Emily of New Moon
say what you like--and do what you like. Nobody will interfere with you
or try to bring you up. I asked you for a visit, not for discipline.
Thought likely you’d have enough of that at New Moon. You can have
the run of the house and pick a beau to your liking from the Priest
boys--not that the young fry are what they were in my time.”
“I don’t want a beau,” retorted Emily. She felt rather disgusted. Old
Kelly had ranted about beaux half the way over and here was Aunt Nancy
beginning on the same unnecessary subject.
“Don’t you tell me,” said Aunt Nancy, laughing till her gold tassels
shook. “There never was a Murray of New Moon that didn’t like a beau.
When I was your age I had half a dozen. All the little boys in Blair
Water were fighting about me. Caroline here now never had a beau in her
life, had you, Caroline?”
“Never wanted one,” snapped Caroline.
“Eighty and twelve say the same thing and both lie,” said Aunt Nancy.
“What’s the use of being hypocrites among ourselves? I don’t say it
isn’t well enough when men are about. Caroline, do you notice what
a pretty hand Emily has? As pretty as mine when I was young. And an
elbow like a cat’s. Cousin Susan Murray had an elbow like that. It’s
odd--she has more Murray points than Starr points and yet she looks
like the Starrs and not like the Murrays. What odd sums in addition we
all are--the answer is never what you’d expect. Caroline, what a pity
Jarback isn’t home. He’d like Emily--I have a feeling he’d like Emily.
Jarback’s the only Priest that’ll ever go to heaven, Emily. Let’s have
a look at your ankles, puss.”
Emily rather unwillingly put out her foot. Aunt Nancy nodded her
satisfaction.
“Mary Shipley’s ankle. Only one in a generation has it. I had it. The
Murray ankles are thick. Even your mother’s ankles were thick. Look at
that instep, Caroline. Emily, you’re not a beauty but if you learn to
use your eyes and hands and feet properly you’ll pass for one. The men
are easily fooled and if the women say you’re not ’twill be held for
jealousy.”
Emily decided that this was a good opportunity to find out something
that had puzzled her.
“Old Mr. Kelly said I had come-hither eyes, Aunt Nancy. Have I? And
_what_ are come-hither eyes?”
“Jock Kelly’s an old ass. You haven’t come-hither eyes--it wouldn’t
be a Murray tradish.” Aunt Nancy laughed. “The Murrays have
keep-your-distance eyes--and so have you--though your lashes contradict
them a bit. But sometimes eyes like that--combined with certain
other points--are quite as effective as come-hither eyes. Men go by
contraries oftener than not--if you tell them to keep off they’ll come
on. My own Nathaniel now--the only way to get him to do anything was to
coax him to do the opposite. Remember, Caroline? Have another cooky,
Emily?”
“I haven’t had one yet,” said Emily, rather resentfully.
Those cookies looked very tempting and she had been wishing they might
be passed. She didn’t know why Aunt Nancy and Caroline both laughed.
Caroline’s laugh was unpleasant--a dry, rusty sort of laugh--“no juice
in it,” Emily decided. She thought she would write in her description
that Caroline had a “thin, rattling laugh.”
“What do you think of us?” demanded Aunt Nancy. “Come now, what _do_
you think of us?”
Emily was dreadfully embarrassed. She had just been thinking of writing
that Aunt Nancy looked “withered and shrivelled;” but one couldn’t say
that--one _couldn’t_.
“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” said Aunt Nancy.
“That isn’t a fair question,” cried Emily.
“You think,” said Aunt Nancy, grinning, “that I’m a hideous old hag
and that Caroline isn’t quite human. She isn’t. She never was--but you
should have seen _me_ seventy years ago. I was handsomest of all the
handsome Murrays. The men were mad about me. When I married Nat Priest
his three brothers could have cut his throat. One cut his own. Oh, I
played havoc in my time. All I regret is I can’t live it over. ’Twas
a grand life while it lasted. I queened it over them. The women hated
me, of course--all but Caroline here. You worshipped me, didn’t you,
Caroline? And you worship me yet, don’t you, Caroline? Caroline, I
_wish_ you didn’t have a wart on your nose.”
“I wish you had one on your tongue,” said Caroline waspishly.
Emily was beginning to feel tired and bewildered. It was
interesting--and Aunt Nancy was kind enough in her queer way; but at
home Ilse and Perry and Teddy would be foregathering in Lofty John’s
bush for their evening revel, and Saucy Sal would be sitting on the
dairy steps, waiting for Cousin Jimmy to give her the froth. Emily
suddenly realized that she was as homesick for New Moon as she had been
for Maywood her first night at New Moon.
“The child’s tired,” said Aunt Nancy. “Take her to bed, Caroline. Put
her in the Pink Room.”
Emily followed Caroline through the back hall, through the kitchen,
through the front hall, up the stairs, down a long hall, through a long
side hall. Where on earth was she being taken? Finally they reached a
large room. Caroline set down the lamp, and asked Emily if she had a
nightgown.
“Of course I have. Do you suppose Aunt Elizabeth would have let me come
without one?”
Emily was quite indignant.
“Nancy says you can sleep as long as you like in the morning,” said
Caroline. “Good-night. Nancy and I sleep in the old wing, of course,
and the rest of us sleep well in our graves.”
With this cryptic remark Caroline trotted out and shut the door.
Emily sat down on an embroidered ottoman and looked about her. The
window curtains were of faded pink brocade and the walls were hung
with pink paper decorated with diamonds of rose chains. It made a very
pretty fairy paper, as Emily found by cocking her eyes at it. There was
a green carpet on the floor, so lavishly splashed with big pink roses
that Emily was almost afraid to walk on it. She decided that the room
was a very splendid one.
“But I have to sleep here alone, so I must say my prayers very
carefully,” she reflected.
She undressed rather hastily, blew out the light and got into bed. She
covered herself up to her chin and lay there, staring at the high,
white ceiling. She had grown so used to Aunt Elizabeth’s curtained
bed that she felt curiously unsheltered in this low, modern one. But
at least the window was wide open--evidently Aunt Nancy did not share
Aunt Elizabeth’s horror of night air. Through it Emily could see summer
fields lying in the magic of a rising yellow moon. But the room was
big and ghostly. She felt horribly far away from everybody. She was
lonesome--homesick. She thought of Old Kelly and his toad ointment.
Perhaps he _did_ boil the toads alive after all. This hideous thought
tormented her. It was _awful_ to think of toads--or anything--being
boiled alive. She had never slept alone before. Suddenly she was
frightened. How the window rattled. It sounded terribly as if
somebody--or _something_--were trying to get in. She thought of Ilse’s
ghost--a ghost you couldn’t _see_ but could _hear_ and _feel_ was
something especially spooky in the way of ghosts--she thought of the
stone dogs that went “Wo--or--oo--oo” at midnight. A dog _did_ begin to
howl somewhere. Emily felt a cold perspiration on her brow. _What_ had
Caroline meant about the rest of them sleeping well in their graves?
The floor creaked. Wasn’t there somebody--or _something_--tiptoeing
round outside the door? Didn’t something move in the corner? There were
mysterious sounds in the long hall.
“I _won’t_ be scared,” said Emily. “I _won’t_ think of those things,
and tomorrow I’ll write down all about how I feel now.”
And then--she _did_ hear something--right behind the wall at the head
of her bed. There was no mistake about it. It was not imagination. She
heard distinctly strange uncanny rustles--as if stiff silk dresses
were rubbing against each other--as if fluttering wings fanned the
air--and there were soft, low, muffled sounds like tiny children’s
cries or moans. They lasted--they kept on. Now and then they would die
away--then start up again.
Emily cowered under the bedclothes, cold with real terror. Before, her
fright had been only on the surface--she had _known_ there was nothing
to fear, even while she feared. Something in her braced her to endure.
But _this_ was no mistake--no imagination. The rustles and flutterings
and cries and moans were all too real. Wyther Grange suddenly became
a dreadful, uncanny place. Ilse was right--it _was_ haunted. And she
was all alone here, with miles of rooms and halls between her and any
human being. It was cruel of Aunt Nancy to put her in a haunted room.
Aunt Nancy must have known it was haunted--cruel old Aunt Nancy with
her ghoulish pride in men who had killed themselves for her. Oh, if
she were back in dear New Moon, with Aunt Elizabeth beside her. Aunt
Elizabeth was not an ideal bedfellow but she was flesh-and-blood. And
if the windows were hermetically sealed they kept out spooks as well as
night air.
“Perhaps it won’t be so bad if I say my prayers over again,” thought
Emily.
But even this didn’t help much.
To the end of her life Emily never forgot that first horrible night at
Wyther Grange. She was so tired that sometimes she dozed fitfully off
only to be awakened in a few minutes in panic horror, by the rustling
and muffled moans behind her bed. Every ghost and groan, every tortured
spirit and bleeding nun of the books she had read came into her mind.
“Aunt Elizabeth was right--novels aren’t fit to read,” she thought.
“Oh, I will die here--of fright--I know I will. I know I’m a coward--I
can’t be brave.”
When morning came the room was bright with sunshine and free from
mysterious sounds. Emily got up, dressed and found her way to the old
wing. She was pale, with black-ringed eyes, but resolute.
“Well, and how did you sleep?” asked Aunt Nancy graciously.
Emily ignored the question.
“I want to go home today,” she said.
Aunt Nancy stared.
“Home? Nonsense! Are you such a homesick baby as that?”
“I’m not homesick--not _very_--but I must go home.”
“You can’t--there’s no one here to take you. You don’t expect Caroline
can drive you to Blair Water, do you?”
“Then I will walk.”
Aunt Nancy thumped her stick angrily on the floor.
“You will stay right here until I’m ready for you to go, Miss Puss. I
never tolerate any whims but my own. Caroline knows that, don’t you,
Caroline? Sit down to your breakfast--and eat--_eat_.”
Aunt Nancy glared at Emily.
“I won’t stay here,” said Emily. “I won’t stay another night in that
horrible haunted room. It was cruel of you to put me there. If--” Emily
gave Aunt Nancy glare for glare--“if I was Salome I’d ask for _your_
head on a charger.”
“Hoity-toity! What nonsense is this about a haunted room? We’ve no
ghosts at Wyther Grange. Have we, Caroline? We don’t consider them
hygienic.”
“You have something _dreadful_ in that room--it rustled and moaned and
cried all night long right in the wall behind my bed. I won’t stay--I
won’t--.”
Emily’s tears came in spite of her efforts to repress them. She was so
unstrung nervously that she couldn’t help crying. It lacked but little
of hysterics with her already.
Aunt Nancy looked at Caroline and Caroline looked back at Aunt Nancy.
“We should have told her, Caroline. It’s all our fault. I clean
forgot--it’s so long since any one slept in the Pink Room. No wonder
she was frightened. Emily, you poor child, it was a shame. It would
serve me right to have my head on a charger, you vindictive scrap. We
should have told you.”
“Told me--what?”
“About the swallows in the chimney. That was what you heard. The big
central chimney goes right up through the walls behind your bed. It is
never used now since the fireplaces were built in. The swallows nest