“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, “shut that door. Remember that after this you are not to meddle with things that don’t belong to you.”
“I thought books belonged to everybody,” said Emily.
“Ours don’t,” said Aunt Elizabeth, contriving to convey the impression that New Moon books were in a class by themselves. “Here is your supper, Emily. We are all so tired that we are just having a lunch. Eat it and then we will go to bed.”
Emily drank the milk and worried down the oatcakes, still gazing about her. How pretty the wallpaper was, with the garland of roses inside the gilt diamond! Emily wondered if she could “see it in the air.” She tried — yes, she could — there it hung, a yard from her eyes, a little fairy pattern, suspended in mid-air like a screen. Emily had discovered that she possessed this odd knack when she was six. By a certain movement of the muscles of her eyes, which she could never describe, she could produce a tiny replica of the wallpaper in the air before her — could hold it there and look at it as long as she liked — could shift it back and forth, to any distance she chose, making it larger or smaller as it went farther away or came nearer. It was one of her secret joys when she went into a new room anywhere to “see the paper in the air.” And this New Moon paper made the prettiest fairy paper she had ever seen.
“What are you staring at nothing in that queer way for?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth, suddenly returning.
Emily shrank into herself. She couldn’t explain to Aunt Elizabeth — Aunt Elizabeth would be like Ellen Greene and say she was “crazy.”
“I — I wasn’t staring at anything.”
“Don’t contradict. I say you were,” retorted Aunt Elizabeth. “Don’t do it again. It gives your face an unnatural expression. Come now — we will go upstairs. You are to sleep with me.”
Emily gave a gasp of dismay. She had hoped it might be with Aunt Laura. Sleeping with Aunt Elizabeth seemed a very formidable thing. But she dared not protest. They went up to Aunt Elizabeth’s big, sombre bedroom where there was dark, grim wallpaper that could never be transformed into a fairy curtain, a high black bureau, topped with a tiny swing-mirror, so far above her that there could be no Emily-in-the-glass, tightly closed windows with dark-green curtains, a high bedstead with a dark-green canopy, and a huge, fat, smothering featherbed, with high, hard pillows.
Emily stood still, gazing about her.
“Why don’t you get undressed?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
“I — I don’t like to undress before you,” faltered Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily through her cold, spectacled eyes.
“Take off your clothes, at once,” she said.
Emily obeyed, tingling with anger and shame. It was abominable — taking off her clothes while Aunt Elizabeth stood and watched her. The outrage of it was unspeakable. It was even harder to say her prayers before Aunt Elizabeth. Emily felt that it was not much good to pray under such circumstances. Father’s God seemed very far away and she suspected that Aunt Elizabeth’s was too much like Ellen Greene’s.
“Get into bed,” said Aunt Elizabeth, turning down the clothes.
Emily glanced at the shrouded window.
“Aren’t you going to open the window, Aunt Elizabeth?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily as if the latter had suggested removing the roof.
“Open the window — and let in the night air!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not!”
“Father and I always had our window open,” cried Emily.
“No wonder he died of consumption,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Night air is poison.”
“What air is there at night but night air?” asked Emily.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth icily, “get — into — bed.”
Emily got in.
But it was utterly impossible to sleep, lying there in that engulfing bed that seemed to swallow her up, with that cloud of blackness above her and not a gleam of light anywhere — and Aunt Elizabeth lying beside her, long and stiff and bony.
“I feel as if I was in bed with a griffin,” thought Emily. “Oh — oh — oh — I’m going to cry — I know I am.”
Desperately and vainly she strove to keep the tears back — they would come. She felt utterly alone and lonely — there in that darkness, with an alien, hostile world all around her — for it seemed hostile now. And there was such a strange, mysterious, mournful sound in the air — far away, yet clear. It was the murmur of the sea, but Emily did not know that and it frightened her. Oh, for her little bed at home — oh, for Father’s soft breathing in the room — oh, for the dancing friendliness of well-known stars shining down through her open window! She must go back — she couldn’t stay here — she would never be happy here! But there wasn’t any “back” to go to — no home — no father — . A great sob burst from her — another followed and then another. It was no use to clench her hands and set her teeth — and chew the inside of her cheeks — nature conquered pride and determination and had her way.
“What are you crying for?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
To tell the truth Aunt Elizabeth felt quite as uncomfortable and disjointed as Emily did. She was not used to a bedfellow; she didn’t want to sleep with Emily any more than Emily wanted to sleep with her. But she considered it quite impossible that the child should be put off by herself in one of the big, lonely New Moon rooms; and Laura was a poor sleeper, easily disturbed; children always kicked, Elizabeth Murray had heard. So there was nothing to do but take Emily in with her; and when she had sacrificed comfort and inclination to do her unwelcome duty this ungrateful and unsatisfactory child was not contented.
“I asked you what you were crying for, Emily?” she repeated.
“I’m — homesick, I guess,” sobbed Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth was annoyed.
“A nice home you had to be homesick for,” she said sharply.
“It — it wasn’t as elegant — as New Moon,” sobbed Emily, “but — Father was there. I guess I’m Fathersick, Aunt Elizabeth. Didn’t you feel awfully lonely when your father died?”
Elizabeth Murray involuntarily remembered the ashamed, smothered feeling of relief when old Archibald Murray had died — the handsome, intolerant, autocratic old man who had ruled his family with a rod of iron all his life and had made existence at New Moon miserable with the petulant tyranny of the five years of invalidism that had closed his career. The surviving Murrays had behaved impeccably, and wept decorously, and printed a long and flattering obituary. But had one genuine feeling of regret followed Archibald Murray to his tomb? Elizabeth did not like the memory and was angry with Emily for evoking it.
“I was resigned to the will of Providence,” she said coldly. “Emily, you must understand right now that you are to be grateful and obedient and show your appreciation of what is being done for you. I won’t have tears and repining. What would you have done if you had no friends to take you in? Answer me that.”
“I suppose I would have starved to death,” admitted Emily — instantly beholding a dramatic vision of herself lying dead, looking exactly like the pictures she had seen in one of Ellen Greene’s missionary magazines depicting the victims