Emily stared again, paling a little.
"Aunt Ruth... I MUST... why, the play would be ruined."
"Better a play ruined than a soul ruined," retorted Aunt Ruth.
Emily dared not smile. The issue at stake was too serious.
"Don't be so... so... indignant, Aunt Ruth"... she had nearly said unjust. "I am sorry you don't approve of plays... I won't take part in any more... but you can see I MUST do it to-night."
"Oh, my dear Em'ly, I don't think you are quite as indispensable as all THAT."
Certainly Aunt Ruth was very maddening. How disagreeable the word "dear" could be! Still was Emily patient.
"I really am... to-night. You see, they couldn't get a substitute at the last moment. Miss Aylmer would never forgive me."
"Do you care more about Miss Aylmer's forgiveness than God's?" demanded Aunt Ruth with the air of one stating a decisive position.
"Yes... than YOUR God's," muttered Emily, unable to keep her patience under such insensate questions.
"Have you no respect for your forefathers?" was Aunt Ruth's next relevant query. "Why, if they knew a descendant of theirs was play-acting they would turn over in their graves!"
Emily favoured Aunt Ruth with a sample of the Murray look.
"It would be excellent exercise for them. I am going to take my part in the play to-night, Aunt Ruth."
Emily spoke quietly, looking down from her young height with resolute eyes. Aunt Ruth felt a nasty sense of helplessness: there was no lock to Emily's door... and she couldn't detain her by physical force.
"If you go, you needn't come back here to-night," she said, pale with rage. "This house is locked at nine o'clock."
"If I don't come back here to-night, I won't come at all." Emily was too angry over Aunt Ruth's unreasonable attitude to care for consequences. "If you lock me out I'll go back to New Moon. THEY know all about the play there... even Aunt Elizabeth was willing for me to take part."
She caught up her coat and jammed the little red-feather hat, which Uncle Oliver's wife had given her at Christmas, down on her head. Aunt Addie's taste was not approved at New Moon but the hat was very becoming and Emily loved it. Aunt Ruth suddenly realized that Emily looked oddly mature and grown-up in it. But the knowledge did not as yet dampen her anger. Em'ly was gone... Em'ly had dared to defy her and disobey her... sly, underhand Em'ly... Em'ly must be taught a lesson.
At nine o'clock a stubborn, outraged Aunt Ruth locked all the doors and went to bed.
The play was a big success. Even the Queen's students admitted that and applauded generously. Emily threw herself into her part with a fire and energy generated by her encounter with Aunt Ruth, which swept away all hampering consciousness of flannel petticoats and agreeably astonished Miss Errol, whose one criticism of Emily's acting had been that she was rather cold and reserved in a part that called for more abandon. Emily was showered with compliments at the close of the performance. Even Evelyn Blake said graciously,
"Really, dear, you are quite wonderful... a star actress... a poet... a budding novelist... what surprise will you give us next?"
Thought Emily, "Condescending, insufferable creature!"
Said Emily, "THANK you!"
There was a happy, triumphant walk home with Teddy, a gay good night at the gate, and then... the locked door.
Emily's anger, which had been sublimated during the evening into energy and ambition, suddenly flared up again, sweeping everything before it. It was unbearable to be treated thus. She had endured enough at Aunt Ruth's hands... this was the proverbial last straw. One could not put up with EVERYTHING, even to get an education. One owed SOMETHING to one's dignity and self-respect.
There were three things she could do. She could thump the old- fashioned brass knocker on the door until Aunt Ruth came down and let her in, as she had done once before... and then endure weeks of slurs because of it. She could fly up-street and down-street to Ilse's boarding-house... the girls wouldn't be in bed yet... as she had likewise done once before, and as no doubt Aunt Ruth would expect her to do now; and then Mary Carswell would tell Evelyn Blake and Evelyn Blake would laugh maliciously and tell it all through the school. Emily had no intention of doing either of these things; she knew from the moment she found the door locked just what she would do. She would walk to New Moon... and stay there! Months of suppressed chafing under Aunt Ruth's perpetual stings burst into a conflagration of revolt. Emily marched out of the gate, slammed it shut behind her with no Murray dignity but plenty of Starr passion, and started on her seven-mile walk through the midnight. Had it been three times seven she would have started just the same.
So angry was she, and so angry she continued to be, that the walk did not seem long, nor, though she had no wrap save her cloth coat, did she feel the cold of the sharp April night.
The winter's snow had gone but the bare road was hard-frozen and rough... no dainty footing for the thin kid slippers of Cousin Jimmy's Christmas box. Emily reflected with what she considered a grim, sarcastic laugh that it was well, after all, that Aunt Ruth had insisted on cashmere stockings and flannel petticoat.
There was a moon that night, but the sky was covered with curdled grey clouds, and the harsh, bleak landscape lay dourly in the pallid grey light. The wind came across it in sudden, moaning gusts. Emily felt with considerable dramatic satisfaction that the night harmonized with her stormy, tragic mood.
She would NEVER go back to Aunt Ruth's that was certain. No matter what Aunt Elizabeth might say... and she WOULD say aplenty, no doubt of that... no matter what anyone would say. If Aunt Elizabeth would not let her go anywhere else to board she would give up school altogether. She knew it would cause a tremendous upheaval at New Moon. Never mind. In her very reckless mood upheavals seemed welcome things. It was time somebody upheaved. She would not humiliate herself another day... that she would not! Aunt Ruth had gone too far at last. You could not safely drive a Starr to desperation.
"I have done with Ruth Dutton for ever," vowed Emily, feeling a tremendous satisfaction in leaving off the "Aunt."
As she drew near home the clouds cleared away suddenly, and when she turned into the New Moon lane the austere beauty of the three tall Lombardies against the moonlit sky made her catch her breath. Oh, how wonderful! For a moment she almost forgot her wrongs and Aunt Ruth. Then bitterness rushed over her soul again... not even the magic of the Three Princesses could charm it away.
There was a light shining out of the New Moon kitchen window, falling on the tall, white birches in Lofty John's bush with spectral effect. Emily wondered who could be up at New Moon: she had expected to find it in darkness and had meant to slip in by the front door and up to her own dear room, leaving explanations to the morning. Aunt Elizabeth always locked and barred the kitchen door every night with great ceremony before retiring, but the front door was never locked. Tramps and burglars would surely never be so ill-mannered as to come to the front door of New Moon.
Emily crossed the garden and peeped through the kitchen window. Cousin Jimmy was there alone, sitting by the table, with two candles for company. On the table was a stoneware crock and just as Emily looked in he absently put his hand into it and drew out a chubby doughnut. Cousin Jimmy's eyes were fixed on a big beef ham hanging from the ceiling and Cousin Jimmy's lips moved soundlessly. There was no reasonable doubt that Cousin Jimmy was composing poetry, though why he was doing it at that hour o' night was a puzzle.
Emily slipped around the house, opened the kitchen door gently, and walked in. Poor Cousin Jimmy in his amazement tried to swallow half a doughnut whole and then couldn't speak for several seconds. Was THIS Emily... or an apparition? Emily in a dark-blue coat, an enchanting little red-feather hat... Emily with windblown night-black hair and tragic eyes... Emily with tattered kid slippers on her feet... Emily in this plight at New Moon when she should have been sound asleep on her maiden couch in Shrewsbury?