"You're too young," reiterated Aunt Laura.
"It's only my body that's young. My soul is a hundred years old. Last winter made me feel so old and wise. YOU know."
"Yes, I know." But Laura also knew that this very feeling old and wise merely proved Emily's youth. People who ARE old and wise never feel either. And all this talk of aged souls didn't do away with the fact that Emily, slim, radiant, with eyes of mystery, was not yet twenty, while Dean Priest was forty-two. In fifteen years... but Laura would not think of it.
And, after all, Dean would not take her away. There HAD been happy marriages with just as much disparity of age.
II
Nobody, it must be admitted, seemed to regard the match with favour. Emily had a rather abominable time of it for a few weeks. Dr. Burnley raged about the affair and insulted Dean. Aunt Ruth came over and made a scene.
"He's an infidel, Emily."
"He isn't!" said Emily indignantly.
"Well, he doesn't believe what WE believe," declared Aunt Ruth as if that ought to settle the matter for any true Murray.
Aunt Addie, who had never forgiven Emily for refusing her son, even though Andrew was now happily and suitably, MOST suitably, married, was very hard to bear. She contrived to make Emily feel a most condescending pity. She had lost Andrew, so must console herself with lame Jarback Priest. Of course Aunt Addie did not put it in so many blunt words but she might as well have. Emily understood her implications perfectly.
"Of course, he's richer than a YOUNG man could be," conceded Aunt Addie.
"And interesting," said Emily. "Most young men are SUCH bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers."
So honours were about even THERE.
The Priests did not like it any too well either. Perhaps because they did not care to see a rich uncle's possessions thus slipping through the fingers of hope. They said Emily Starr was just marrying Dean for his money, and the Murrays took care that she should hear they had said it. Emily felt that the Priests were continually and maliciously discussing her behind her back.
"I'll never feel at home in your clan," she told Dean rebelliously.
"Nobody will ask you to. You and I, Star, are going to live unto ourselves. We are not going to walk or talk or think or breathe according to any clan standard, be it Priest or Murray. If the Priests disapprove of you as a wife for me the Murrays still more emphatically disapprove of me as a husband for you. Never mind. Of course the Priests find it hard to believe that you are marrying me because you care anything for me. How could you? I find it hard to believe myself."
But you DO believe it, Dean? Truly I care more for you than any one in the world. Of course... I told you... I don't love you like a silly, romantic girl."
"Do you love any one else?" asked Dean quietly. It was the first time he had ventured to ask the question.
"No. Of course... you know... I've had one or two broken-backed love affairs... silly schoolgirl fancies. That is all years behind me. Last winter seems like a lifetime... dividing me by centuries from those old follies. I'm all yours, Dean."
Dean lifted the hand he held and kissed it. He had never yet touched her lips.
"I can make you happy, Star. I know it. Old... lame as I am, I can make you happy. I've been waiting for you all my life, my star. That's what you've always seemed to me, Emily. An exquisite, unreachable star. Now I have you... hold you... wear you on my heart. And you will love me yet... some day you will give me more than affection."
The passion in his voice startled Emily a little. It seemed in some way to demand more of her than she had to give. And Ilse, who had graduated from the School of Oratory and had come home for a week before going on a summer concert tour, struck another note of warning that disturbed faintly for a time.
"In some ways, honey, Dean is just the man for you. He's clever and fascinating and not so horribly conscious of his own importance as most of the Priests. But you'll belong to him body and soul. Dean can't bear any one to have any interest outside of him. He must possess exclusively. If you don't mind that... "
"I don't think I do."
"Your writing... "
"Oh, I'm done with THAT. I seem to have no interest in it since my illness. I saw... then... how little it really mattered... how many more important things there were... "
"As long as you feel like that you'll be happy with Dean. Heigh- ho." Ilse sighed and pulled the blood-red rose that was pinned to her waist to pieces. "It makes me feel fearfully old and wise to be talking like this of your getting married, Emily. It seems so... absurd in some ways. Yesterday we were schoolgirls. To-day you're engaged. To-morrow... you'll be a grandmother."
"Aren't you... isn't there anybody in your own life, Ilse?"
"Listen to the fox that lost her tail. No, thank you. Besides... one might as well be frank. I feel an awful mood of honest confession on me. There's never been anybody for me but Perry Miller. And you've got your claws in him."
Perry Miller. Emily could not believe her ears.
"Ilse Burnley! You've always laughed at him... raged at him... "
"Of course I did. I liked him so much that it made me furious to see him making a fool of himself. I wanted to be proud of him and he always made me ashamed of him. Oh, there were times when he made me mad enough to bite the leg off a chair. If I hadn't cared, do you suppose it would have mattered what kind of a donkey he was? I can't get over it... the 'Burnley sotness,' I suppose. We never change. Oh, I'd have jumped at him... would yet... herring-barrels, Stovepipe Town and all. There you have it. But never mind. Life is very decent without him."
"Perhaps... some day... "
"Don't dream it. Emily, I won't have you setting about making matches for me. Perry never gave me two thoughts... never will. I'm not going to think of him. What's that old verse we laughed over once that last year in high school... thinking it was all nonsense?
Since ever the world was spinning And till the world shall end You've your man in the beginning Or you have him in the end, But to have him from start to finish And neither to borrow nor lend Is what all of the girls are wanting And none of the gods can send.
"Well, next year I'll graduate. For years after that a career. Oh, I dare say I'll marry some day."
"Teddy?" said Emily, before she could prevent herself. She could have bitten her tongue off the moment the word escaped it.
Ilse gave her a long, keen look, which Emily parried successfully with all the Murray pride... too successfully, perhaps.
"No, not Teddy. Teddy never thought about me. I doubt if he thinks of any one but himself. Teddy's a duck but he's selfish, Emily, he really is."
"No, no," indignantly. She could not listen to this.
"Well, we won't quarrel over it. What difference does it make if he is? He's gone out of our lives anyway. The cat can have him. He's going to climb to the top... they thought him a wow in Montreal. He'll make a wonderful portrait painter... if he can only cure himself of his old trick of putting YOU into all the faces he paints."
"Nonsense. He doesn't... "
"He DOES. I've raged at him about it times without number. Of course he denies it. I really think he's quite unconscious of it himself. It's the hang-over from some old unconscious emotion, I suppose... to use the jargon of modern psychologists. Never mind. As I said, I mean to marry sometime. When I'm tired of a career. It's very jolly NOW... but some day. I'll make a sensible wedding o't, just as you're doing, with a heart of gold and a pocket of silver. Isn't it funny to be talking of marrying some man you've never even seen? What is he doing at this very moment? Shaving... swearing... breaking his heart over some other girl? Still, he's to marry ME. Oh, we'll be happy enough, too. And we'll visit each other, you and I... and compare our children... call your first girl Ilse, won't you, friend of my heart... and... and what a devilish thing it is to be a woman, isn't it, Emily?"