"When you asked my permission to take part in this concert you told me it was a dialogue," said Aunt Ruth icily.
"O-o-h - but Miss Aylmer decided to have a little play in place of it. I thought you knew, Aunt Ruth - truly I did. I thought I mentioned it to you."
"You didn't think anything of the kind, Em'ly - you deliberately kept me in ignorance because you knew I wouldn't have allowed you to take part in i play."
"Indeed, no, Aunt Ruth," pleaded Emily, gravely. "I never thought of hiding it. Of course, I didn't feel like talking much to you about it because I knew you didn't approve of the concert at all."
When Emily spoke gravely Aunt Ruth always thought she was impudent.
"This crowns all, Em'ly. Sly as I've always known you to be I wouldn't have believed you could be as sly as this."
"There was nothing of the kind about it, Aunt Ruth!" said Emily impatiently. "It would have been silly of me to try to hide the fact that we were getting up a play when all Shrewsbury is talking of it. I don't see how you could help hearing of it."
"You knew I wasn't going anywhere because of my bronchitis. Oh, I see through it all, Em'ly. You cannot deceive me.
"I haven't tried to deceive you. I thought you knew - that is all there is to it. I thought the reason you never spoke of it was because you were opposed to the whole thing. That is the truth, Aunt Ruth. What difference is there between a dialogue and a play?"
"There is every difference," said Aunt Ruth. "Plays are wicked."
"But this is such a little one," pleaded Emily despairingly - and then laughed because it sounded so ridiculously like the nursemaid's excuse in Midshipman Easy. Her sense of humour was untimely; her laughter infuriated Aunt Ruth.
"Little or big, you are not going to take part in it."
Emily stared again, paling a little.
"Aunt Ruth - I must - why, the play would be ruined."
"Better a play ruined than a soul ruined," retorted Aunt Ruth.
Emily dared not smile. The issue at stake was too serious.
"Don't be so - so - indignant, Aunt Ruth" - she had nearly said unjust. "I am sorry you don't approve of plays - I won't take part in any more - but you can see I must do it tonight."
"Oh, my dear Em'ly, I don't think you are quite as indispensable as all that."
Certainly Aunt Ruth was very maddening. How disagreeable the word "dear" could be! Still was Emily patient.
"I really am - tonight. You see, they couldn't get a substitute at the last moment. Miss Aylmer would never forgive me."
"Do you care more about Miss Aylmer's forgiveness than God's?" demanded Aunt Ruth with the air of one stating a decisive position.
"Yes - than your God's," muttered Emily, unable to keep her patience under such insensate questions.
"Have you no respect for your forefathers?" was Aunt Ruth's next relevant query. "Why, if they knew a descendant of theirs was play-acting they would turn over in their graves!"
Emily favoured Aunt Ruth with a sample of the Murray look.
"It would be excellent exercise for them. I am going to take my part in the play tonight, Aunt Ruth."
Emily spoke quietly, looking down from her young height with resolute eyes. Aunt Ruth felt a nasty sense of helplessness: there was no lock to Emily's door - and she couldn't detain her by physical force.
"If you go, you needn't come back here tonight," she said, pale with rage. "This house is locked at nine o'clock."
"If I don't come back here tonight, I won't come at all." Emily was too angry over Aunt Ruth's unreasonable attitude to care for consequences. "If you lock me out I'll go back to New Moon. They know all about the play there - even Aunt Elizabeth was willing for me to take part."
She caught up her coat and jammed the little red-feather hat, which Uncle Oliver's wife had given her at Christmas, down on her head. Aunt Addie's taste was not approved at New Moon but the hat was very becoming and Emily loved it. Aunt Ruth suddenly realised that Emily looked oddly mature and grown-up in it. But the knowledge did not as yet dampen her anger. Em'ly was gone - Em'ly had dared to defy her and disobey her - sly, underhand Em'ly - Em'ly must be taught a lesson.
At nine o'clock a stubborn, outraged Aunt Ruth locked all the doors and went to bed.
The play was a big success. Even the Queen's students admitted that and applauded generously. Emily threw herself into her part with a fire and energy generated by her encounter with Aunt Ruth, which swept away all hampering consciousness of flannel petticoats and agreeably astonished Miss Errol, whose one criticism of Emily's acting had been that she was rather cold and reserved in a part that called for more abandon. Emily was showered with compliments at the close of the performance. Even Evelyn Blake said graciously,
"Really, dear, you are quite wonderful - a star actress - a poet - a budding novelist - what surprise will you give us next?"
Thought Emily, "Condescending, insufferable creature!"
Said Emily, "Thank you!"
There was a happy, triumphant walk home with Teddy, a gay good-night at the gate, and then - the locked door.
Emily's anger, which had been sublimated during the evening into energy and ambition, suddenly flared up again, sweeping everything before it. It was unbearable to be treated thus. She had endured enough at Aunt Ruth's hands - this was the proverbial last straw. One could not put up with everything, even to get an education. One owed something to one's dignity and self-respect.
There were three things she could do. She could thump the old-fashioned brass knocker on the door until Aunt Ruth came down and let her in, as she had done once before - and then endure weeks of slurs because of it. She could fly up-street and down-street to Ilse's boardinghouse - the girls wouldn't be in bed yet - as she had likewise done once before, and as no doubt Aunt Ruth would expect her to do now; and then Mary Carswell would tell Evelyn Blake and Evelyn Blake would laugh maliciously and tell it all through the school. Emily had no intention of doing either of these things; she knew from the moment she found the door locked just what she would do. She would walk to New Moon - and stay there! Months of suppressed chafing under Aunt Ruth's perpetual stings burst into a conflagration of revolt. Emily marched out of the gate, slammed it shut behind her with no Murray dignity but plenty of Starr passion, and started on her seven-mile walk through the midnight. Had it been three times seven she would have started just the same.
So angry was she, and so angry she continued to be, that the walk did not seem long, nor, though she had no wrap save her cloth coat, did she feel the cold of the sharp April night.
The winter's snow had gone but the bare road was hard-frozen and rough - no dainty footing for the thin kid slippers of Cousin Jimmy's Christmas box. Emily reflected with what she considered a grim, sarcastic laugh that it was well, after all, that Aunt Ruth had insisted on cashmere stockings and flannel petticoat.
There was a moon that night, but the sky was covered with curdled grey clouds, and the harsh, bleak landscape lay dourly in the pallid grey light. The wind came across it in sudden, moaning gusts. Emily felt with considerable dramatic satisfaction that the night harmonised with her stormy, tragic mood.
She would never go back to Aunt Ruth's, that was certain. No matter what Aunt Elizabeth might say - and she would say aplenty, no doubt of that - no matter what any one would say. If Aunt Elizabeth would not let her go anywhere else to board she would give up school altogether. She knew it would cause a tremendous upheaval at New Moon. Never mind. In her very reckless mood upheavals seemed welcome things. It was time somebody upheaved. She would not humiliate herself another day - that she would not! Aunt Ruth had gone too far at last. You could not safely drive a Starr to desperation.
"I have done with Ruth Dutton forever," vowed Emily feeling a tremendous satisfaction in leaving off the "Aunt."
As she drew near home the clouds cleared away suddenly, and when she turned into the New Moon lane the austere beauty of the three tall Lombardies against the moonlit sky made her catch h
er breath. Oh, how wonderful! For a moment she almost forgot her wrongs and Aunt Ruth. Then bitterness rushed over her soul again - not even the magic of the Three Princesses could charm it away.
There was a light shining out of the New Moon kitchen window, falling on the tall, white birches in Lofty John's bush with spectral effect. Emily wondered who could be up at New Moon: she had expected to find it in darkness and had meant to slip in by the front door and up to her own dear room, leaving explanations to the morning. Aunt Elizabeth always locked and barred the kitchen door every night with great ceremony before retiring, but the front door was never locked. Tramps and burglars would surely never be so ill-mannered as to come to the front door of New Moon.
Emily crossed the garden and peeped through the kitchen window. Cousin Jimmy was there alone, sitting by the table, with two candles for company. On the table was a stoneware crock and just as Emily looked in he absently put his hand into it and drew out a chubby doughnut. Cousin Jimmy's eyes were fixed on a big beef ham pendent from the ceiling and Cousin Jimmy's lips moved soundlessly. There was no reasonable doubt that Cousin Jimmy was composing poetry, though why he was doing it at that hour o' night was a puzzle.
Emily slipped around the house, opened the kitchen door gently, and walked in. Poor Cousin Jimmy in his amazement tried to swallow half a doughnut whole and then couldn't speak for several seconds. Was this Emily - or an apparition? Emily in a dark-blue coat, an enchanting little red-feather hat - Emily with wind-blown night-black hair and tragic eyes - Emily with tattered kid slippers on her feet - Emily in this plight at New Moon when she should have been sound asleep on her maiden couch in Shrewsbury?
Cousin Jimmy seized the cold hands Emily held out to him.
"Emily, dear child, what has happened?"
"Well, just to jump into the middle of things - I've left Aunt Ruth's and I'm not going back."
Cousin Jimmy didn't say anything for a few moments. But he did a few things. First, he tiptoed across the kitchen and carefully shut the sitting-room door; then he gently filled the stove up with wood, drew a chair up to it, pushed Emily into it and lifted her cold, ragged feet to the hearth. Then he lighted two more candles and put them on the chimney-piece. Finally he sat down in his chair again and put his hands on his knees.
"Now, tell me all about it."
Emily, still in the throes of rebellion and indignation, told it pretty fully.
As soon as Cousin Jimmy got an inkling of what had really happened he began to shake his head slowly - continued to shake it - shook it so long and gravely that Emily began to feel an uncomfortable conviction that instead of being a wronged, dramatic figure she was by way of being a bit of a little fool. The longer Cousin Jimmy shook his head the smaller grew her heroics. When she had finished her story with a defiant, conclusive "I'm not going back to Aunt Ruth's, anyhow," Cousin Jimmy gave a final wag to his head and pushed the crock across the table.
"Have a doughnut, pussy."
Emily hesitated. She was very fond of doughnuts - and it had been a long time since she had her supper. But doughnuts seemed out of keeping with rebellion and tumult. They were decidedly reactionary in their tendencies. Some vague glimmering of this made Emily refuse the doughnut.
Cousin Jimmy took one himself.
"So, you're not going back to Shrewsbury?"
"Not to Aunt Ruth's," said Emily.
"It's the same thing," said Cousin Jimmy.
Emily knew it was. She knew it was of no Ilse to hope that Aunt Elizabeth would let her board elsewhere.
"And you walked all the way home over those roads." Cousin Jimmy shook his head. "Well, you have spunk. Heaps of it," he added meditatively between bites.
"Do you blame me?" demanded Emily passionately - all the more passionately because she felt some inward support had been shaken away by Cousin Jimmy's head.
"No-o-o, it was a durn mean shame to lock you out - just like Ruth Dutton."
"And you see - don't you - that I can't go back after such an insult?"
Cousin Jimmy nibbled at the doughnut cautiously, as if bent on trying to see how near he could nibble to the hole without actually breaking through.
"I don't think any of your grandmothers would have given up a chance for an education so easily," he said. "Not on the Murray side, anyhow," he added after a moment's reflection, which apparently reminded him that he knew too little about the Starrs to dogmatise concerning them.
Emily sat very still. As Teddy would have said in cricket parlance, Cousin Jimmy had got her middle wicket with the first ball. She felt at once that when Cousin Jimmy, in that diabolical fit of inspiration, dragged her grandmothers in, everything was over but the precise terms of surrender. She could see them all around her - the dear, dead ladies of New Moon - Mary Shipley and Elizabeth Burnley and all the rest - mild, determined, restrained, looking down with something of contemptuous pity on her, their foolish, impulsive descendant. Cousin Jimmy appeared to think there might be some weakness on the Starr side. Well, there wasn't - she would show him!
She had expected more sympathy from Cousin Jimmy. She had known Aunt Elizabeth would condemn her and even Aunt Laura would look disappointed question. But she had counted on Cousin Jimmy taking her part. He always had before.
"My grandmothers never had to put up with Aunt Ruth," she flung at him.
"They had to put up with your grandfathers." Cousin Jimmy appeared to think that this was conclusive - as any one who had known Archibald and Hugh Murray might have very well thought.
"Cousin Jimmy, do you think I ought to go back and accept Aunt Ruth's scolding and go on as if this had never happened?"
"What do you think about it?" asked Cousin Jimmy. "Do take a doughnut, pussy."
This time Emily took the doughnut. She might as well have some comfort. Now, you can't eat doughnuts and remain dramatic. Try it.
Emily slipped from her peak of tragedy to the valley of petulance.
"Aunt Ruth has been abominable these past two months - ever since her bronchitis has prevented her from going out. You don't know what it's been like."
"Oh, I do - I do. Ruth Dutton never made any one feel better pleased with herself. Feet getting warm, Emily?"
"I hate her," cried Emily, still grasping after self-justification. "It's horrible to live in the same house with any one you hate -"
"Poisonous," agreed Cousin Jimmy.
"And it isn't my fault. I have tried to like her - tried to please her - she's always twitting me - she attributes mean motives to everything I do or say - or don't do or say. I've never heard the last of sitting in the corner of the pew - and failing to get a star pin. She's always hinting insults to my father and mother. And she's always forgiving me for things I haven't done - or that don't need forgiveness."
"Aggravating - very," conceded Cousin Jimmy.
"Aggravating - you're right. I know if I go back she'll say 'I'll forgive you this time, but don't let it happen again.' And she will sniff - oh, Aunt Ruth's sniff is the hatefulest sound in the world!"
"Ever hear a dull knife sawing through thick cardboard?" murmured Cousin Jimmy.
Emily ignored him and swept on.
"I can't be always in the wrong - but Aunt Ruth thinks I am - and says she has 'to make allowances' for me. She doses me with cod-liver oil - she never lets me go out in the evening if she can help it - 'consumptives should never be out after eight o'clock.' If she is cold, I must put on an extra petticoat. She is always asking disagreeable questions and refusing to believe my answers. She believes and always will believe that I kept this play a secret from her because of slyness. I never thought of such a thing. Why, the Shrewsbury Times referred to it last week. Aunt Ruth doesn't often miss anything in the Times. She twitted me for days because she found a composition of mine that I had signed 'Emilie.' 'Better try to spell your name after some unheard-of twist,' she sneered!"
"Well, wasn't it a bit silly, pussy?"
"Oh, I suppose my grandmothers wouldn't have done it! Bu
t Aunt Ruth needn't have kept it up as she did. That is what is so dreadful - if she'd speak her mind on a thing and have done with it. Why, I got a little spot of iron-rust on my white petticoat and Aunt Ruth harped on it for weeks. She was determined to find out when it was rusted and how - and I hadn't the least idea. Really, Cousin Jimmy, when this had gone on for three weeks I thought I'd have to scream if she mentioned it again."
"Any proper person would feel the same," said Cousin Jimmy to the beef ham.
"Oh, any one of these things is only a pin-prick, I know - and you think I'm silly to mind it - but -"
"No, no. A hundred pin-pricks would be harder to put up with than a broken leg. I'd sooner be knocked on the head and be done with it."
"Yes, that's it - nothing but pin-pricks all the time. She won't let Ilse come to the house - or Teddy, or Perry-nobody but that stupid Andrew. I'm so tired of him. She wouldn't let me go to the Prep dance. They had a sleigh drive and supper at the Brown Teapot Inn and a little dance - everybody went but me - it was the event of the winter. If I go for a walk in the Land of Uprightness at sunset she is sure there is something sinister in it - she never wants to walk in the Land of Uprightness, so why should P. She says I have got too high an opinion of myself. I haven't-have I, Cousin Jimmy?"
"No," said Cousin Jimmy thoughtfully. "High - but not too high."
"She says I'm always displacing things - if I look out of a window she'll trot across the room and mathematically match the corners of the curtains again. And it's 'Why - why - why - all the time, all the time, Cousin Jimmy."
"I know you feel a lot better now that you've got all that out of your system," said Cousin Jimmy. "'Nother doughnut?"
Emily, with a sigh of surrender, took her feet off the stove and moved over to the table. The crock of doughnuts was between her and Cousin Jimmy. She was very hungry.
"Ruth give you enough to eat?" queried Cousin Jimmy anxiously.
"Oh, yes. Aunt Ruth keeps up one New Moon tradish at least. She has a good table. But there are no snacks."
"And you always liked a tasty bite at bed-time, didn't you? But you took a box back last time you were home?"
"Aunt Ruth confiscated it. That is, she put it in the pantry and served its contents up at meal times. These doughnuts are good. And there is always something exciting and lawless about eating at unearthly hours like this, isn't there? How did you happen to be up, Cousin Jimmy?"