Aunt Ruth's house was at the end of a residential side street... almost out in the country. Emily thought it a very ugly house, covered as it was with gingerbread-work of various kinds. But a house with white wooden lace on its roof and its bay windows was the last word of elegance in Shrewsbury. There was no garden... nothing but a bare, prim, little lawn; but one thing rejoiced Emily's eyes. Behind the house was a big plantation of tall, slender fir-trees... the tallest, straightest, slenderest firs she had ever seen, stretching back into long, green, gossamered vistas.
Aunt Elizabeth had spent the day in Shrewsbury and went home after supper. She shook hands with Emily on the doorstep and told her to be a good girl and do exactly as Aunt Ruth bade her. She did not kiss Emily, but her tone was very gentle for Aunt Elizabeth. Emily choked up and stood tearfully on the doorstep to watch Aunt Elizabeth out of sight... Aunt Elizabeth going back to dear New Moon.
"Come in," said Aunt Ruth, and "PLEASE don't slam the door."
Now, Emily never slammed doors.
"We will wash the supper dishes," said Aunt Ruth. "You will always do that after this. I will show you where everything is put. I suppose Elizabeth told you I would expect you to do a few chores for your board."
"Yes," said Emily briefly.
She did not mind doing chores, any number of them... but it was Aunt Ruth's TONE.
"Of course your being here will mean a great deal of extra expense for me," continued Aunt Ruth. "But it is only fair that we should all contribute something to your bringing up. I think, and I have always thought, that it would have been much better to send you to Queen's to get a teacher's licence."
"I wanted that, too," said Emily.
"M... m." Aunt Ruth pursed her mouth. "So you tell me. In that case I don't see why Elizabeth didn't send you to Queen's. She has pampered you enough in other ways, I'm sure... I would expect her to give in about this, too, if she thought you really wanted it. You will sleep in the kitchen chamber. It is warmer in winter than the other rooms. There is no gas in it but I could not afford to let you have gas to study by in any case. You must use candles... you can burn two at a time. I shall expect you to keep your room neat and tidy and to be here at my exact hours for meals. I am very particular about that. And there is another thing you might as well understand at once. You must not bring your friends here. I do not propose to entertain them."
"Not Ilse... or Perry... or Teddy?"
"Well, Ilse is a Burnley and a distant connection. She might come in once in a while... I can't have her running in at all times. From all I hear of her she isn't a very suitable companion for you. As for the boys... certainly not. I know nothing of Teddy Kent... and you ought to be too proud to associate with Perry Miller."
"I'm too proud NOT to associate with him," retorted Emily.
"Don't be pert with ME, Em'ly. You might as well understand right away that you are not going to have things all your own way, HERE, as you had at New Moon. You have been badly spoiled. But I will not have hired boys calling on my niece. I don't know where you get your low tastes from, I'm sure. Even your father SEEMED like a gentleman. Go upstairs and unpack your trunk. Then do your lessons. We go to bed at nine o'clock!"
Emily felt very indignant. Even Aunt Elizabeth had never dreamed of forbidding Teddy to come to New Moon. She shut herself in her room and unpacked drearily. The room was such an ugly one. She hated it at sight. The door wouldn't shut tight; the slanting ceiling was rain stained, and came down so close to the bed that she could touch it with her hand. On the bare floor was a large "hooked" mat which made Emily's eyes ache. It was not in Murray taste... nor in Ruth Dutton's taste either, to be just. A country cousin of the deceased Mr. Dutton had given it to her. The centre, of a crude, glaring scarlet, was surrounded by scrolls of militant orange and violent green. In the corners were bunches of purple ferns and blue roses.
The woodwork was painted a hideous chocolate brown, and the walls were covered with paper of still more hideous design. The pictures were in keeping, especially a chromo of Queen Alexandra, gorgeously bedizened with jewels, hung at such an angle that it seemed the royal lady must certainly fall over on her face. Not even a chromo could make Queen Alexandra ugly or vulgar, but it came piteously near it. On a narrow, chocolate shelf sat a vase filled with paper flowers that had been paper flowers for twenty years. One couldn't believe that ANYTHING could be as ugly and depressing as they were.
"This room is unfriendly... it... doesn't want me... I can NEVER feel at home here," said Emily.
She was horribly homesick. She wanted the New Moon candle-lights shining out on the birch-trees... the scent of hop-vines in the dew... her purring pussy cats... her own dear room, full of dreams... the silences and shadows of the old garden... the grand anthems of wind and billow in the gulf... that sonorous old music she missed so much in this inland silence. She missed even the little graveyard where slept the New Moon dead.
"I'm NOT going to cry." Emily clenched her hands. "Aunt Ruth will laugh at me. There's nothing IN this room I can ever love. Is there anything OUT of it?"
She pushed up the window. It looked south into the fir grove and its balsam blew in to her like a caress. To the left there was an opening in the trees like a green, arched window, and one saw an enchanting little moonlit landscape through it. And it would let in the splendour of sunset. To the right was a view of the hill- side along which West Shrewsbury straggled: the hill was dotted with lights in the autumn dusk, and had a fairy-like loveliness. Somewhere near by there was a drowsy twittering, as of little, sleepy birds swinging on a shadowy bough.
"Oh, THIS is beautiful," breathed Emily, bending out to drink in the balsam-scented air. "Father told me once that one could find something beautiful to love EVERYWHERE. I'll love this."
Aunt Ruth poked her head in at the door, unannounced.
"Em'ly, why did you leave that antimacassar crooked on the sofa in the dining-room?"
"I... don't... know," said Emily confusedly. She hadn't even known she had disarranged the antimacassar. Why did Aunt Ruth ask such a question, as if she suspected her of some dark, deep, sinister design?
"Go down and put it straight."
As Emily turned obediently Aunt Ruth exclaimed,
"Em'ly Starr, put that window down at once! Are you crazy?"
"The room is so close," pleaded Emily.
"You can air it in the daytime but NEVER have that window open after sundown. I am responsible for your health now. You must know that consumptives have to avoid night air and draughts."
"I'm not a consumptive," cried Emily rebelliously.
"Contradict, of course."
"And if I WERE, fresh air any time is the best thing for me. Dr. Burnley says so. I HATE being smothered."
"'Young people THINK old people to be fools and old people KNOW young people to be fools.'" Aunt Ruth felt that the proverb left nothing to be said. "Go and straighten that antimacassar, Em'ly."
"Em'ly" swallowed something and went. The offending antimacassar was mathematically corrected.
Emily stood for a moment and looked about her. Aunt Ruth's dining- room was much more splendid and "up-to-date" than the "sitting- room" at New Moon where they had "company" meals. Hardwood floor... Wilton rug... Early English oak furniture. But it was not half as "friendly" as the old New Moon room, Emily thought. She was more homesick than ever. She did not believe she was going to like ANYTHING in Shrewsbury... living with Aunt Ruth, or going to school. The teachers all seemed flat and insipid after pungent Mr. Carpenter and there was a girl in the Junior class she had hated at sight. And she had thought it would be all so delightful... living in pretty Shrewsbury and going to High School. Well, nothing ever IS exactly like what you expect it to be, Emily told herself in temporary pessimism as she went back to her room. Hadn't Dean told her once that he had dreamed all his life of rowing in a gondola through the canals of Venice on a moonlit night? And when he did he was almost eaten alive by mosquitoes.