“SHE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT”
Great-Aunt Nancy and Caroline Priest were wont to colour their grey
days with the remembered crimsons of old, long-past delights and
merry-makings, but they went further than this and talked over any
number of old family histories before Emily with a total disregard of
her youth. Loves, births, deaths, scandals, tragedies--anything that
came into their old heads. Nor did they spare details. Aunt Nancy
revelled in details. She forgot nothing, and sins and weaknesses that
death had covered and time shown mercy to were ruthlessly dragged out
and dissected by this ghoulish old lady.
Emily was not quite certain whether she really liked it or not. It
_was_ fascinating--it fed some dramatic hunger in her--but it made her
feel unhappy somehow, as if something very ugly were concealed in the
darkness of the pit they opened before her innocent eyes. As Aunt Laura
had said, her youth protected her to some extent, but it could not save
her from a dreadful understanding of the pitiful story of Ilse’s mother
on the afternoon when it seemed good to Aunt Nancy to resurrect that
tale of anguish and shame.
Emily was curled up on the sofa in the back parlour, reading _The
Scottish Chiefs_ because it was a breathlessly hot July afternoon--too
hot to haunt the bay shore. Emily was feeling very happy. The Wind
Woman was ruffling over the big maple grove behind the Grange, turning
the leaves until every tree seemed to be covered with strange, pale,
silvery blossoms; fragrances drifted in from the garden; the world was
lovely; she had had a letter from Aunt Laura saying that one of Saucy
Sal’s kittens had been saved for her. Emily had felt when Mike II died
that she would never want another cat. But now she found she did.
Everything suited her very well; she was so happy that she should have
sacrificed her dearest possession to the jealous gods if she had known
anything about the old pagan belief.
Aunt Nancy was tired of playing solitaire. She pushed the cards away
and took up her knitting.
“Emily,” she said, “has your Aunt Laura any notion of marrying Dr.
Burnley?”
Emily, recalled thus abruptly from the field of Bannockburn, looked
bored. Blair Water gossip had often asked or hinted this question; and
now it met her in Priest Pond.
“No, I’m sure she hasn’t,” she said. “Why, Aunt Nancy, Dr. Burnley
_hates_ women.”
Aunt Nancy chuckled.
“Thought perhaps he’d got over that. It’s eleven years now since his
wife ran away. Few men hold to one idea for anything like eleven years.
But Allan Burnley always was stubborn in anything--love or hate. He
still loves his wife--and that is why he hates her memory and all other
women.”
“I never heard the rights of that story,” said Caroline. “Who was his
wife?”
“Beatrice Mitchell--one of the Shrewsbury Mitchells. She was only
eighteen when Allan married her. He was thirty-five. Emily, never you
be fool enough to marry a man much older than yourself.”
Emily said nothing. _The Scottish Chiefs_ was forgotten. Her
finger-tips were growing cold as they always did in excitement, her
eyes turning black. She felt that she was on the verge of solving the
mystery that had so long worried and puzzled her. She was desperately
afraid that Aunt Nancy would branch off to something else.
“I’ve heard she was a great beauty,” said Caroline.
Aunt Nancy sniffed.
“Depends on your taste in style. Oh, she was pretty--one of your
golden-haired dolls. She had a little birthmark over her left
eyebrow--just like a tiny red heart--I never could see anything but
that mark when I looked at her. But her flatterers told her it was a
beauty spot--‘the Ace of Hearts’ they called her. Allan was mad about
her. She had been a flirt before her marriage. But I _will_ say--for
justice among women is a rare thing, Caroline--_you_, for instance, are
an unjust old hag--that she didn’t flirt after marrying--openly, at
least. She was a sly puss--always laughing and singing and dancing--no
wife for Allan Burnley if you ask me. And he could have had Laura
Murray. But between a fool and a sensible woman did a man ever
hesitate? The fool wins every time, Caroline. That’s why _you_ never
got a husband. You were too sensible. I got mine by pretending to be a
fool. Emily, you remember that. You have brains--hide them. Your ankles
will do more for you than your brains ever will.”
“Never mind Emily’s ankles,” said Caroline, keen on a scandal hunt. “Go
on about the Burnleys.”
“Well, there was a cousin of hers--Leo Mitchell from Shrewsbury. You
remember the Mitchells, don’t you, Caroline? This Leo was a handsome
fellow--a sea-captain. He had been in love with Beatrice, so gossip
ran. Some said Beatrice wanted him but that her people made her marry
Allan Burnley because he was the better match. Who knows? Gossip lies
nine times and tells a half truth the tenth. She pretended to be in
love with Allan anyhow, and he believed it. When Leo came home from a
voyage and found Beatrice married he took it coolly enough. But he was
always over at Blair Water. Beatrice had plenty of excuses. Leo was her
cousin--they had been brought up together--they were like brother and
sister--she was so lonesome in Blair Water after living in a town--he
had no home except with a brother. Allan took it all down--he was so
infatuated with her she could have made him believe anything. She and
Leo were always together there when Allan was away seeing his patients.
Then came the night Leo’s vessel--_The Lady of Winds_--was to sail from
Blair Harbour for South America. He went--and my lady Beatrice went
with him.”
A queer little strangled sound came from Emily’s corner. If Aunt Nancy
or Caroline had looked at her they would have seen that the child was
white as the dead, with wide, horror-filled eyes. But they did not
look. They knitted and gossiped on, enjoying themselves hugely.
“How did the doctor take it?” asked Caroline.
“Take it--take it--nobody knows. Everybody knows what kind of a man
he’s been ever since, though. He came home that night at dusk. The baby
was asleep in its crib and the servant girl was watching it. She told
Allan that Mrs. Burnley had gone to the harbour with her cousin for a
good-bye walk and would be back at ten. Allan waited for her easily
enough--he never doubted her--but she didn’t come back. She had never
intended to come back. In the morning _The Lady of Winds_ was gone--had
sailed out of the harbour at dark the night before. Beatrice had gone
on board with him--that was all anybody knew. Allan Burnley _said_
nothing, beyond forbidding her name ever to be mentioned in his hearing
again. But _The Lady of Winds_ was lost with all on board off Hatteras
and that was the end of that elopement, and the end of Beatrice with
her beauty and her laughter and her Ace of Hearts.”
“But not the end of the shame and wretchedness she brought to her
home,” said Caroline shrewishly. “I’d tar and feather such a woman.”
“Nonsense--if a man can’t look after his wife--if he blinds his own
eyes-- Mercy on us, child, what is the matter?”
For Emily was standing up, holding out her hands as if pushing some
loathly thing from her.
“I don’t believe it,” she cried, in a high, unnatural voice. “I don’t
believe Ilse’s mother did _that_. She didn’t--she couldn’t have--not
Ilse’s _mother_.”
“Catch her, Caroline!” cried Aunt Nancy.
But Emily, though the back parlour had whirled about her for a second,
had recovered herself.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried passionately. “Don’t touch me!
You--you--you _liked_ hearing that story!”
She rushed out of the room. Aunt Nancy looked ashamed for a moment. For
the first time it occurred to her that her scandal-loving old tongue
had done a black thing. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
“She can’t go through life in cotton wool. Might as well learn spades
are spades now as ever. I would have thought she’d have heard it all
long ago if Blair Water gossip is what it used to be. If she goes home
and tells this I’ll have the indignant virgins of New Moon coming down
on me in holy horror as a corrupter of youth. Caroline, don’t you ask
me to tell you any more family horrors before my niece, you scandalous
old woman. At your age! I’m surprised at you!”
Aunt Nancy and Caroline returned to their knitting and their spicy
reminiscences, and upstairs in the Pink Room Emily lay face downwards
on her bed and cried for hours. It was so horrible--Ilse’s mother
had run away and left her little baby. To Emily that was the awful
thing--the strange, cruel, heartless thing that Ilse’s mother had done.
She could not bring herself to believe it--there was some mistake
somewhere--there _was_.
“Perhaps she was kidnapped,” said Emily, trying desperately to explain
it. “She just went on board to look around--and he weighed anchor and
carried her off. She _couldn’t_ have gone away of her own accord and
left her dear little baby.”
The story haunted Emily in good earnest. She could think of nothing
else for days. It took possession of her and worried and gnawed at her
with an almost physical pain. She dreaded going back to New Moon and
meeting Ilse with this consciousness of a dark secret which she must
hide from her. Ilse knew nothing. She had asked Ilse once where her
mother was buried and Ilse had said, “Oh, I don’t know. At Shrewsbury,
I guess--that’s where all the Mitchells are buried.”
Emily wrung her slim hands together. She was as sensitive to ugliness
and pain as she was to beauty and pleasure, and this thing was both
hideous and agonizing. Yet she could not keep from thinking about it,
day and night. Life at Wyther Grange suddenly went stale. Aunt Nancy
and Caroline all at once gave up talking family history, even harmless
history, before her. And as it was painful repression for them, they
did not encourage her hanging round. Emily began to feel that they
were glad when she was out of hearing, so she kept away and spent
most of her days wandering on the bay shore. She could not compose
any poetry--she could not write in her Jimmy-book--she could not even
write to her father. Something seemed to hang between her and her old
delights. There was a drop of poison in every cup. Even the filmy
shadows on the great bay, the charm of its fir-hung cliffs and its
little purple islets that looked like outposts of fairyland, could not
bring to her the old “fine, careless rapture.” She was afraid she could
never be happy again--so intense had been her reaction to her first
revelation of the world’s sin and sorrow. And under it all, persisted
the same incredulity--Ilse’s mother _couldn’t_ have done it--and the
same helpless longing to prove she couldn’t have done it. But how could
it be proved? It couldn’t. She had solved one “mystery” but she had
stumbled into a darker one--the reason why Beatrice Burnley had never
come back on that summer twilight of long ago. For, all the evidence of
facts to the contrary notwithstanding, Emily persisted in her secret
belief that whatever the reason _was_, it was _not_ that she had gone
away in _The Lady of Winds_ when that doomed ship sailed out into the
starlit wonder of the gulf beyond Blair Harbour.