DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
Emily, who had been pointedly ignored by the Murrays at breakfast, was
called into the parlour when the meal was over.
They were all there--the whole phalanx of them--and it occurred to
Emily as she looked at Uncle Wallace, sitting in the spring sunshine,
that she had not just found the exact word after all to express his
peculiar quality of grimness.
Aunt Elizabeth stood unsmilingly by the table with slips of paper in
her hand.
“Emily,” she said, “last night we could not decide who should take you.
I may say that none of us feel very much like doing so, for you have
behaved very badly in many respects--”
“Oh, Elizabeth,--” protested Laura. “She--she is our sister’s child.”
Elizabeth lifted a hand regally.
“_I_ am doing this, Laura. Have the goodness not to interrupt me. As I
was saying, Emily, we could not decide as to who should have the care
of you. So we have agreed to Cousin Jimmy’s suggestion that we settle
the matter by lot. I have our names here, written on these slips of
paper. You will draw one and the one whose name is on it will give you
a home.”
Aunt Elizabeth held out the slips of paper. Emily trembled so violently
that at first she could not draw one. This was terrible--it seemed as
if she must blindly settle her own fate.
“Draw,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
Emily set her teeth, threw back her head with the air of one who
challenges destiny, and drew. Aunt Elizabeth took the slip from the
little shaking hand and held it up. On it was her own name--“Elizabeth
Murray.” Laura Murray suddenly put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Well, that’s settled,” said Uncle Wallace, getting up with an air of
relief. “And if I’m going to catch that train I’ve got to hurry. Of
course, as far as the matter of expense goes, Elizabeth, I’ll do my
share.”
“We are not paupers at New Moon,” said Aunt Elizabeth rather coldly.
“Since it has fallen to me to take her, I shall do all that is
necessary, Wallace. I do not shirk my duty.”
“_I_ am her duty,” thought Emily. “Father said nobody ever liked a
duty. So Aunt Elizabeth will never like me.”
“You’ve got more of the Murray pride than all the rest of us put
together, Elizabeth,” laughed Uncle Wallace.
They all followed him out--all except Aunt Laura. She came up to Emily,
standing alone in the middle of the room, and drew her into her arms.
“I’m so glad, Emily--I’m so glad,” she whispered. “Don’t fret, dear
child. I love you already--and New Moon is a nice place, Emily.”
“It has--a pretty name,” said Emily, struggling for self-control.
“I’ve--always hoped--I could go with you, Aunt Laura. I think I am
going to cry--but it’s not because I’m sorry I’m going there. My
manners are _not_ as bad as you may think, Aunt Laura--and I wouldn’t
have listened last night if I’d known it was wrong.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Aunt Laura.
“But I’m not a Murray, you know.”
Then Aunt Laura said a queer thing--for a Murray.
“Thank heaven for that!” said Aunt Laura.
Cousin Jimmy followed Emily out and overtook her in the little hall.
Looking carefully around to ensure privacy, he whispered,
“Your Aunt Laura is a great hand at making an apple turnover, pussy.”
Emily thought apple turnover sounded nice, though she did not know what
it was. She whispered back a question which she would never have dared
ask Aunt Elizabeth or even Aunt Laura.
“Cousin Jimmy, when they make a cake at New Moon, will they let me
scrape out the mixing-bowl and eat the scrapings?”
“Laura will--Elizabeth won’t,” whispered Cousin Jimmy solemnly.
“And put my feet in the oven when they get cold? And have a cooky
before I go to bed?”
“Answer same as before,” said Cousin Jimmy. “_I’ll_ recite my poetry
to you. It’s very few people I do that for. I’ve composed a thousand
poems. They’re not written down--I carry them here.” Cousin Jimmy
tapped his forehead.
“Is it very hard to write poetry?” asked Emily, looking with new
respect at Cousin Jimmy.
“Easy as rolling off a log if you can find enough rhymes,” said Cousin
Jimmy.
They all went away that morning except the New Moon people. Aunt
Elizabeth announced that they would stay until the next day to pack up
and take Emily with them.
“Most of the furniture belongs to the house,” she said, “so it won’t
take us long to get ready. There are only Douglas Starr’s books and his
few personal belongings to pack.”
“How shall I carry my cats?” asked Emily anxiously.
Aunt Elizabeth stared.
“Cats! You’ll take no cats, miss.”
“Oh, I must take Mike and Saucy Sal!” cried Emily wildly. “I can’t
leave them behind. I can’t live without a cat.”
“Nonsense! There are barn cats at New Moon, but they are never allowed
in the house.”
“Don’t you like cats?” asked Emily wonderingly.
“No, I do _not_.”
“Don’t you like the _feel_ of a nice, soft, fat cat?” persisted Emily.
“No; I would as soon touch a snake.”
“There’s a lovely old wax doll of your mother’s up there,” said Aunt
Laura. “I’ll dress it up for you.”
“I don’t like dolls--they can’t talk,” exclaimed Emily.
“Neither can cats.”
“Oh, can’t they! Mike and Saucy Sal can. Oh, I _must_ take them. Oh,
_please_, Aunt Elizabeth. I _love_ those cats. And they’re the only
things left in the world that love me. Please!”
“What’s a cat more or less on two hundred acres?” said Cousin Jimmy,
pulling his forked beard. “Take ’em along, Elizabeth.”
Aunt Elizabeth considered for a moment. She couldn’t understand why
anybody should want a cat. Aunt Elizabeth was one of those people who
never do understand anything unless it is told them in plain language
and hammered into their heads. And _then_ they understand it only with
their brains and not with their hearts.
“You may take _one_ of your cats,” she said at last, with the air of a
person making a great concession. “One--and no more. No, don’t argue.
You may as well learn first as last, Emily, that when _I_ say a thing I
mean it. That’s enough, Jimmy.”
Cousin Jimmy bit off something he had tried to say, stuck his hands in
his pockets, and whistled at the ceiling.
“When she won’t, she won’t--Murray like. We’re all born with that kink
in us, small pussy, and you’ll have to put up with it--more by token
that you’re full of it yourself, you know. Talk about your not being
Murray! The Starr is only skin deep with you.”
“It isn’t--I’m _all_ Starr--I _want_ to be,” cried Emily. “And, oh, how
can I choose between Mike and Saucy Sal?”
This was indeed a problem. Emily wrestled with it all day, her heart
bursting. She liked Mike best--there was no doubt of that; but she
_couldn’t_ leave Saucy Sal to Ellen’s tender mercies. Ellen had always
hated Sal; but she rather liked Mike and she would be good to him.
Ellen was going back to her own little house in Maywood village and she
wanted a cat. At last in the evening, Emily made her bitter decision.
She would take Saucy Sal.
“Better take the Tom,” said Cousin Jimmy. “Not so much bother with
kittens you know, Emily.”
“Jimmy!” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly. Emily wondered over the
sternness. Why weren’t kittens to be spoken of? But she didn’t like to
hear Mike called “the Tom.” It sounded insulting, someway.
And she didn’t like the bustle and commotion of packing up. She longed
for the old quiet and the sweet, remembered talks with her father.
She felt as if he had been thrust far away from her by this influx of
Murrays.
“What’s this?” said Aunt Elizabeth suddenly, pausing for a moment in
her packing. Emily looked up and saw with dismay that Aunt Elizabeth
had in her hands the old account book--that she was opening it--that
she was _reading_ in it. Emily sprang across the floor and snatched the
book.
“You mustn’t read that, Aunt Elizabeth,” she cried indignantly, “that’s
mine,--my own _private property_.”
“Hoity-toity, Miss Starr,” said Aunt Elizabeth, staring at her, “let
me tell you that I have a right to read your books. I am responsible
for you now. I am not going to have anything hidden or underhanded,
understand that. You have evidently something there that you are
ashamed to have seen and I mean to see it. Give me that book.”
“I’m _not_ ashamed of it,” cried Emily, backing away, hugging her
precious book to her breast. “But I won’t let you--or _anybody_--see
it.”
Aunt Elizabeth followed.
“Emily Starr, do you hear what I say? Give me that book--at _once_.”
“No--no!” Emily turned and ran. She would _never_ let Aunt Elizabeth
see that book. She fled to the kitchen stove--she whisked off a
cover--she crammed the book into the glowing fire. It caught and blazed
merrily. Emily watched it in agony. It seemed as if part of herself
were burning there. But Aunt Elizabeth should never see it--see all
the little things she had written and read to Father--all her fancies
about the Wind Woman, and Emily-in-the-glass--all her little cat
dialogues--all the things she had said in it last night about the
Murrays. She watched the leaves shrivel and shudder, as if they were
sentient things, and then turn black. A line of white writing came out
vividly on one. “Aunt Elizabeth is very cold and _hawty_.” What if
Aunt Elizabeth had seen _that_? What if she were seeing it now! Emily
glanced apprehensively over her shoulder. No, Aunt Elizabeth had gone
back to the room and shut the door with what, in anybody but a Murray,
would have been called a bang. The account book was a little heap of
white film on the glowing coals. Emily sat down by the stove and cried.
She felt as if she had lost something incalculably precious. It was
terrible to think that all those dear things were gone. She could never
write them again--not just the same; and if she could she wouldn’t
dare--she would never dare to write _anything_ again, if Aunt Elizabeth
must see everything. Father never insisted on seeing them. She liked to
read them to _him_--but if she hadn’t wanted to do it he would never
have made her. Suddenly Emily, with tears glistening on her cheeks,
wrote a line in an imaginary account book.
“Aunt Elizabeth is cold and hawty; and she is _not fair_.”
Next morning, while Cousin Jimmy was tying the boxes at the back of
the double-seated buggy, and Aunt Elizabeth was giving Ellen her final
instructions, Emily said good-bye to everything--to the Rooster Pine
and Adam-and-Eve--“they’ll miss me so when I’m gone; there won’t be
any one here to love them,” she said wistfully--to the spider crack
in the kitchen window--to the old wing-chair--to the bed of striped
grass--to the silver birch-ladies. Then she went upstairs to the window
of her own old room. That little window had always seemed to Emily to
open on a world of wonder. In the burned account book there had been
one piece of which she was especially proud. “A deskripshun of the
vew from my Window.” She had sat there and dreamed; at night she used
to kneel there and say her little prayers. Sometimes the stars shone
through it--sometimes the rain beat against it--sometimes the little
greybirds and swallows visited it--sometimes airy fragrances floated
in from apple and lilac blossom--sometimes the Wind Woman laughed
and sighed and sang and whistled round it--Emily had heard her there
in the dark nights and in wild, white winter storms. She did not say
good-bye to the Wind Woman, for she knew the Wind Woman would be at New
Moon, too; but she said good-bye to the little window and the green
hill she had loved, and to her fairy-haunted barrens and to little
Emily-in-the-glass. There might be another Emily-in-the-glass at New
Moon, but she wouldn’t be the same one. And she unpinned from the wall
and stowed away in her pocket the picture of the ball dress she had cut
from a fashion sheet. It was such a wonderful dress--all white lace
and wreaths of rosebuds, with a long, long, train of lace flounces
that must reach clear across a room. Emily had pictured herself a
thousand times wearing that dress, sweeping, a queen of beauty, across
a ballroom floor.
Downstairs they were waiting for her. Emily said good-bye to Ellen
Greene rather indifferently--she had never liked Ellen Greene at any
time, and since the night Ellen had told her her father was going to
die she had hated and feared her.
Ellen amazed Emily by bursting into tears and hugging her--begging her
not to forget her--asking her to write to her--calling her “my blessed
child.”
“I am not your blessed child,” said Emily, “but I will write to you.
And will you be very good to Mike?”
“I b’lieve you feel worse over leaving that cat than you do over
leaving me,” sniffed Ellen.
“Why, of course I do,” said Emily, amazed that there could be any
question about it.
It took all her resolution not to cry when she bade farewell to Mike,
who was curled up on the sun-warm grass at the back door.
“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime,” she whispered as she hugged him.
“I’m sure _good_ pussy cats go to heaven.”
Then they were off in the double-seated buggy with its fringed canopy,
always affected by the Murrays of New Moon. Emily had never driven in
anything so splendid before. She had never had many drives. Once or
twice her father had borrowed Mr. Hubbard’s old buckboard and grey pony
and driven to Charlottetown. The buckboard was rattly and the pony
slow, but Father had talked to her all the way and made the road a
wonder.
Cousin Jimmy and Aunt Elizabeth sat in front, the latter very imposing
in black lace bonnet and mantle. Aunt Laura and Emily occupied the seat
behind, with Saucy Sal between them in a basket, shrieking piteously.
Emily glanced back as they drove up the grassy lane, and thought the
little, old, brown house in the hollow had a broken-hearted look. She
longed to run back and comfort it. In spite of her resolution, the
tears came into her eyes; but Aunt Laura put a kid-gloved hand across
Sal’s basket and caught Emily’s in a close, understanding squeeze.
“Oh, I just love you, Aunt Laura,” whispered Emily.
And Aunt Laura’s eyes were very, very blue and deep and kind.