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 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 reopened.
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 grownups. She continued to
