Emily cowered under the bedclothes, cold with real terror. Before, her fright had been only on the surface—she had known there was nothing to fear, even while she feared. Something in her braced her to endure. But this was no mistake—no imagination. The rustles and flutterings and cries and moans were all too real. Wyther Grange suddenly became a dreadful, uncanny place. Ilse was right—it was haunted. And she was all alone here, with miles of rooms and halls between her and any human being. It was cruel of Aunt Nancy to put her in a haunted room. Aunt Nancy must have known it was haunted—cruel old Aunt Nancy with her ghoulish pride in men who had killed themselves for her. Oh, if she were back in dear New Moon, with Aunt Elizabeth beside her. Aunt Elizabeth was not an ideal bedfellow but she was flesh-and-blood. And if the windows were hermetically sealed they kept out spooks as well as night air.
“Perhaps it won’t be so bad if I say my prayers over again,” thought Emily.
But even this didn’t help much.
To the end of her life Emily never forgot that first horrible night at Wyther Grange. She was so tired that sometimes she dozed fitfully off only to be awakened in a few minutes in panic horror, by the rustling and muffled moans behind her bed. Every ghost and groan, every tortured spirit and bleeding nun of the books she had read came into her mind.
“Aunt Elizabeth was right—novels aren’t fit to read,” she thought. “Oh, I will die here—of fright—I know I will. I know I’m a coward—I can’t be brave.”
When morning came the room was bright with sunshine and free from mysterious sounds. Emily got up, dressed and found her way to the old wing. She was pale, with black-ringed eyes, but resolute.
“Well, and how did you sleep?” asked Aunt Nancy graciously.
Emily ignored the question.
“I want to go home today,” she said.
Aunt Nancy stared.
“Home? Nonsense! Are you such a homesick baby as that?”
“I’m not homesick—not very—but I must go home.”
“You can’t—there’s no one here to take you. You don’t expect Caroline can drive you to Blair Water, do you?”
“Then I will walk.”
Aunt Nancy thumped her stick angrily on the floor.
“You will stay right here until I’m ready for you to go, Miss Puss. I never tolerate any whims but my own. Caroline knows that, don’t you, Caroline? Sit down to your breakfast—and eat—eat.”
Aunt Nancy glared at Emily.
“I won’t stay here,” said Emily. “I won’t stay another night in that horrible haunted room. It was cruel of you to put me there. If—” Emily gave Aunt Nancy glare for glare—“if I was Salome I’d ask for your head on a charger.”
“Hoity-toity! What nonsense is this about a haunted room? We’ve no ghosts at Wyther Grange. Have we, Caroline? We don’t consider them hygienic.”
“You have something dreadful in that room—it rustled and moaned and cried all night long right in the wall behind my bed. I won’t stay—I won’t—.”
Emily’s tears came in spite of her efforts to repress them. She was so unstrung nervously that she couldn’t help crying. It lacked but little of hysterics with her already.
Aunt Nancy looked at Caroline and Caroline looked back at Aunt Nancy.
“We should have told her, Caroline. It’s all our fault. I clean forgot—it’s so long since anyone slept in the Pink Room. No wonder she was frightened. Emily, you poor child, it was a shame. It would serve me right to have my head on a charger, you vindictive scrap. We should have told you.”
“Told me—what?”
“About the swallows in the chimney. That was what you heard. The big central chimney goes right up through the walls behind your bed. It is never used now since the fireplaces were built in. The swallows nest there—hundreds of them. They do make an uncanny noise—fluttering and quarrelling as they do.”
Emily felt foolish and ashamed—much more ashamed than she needed to feel, for her experience had really been a very trying one, and older folks than she had been woefully frightened o’ nights in the Pink Room at Wyther Grange. Nancy Priest had put people into that room sometimes expressly to scare them. But to do her justice she really had forgotten in Emily’s case and was sorry.
Emily said no more about going home; Caroline and Aunt Nancy were both very kind to her that day; she had a good nap in the afternoon; and when the second night came she went straight to the Pink Room and slept soundly the night through. The rustles and cries were as distinct as ever but swallows and spectres were two entirely different things.
“After all, I think I’ll like Wyther Grange,” said Emily.
XXIV
A Different Kind of Happiness
“Dear Father:
“I have been a fortnight at Wyther Grange and I have not written to you once. But I thought of you every day. I had to write to Aunt Laura and Ilse and Teddy and Cousin Jimmy and Perry and between times I am having such fun. The first night I was here I did not think I was going to be happy. But I am—only it’s a different kind from New Moon happiness.
“Aunt Nancy and Caroline are very good to me and let me do exactly as I like. This is very agreeable. They are very sarcastic to each other. But I think they are a good bit like Ilse and me—they fight quite frequently but love each other very hard between times. I am sure Caroline isn’t a witch but I would like to know what she thinks of when she is all alone by herself. Aunt Nancy is not pretty any longer but she is very aristocratic looking. She doesn’t walk much because of her roomatism, so she sits mostly in her back parlor and reads and knits lace or
