“Crusted with uncounted gems,
Those stars so distant, cold and true,
Don’t try to pass those lines off as your own, Emily. You couldn’t have written them.”
“I did — I did!” Emily was white with sense of outrage. “And I’ve written lots far better.”
Miss Brownell suddenly crumpled the ragged little papers up in her hand.
“We have wasted enough time over this trash,” she said. “Go to your seat, Emily.”
She moved towards the stove. For a moment Emily did not realize her purpose. Then, as Miss Brownell opened the stove door, Emily understood and bounded forward. She caught at the papers and tore them from Miss Brownell’s hand before the latter could tighten her grasp.
“You shall not burn them — you shall not have them,” gasped Emily. She crammed the poems into the pocket of her “baby apron” and faced Miss Brownell in a kind of calm rage. The Murray look was on her face — and although Miss Brownell was not so violently affected by it as Aunt Elizabeth had been, it nevertheless gave her an unpleasant sensation, as of having roused forces with which she dared not tamper further. This tormented child looked quite capable of flying at her, tooth and claw.
“Give me those papers, Emily,” — but she said it rather uncertainly.
“I will not,” said Emily stormily. “They are mine. You have no right to them. I wrote them at recesses — I didn’t break any rules. You” — Emily looked defiantly into Miss Brownell’s cold eyes—”You are an unjust, tyrannical person.”
Miss Brownell turned to her desk.
“I am coming up to New Moon tonight to tell your Aunt Elizabeth of this,” she said.
Emily was at first too much excited over saving her precious poetry to pay much heed to this threat. But as her excitement ebbed cold dread flowed in. She knew she had an unpleasant time ahead of her. But at all events they should not get her poems — not one of them, no matter what they did to her. As soon as she got home from school she flew to the garret and secreted them on the shelf of the old sofa.
She wanted terribly to cry but she would not. Miss Brownell was coming and Miss Brownell should not see her with red eyes. But her heart burned within her. Some sacred temple of her being had been desecrated and shamed. And more was yet to come, she felt wretchedly sure. Aunt Elizabeth was certain to side with Miss Brownell. Emily shrank from the impending ordeal with all the dread of a sensitive, fine strung nature facing humiliation. She would not have been afraid of justice; but she knew at the bar of Aunt Elizabeth and Miss Brownell she would not have justice.
“And I can’t write Father about it,” she thought, her little breast heaving. The shame of it all was too deep and intimate to be written out, and so she could find no relief for her pain.
They did not have supper at New Moon in winter time until Cousin Jimmy had finished his chores and was ready to stay in for the night. So Emily was left undisturbed in the garret.
From the dormer-window she looked down on a dreamland scene that would ordinarily have delighted her. There was a red sunset behind the white, distant hills, shining through the dark trees like a great fire; there was a delicate blue tracery of bare branch shadows all over the crusted garden; there was a pale, ethereal alpen-glow all over the southeastern sky; and presently there was a little, lovely new moon in the silvery arch over Lofty John’s bush. But Emily found no pleasure in any of them.
Presently she saw Miss Brownell coming up the lane, under the white arms of the birches, with her mannish stride.
“If my father was alive,” said Emily, looking down at her, “you would go away from this place with a flea in your ear.”
The minutes passed, each seeming very long to Emily. At last Aunt Laura came up.
“Your Aunt Elizabeth wants you to come down to the kitchen, Emily.”
Aunt Laura’s voice was kind and sad. Emily fought down a sob. She hated to have Aunt Laura think she had been naughty, but she could not trust herself to explain. Aunt Laura would sympathize and sympathy would break her down. She went silently down the two long flights of stairs before Aunt Laura and out to the kitchen.
The supper-table was set and the candles were lighted. The big black-raftered kitchen looked spookish and weird, as it always did by candlelight. Aunt Elizabeth sat rigidly by the table and her face was very hard. Miss Brownell sat in the rocking-chair, her pale eyes glittering with triumphant malice. There seemed something baleful and poisonous in her very glance. Also her nose was very red — which did not add to her charm.
Cousin Jimmy, in his grey jumper, was perched on the edge of the woodbox, whistling at the ceiling, and looking more gnome-like than ever. Perry was nowhere to be seen. Emily was sorry for this. The presence of Perry, who was on her side, would have been a great moral support.
“I am sorry to say, Emily, that I have been hearing some very bad things about your behaviour in school to-day,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
“No, I don’t think you are sorry,” said Emily, gravely.
Now that the crisis had come she found herself able to confront it coolly — nay, more, to take a curious interest in it under all her secret fear and shame, as if some part of her had detached itself from the rest and was interestedly absorbing impressions and analysing motives and describing settings. She felt that when she wrote about this scene later on she must not forget to describe the odd shadows the candle under Aunt Elizabeth’s nose cast upward on her face, producing a rather skeletonic effect. As for Miss Brownell, could she ever have been a baby — a dimpled, fat, laughing baby? The thing was unbelievable.
“Don’t speak impertinently to me,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
“You see,” said Miss Brownell, significantly.
“I don’t mean to be impertinent, but you are not sorry,” persisted Emily. “You are angry because you think I have disgraced New Moon, but you are a little glad that you have got someone to agree with you that I’m bad.”
“What a grateful child,” said Miss Brownell — flashing her eyes up at the ceiling — where they encountered a surprising sight. Perry Miller’s head — and no more of him — was stuck down out of the “black hole” and on Perry Miller’s upside-down face was a most disrespectful and impish grimace. Face and head disappeared in a flash, leaving Miss Brownell staring foolishly at the ceiling.
“You have been behaving disgracefully in school,” said Aunt Elizabeth, who had not seen this by-play. “I am ashamed of you.”
“It was not as bad as that, Aunt Elizabeth,” said Emily steadily. “You see it was this way—”
“I don’t want to hear anything more about it,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
“But you must,” cried Emily. “It isn’t fair to listen only to her side. I was a little bad — but not so bad as she says—”
“Not another word! I have heard the whole story,” said Aunt Elizabeth grimly.
“You heard a pack of lies,” said Perry, suddenly sticking his head down through the black hole again.
Everybody jumped — even Aunt Elizabeth, who at once became angrier than ever because she had jumped.
“Perry Miller, come down out of that loft instantly!” she commanded.
“Can’t,”