But even the Murray look, while it might demolish a concrete offender, could not scotch scandalous stories. Everybody, she felt morbidly, believed them. It was reported to her that Miss Percy of the library said she had always distrusted Emily Starr's smile... she had always felt sure it was deliberately provocative and alluring. Emily felt that she, like poor King Henry, would never smile again. People remembered that old Nancy Priest had been a wild thing seventy years ago... and hadn't there been some scandal about Mrs. Dutton herself in her girlhood? What's bred in the bone, you understand. Her mother had eloped, hadn't she? And Ilse's mother? Of course, she had been killed by falling into the old Lee well, but who knew what she would have done if she hadn't? Then there was that old story of bathing on Blair Water sandshore, au naturel. In short, you didn't see ankles like Emily's on proper girls. They simply didn't have them.
Even harmless, unnecessary Andrew had ceased to call on Friday nights. There WAS a sting in this. Emily thought Andrew a bore and dreaded his Friday nights. She had always meant to send him packing as soon as he gave her an opportunity. But for Andrew to go packing of his own accord had a very different flavour, mark you. Emily clenched her hands when she thought of it.
A bitter report came to her ears that Principal Hardy had said she ought to resign from the presidency of the Senior Class. Emily threw up her head. Resign? Confess defeat and admit guilt? Not she!
"I could knock that man's block off," said Ilse. "Emily Starr, don't let yourself worry over this. What does it matter what a lot of doddering old donkeys think? I hereby devote them to the infernal gods. They'll have their maws full of something else in a month and they'll forget this."
"I'll never forget it," said Emily, passionately. "To my dying day I'll remember the humiliation of these weeks. And now... Ilse, Mrs. Tolliver has written asking me to give up my stall at the St. John's bazaar."
"Emily Starr... she hasn't!"
"She has. Oh, of course, she cloaks it under an excuse that she'd like a stall for her cousin from New York, who is visiting her... but I understand. And it's 'Dear Miss Starr'... look you... when it was 'Dearest Emily' a few weeks ago. Everybody in St. John's will know why I've been asked to step out. And she almost went on her knees to Aunt Ruth to let me take the stall. Aunt Ruth didn't want to let me."
"What will your Aunt Ruth say about this?"
"Oh, that's the worst of it, Ilse. She'll have to know now. She's never heard a word of this since she's been laid up with her sciatica. I've lived in dread of her finding out... for I know it will be hideous when she does. She's getting about now, so of course she'd soon hear it, anyway. And I haven't the spirit to stand up to her, Ilse. Oh, it all seems like a nightmare."
"They've got such mean, narrow, malicious, beastly little minds in this town," said Ilse... and was straightway comforted. But Emily could not ease her tortured spirit by a choice assortment of adjectives. Neither could she write out her misery and so rid herself of it. There were no more jottings in her Jimmy-book, no further entries in her journal, no new stories or poems. The flash never came now... never would come again. There would never again be wonderful little secret raptures of insight and creation which no one could share. Life had grown thin and poor, tarnished and unlovely. There was no beauty in anything... not even in the golden- white March solitudes of New Moon, when she went home for the week- end. She had longed to go home, where no one believed ill of her. No one at New Moon had heard anything of what was being whispered in Shrewsbury. But there very ignorance tortured Emily. Soon they WOULD know; they would be hurt and grieved over the fact that a Murray, even an innocent Murray, had become a target for scandal. And who knew how they would regard Ilse's mishap with Malcolm's Scotch? Emily felt it almost a relief to go back to Shrewsbury.
She imagined slurs in everything Principal Hardy said... covert insults in every remark or look of her schoolmates. Only Evelyn Blake posed as friend and defender, and this was the most unkindest cut of all. Whether alarm or malice was beyond Evelyn's pose, Emily did not know... but she did know that Evelyn's parade of friendship and loyalty and staunch belief in the face of overwhelming evidence, was something that seemed to smirch her more than all the gossip could. Evelyn went about assuring every one that SHE wouldn't believe one word against "poor dear Emily." Poor dear Emily could have cheerfully watched her drown... or thought she could.
Meanwhile, Aunt Ruth, who had been confined to her house for several weeks with sciatica and had been so crusty with it that neither friends nor enemies had dared to hint anything to her of the gossip concerning her niece, was beginning to take notice. Her sciatica had departed and left her faculties free to concentrate on other things. She recalled that Emily's appetite had been poor for days and Aunt Ruth suspected that she had not been sleeping. The moment this suspicion occurred to Aunt Ruth she took action. Secret worries were not to be tolerated in her house.
"Emily, I want to know what is the matter with you," she demanded, one Saturday afternoon when Emily pale and listless, with purple smudges under her eyes, had eaten next to nothing for dinner.
A little colour came into Emily's face. The hour she had dreaded so was upon her. Aunt Ruth must be told all. And Emily felt miserably that she had neither the courage to endure the resultant heckling nor the spirit to hold her own against Aunt Ruth's whys and wherefores. She knew so well how it would all be: horror over the John house episode... as if anybody could have helped it: annoyance over the gossip... as if Emily were responsible for it: several assurances that she had always expected something like this: and then intolerable weeks of reminders and slurs. Emily felt a sort of mental nausea at the whole prospect. For a minute she could not speak.
"What have you been doing?" persisted Aunt Ruth.
Emily set her teeth. It was unendurable, but it must be endured. The story had to be told... the only thing to do was to get it told as soon as possible.
"I haven't done anything wrong, Aunt Ruth. I've just done something that has been misunderstood."
Aunt Ruth sniffed. But she listened without interruption to Emily's story. Emily told it as briefly as possible, feeling as if she were a criminal in the witness box with Aunt Ruth as judge, jury and prosecuting attorney all in one. When she had finished she sat in silence waiting for some characteristic Aunt Ruthian comment.
"And what are they making all the fuss about?" said Aunt Ruth.
Emily didn't know exactly what to say. She stared at Aunt Ruth.
"They... they're thinking... and saying all sorts of horrible things," she faltered. "You see... down here in sheltered Shrewsbury they didn't realize what a storm it was. And then, of course, every one who repeated the story coloured it a little... we were ALL drunk by the time it filtered through Shrewsbury."
"What exasperates me," said Aunt Ruth, "is to think you told about it in Shrewsbury at all. Why on earth didn't you keep it all quiet?"
"That would have been SLY." Emily's demon suddenly prompted her to say this. Now that the story was out she felt a rebound of spirit that was almost laughter.
"Sly! It would have been common sense," snorted Aunt Ruth. "But, of course, Ilse couldn't hold her tongue. I've often told you, Emily, that a fool friend is ten times more dangerous than an enemy. But what are you killing yourself worrying for? YOUR conscience is clear. This gossip will soon die out."
"Principal Hardy says I ought to resign from the presidency of the class," said Emily.
"Jim Hardy! Why, his Father was a hired boy to my Grandfather for years," said Aunt Ruth in tones of ineffable contempt. "Does Jim Hardy imagine that MY NIECE would behave improperly?"