This is one of the places where a conscientious biographer feels that, in the good old phrase, her pen cannot do justice to the scene.
Emily and Perry stood as if turned to stone. So, for a moment, did Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth had expected to find Emily there, writing, as she had done one night a month previously when Emily had had an inspiration at bedtime and had slipped down to the warm dining-room to jot it down in a Jimmy-book. But THIS! I must admit it DID look bad. Really, I think we can hardly blame Aunt Ruth for righteous indignation.
Aunt Ruth looked at the unlucky pair.
"What are you doing here?" she asked Perry.
Stovepipe Town made a mistake.
"Oh, looking for a round square," said Perry offhandedly, his eyes suddenly becoming limpid with mischief and lawless roguery.
Perry's "impudence"... Aunt Ruth called it that, and, really, I think he WAS impudent... naturally made a bad matter worse. Aunt Ruth turned to Emily.
"Perhaps YOU can explain how you came to be here, at this hour, kissing this fellow in the dark?"
Emily flinched from the crude vulgarity of the question as if Aunt Ruth had struck her. She forgot how much appearances justified Aunt Ruth, and let a perverse spirit enter into and possess her. She lifted her head haughtily.
"I have no explanation to give to such a question, Aunt Ruth."
"I didn't think you would have."
Aunt Ruth gave a very disagreeable laugh, through which a thin, discordant note of triumph sounded. One might have thought that, under all her anger, something pleased Aunt Ruth. It IS pleasant to be justified in the opinion we have always entertained of anybody. "Well, perhaps you will be so good as to answer some questions. How did this fellow get here?"
"Window," said Perry laconically, seeing that Emily was not going to answer.
"I was not asking YOU, sir. Go," said Aunt Ruth, pointing dramatically to the window.
"I'm not going to stir a step out of this room until I see what you're going to do to Emily," said Perry stubbornly.
"I," said Aunt Ruth, with an air of terrible detachment, "am not going to do anything to Emily."
"Mrs. Dutton, be a good sport," implored Perry coaxingly. "It's all my fault... honest! Emily wasn't one bit to blame. You see, it was this way... "
But Perry was too late.
"I have asked my niece for an explanation and she has refused to give it. I do not choose to listen to yours."
"But... " persisted Perry.
"You had better go, Perry," said Emily, whose face was flying danger signals. She spoke quietly, but the Murrayest of all Murrays could not have expressed a more definite command. There was a quality in it Perry dared not disregard. He meekly scrambled out of the window into the night. Aunt Ruth stepped forward and shut the window. Then, ignoring Emily utterly, she marched her pink flanneled little figure back upstairs.
Emily did not sleep much that night... nor, I admit, did she deserve to. After her sudden anger died away, shame cut her like a whip. She realized that she had behaved very foolishly in refusing an explanation to Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth had a right to it, when such a situation developed in her own house, no matter how hateful and disagreeable she made her method of demanding it. Of course, she would not have believed a word of it; but Emily, if she had given it, would not have further complicated her false position.
Emily fully expected she would be sent home to New Moon in disgrace. Aunt Ruth would stonily decline to keep such a girl any longer in her house... Aunt Elizabeth would agree with her... Aunt Laura would be heart-broken. Would even Cousin Jimmy's loyalty stand the strain? It was a very bitter prospect. No wonder Emily spent a white night. She was so unhappy that every beat of her heart seemed to hurt her. And again I say, most unequivocally, she deserved it. I haven't one word of pity or excuse for her.
CHAPTER 18. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
At the Saturday morning breakfast-table Aunt Ruth preserved a stony silence, but she smiled cruelly to herself as she buttered and ate her toast. Anyone might have seen clearly that Aunt Ruth was enjoying herself... and, with equal clearness, that Emily was NOT. Aunt Ruth passed Emily the toast and marmalade with killing politeness, as if to say,
"I will not abate one jot or tittle of the proper thing. I may turn you out of my house, but it will be your own fault if you go without your breakfast."
After breakfast Aunt Ruth went uptown. Emily suspected that she had gone to telephone to Dr. Burnley a message for New Moon. She expected when Aunt Ruth returned to be told to pack her trunk. But still Aunt Ruth spoke not. In the middle of the afternoon Cousin Jimmy arrived with the double-seated box-sleigh. Aunt Ruth went out and conferred with him. Then she came in and at last broke her silence.
"Put on your wraps," she said. "We are going to New Moon."
Emily obeyed mutely. She got into the back seat of the sleigh and Aunt Ruth sat beside Cousin Jimmy in front. Cousin Jimmy looked back at Emily over the collar of his fur coat and said, "Hello, Pussy," with just a shade too much of cheerful encouragement. Evidently Cousin Jimmy believed something very serious had happened, though he didn't know what.
It was not a pleasant drive through the beautiful greys and smokes and pearls of the winter afternoon. The arrival at New Moon was not pleasant. Aunt Elizabeth looked stern... Aunt Laura looked apprehensive.
"I have brought Emily here," said Aunt Ruth, "because I do not feel that I can deal with her alone. You and Laura, Elizabeth, must pass judgment on her behaviour yourselves."
So it was to be a domestic court, with her, Emily, at the bar of justice. Justice... would she get justice? Well, she would make a fight for it. She flung up her head and the colour rushed back into her face.
They were all in the sitting-room when she came down from her room. Aunt Elizabeth sat by the table. Aunt Laura was on the sofa ready to cry. Aunt Ruth was standing on the rug before the fire, looking peevishly at Cousin Jimmy, who, instead of going to the barn as he should have done, had tied the horse to the orchard fence and had seated himself back in the corner, determined, like Perry, to see what was going to be done to Emily. Ruth was annoyed. She wished Elizabeth would not always insist on admitting Jimmy to family conclaves when he desired to be present. It was absurd to suppose that a grown-up child like Jimmy had any right there.
Emily did not sit down. She went and stood by the window, where her black head came out against the crimson curtain as softly and darkly clear as a pine-tree against a sunset of spring. Outside a white, dead world lay in the chilly twilight of early March. Past the garden and the Lombardy poplars the fields of New Moon looked very lonely and drear, with the intense red streak of lingering sunset beyond them. Emily shivered.
"Well," said Cousin Jimmy, "let's begin and get it over. Emily must want her supper."
"When you know what I know about her, you will think she needs something besides supper," said Mrs. Dutton tartly.
"I know all anyone need know about Emily," retorted Cousin Jimmy.
"Jimmy Murray, you are an ass," said Aunt Ruth, angrily.
"Well, we're cousins," agreed Cousin Jimmy pleasantly.
"Jimmy, be silent," said Elizabeth, majestically. "Ruth, let us hear what you have to say."
Aunt Ruth told the whole story. She stuck to facts, but her manner of telling them made them seem even blacker than they were. She really contrived to make a very ugly story of it, and Emily shivered again as she listened. As the telling proceeded Aunt Elizabeth's face became harder and colder, Aunt Laura began to cry, and Cousin Jimmy began to whistle.
"He was kissing her NECK," concluded Aunt Ruth. Her tone implied that, bad as it was to kiss on ordinary places for kissing, it was a thousand-fold more scandalous and disgraceful to kiss the neck.