Naturally they were overwhelmed with advice from every one in the Priest and Murray clans... and took none of it. For one thing, they wouldn't paint the Disappointed House... just shingled it and left the shingles to turn woodsy grey, much to Aunt Elizabeth's horror.
"It's only Stovepipe Town houses that aren't painted," she said.
They replaced the old, unused, temporary board steps, left by the carpenters thirty years before, with broad, red sandstones from the shore. Dean had casement windows put in with diamond shaped panes which Aunt Elizabeth warned Emily would be terrible things to keep clean. And he added a dear little window over the front door with a little roof over it like a shaggy eyebrow and in the living-room they had a French window from which you could step right out into the fir wood.
And Dean had jewels of closets and cupboards put in everywhere.
"I'm not such a fool as to imagine that a girl can keep on loving a man who doesn't provide her with proper cupboards," he declared.
Aunt Elizabeth approved of the cupboards but thought they were clean daft in regard to the wallpapers. Especially the living-room paper. They should have had something cheerful there... flowers or gold stripes; or even, as a vast concession to modernity, some of those "landscape papers" that were coming in. But Emily insisted on papering it with a shadowy grey paper with snowy pine branches over it. Aunt Elizabeth declared she would as soon live in the woods as in such a room. But Emily in this respect, as in all others concerning her own dear house, was "as pig-headed as ever," so exasperated Aunt Elizabeth averred, quite unconscious that a Murray was borrowing one of Old Kelly's expressions.
But Aunt Elizabeth was really very good. She dug up, out of long undisturbed boxes and chests, china and silver belonging to her stepmother... the things Juliet Murray would have had if she had married in orthodox fashion a husband approved of her clan... and gave them to Emily. There were some lovely things among them... especially a priceless pink lustre jug and a delightful old dinner- set of real willow-ware... Emily's grandmother's own wedding-set. Not a piece was missing. And it had shallow thin cups and deep saucers and scalloped plates and round, fat, pobby tureens. Emily filled the built-in cabinet in the living-room with it and gloated over it. There were other things she loved too; a little gilt- framed oval mirror with a black cat on top of it, a mirror that had so often reflected beautiful women that it lent a certain charm to every face; and an old clock with a pointed top and two tiny gilded spires on each side, a clock that gave warning ten minutes before it struck, a gentlemanly clock never taking people unawares. Dean wound it up but would not start it.
"When we come home... when I bring you in here as bride and queen, you shall start it going," he said.
It turned out, too, that the Chippendale sideboard and the claw- footed mahogany table at New Moon were Emily's. And Dean had no end of quaint delightful things picked up all over the world... a sofa covered with striped silk that had been in the Salon of a Marquise of the Old Regime, a lantern of wrought-iron lace from an old Venetian palace to hang in the living-room, a Shiraz rug, a prayer-rug from Damascus, brass andirons from Italy, jades and ivories from China, lacquer bowls from Japan, a delightful little green owl in Japanese china, a painted Chinese perfume-bottle of agate which he had found in some weird place in Mongolia, with the perfume of the east... which is never the perfume of the west... clinging to it, a Chinese teapot with dreadful golden dragons coiling over it... five-clawed dragons whereby the initiated knew that it was of the Imperial cabinets. It was part of the loot of the Summer Palace in the Boxer Rebellion, Dean told Emily, but he would not tell her how it had come into his possession.
"Not yet. Some day. There's a story about almost everything I've put in this house."
IV
They had a great day putting the furniture in the living-room. They tried it in a dozen different places and were not satisfied until they had found the absolutely right one. Sometimes they could not agree about it and then they would sit on the floor and argue it out. And if they couldn't settle it they got Daffy to pull straws with his teeth and decide it that way. Daffy was always around. Saucy Sal had died of old age and Daffy was getting stiff and a bit cranky and snored dreadfully when he was sleeping, but Emily adored him and would not go to the Disappointed House without him. He always slipped up the hill path beside her like a grey shadow dappled with dark.
"You love that old cat more than you do me, Emily," Dean once said... jestingly yet with an undernote of earnest.
"I HAVE to love him," defended Emily. "He's growing old. YOU have all the years before us. And I must always have a cat about. A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion. And you must have a dog."
"I've never cared to have a dog since Tweed died. But perhaps I'll get one... an altogether different kind of a one. We'll need a dog to keep your cats in order. Oh, isn't it nice to feel that a place belongs to you?"
"It's far nicer to feel that you belong to a place," said Emily, looking about her affectionately.
"Our house and we are going to be good friends," agreed Dean.
V
They hung their pictures one day. Emily brought her favourites up, including the Lady Giovanna and Mona Lisa. These two were hung in the corner between the windows.
"Where your writing-desk will be," said Dean. "And Mona Lisa will whisper to you the ageless secret of her smile and you shall put it in a story."
"I thought you didn't want me to write any more stories," said Emily. "You've never seemed to like the fact of my writing."
"That was when I was afraid it would take you away from me. Now, it doesn't matter. I want you to do just as pleases you."
Emily felt indifferent. She had never cared to take up her pen since her illness. As the days passed she felt a growing distaste to the thought of ever taking it up. To think of it meant to think of the book she had burned; and THAT hurt beyond bearing. She had ceased to listen for her "random word"... she was an exile from her old starry kingdom.
"I'm going to hang old Elizabeth Bas by the fireplace," said Dean. "'Engraving from a portrait by Rembrandt.' Isn't she a delightful old woman, Star, in her white cap and tremendous white ruff collar? And did you ever see such a shrewd, humorous, complacent, slightly contemptuous old face?"
"I don't think I should want to have an argument with Elizabeth," reflected Emily. "One feels that she is keeping her hands folded under compulsion and might box your ears if you disagreed with her."
"She has been dust for over a century," said Dean dreamily. "Yet here she is living on this cheap reprint of Rembrandt's canvas. You are expecting her to speak to you. And I feel, as you do, that she wouldn't put up with any nonsense."
"But likely she has a sweetmeat stored away in some pocket of her gown for you. That fine, rosy, wholesome old woman. SHE ruled her family... not a doubt of it. Her husband did as she told him... but never knew it."
"HAD she a husband?" said Dean doubtfully. "There's no wedding- ring on her finger."
"Then she must have been a most delightful old maid," averred Emily.
"What a difference between her smile and Mona Lisa's," said Dean, looking from one to the other. "Elizabeth is tolerating things... with just a hint of a sly, meditative cat about her. But Mona Lisa's face has that everlasting lure and provocation that drives men mad and writes scarlet pages on dim historical records. La Gioconda would be a more stimulating sweetheart. But Elizabeth would be nicer for an aunt."