Emily and Little Elizabeth went out on the verandah at New Moon to watch the beautiful, ghostly-purple night creep over the hills and into their garden. Teddy had gone overnight to Charlottetown, for a gallery opening. Emily had hoped to go, too, but Aunt Elizabeth whispered that a trip was not the wisest thing for someone in her condition. So she and Little Elizabeth had ventured through Lofty John's bush to see the New Moon folks for the evening.
The two girls sat together on the bottom-most step--Little Elizabeth radiant and golden, with the last rays of sun shining on her pale hair, and Emily, white and witch-like, her raven tresses running free over her shoulders. Aunt Elizabeth did lend the whole scene a prosaic aura, sitting behind them in a rocker, knitting wristers for Little Elizabeth to take to Paris when she went. Aunt Elizabeth had heard it was very damp there.
Emily was reading from a book of fairy-stories that Dean had picked up in Switzerland--fairy stories with grotesque endings--not at all like the old familiar stories that Emily herself heard when she was small. They were hugely amusing. Emily laughed as she read the end of Hansel and Gretel. In this version the witch did eat them.
"Oh, how I wish Ilse was hear to read that," Emily sighed, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. They were rapidly threatening to become tears of something else. "She always thought that Hansel and Gretel deserved to be boiled in oil--'How do you think that poor witch felt when she heard them eating her house?' she'd ask."
"It's a pity that you and Ilse have dropped your friendship of so long," said Aunt Elizabeth.
"I haven't dropped it," said Emily, a little peevishly and a little sadly. "Only--I feel as if it had been snatched away from me. Or as if it never had been. Ilse and I don't even nod to one another any more--it is as if we were never friends at all. I want to walk over to her and shake her until we both wake up from this dream. This nightmare. Or else--take her hand very gently and said, 'Ilse, please. Let's go back.' If only we could--go back!" She sighed. "Enough of this--it's getting me in the dumps. Little Elizabeth, you pick the next story."
Emily had to say the girl's name several times before she looked up. She was lost in thought. She picked a story without much enthusiasm, and as Emily read she got the distinct feeling that Little Elizabeth wasn't listening. Aunt Elizabeth finally excused herself and went in for the night--the evenings were turning a little chilly and Aunt Elizabeth's rheumatism bothered her in the chill. When she was gone, Little Elizabeth whirled around. At the sight of her face, Emily lowered the book and let her voice trail away.
Why--Little Elizabeth was--crying!
Not crying--it seemed to be more than that. Without any sound or warning, the tears began coursing down her cheeks, swiftly and silently. Little Elizabeth did not even try to wipe them away.
"I have--been--holding those tears in--all day!" Little Elizabeth cried. "It feels--so--good to let them out at last!"
"Darling!" said Emily.
"You aren't going to ask me what's wrong, are you Emily Kent?" said Little Elizabeth. "You know--you know. I never suspected--" Here she faltered. "I never guessed you had such a poor opinion of me!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," said poor Emily.
"Do you have a dream, Emily?" asked Little Elizabeth sadly. "Ever since I was small I have had a dream of fairyland--with a purple castle against the snow-covered hills--fairies in my garden--little green folk peeping out of the trees--and magic--heaps of magic--everywhere. Do you have anything like that, Emily?"
"I have my Alpine Path," Emily murmured.
"Ever since I have come here I've been adding things to my fairyland--things that I want more than anything," said Little Elizabeth. "A little dear house, like Evensong--dear, fat, cuddly babies--an old maiden just like Aunt Elizabeth, but with pointed ears like yours. And--Dean! Dean! And now I shall never have him."
"You love him!" Emily crowed, triumphant. It was just as she had suspected.
"Yes!" said Little Elizabeth passionately. "And you told him I would never love him back--I heard you the other night--on the porch, at Evensong. 'Of course she couldn't love you,'" she mimicked. "'Of course she couldn't--love--you, Dean.'"
"I didn't--know--for sure--if you loved him," Emily stammered. "Dean is so--old. He is as old as your father, Little Elizabeth."
"'The bounds of love know not age or reason,'" quoth Little Elizabeth. "Do you suspect that would make any difference to me? But let's go back--why did you say it? I know what it is--you don't think I am good enough for him! I am young--and flighty--and silly--"
"You're a darling," said Emily with a smile. "But you must learn not to walk in on the middle of peoples' conversations. If you had come just a moment earlier, you would have heard Dean say that he loves you, too. But Little Elizabeth, Dean Priest has a terrible habit of pitying himself--I've tried for years to stop him with no avail and have resorted to irony and sarcasm. You'll have to cure him of it when you are married to himyou are going to marry him, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Little Elizabeth, her tears drying on her cheeks and a strange light in her eyes. "If he asks me."
On the way back to Evensong, Emily met Dean in Lofty John's bush.
"Go to her," she said. "She is waiting for you."
* * *
Little Elizabeth and Dean Priest announced their engagement in that week's paper. Everyone was in uproar except the New Moon folk. Dean and Little Elizabeth--it seemed so natural to them--far more natural than the idea of Emily and Dean! The adored one another. They all looked fondly as Dean lay out on the verandah with his head in her lap, Little Elizabeth running her fingers over his hair with a wise small on her face that seemed older than the rest of her. What mattered it that he was old and gray and she was young and pale? They went together like shadow and sunset.
Even Aunt Elizabeth, who had never cared much for Dean Priest, had to revise her opinion. Little Elizabeth could not choose a man that was bad. She was a sensible girl. She abandoned the wristers she was knitting immediately and she and Aunt Laura got to work making Little Elizabeth's wedding things. When Dean came to call on his bride, he was always greeted pleasantly by Aunt Elizabeth, although a few times she slipped and almost called him 'Jarback.'
"We'll be married this fall," said Dean. They had decided to do it in Paris, so that Elizabeth's father could attend.
"We won't be able to come," said Emily mournfully. She would be very busy come fall. But Aunt Elizabeth was going! Imagine Aunt Elizabeth in Paris! Emily wondered if she would look up at the Eiffel Tower and knit.
"We'll think of you all day--of you both," said Dean, his eyes shining in a way Emily had not seen much before--not even when she was engaged to him. "Teddy, man, I'm going to have you paint my bride in her wedding clothes. That is going to be your present to us. And I'll throw a little work your way every year. I want an annual painting of Little Elizabeth--so I can see how she changes--how the face that I love stays the same. And for God's sake, don't put any of Emily's soul into those pictures--though you may in all of the others you please. My Beatrice has got a perfectly good one of her own!"
Beatrice was what Dean called Little Elizabeth. "Like Dante's Beatrice, she guided me to Heaven," he said.
Emily smiled up at God after they had gone, arm and arm, back to New Moon.
"Oh, You do work in mysterious ways," she said. "I guess You know what You're doing, after all."