In March Aunt Elizabeth died. It was a great shock to everyone. She had been sick only once all winter, with a little cold. She didn't even take to bed with it, but carried on cleaning and cooking and calling on friends. She wrote long letters to Little Elizabeth and Dean. Little Elizabeth would hav e a baby in the fall!
Dean wrote, "When it is twenty, I'll be seventy, and when it's forty, I'll be dead. Even though the Priests are all terribly long-lived--but not that long-lived."
Aunt Elizabeth spent her spare moments at Evensong. She settled herself in the old rocker by the fire and held one of the children in her arms. Usually it was Juliet--Douglas thrashed about too much. She and Emily had long chats as Emily bustled about in the kitchen.
"Oh, and Aunt Elizabeth, you should have seen Ilse in the shop, with an old Christmas wreath on her head, all sticks and holly and tinsel, pretending to be Mrs. John Lindley from the Cape. You know how she wears those outrageous hats. It was a dead on impression. And then Ilse turned 'round and who was there but Mrs. John Lindley! I thought I would die from laughing. Aunt Elizabeth? Aunt Elizabeth?"
For Aunt Elizabeth's head had dropped to her breast and her arms, holding little Juliet went limp. Emily dashed forward to catch the baby and feel for a pulse. There was nothing. Just like that--Aunt Elizabeth was gone. Still, she got on the phone and rang for Dr. Burnley.
"Aunt Laura and Uncle Jimmy are taking it very hard, " she wrote in her Jimmy-book. "Aunt Laura had to be sedated from the shock. She is younger, so she has never in her life been without Elizabeth to take care of her. Uncle Jimmy wept out in the barn, when he was supposed to be milking the cow. I found him there.
"'She never forgave herself for pushing me into the well,' he said. 'She never, ever did. I wish--I wish, Emily, that she'd had a minute or two of not feeling guilty about it. I'm happy enough. But it was always there, always there. I could see it in her eyes.'
"The funeral would have been tomorrow but Little Elizabeth wired that she is coming and that she must be there. She and Dean are in Japan--they want to travel until the baby's birth. Little Elizabeth is going to fly to Hawaii, hop on another flight and fly to California, then to Montreal, then Charlottetown. Then she will hop on the boat , and the train, to get here. Poor girl. I think Aunt Elizabeth was like a Mother to her, since she never knew her own.
Me? I don't know what to do with myself. I'm sad, of course, but my sadness pales in comparison to the others. I'm always up and around doing the things that have to be done, tending to the twins, making arrangements. Everyone else seems paralyzed by their grief--even Teddy, who suffers from no great love for Aunt Elizabeth but an artist's sensitive soul. Sometimes I'm actually so busy that I forget, and it comes rushing back--but instead of being sad, I think, "Well, at least I got done what I needed to get done."
* * *
The funeral was on a crisp, sunny day. You could smell spring in the air. Aunt Elizabeth in her casket looked very splendid in her best black silk dress--a bit out of fashion, but stately. Her hair was crimped, as per her request. She looked much more pleasant in death than she had looked in life--Emily realized that Cousin Jimmy was right. Aunt Elizabeth had always looked guilty--tortured--her face had been transformed by it. Now, relaxed, she looked--truly--as if she were at peace.
* * *
Emily took a pot of soup over to New Moon for their supper. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy were out--they had gone to plant a slip of a rosebush on Aunt Elizabeth's grave.
Emily set the pot on the stove and, with a smile walked through the silent, lovely New Moon.
She visited her own little room, then went down the hall and quietly opened the door to Aunt Elizabeth's room. She thought it would be locked, but it sprang open easily, with a welcoming creak. Emily walked in. She had not been in here for many, many years--not since she was given a room of her own. Aunt Elizabeth's lace cap was hanging on the bedpost. Her Bible was open to a verse--she had probably read it that morning, before she went over to Emily's. There were some scraps pieced together of a quilt she had been making for Juliet. It would never be finished now.
Emily pulled open a drawer in the desk and looked through it. There were receipts in this one. She closed it. In another: One broken chandelier earring. She found a packed of folded paper in the third. Curiously, and with a sense of foreboding, Emily opened the one on top.
Her own black, forthright writing jumped out at her. Why--these were her own little letters--the ones she had written to Father so long ago. One phrase caught her eye.
Aunt Elizabeth is krewel and tyrannickal.
Emily covered her mouth with her hand. Why, had Aunt Elizabeth found these in her old room and read them all, again? Oh, what had she thought? Aunt Elizabeth is cruel and tyrannical. Truthfully, Aunt Elizabeth had laughed over those childish scrawls. She knew Emily loved her now. But Emily did not know this. Had Aunt Elizabeth, she wondered, gone to her grave thinking Emily--hated her? It was ridiculous--that was so many years ago--of course Aunt Elizabeth knew Emily loved her. But Emily was flooded with memories. The first night at New Moon--the first time she kissed Aunt Elizabeth's wrinkled cheek. Aunt Elizabeth flushing with pride when Emily published her first book. The sweet glances she gave her when she thought no one was looking.
Emily sank down to the floor, and all of the tears of the past few days finally welled up and slipped softly down her cheeks.
* * *
She stayed that way for a very long time. When she heard Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy come home she went to the basin and splashed her face, and then made her way downstairs.
"Stay and eat with us," Aunt Laura begged, but Emily had left the twins with Ilse and needed to get home.
"There a man coming up the lane, there," Cousin Jimmy noticed. "I wonder what he wants?"