Emily of New Moon
most sacred shrine of her soul had been profaned.
“How dare you?” she said. “How dare you touch _my private papers_, Aunt
Elizabeth?”
Aunt Elizabeth had not expected _this_. She had looked for
confusion--dismay--shame--fear--for anything but this righteous
indignation, as if _she_, forsooth, were the guilty one. She rose.
“Give me those letters, Emily.”
“No, I will not,” said Emily, white with anger, as she clasped her
hands around the bundle. “They are mine and Father’s--not yours. You
had no right to touch them. I will _never_ forgive you!”
This was turning the tables with a vengeance. Aunt Elizabeth was so
dumfounded that she hardly knew what to say or do. Worst of all, a most
unpleasant doubt of her own conduct suddenly assailed her--driven home
perhaps by the intensity and earnestness of Emily’s accusation. For
the first time in her life it occurred to Elizabeth Murray to wonder if
she had done rightly. For the first time in her life she felt ashamed;
and the shame made her furious. It was intolerable that _she_ should be
made to feel ashamed.
For the moment they faced each other, not as aunt and niece, not as
child and adult, but as two human beings each with hatred for the other
in her heart--Elizabeth Murray, tall and austere and thin-lipped; Emily
Starr, white of face, her eyes pools of black flame, her trembling arms
hugging her letters.
“So _this_ is your gratitude,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “You were a
penniless orphan--I took you to my home--I have given you shelter and
food and education and kindness--and _this_ is my thanks.”
As yet Emily’s tempest of anger and resentment prevented her from
feeling the sting of this.
“You did not _want_ to take me,” she said. “You made me draw lots and
you took me because the lot fell to you. You knew some of you had to
take me because you were the proud Murrays and couldn’t let a relation
go to an orphan asylum. Aunt Laura loves me now but you don’t. So why
should I love you?”
“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 parlour. 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 Aunt 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
analyse 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 any one 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.
CHAPTER XXX
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 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