It was maddening to be condescended to like this--maddening that nobody could see that she had to write--maddening to have Aunt Laura so sweet and loving and stupid about it.
"Oh," thought Emily bitterly, "if that hateful Enterprise editor had printed my piece they'd have believed then."
"At any rate," advised Aunt Laura, "don't let Elizabeth see you writing them."
But somehow Emily could not take this prudent advice. There had been occasions when she had connived with Aunt Laura to hoodwink Aunt Elizabeth on some little matter, but she found she could not do it in this. This had to be open and above-board. She must write stories--and Aunt Elizabeth must know it--that was the way it had to be. She could not be false to herself in this--she could not pretend to be false.
She wrote her father all about it--poured out her bitterness and perplexity to him in what, though she did not suspect it at the time, was the last letter she was to write him. There was a great bundle of letters by now on the old sofa shelf in the garret--for Emily had written many letters to her father besides those which have been chronicled in this history. There were a great many paragraphs about Aunt Elizabeth in them, most of them very uncomplimentary and some of them, as Emily herself would have owned when her first bitterness was past, overdrawn and exaggerated. They had been written in moments when her hurt and angry soul demanded some outlet for its emotion and barbed her pen with venom. Emily was mistress of a subtly malicious style when she chose to be. After she had written them the hurt had ceased and she thought no more about them. But they remained.
And one spring day, Aunt Elizabeth, housecleaning in the garret while Emily played happily with Teddy at the Tansy Patch, found the bundle of letters on the sofa shelf, sat down, and read them all.
Elizabeth Murray would never have read any writing belonging to a grown person. But it never occurred to her that there was anything dishonorable in reading the letters wherein Emily, lonely and--sometimes--misunderstood, had poured out her heart to the father she had loved and been loved by, so passionately and understandingly. Aunt Elizabeth thought she had a right to know everything that this pensioner on her bounty did, said, or thought. She read the letters and she found out what Emily thought of her--of her, Elizabeth Murray, autocrat unchallenged, to whom no one had ever dared to say anything uncomplimentary. Such an experience is no pleasanter at sixty than at sixteen. As Elizabeth Murray folded up the last letter her hands trembled--with anger, and something underneath it that was not anger.
"Emily, your Aunt Elizabeth wants to see you in the parlor," said Aunt Laura, when Emily returned from the Tansy Patch, driven home by the thin gray rain that had begun to drift over the greening fields. Her tone--her sorrowful look--warned Emily that mischief was in the wind. Emily had no idea what mischief--she could not recall anything she had done recently that should bring her up before the tribunal Aunt Elizabeth occasionally held in the parlor. It must be serious when it was in the parlor. For reasons best known to herself Aunt Elizabeth held super-serious interviews like this in the parlor. Possibly it was because she felt obscurely that the photographs of the Murrays on the walls gave her a backing she needed when dealing with this hop-out-of-kin; for the same reason Emily detested a trial in the parlor. She always felt on such occasions like a very small mouse surrounded by a circle of grim cats.
Emily skipped across the big hall, pausing, in spite of her alarm, to glance at the charming red world through the crimson glass; then pushed open the parlor door. The room was dim, for only one of the slat blinds was partially raised. Aunt Elizabeth was sitting bolt upright in Grandfather Murray's black horsehair-chair. Emily looked at her stern, angry face first--and then at her lap.
Emily understood.
The first thing she did was to retrieve her precious letters. With the quickness of light she sprang to Aunt Elizabeth, snatched up the bundle and retreated to the door; there she faced Aunt Elizabeth, her face blazing with indignation and outrage. Sacrilege had been committed--the 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 dumbfounded 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 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. Nothin
g 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.
CHAPTER 30
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.