Did Ilse do it... no, she DIDN'T... she COULDN'T have. Who then? Mary? The idea was absurd. It must have been Evelyn... Evelyn had come back and played that cruel trick on her out of spite and pique. Yet she had denied it, with seemingly insulted indignation, and eyes that were perhaps a shade too innocent. WHAT had Ilse said... "You are getting positively smug... something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic." Had Ilse taken that abominable way of curing her?
"No... no... no!" Emily sobbed fiercely into her pillow. But the doubt persisted.
Aunt Ruth had no doubt. Aunt Ruth was calling on her friend, Mrs. Ball, and her friend, Mrs. Ball, had a daughter who was a Prep. Anita Ball came home with the tale that had been well laughed over in Prep and Junior and Senior classes, and Anita Ball said that Evelyn Blake had said Ilse Burnley had done the deed.
"Well," said Aunt Ruth, invading Emily's room on her return home, "I hear Ilse Burnley decorated you beautifully to-day. I hope you realize what she is now."
"Ilse didn't do it," said Emily.
"Have you asked her?"
"No. I wouldn't insult her with such a question."
"Well, I believe she did do it. And she is not to come here again. Understand that."
"Aunt Ruth... "
"You've heard what I said, Em'ly. Ilse Burnley is no fit associate for you. I've heard too many tales about her lately. But this is unpardonable."
"Aunt Ruth, if I ask Ilse if she did it and she says she did not, won't you believe her?"
"No, I wouldn't believe any girl brought up as Ilse Burnley was. It's my belief she'd do anything and say anything. Don't let me see her in my house again."
Emily stood up and tried to summon the Murray look into a face distorted by weeping.
"Of course, Aunt Ruth," she said coldly, "I won't bring Ilse here if she is not welcome. But I shall go to see her. And if you forbid me... I'll... I'll go home to New Moon. I feel as if I wanted to go anyhow now. Only... I WON'T let Evelyn Blake drive me away."
Aunt Ruth knew quite well that the New Moon folks would not agree to a complete divorce between Emily and Ilse. They were too good friends with the doctor for that. Mrs. Dutton had never liked Dr. Burnley. She had to be content with the excuse for keeping Ilse away from her house, for which she had long hankered. Her own annoyance over the matter was not born out of any sympathy with Emily but solely from anger at a Murray being made ridiculous.
"I would have thought you'd had enough of going to see Ilse. As for Evelyn Blake, she is too clever and sensible a girl to have played a silly trick like that. I know the Blakes. They are an excellent family and Evelyn's father is well-to-do. Now, stop crying. A pretty face you've got. What sense is there in crying?"
"None at all," agreed Emily drearily, "only I can't help it. I can't BEAR to be made ridiculous. I can endure anything but that. Oh, Aunt Ruth, PLEASE leave me alone. I can't eat any supper."
"You've got yourself all worked up... Starr-like. We Murrays conceal our feelings."
"I don't believe you've any to conceal... some of you," thought Emily rebelliously.
"Keep away from Ilse Burnley after this, and you'll not be so likely to be publicly disgraced," was Aunt Ruth's parting advice.
Emily, after a sleepless night... during which it seemed to her that if she couldn't push that ceiling farther from her face she would surely smother... went to see Ilse the next day and reluctantly told her what Aunt Ruth had said. Ilse was furious... but Emily noted with a pang that she did not assert any innocence of the crayon trick.
"Ilse, you... you didn't really do that?" she faltered. She KNEW Ilse hadn't... she was SURE of it... but she wanted to hear her say so. To her surprise, a sudden blush swept over Ilse's face.
"Is thy servant a dog?" she said, rather confusedly. It was very unlike straightforward, outspoken Ilse to be so confused. She turned her face away and began fumbling aimlessly with her book- bag. "You don't suppose I'd do anything like that to you, Emily?"
"No, of course not," said Emily, slowly. The subject was dropped. But the little doubt and distrust at the bottom of Emily's mind came out of its lurking-place and declared itself. Even yet she couldn't believe Ilse could do such a thing... and lie about it afterward. But why was she so confused and shamefaced? Would not an innocent Ilse have stormed about according to form, berated Emily, roundly, for mere suspicion, and aired the subject generally until all the venom had been blown out of it?
It was not referred to again. But the shadow was there and spoiled, to a certain extent, the Christmas holidays at New Moon. Outwardly, the girls were the friends they had always been, but Emily was acutely conscious of a sudden rift between them. Strive as she would she could not bridge it. The seeming unconsciousness of any such severance on Ilse's part served to deepen it. Hadn't Ilse cared enough for her and her friendship to FEEL the chill that had come over it? Could she be so shallow and indifferent as not to perceive it? Emily brooded and grew morbid over it. A thing like that... a dim, poisonous thing that lurked in shadow and dared not come into the open... always played havoc with her sensitive and passionate temperament. No open quarrel with Ilse could have affected her like this... she had quarrelled with Ilse scores of times and made up the next minute with no bitterness or backward glance. THIS was different. The more Emily brooded over it the more monstrous it grew. She was unhappy, absent, restless. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy noticed it but attributed it to her disappointment over the star pin. She had told them she was sure she would not win. But Emily had ceased to care about the star pin.
To be sure, she had a bad time of it, when she went back to High School and the examination results were announced. She was not one of the envied four who flaunted star pins and Aunt Ruth rubbed it in for weeks. Aunt Ruth felt that she had lost family prestige in Emily's failure and she was very bitter about it. Altogether Emily felt that the New Year had come in very inauspiciously for her. The first month of it was a time she never liked to recall. She was very lonely. Ilse could not come to see her, and though she made herself go to see Ilse the subtle little rift between them was slowly widening. Ilse still gave no sign of feeling it; but then, somehow, she was seldom alone with Ilse now. The room was always filled with girls, and there was a good deal of noise and laughter and jokes and school gossip... all very harmless and even jolly, but very different from the old intimacy and understanding comradeship with Ilse. Formerly it used to be a chummy jest between them that they could walk or sit for hours together and say no word and yet feel that they had had a splendid time. There were no such silences now: when they did happen to be alone together they both chattered gaily and shallowly, as if each were secretly afraid that there might come a moment for the silence that betrays.
Emily's heart ached over their lost friendship: every night her pillow was wet with tears. Yet there was nothing she could do: she could not, try as she would, banish the doubt that possessed her. She made many an honest effort to do so. She told herself every day that Ilse Burnley could never have played that trick... that she was constitutionally incapable of it... and went straightway to Ilse with the firm determination to be just what she had always been to her. With the result that she was unnaturally cordial and friendly... even gushing... and no more like her real self than she was like Evelyn Blake. Ilse was just as cordial and friendly... and the rift was wider still.
"Ilse never goes into a tantrum with me now," Emily reflected sadly.