“Did ever any mortal! Venetian beads with a mourning dress! Shame on you! Is this a time to be thinking of vanity?”
“It isn’t vanity!” cried Emily. “Father gave me those beads last Christmas — and I want to show the Murrays that I’ve got something!”
“No more of your nonsense! Come along, I say! Mind your manners — there’s a good deal depends on the impression you make on them.”
Emily walked rigidly downstairs before Ellen and into the parlour. Eight people were sitting around it — and she instantly felt the critical gaze of sixteen stranger eyes. She looked very pale and plain in her black dress; the purple shadows left by weeping made her large eyes look too large and hollow. She was desperately afraid, and she knew it — but she would not let the Murrays see it. She held up her head and faced the ordeal before her gallantly.
“This,” said Ellen, turning her around by the shoulder, “is your Uncle Wallace.”
Emily shuddered and put out a cold hand. She did not like Uncle Wallace — she knew that at once — he was black and grim and ugly, with frowning, bristly brows and a stern, unpitying mouth. He had big pouches under his eyes, and carefully-trimmed black sidewhiskers. Emily decided then and there that she did not admire sidewhiskers.
“How do you do, Emily?” he said coldly — and just as coldly he bent forward and kissed her cheek.
A sudden wave of indignation swept over Emily’s soul. How dared he kiss her — he had hated her father and disowned her mother! She would have none of his kisses! Flash-quick, she snatched her handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her outraged cheek.
“Well — well!” exclaimed a disagreeable voice from the other side of the room.
Uncle Wallace looked as if he would like to say a great many things but couldn’t think of them. Ellen, with a grunt of despair, propelled Emily to the next sitter.
“Your Aunt Eva,” she said.
Aunt Eva was sitting huddled up in a shawl. She had the fretful face of the imaginary invalid. She shook hands with Emily and said nothing. Neither did Emily.
“Your Uncle Oliver,” announced Ellen.
Emily rather liked Uncle Oliver’s appearance. He was big and fat and rosy and jolly-looking. She thought she would not mind so much if he kissed her, in spite of his bristly white moustache. But Uncle Oliver had learned Uncle Wallace’s lesson.
“I’ll give you a quarter for a kiss,” he whispered genially. A joke was Uncle Oliver’s idea of being kind and sympathetic, but Emily did not know this, and resented it.
“I don’t sell my kisses,” she said, lifting her head as haughtily as any Murray of them all could do.
Uncle Oliver chuckled and seemed infinitely amused and not a bit offended. But Emily heard a sniff across the room.
Aunt Addie was next. She was as fat and rosy and jolly-looking as her husband and she gave Emily’s cold hand a nice, gentle squeeze.
“How are you, dear?” she said.
That “dear” touched Emily and thawed her a trifle. But the next in turn froze her up instantly again. It was Aunt Ruth — Emily knew it was Aunt Ruth before Ellen said so, and she knew it was Aunt Ruth who had “well — welled” and sniffed. She knew the cold, grey eyes, the prim, dull brown hair, the short, stout figure, the thin, pinched, merciless mouth.
Aunt Ruth held out the tips of her fingers, but Emily did not take them.
“Shake hands with your Aunt,” said Ellen in an angry whisper.
“She does not want to shake hands with me,” said Emily, distinctly, “and so I am not going to do it.”
Aunt Ruth folded her scorned hands back on her black silk lap.
“You are a very illbred child,” she said; “but of course it was only what was to be expected.”
Emily felt a sudden compunction. Had she cast a reflection on her father by her behaviour? Perhaps after all she should have shaken hands with Aunt Ruth. But it was too late now — Ellen had already jerked her on.
“This is your Cousin, Mr James Murray,” said Ellen, in the disgusted tone of one who gives up something as a bad job and is only anxious to be done with it.
“Cousin Jimmy — Cousin Jimmy,” said that individual. Emily looked steadily at him, and liked him at once without any reservations.
He had a little, rosy, elfish face with a forked grey beard; his hair curled over his head in a most un-Murray-like mop of glossy brown; and his large, brown eyes were as kind and frank as a child’s. He gave Emily a hearty handshake, though he looked askance at the lady across from him while doing it.
“Hello, pussy!” he said.
Emily began to smile at him, but her smile was, as always, so slow in developing that Ellen had whisked her on before it was in full flower, and it was Aunt Laura who got the benefit of it. Aunt Laura started and paled.
“Juliet’s smile!” she said, half under her breath. And again Aunt Ruth sniffed.
Aunt Laura did not look like anyone else in the room. She was almost pretty, with her delicate features and the heavy coils of pale, sleek, fair hair, faintly greyed, pinned closely all around her head. But it was her eyes that won Emily. They were such round blue, blue eyes. One never quite got over the shock of their blueness. And when she spoke it was in a beautiful, soft voice.
“You poor, dear, little child,” she said, and put her arm around Emily for a gentle hug.
Emily returned the hug and had a narrow escape then from letting the Murrays see her cry. All that saved her was the fact that Ellen suddenly pushed her on into the corner by the window.
“And this is your Aunt Elizabeth.”
Yes, this was Aunt Elizabeth. No doubt about that — and she had on a stiff, black satin dress, so stiff and rich that Emily felt sure it must be her very best. This pleased Emily. Whatever Aunt Elizabeth thought of her father, at least she had paid him the respect of her best dress. And Aunt Elizabeth was quite fine looking in a tall, thin, austere style, with clear-cut features and a massive coronet of iron-grey hair under her black lace cap. But her eyes, though steel-blue, were as cold as Aunt Ruth’s, and her long, thin mouth was compressed severely. Under her cool, appraising glance Emily retreated into herself and shut the door of her soul. She would have liked to please Aunt Elizabeth — who was “boss” at New Moon — but she felt she could not do it.
Aunt Elizabeth shook hands and said nothing — the truth being that she did not know exactly what to say. Elizabeth Murray would not have felt “put about” before King or Governor-General. The Murray pride would have carried her through there; but she did feel disturbed in the presence of this alien, level-gazing child who had already shown that she was anything but meek and humble. Though Elizabeth Murray would never have admitted it, she did not want to be snubbed as Wallace and Ruth had been.
“Go and sit on the sofa,” ordered Ellen.
Emily sat on the sofa with her eyes cast down, a slight, black, indomitable little figure. She folded her hands on her lap and crossed her ankles. They should see she had manners.
Ellen had retreated to the kitchen, thanking her stars that that was over. Emily did not like Ellen but she felt deserted when Ellen had gone. She was alone now before the bar of Murray opinion. She would have given anything to be out of the room. Yet in the back of her mind a design was forming of writing all about it in the old account-book. It would be interesting. She could describe them all — she knew she could. She had the very word for Aunt Ruth’s eyes—”stone-grey.” They were just like stones — as hard and cold and relentless. Then a pang tore through her heart. Father could never again read what she wrote in the account-book.