Dr. Burnley nearly went headlong on the ground. Then Perry curled up on the doorstep again. He watched there until Laura and Cousin Jimmy had gone to bed and then he sneaked through the house and sat on the stairs, where he could hear any sound in Emily's room. He sat there all night, with his fists clenched, as if keeping guard against an unseen foe.

Elizabeth Murray watched by Emily until two o'clock, and then Laura took her place.

“She has raved a great deal,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “I wish I knew what is worrying her—there
is
something, I feel sure. It isn't all mere delirium. She keeps repeating ‘She couldn't have done it' in such imploring tones. I wonder oh, Laura, you remember the time I read her letters? Do you think she means me?”

Laura shook her head. She had never seen Elizabeth so moved.

“If the child—doesn't get—better—” said Aunt Elizabeth. She said no more but went quickly out of the room.

Laura sat down by the bed. She was pale and drawn with her own worry and fatigue—for she had not been able to sleep. She loved Emily as her own child and the awful dread that had possessed her heart would not lift for an instant. She sat there and prayed mutely. Emily fell into a troubled slumber which lasted until the gray dawn crept into the lookout. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Aunt Laura—looked through her—looked beyond her.

“I see her coming over the fields,” she said in a high, clear voice. “She is coming so gladly—she is singing—she is thinking of her baby—oh, keep her back—keep her back—she doesn't see the well—it's so dark she doesn't see it—oh, she's gone into it—she's gone into it!”

Emily's voice rose in a piercing shriek which penetrated to Aunt Elizabeth's room and brought her flying across the hall in her flannel nightgown.

“What is wrong, Laura?” she gasped.

Laura was trying to soothe Emily, who was struggling to sit up in bed. Her cheeks were crimson and her eyes had still the same far, wild look.

“Emily—Emily, darling, you've just had a bad dream. The old Lee well isn't open—nobody has fallen into it.”

“Yes, somebody has,” said Emily shrilly. “
She
has—I saw her—I saw her—with the ace of hearts on her forehead. Do you think I don't know her?”