"It was my ear, really," murmured Emily, with a sudden impish grin she could not check in time. Under all her discomfort and dread, there was Something that was standing back and ENJOYING this... the drama, the comedy of it. But this outbreak of it was most unfortunate. It made her appear flippant and unashamed.
"Now, I ask you," said Aunt Ruth, throwing out her pudgy hands, "if you can expect me to keep a girl like her any longer in my house?"
"No, I don't think we can," said Elizabeth slowly.
Aunt Laura began to sob wildly. Cousin Jimmy brought down the front legs of his chair with a bang.
Emily turned from the window and faced them all.
"I want to explain what happened, Aunt Elizabeth."
"I think we have heard enough about it," said Aunt Elizabeth icily... all the more icily because of a certain bitter disappointment that was filling her soul. She had been gradually becoming very fond and proud of Emily, in her reserved, undemonstrative Murray way: to find her capable of such conduct as this was a terrible blow to Aunt Elizabeth. Her very pain made her the more merciless.
"No, that won't do now, Aunt Elizabeth," said Emily quietly. "I'm too old to be treated like that. You MUST hear my side of the story."
The Murray look was on her face... the look Elizabeth knew and remembered so well of old. She wavered.
"You had your chance to explain last night," snapped Aunt Ruth, "and you wouldn't do it."
"Because I was hurt and angry over your thinking the worst of me," said Emily. "Besides, I knew YOU wouldn't believe me."
"I would have believed you if you had told the truth," said Aunt Ruth. "The reason you wouldn't explain last night was because you couldn't think up an excuse for your conduct on the spur of the moment. You've had time to invent something since, I suppose."
"Did you ever know Emily to tell a lie?" demanded Cousin Jimmy.
Mrs. Dutton opened her lips to say "Yes." Then closed them again. Suppose Jimmy should demand a specific instance? She felt sure Emily had told her... fibs... a score of times, but what proof had she of it?
"DID you?" persisted that abominable Jimmy.
"I am not going to be catechized by you." Aunt Ruth turned her back on him. "Elizabeth, I've always told you that girl was deep and sly, haven't I?"
"Yes," admitted poor Elizabeth, rather thankful that there need be no indecision on THAT point. Ruth had certainly told her so times out of number.
"And doesn't this show I was right?"
"I'm... afraid... so." Elizabeth Murray felt that it was a very bitter moment for her.
"Then it is for YOU to decide what is to be done about the matter," said Ruth triumphantly.
"Not yet," interposed Cousin Jimmy resolutely. "You haven't given Emily the ghost of a chance to explain. That's no fair trial. Now let her talk for ten minutes without interrupting her once."
"That is only fair," said Elizabeth with sudden resolution. She had a mad, irrational hope that, after all, Emily might be able to clear herself.
"Oh... well... " Mrs. Dutton yielded ungraciously and sat herself down with a thud on old Archibald Murray's chair.
"Now, Emily, tell us what really happened," said Cousin Jimmy.
"Well, upon my word!" exploded Aunt Ruth. "Do you mean to say I didn't tell what really happened?"
Cousin Jimmy lifted his hand.
"Now... now... you had your say. Come, Pussy."
Emily told her story from beginning to end. Something in it carried conviction. Three of her listeners at least believed her and felt an enormous load lifted from their minds. Even Aunt Ruth, deep down in her heart, knew Emily was telling the truth, but she would not admit it.
"A very ingenious tale, upon my word." she said derisively.
Cousin Jimmy got up and walked across the floor. He bent down before Mrs. Dutton and thrust his rosy face with its forked beard and child-like brown eyes under his shock of grey curls, very close to hers.
"Ruth Murray," he said, "do you remember the story that got around forty years ago about you and Fred Blair? DO you?"
Aunt Ruth pushed back her chair. Cousin Jimmy followed her.
"Do you remember that you were caught in a scrape that looked far worse than this? DIDN'T it?"
Again poor Aunt Ruth pushed back her chair. Again Cousin Jimmy followed.
"Do you remember how mad you were because people wouldn't believe you? But your father believed you... HE had confidence in his own flesh and blood. HADN'T he?"
Aunt Ruth had reached the wall by this time and had to surrender at discretion.
"I... I... remember well enough," she said shortly.
Her cheeks were a curdled red. Emily looked at her interestedly. WAS Aunt Ruth trying to blush? Ruth Dutton was, in fact, living over some very miserable months in her long past youth. When she was a girl of eighteen she had been trapped in a very ugly situation. And she had been innocent... absolutely innocent. She had been the helpless victim of a most impish combination of circumstances. Her father had believed her story and her own family had backed her up. But her contemporaries had believed the evidence of known facts for years... perhaps believed it yet, if they ever thought about the matter. Ruth Dutton shivered over the remembrance of her suffering under the lash of scandal. She no longer dared to refuse credence to Emily's story but she could not yield gracefully.
"Jimmy," she said sharply, "will you be good enough to go away and sit down? I suppose Emily IS telling the truth... it's a pity she took so long deciding to tell it. And I'm sure that creature WAS making love to her."
"No, he was only asking me to marry him," said Emily coolly.
You heard three gasps in the room. Aunt Ruth alone was able to speak.
"Do you intend to, may I ask?"
"No. I've told him so half a dozen times."
"Well, I'm glad you had that much sense. Stovepipe Town, indeed!"
"Stovepipe Town had nothing to do with it. Ten years from now Perry Miller will be a man whom even a Murray would delight to honour. But he doesn't happen to be the type I fancy, that's all."
Could THIS be Emily... this tall young woman coolly giving her reasons for refusing an offer of marriage... and talking about the "types" she fancied? Elizabeth... Laura... even Ruth looked at her as if they had never seen her before. And there was a new respect in their eyes. Of course they knew that Andrew was... was... well, in short, that Andrew WAS. But years must doubtless pass before Andrew would... would... well, WOULD! And now the thing had happened already with another suitor... happened "half a dozen times" mark you! At that moment, although they were quite unconscious of it, they ceased to regard her as a child. At a bound she had entered their world and must henceforth be met on equal terms. There could be no more family courts. They FELT this, though they did not perceive it. Aunt Ruth's next remark showed it. She spoke almost as she might have spoken to Laura or Elizabeth, if she had deemed it her duty to admonish them.
"Just suppose, Emily, if anyone passing had seen Perry Miller sitting in that window at that hour of night?"
"Yes, of course. I see your angle of it perfectly, Aunt Ruth. All I want is to get you to see MINE. I was foolish to open the window and talk to Perry... I see that now. I simply didn't think... and then I got so interested in the story of his mishaps at Dr. Hardy's dinner that I forgot how time was going."
"Was Perry Miller to dinner at DR. HARDY'S?" asked Aunt Elizabeth. This was another staggerer for her. The world... the Murray world... must be literally turned upside-down if Stovepipe Town was invited to dinner on Queen Street. At the same moment Aunt Ruth remembered with a pang of horror that Perry Miller had seen her in her pink flannel nightgown. It hadn't mattered before... he had been only the help-boy at New Moon. NOW he was Dr. Hardy's guest.