Chapter 10 Emily Climbs by Lucy Montgomery
The Madness of an Hour
The High School concert in aid of the school library was an annual event in Shrewsbury, coming off in early April, before it was necessary to settle down to hard study for spring examinations. This year it was at first intended to have the usual programme of music and readings with a short dialogue. Emily was asked to take part in the latter and agreed, after securing Aunt Ruth's very grudging consent, which would probably never have been secured if Miss Aylmer had not come in person to plead for it. Miss Aylmer was a granddaughter of Senator Aylmer and Aunt Ruth yielded to family what she would have yielded to nothing else. Then Miss Aylmer suggested cutting out most of the music and all of the readings and having a short play instead. This found favour in the eyes of the students and the change was made forthwith. Emily was cast for a part that suited her, so she became keenly interested in the matter and enjoyed the practices, which were held in the school building two evenings of the week under the chaperonage of Miss Aylmer.
The play created quite a stir in Shrewsbury. Nothing so ambitious had been undertaken by the High School students before: it became known that many of the Queen's Academy students were coming up from Charlottetown on the evening train to see it. This drove the performers half wild. The Queen's students were old hands at putting on plays. Of course they came to criticize. It became a fixed obsession with each member of the cast to make the play as good as any of the Queen's Academy plays had been, and every nerve was strained to that end. Kate Errol's sister, who was a graduate of a school of oratory, coached them and when the evening of the performance arrived there was burning excitement in the various homes and boarding-houses of Shrewsbury.
Emily, in her small, candle-lighted room, looked at Emily-in-the-Glass with considerable satisfaction--a satisfaction that was quite justifiable. The scarlet flush of her cheeks, the deepening darkness of her grey eyes, came out brilliantly above the ashes-of-roses gown, and the little wreath of silver leaves, twisted around her black hair, made her look like a young dryad. She did not, however, feel like a dryad. Aunt Ruth had made her take off her lace stockings and put on cashmere ones--had tried, indeed, to make her put on woollen ones, but had gone down in defeat on that point, retrieving her position, however, by insisting on a flannel petticoat.
"Horrid bunchy thing," thought Emily resentfully--meaning the petticoat, of course. But the skirts of the day were full and Emily's slenderness could carry even a thick flannel petticoat.
She was just fastening her Egyptian chain around her neck when Aunt Ruth stalked in.
One glance was sufficient to reveal that Aunt Ruth was very angry.
"Em'ly, Mrs. Ball has just called. She told me something that amazed me. Is this a play you're taking part in to-night?"
"Of course it's a play, Aunt Ruth. Surely you knew that."
"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 a 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 to-night."
"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--to-night. 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 to-night, 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 to-night," she said, pale with rage. "This house is locked at nine o'clock."
"If I don't come back here to-night, 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 realized 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 boarding-house--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 harmonized 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 anyone 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 for ever," 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 her 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 hanging 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 windblown 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 use 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 dogmatize 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 anyone 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 anyone 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 anyone 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! But 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 I? 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?"
"A sick cow. Thought I'd better sit up and look after her."
"It was lucky for me you were. Oh, I'm in my proper senses again, Cousin Jimmy. Of course, I know you think I've been a little fool."
"Everybody's a fool in some particular," said Cousin Jimmy.
"Well, I'll go back and bite the sour apple without a grimace."
"Lie down on the sofa and have a nap. I'll hitch up the grey mare and drive you back as soon as it begins to be daylight."
"No, that won't do at all. Several reasons. In the first place, the roads aren't fit for wheels or runners. In the second place we couldn't drive away from here without Aunt Elizabeth hearing us, and then she'd find out all about it and I don't want her to. We'll keep my foolishness a dark and deadly secret between you and me, Cousin Jimmy."
"Then how are you going to get back to Shrewsbury?"
"Walk."
"Walk? To Shrewsbury? At this hour of the night?"
"Haven't I just walked from Shrewsbury at this hour? I can do it again and it won't be any harder than bumping over those awful roads behind the grey mare. Of course, I'll put something on my feet that will be a little more protection than kid slippers. I've ruined your Christmas present in my brain-storm. There is a pair of my old boots in the closet there. I'll put them on--and my old ulster. I'll be back in Shrewsbury by daylight. I'll start as soon as we finish the doughnuts. Let's lick the platter clean, Cousin Jimmy."
Cousin Jimmy yielded. After all, Emily was young and wiry, the night was fine, and the less Elizabeth knew about some things the better for all concerned. With a sigh of relief that the affair had turned out so well--he had really been afraid at first that Emily's underlying "stubbornness" had been reached and then, whew!--Cousin Jimmy settled down to doughnuts.
"How's the writing coming on?" he asked.
"I've written a good deal lately--though it's pretty cold in my room mornings, but I love it so--it's my dearest dream to do something worth while some day."
"So you will. You haven't been pushed down a well," said Cousin Jimmy.
Emily patted his hand. None realized better than she what Cousin Jimmy might have done if he had not been pushed down a well.
When the doughnuts were finished Emily donned her old boots and ulster. It was a very shabby garment but her young-moon beauty shone over it like a star in the old, dim, candle-lighted room.
Cousin Jimmy looked up at her. He thought that she was a gifted, beautiful, joyous creature and that some things were a shame.
"Tall and stately--tall and stately like all our women," he murmured dreamily. "Except Aunt Ruth," he added.
Emily laughed--and "made a face."
"Aunt Ruth will make the most of her inches in our forthcoming interview. This will last her the rest of the year. But don't worry, Cousin darling, I won't do any more foolish things for quite a long time now. This has cleared the air. Aunt Elizabeth will think it was dreadful of you to eat a whole crockful of doughnuts yourself, you greedy Cousin Jimmy."
"Do you want another blank-book?"
"Not yet. The last one you gave me is only half-full yet. A blank-book lasts me quite a while when I can't write stories. Oh, I wish I could, Cousin Jimmy."
"The time will come--the time will come," said Cousin Jimmy encouragingly. "Wait a while--just wait a while. If we don't chase things--sometimes the things following us can catch up. 'Through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding is it established. And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches'--all precious and pleasant riches, Emily. Proverbs twenty-fourth, third and fifth."
He let Emily out and bolted the door. He put out all the candles but one. He glared at it for a few moments, then, satisfied that Elizabeth could not hear him, Cousin Jimmy said fervently,
"Ruth Dutton can go to--to--to--" Cousin Jimmy's courage failed him, "--to heaven!"
Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty--and Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.
As she walked along she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily's nature--a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own--the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.
The big fir-trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was ever anything so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean-limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them--of little children's dear hands folded in exquisite slumber--of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils--of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night--all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.
And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad--things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp--she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses--something frisked across her path--it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person; the trees put on half-pleasing, half-terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.
"One loses so much when one becomes incredulous," said Emily--and then thought that was a rather clever remark and wished she had a Jimmy-book to write it down.
So, having washed her soul free from bitterness in the aerial bath of the spring night and tingling from head to foot with the wild, strange, sweet life of the spirit, she came to Aunt Ruth's when the faint, purplish hills east of the harbour were growing clear under a whitening sky. She had expected to find the door still locked; but the knob turned as she tried it and she went in.
Aunt Ruth was up and was lighting the kitchen fire.
On the way from New Moon Emily had thought over a dozen different ways of saying what she meant to say--and now she used not one of them. At the last moment an impish inspiration came to her. Before Aunt Ruth could--or would--speak Emily said,
"Aunt Ruth, I've come back to tell you that I forgive you, but that this must not happen again."
To tell the truth, Mistress Ruth Dutton was considerably relieved that Emily had come back. She had been afraid of Elizabeth and Laura--Murray family rows were bitter things--and truly a little afraid of the results to Emily herself if she had really gone to New Moon in those thin shoes and that insufficient coat. For Ruth Dutton was not a fiend--only a rather stupid, stubborn little barnyard fowl trying to train up a skylark. She was honestly afraid that Emily might catch a cold and go into consumption. And if Emily took it into her head not to come back to Shrewsbury--well, that would "make talk" and Ruth Dutton hated "talk" when she or her doings was the subject. So, all things considered, she decided to ignore the impertinence of Emily's greeting.
"Did you spend the night on the streets?" she asked grimly.
"Oh, dear no--I went out to New Moon--had a chat with Cousin Jimmy and some lunch--then walked back."
"Did Elizabeth see you? Or Laura?"
"No. They were asleep."
Mrs. Dutton reflected that this was just as well.
"Well," she said coldly, "you have been guilty of great ingratitude, Em'ly, but I'll forgive you this time"--then stopped abruptly. Hadn't that been said already this morning? Before she could think of a substitute remark Emily had vanished upstairs. Mistress Ruth Dutton was left with the unpleasant sensation that, somehow or other, she had not come out of the affair quite as triumphantly as she should have.