They entered, and stood face to face with the wonderful lady in the gray gown, whose every line and graceful fold spoke of the skill of a foreign tailor. And then, strange to say, it was Aunt Crete who came to herself first.
Perfectly conscious of her comely array, and strong in the strength of her handsome nephew who stood near to protect, she suddenly lost all fear of her fretful sister and bullying niece, and stepped forward with an unconscious grace of welcome that must have been hers all the time, or it never would have come to the front in this crisis.
“Why, here you are at last, Luella! How nice you look in your red crape! Why, Carrie, I’m real glad you’ve got better so you could come down. How is your ankle? And here is Donald. Carrie, can’t you see Hannah’s looks in him?”
Amazement and embarrassment struggled in the faces of mother and daughter. They looked at Aunt Crete, and they looked at Donald, and then they looked at Aunt Crete again. It couldn’t be, it wasn’t, yet it was, the voice of Aunt Crete, kind and forgiving, and always thoughtful for every one, yet with a new something in it. Or was it rather the lack of something? Yes, that was it, the lack of a certain servile something that neither Luella nor her mother could name, yet which made them feel strangely ill at ease with this new-old Aunt Crete.
They looked at each other bewildered, and then back at Aunt Crete again, tracing line by line the familiar features in their new radiance of happiness, and trying to conjure back the worried V in her forehead, and the slinky sag of her old gowns. Was the world turned upside down? What had happened to Aunt Crete?
“Upon my word, Lucretia Ward, is it really you?” exclaimed her sister, making a wild dash into the conversation, determined to right herself and everything else if possible. She felt like a person suddenly upset in a canoe, and she struggled wildly to get her footing once more if there was any solid footing anywhere, with her sister Crete standing there calmly in an imported gown, her hair done up like a fashion-plate, and a millionaire’s smile on her pleasant face.
But Luella was growing angry. What did Aunt Crete mean by masquerading round in that fashion and making them ashamed before this handsome young man? and was he really their Western cousin? Luella felt that a joke was being played upon her, and she always resented jokes—at least, unless she played them herself.
Then Donald came to the front, for he feared for Aunt Crete’s poise. She must not lose her calm dignity and get frightened. There was a sharp ring in the other aunt’s voice, and the new cousin looked unpromising.
“And is this my Aunt Carrie? And my Cousin Luella?” He stepped forward, and shook hands pleasantly.
“I am glad to be able to speak with you at last,” he said as he dropped Luella’s hand, “though it’s not the first time I’ve seen you, nor heard your voice, either, you know.”
Luella looked up puzzled, and tried to muster her scattered graces, and respond with her ravishing society air; but somehow the ease and grace of the man before her overpowered her. And was he really her cousin? She tried to think what he could mean by having seen and talked with her before. Surely he must be mistaken, or—perhaps he was referring to the glimpse he had of her when Mr. Grandon bowed the evening before. She tossed her head with a kittenish movement, and arched her poorly pencilled eyebrows.
“O, how is that?” she asked, wishing he had not been quite so quick to drop her hand. It would have been more impressive to have had him hold it just a second longer.
“Why, I saw you the morning you left your home, as I was getting out of the train. You were just entering, and you called out of the window to a young lady in a pony-cart. You wore a light kind of a yellowish suit, didn’t you? Yes, I was very sure it was you.”
He was studying her face closely, a curious twinkle in his eyes, which might or might not have been complimentary. Luella could not be sure. The color rose in her cheeks and neck and up to her black-walnut hair till the red dress and the red face looked all of a flame. She suddenly remembered what she had called out to the young lady in the pony-cart, and she wondered whether he had heard or noticed.
“And then,” went on her handsome persecutor, “I had quite a long talk with you over the telephone, you know——”
“What!” gasped Luella. “Was that you? Why, you must be mistaken; I never telephoned to you; that is, I couldn’t get any one to the ’phone.”
“What’s all this about, Luella?” questioned her mother sharply, but Donald interposed.
“Sit down, Aunt Carrie. We are so excited over meeting you at last that we are forgetting to be courteous.” He shoved forth a comfortable chair for his aunt, and another for the blushing, overwhelmed Luella; and then he took Aunt Crete’s hands lovingly, and gently pushed her backward into the most comfortable rocker in the room. “It’s just as cheap to sit down, dear aunt,” he said, smiling. “And you know you’ve had a pretty full day, and must not get tired for to-night’s concert at the Casino. Now, Aunt Carrie, tell us about your ankle. How did you come to sprain it so badly, and how did it get well so fast? We were quite alarmed about you. Is it really better? I am afraid you are taxing it too much to have come down this evening. Much as we wanted to see you, we could have waited until it was quite safe for you to use it, rather than have you run any risks.”
Then it was the mother’s turn to blush, and her thin, somewhat colorless face grew crimson with embarrassment.
“Why, I——” she began; “that is, Luella was working over it, rubbing it with liniment, and all of a sudden she gave it a sort of a little pull; and something seemed to give way with a sharp pain, and then it came all right as good as ever. It feels a little weak, but I think by morning it’ll be all right. I think some little bone got out of place, and Luella pulled it back in again. My ankles have always been weak, anyway. I suffer a great deal with them in going about my work at home.”
“Why, Carrie,” said Aunt Crete, leaning forward with troubled reproach in her face, “you never complained about it.”
A dull red rolled over Mrs. Burton’s thin features again, and receded, leaving her face pinched and haggard-looking. She felt as if she were seeing visions. This couldn’t be her own sister, all dressed up so, and yet speaking in the old sympathetic tone.
“O, I never complain, of course. It don’t do any good.”
The conversation was interrupted by another tap on the door. Donald opened it, and received a large express package. While he was giving some orders to the servant, Mrs. Burton leaned forward, and said in a low tone to her sister:
“For goodness’ sake, Lucretia Ward, what does all this mean? How ever did you get tricked out like that?”
Then Donald’s clear voice broke in upon them as the door closed once more, and Luella watched him curiously cutting with eager, boyish haste the cords of the express package.
“Aunt Crete, your cloak has come. Now we’ll all see if it’s becoming.”
“Bless the boy,” said Aunt Crete, looking up with delighted eyes. “Cloak; what cloak? I’m sure I’ve got wraps enough now. There’s the cloth coat, and the silk one, and that elegant black lace——”
“No, you haven’t. I saw right off what you needed when we went out in the auto last night; and I telephoned to that Miss Brower up in the city this morning, and she’s fixed it all up. I hope you’ll like it.”
With that he pulled the cover off the box, and brought to view a long, full evening cloak of pale pearl-colored broadcloth lined with white silk, and a touch about the neck of black velvet and handsome creamy lace.
He held it up at arm’s length admiringly.
“It’s all right, Aunt Crete. It looks just like you. I knew that woman would understand. Stand up, and let’s see how you look in it; and then after dinner we’ll take a little spin around the streets to try you in it.”
Aunt Crete, blushing like a pretty girl, stood up; and he folded the soft garment about her in all its elegant richness. She stood just in front of the full-length mirror, and could not deny to herself that it was becoming. But she was getting used to seeing herself look well, and was not so much overpowered with the sight as she was with the tender thought of the boy that had got it for her. She forgot Carrie and Luella, and everything but that Donald had gone to great trouble and expense to please her; and she just turned around, and put her two hands, one on each of his cheeks, standing on her tiptoes to reach him, and kissed him.
He bent and returned the kiss laughingly.
“It’s lot of fun to get you things, Aunt Crete,” he said; “you always like them so much.”
“It is beautiful, beautiful,” she said, looking down and smoothing the cloth tenderly as if it had been his cheek. “It’s much too beautiful for me. Donald, you will spoil me.”
“Yes, I should think so,” sniffed Luella, as if offering an apology in some sort for her childish aunt.
“A little spoiling won’t hurt you, dear aunt,” said Donald seriously. “I don’t believe you’ve had your share of spoiling yet, and I mean to give it to you if I can. Doesn’t she look pretty in it, Cousin Luella? Come now, Aunt Carrie, I suppose it’s time to go down to dinner, or we sha’n’t get through in time for the fun. Are you sure your ankle is quite well? Are you able to go to the Casino to-night? I’ve tickets for us all. Sousa’s orchestra is to be there, and the programme is an unusually fine one.”
Luella was mortified and angry beyond words, but a chance to go to the Casino, in company with Clarence Grandon and his mother, was not to be lightly thrown away; and she crushed down her mortification, contenting herself with darting an angry glance and a hateful curl of her lip at Aunt Crete as they went out the door together. This, however, was altogether lost on that little woman, for she was watching her nephew’s face, and wondering how it came that such joy had fallen to her lot.
There was no chance for the mortified mother and daughter to exchange a word as they went down in the elevator or followed in the wake of their relatives, before whom all porters and office-boys and even head waiters bowed, and jumped to offer assistance. They were having their wish, to be sure, entering the dining-hall behind the handsome young man and the elegant, gray-clad, fashionably coiffured old lady, a part of the train, with the full consciousness of “belonging,” yet in what a way! Both were having ample opportunity for reflection, for they could see at a glance that no one noticed them, and all attention was for those ahead of them.
Luella bit her lip angrily, and looked in wonder at Aunt Crete, who somehow had lost her dumpiness, and walked as gracefully beside her tall young nephew as if she had been accustomed to walk in the eyes of the world thus for years. The true secret of her grace, if Luella had but known it, was that she was not thinking in the least of herself. Her conscience was at rest now, for the meeting between the cousins was over, and Luella was to have a good time too. Aunt Crete was never the least bit selfish. It seemed to her that her good time was only blooming into yet larger things, after all.
Behind her walked her sister and niece in mortified humiliation. Luella was trying to recall just what she had said about “country cousins” over the telephone, and exactly what she had said to the girl in the pony-cart the morning she left home. The memory did not serve to cool her already heated complexion. It was beginning to dawn upon her that she had made a mighty mistake in running away from such a cousin and in such a manner.
All her life, in such a case, Luella had been accustomed to lay the blame of her disappointments upon some one else, and vent, as it were, her spite upon that one. Now, in looking about to find such an object of blame her eyes naturally fell upon the one that had borne the greater part of all blame for her. But, try as she would to pour out blame and scorn from her large, bold eyes upon poor Aunt Crete, somehow the blame seemed to slip off from the sweet gray garments, and leave Aunt Crete as serene as ever, with her eyes turned trustingly toward her dear Donald. Luella was brought to the verge of vexation by this, and could scarcely eat any dinner.
The dessert was just being served when the waiter brought Aunt Crete a dainty note from which a faint perfume of violets stole across the table to the knowing nostrils of Luella.
With the happy abandonment of a child Aunt Crete opened it joyously.
“Who in the world can be writing to me?” she said wonderingly. “You’ll have to read it for me, Donald; I’ve left my glasses up in my room.”
Luella made haste to reach out her hand for the note, but Donald had it first, as if he had not seen her impatient hand claiming her right to read Aunt Crete’s notes.
“It’s from Mrs. Grandon, auntie,” he said.
“‘Dear Miss Ward,’” he read, “‘I am sorry that I am feeling too weary to go to the concert this evening as we had planned, and my son makes such a baby of me that he thinks he cannot leave me alone; but I do hope we can have the pleasure of the company of yourself and your nephew on a little auto trip to-morrow afternoon. My brother has a villa a few miles up the shore, and he telephoned us this morning to dine with them to-night. When he heard of your being here, he said by all means to bring you with us. My brother knows of your nephew’s intimacy with Clarence, and is anxious to meet him, as are the rest of his family. I do hope you will feel able to go with us.
“‘With sincere regrets that I cannot go with you to the Casino this evening,
Helen Grandon.’”
For the moment Luella forgot everything else in her amazement at this letter. Aunt Crete receiving notes from Mrs. Grandon, from whom she and her mother could scarcely get a frigid bow! Aunt Crete invited on automobile trips and dinners in villas! Donald an intimate friend of Clarence Grandon’s! O, fool and blind! What had she done! Or what had she undone? She studied the handsome, keen face of her cousin as he bent over the letter, and writhed to think of her own words, “I’m running away from a backwoods cousin”! She could hear it shouted from one end of the great dining-hall to the other, and her face blazed redder and redder till she thought it would burst. Her mother turned from her in mortified silence, and wondered why Luella couldn’t have had a good complexion.
Studied politeness was the part that Donald had set for himself that evening. He began to see that his victims were sufficiently unhappy. He had no wish to see them writhe under further tortures, though when he looked upon Aunt Crete’s happy face, and thought how white it had turned at dread of them, he felt he must let the thorns he had planted in their hearts remain long enough to bring forth a true repentance. But he said nothing further to distress them, and they began to wonder whether, after all, he really had seen through their plan of running away from him.
It was all Aunt Crete’s fault. She ought to have arranged it in some way to get them quietly home as soon as she found out what kind of cousin it was that had come to see them. It never occurred to Luella that nothing her poor, abused aunt could have said would have convinced her that her cousin was worthy of her home-coming.
As the concert drew near to its close, Luella and her mother began to prepare for a time of reckoning for Aunt Crete. When she was safely in her room, what was to hinder them from going to her alone and having it out? The sister’s face hardened, and the niece’s eyes glittered as she stonily thought of the scornful sentences she would hurl after her aunt.
Donald looked at her menacing face, and read its thoughts. He resolved to protect Aunt Crete, whatever came; so at the door, when he saw a motion on his Aunt Crete’s part to pause, he said gently: “Aunt Crete, I guess we’ll have to say ‘Good night’ now; for you’ve had a hard day of it, and I want you to be bright and fresh for morning. We want to take an early dip in the ocean. The bathing-hours are early to-morrow, I see.”
He bowed good-night in his pleasantest manner, and the ladies from the fourth floor reluctantly withdrew to the elevator, but fifteen minutes later surreptitiously tapped at the private door of the room they understood to be Aunt Crete’s.
The door was opened cautiously by the maid, who was “doing” Aunt Crete’s hair, having just finished a most refreshing facial massage given at Donald’s express orders.
Aunt Crete looked round upon her visitors with a rested, rosy countenance, which bloomed out under her fluff of soft, white hair, and quite startled her sister with its freshness and youth. Could it be possible that this was really her sister Crete; or had she made a terrible mistake, and entered the wrong apartment?
But a change came suddenly over the ruddy countenance of Aunt Crete as over the face of a child that in the midst of happy play sees a trouble descending upon it. A look almost of terror came over her, and she caught her breath, and waited to see what was coming.
“Why, Carrie, Luella!” she gasped weakly. “I thought you’d gone to bed. Marie’s just doing up my hair for night. She’s been giving me a face-massage. You ought to try one. It makes you feel young again.”
“H’m!” said her affronted sister. “I shouldn’t care for one.”
Marie looked over Luella and her mother, beginning with the painfully elaborate arrangement of hair, and going down to the tips of their boots. Luella’s face burned with mortification as she read the withering disapproval in the French woman’s countenance.
“Let’s sit down till she’s done,” said Luella, dropping promptly on the foot of Aunt Crete’s bed and gazing around in frank surprise over the spaciousness of the apartment.
Thereupon the maid ignored them, and went about her work, brushing out and deftly manipulating the wavy white hair, and chattering pleasantly meanwhile, just as if no one else were in the room. Aunt Crete tried to forget what was before her, or, rather, behind her; but her hands trembled a little as they lay in her lap in the folds of the pretty pink and gray challis kimono she wore; and all of a sudden she remembered the unwhitewashed cellar, and the uncooked jam, and the unmade shirt-waists, and the little hot brick house gazing at her reproachfully from the distant home, and she here in this fine array, forgetting it all and being waited upon by a maid—a lazy truant from her duty.
Did the heart of the maid divine the state of things, or was it only her natural instinct that made her turn to protect the pleasant little woman, in whose service she had already been well paid, against the two women that were so evidently of the common walks of life, and were trying to ape those that in the eyes of the maid were their betters? However it was, Marie prolonged her duties a good half-hour, and Luella’s impatience waxed furious, so that she lost her fear of the maid gradually, and yawned loudly, declaring that Aunt Crete had surely had enough fussing over for one evening.
They held in their more personal remarks until the door finally closed upon Marie, but burst forth so immediately that she heard the opening sentences through the transom, and thought it wise to step to the young gentleman’s door and warn him that his elderly relative of whom he seemed so careful was likely to be disturbed beyond a reasonable hour for retiring. Then she discreetly withdrew, having not only added to her generous income by a good bit of silver, but also having followed out the dictates of her heart, which had taken kindly to the gentle woman of the handsome clothes and few pretensions.
“Well, upon my word! I should think you’d be ashamed, Aunt Crete!” burst forth Luella, arising from the bed in a majesty of wrath. “Sitting there, being waited on like a baby, when you ought to be at home this minute earning your living. What do you think of yourself, anyway, living in this kind of luxury when you haven’t a cent in the world of your own, and your own sister, who has supported you for years, up in a little dark fourth-floor room? Such selfishness I never saw in all my life. I wouldn’t have believed it of you, though we might have suspected it long ago from the foolish things you were always doing. Aunt Crete, have you any idea how much all this costs?”
She waved her hand tragically over the handsome room, including the trunk standing open, and the gleam of silver-gray silk that peeped through the half-open closet door. Aunt Crete fairly cringed under Luella’s scornful eyes.
“And you, nothing in the world but a beggar, a beggar! That’s what you are—a beggar dependent upon us; and you swelling around as if you owned the earth, and daring to wear silk dresses and real lace collars and expensive jewelry, and even having a maid, and shaming your own relatives, and getting in ahead of us, who have always been good to you, and taking away our friends, and making us appear like two cents! It’s just fierce, Aunt Crete! It’s—it’s heathenish!” Luella paused in her anger for a fitting word, and then took the first one that came.
Aunt Crete winced. She was devoted to the Woman’s Missionary Society, and it was terrible to be likened to a heathen. She wished Luella had chosen some other word.
“I should think you’d be so ashamed you couldn’t hold your head up before your honest relatives,” went on the shameless girl. “Taking money from a stranger,—that’s what he is, a stranger,—and you whining round and lowering yourself to let him buy you clothes and things, as if you didn’t have proper clothes suited to your age and station. He’s a young upstart coming along and daring to buy you any—and such clothes! Do you know you’re a laughing-stock? What would Mrs. Grandon say if she knew whom she was inviting to her automobile rides and dinners? Think of you in your old purple calico washing the dishes at home, and scrubbing the kitchen, and ask yourself what you would say if Mrs. Grandon should come to call on you, and find you that way. You’re a hypocrite, Aunt Crete, an awful hypocrite!”
Luella towered over Aunt Crete, and the little old lady looked into her eyes with a horrible fascination, while her great grief and horror poured down her sweet face in tears of anguish that would not be stayed. Her kindly lips were quivering, and her eyes were wide with the tears.
Luella saw that she was making an impression, and she went on more wildly than before, her fury growing with every word, and not realizing how loud her voice was.
“And it isn’t enough that you should do all that, but now you’re going to spoil my prospects with Clarence Grandon. You can’t keep up this masquerade long; and, when they find out what you really are, what will they think of me? It’ll be all over with me, and it’ll be your fault, Aunt Crete, your fault, and you’ll never have a happy moment afterwards, thinking of how you spoiled my life.”
“Now, Luella,” broke in Aunt Crete solemnly through her tears, “you’re mistaken about one thing. It won’t be my fault there, for it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, poor child. I’m real sorry for you, and I meant to tell you just as soon as we got home, for I couldn’t bear to spoil your pleasure while we were here; but that Clarence Grandon belongs to some one else. He ain’t for you, Luella, and there must have been some mistake about it. Perhaps he was just being kind to you. For Donald knows him real well, and he says he’s engaged to a girl out West, and they’re going to be married this fall; and Donald says she’s real sweet and——”
But Aunt Crete’s quavering voice stopped suddenly in mild affright, for Luella sprang toward her like some mad creature, shaking her finger in her aunt’s face, and screaming at the top of her voice:
“It’s a lie! I say it’s a lie! Aunt Crete, you’re a liar; that’s what you are with all the rest.”
And the high-strung, uncontrolled girl burst into angry sobs.
No one heard the gentle knock that had been twice repeated during the scene, and no one saw the door open until they all suddenly became aware that Donald stood in the room, looking from one face to another in angry surprise.
Donald had not retired at once after bidding Aunt Crete good night. He found letters and telegrams awaiting his attention, and he had been busy writing a letter of great importance when the maid gave him the hint of Aunt Crete’s late callers. Laying down his pen, he stepped quietly across the private parlor that separated his room from his aunt’s, and stopped a moment before the door to make sure he heard voices. Then he had knocked, and knocked again, unable to keep from hearing the most of Luella’s tirade.
His indignation knew no bounds, and he concluded his time had come to interfere; so he opened the door, and went in.
“What does all this mean?” he asked in a tone that frightened his Aunt Carrie, and made Luella stop her angry sobs in sudden awe.
No one spoke, and Aunt Crete looked a mute appeal through her tears. “What is it, dear aunt?” he said, stepping over by her side, and placing his arm protectingly round the poor, shrinking little figure, who somehow in her sorrow and helplessness reminded him strongly of his own lost mother. He could not remember at that moment that the other woman, standing hard and cold and angry across the room, was also his mother’s sister. She did not look like his mother, nor act like her.
Aunt Crete put her little curled white head in its crisping-pins down on Donald’s coat-sleeve, and shrank into her pink and gray kimono appealingly as she tried to speak.
“It’s just as I told you, Donald, you dear boy,” she sobbed out. “I—oughtn’t to have come. I knew it, but it wasn’t your fault. It was all mine. I ought to have stayed at home, and not dressed up and come off here. I’ve had a beautiful time; but it wasn’t for me, and I oughtn’t to have taken it. It’s just spoiled Luella’s nice time, and she’s blaming me, just as I knew she would.”
“What does my cousin mean by using that terrible word to you, which I heard as I entered the room?”
Donald’s voice was keen and scathing, and his eyes fairly piercing as he asked the question and looked straight at Luella, who answered not a word.
“That wasn’t just what she’d have meant, Donald,” said Aunt Crete apologetically. “She was most out of her mind with trouble. You see I had to tell her what you told me about that Clarence Grandon being engaged to another girl——”
“Aunt Crete, don’t say another word about that!” burst out Luella with flashing eyes and crimson face.
“For mercy’s sake, Crete, can’t you hold your tongue?” said Luella’s mother sharply.
“Go on, Aunt Crete; did my cousin call you a liar for saying that? Yet it was entirely true. If she is not disposed to believe me either, I can call Mr. Grandon in to testify in the matter. He will come if I send for him. But I feel sure, after all, that that will not be necessary. It is probably true, as Aunt Crete says, that you were excited, Luella, and did not mean what you said; and after a good night’s sleep you will be prepared to apologize to Aunt Crete, and be sorry enough for worrying her. I am going to ask you to leave Aunt Crete now, and let her rest. She has had a wearying day, and needs to be quiet at once. She is my mother’s sister, you know, and I feel as if I must take care of her.”
“You seem to forget that I am your mother’s sister, too,” said Aunt Carrie coldly, as she stood stiff and disapproving beside the door, ready to pass out.
“If I do, Aunt Carrie, forgive me,” said Donald courteously. “It is not strange when you remember that you forgot that I was your sister’s child, and ran away from me. But never mind; we will put that aside and try to forget it. Good night, Aunt Carrie. Good night, Cousin Luella. We will all feel better about it in the morning.”
They bowed their diminished heads, and went with shame and confusion to the fourth floor back; and, when the door was closed upon them, they burst into angry talk, each blaming the other, until at last Luella sank in a piteous heap upon the bed, and gave herself over to helpless tears.
“Luella,” said her mother in a business-like tone, “you stop that bawling, and sit up here and answer me some questions. Did you or did you not go riding with Mr. Clarence Grandon last winter in his automobile?”
Luella paused in her grief, and nodded assent hopelessly.
“Well, how’d it come about? There’s no use sniffing. Tell me exactly.”
“Why, it was a rainy day,” sobbed out the girl, “and I met him on the street in front of the public library the day I’d been to take back ‘The Legacy of Earl Crafton,’ and that other book by the same author——”
“Never mind what books; tell me what happened,” said the exasperated mother.
“Well, if you’re going to be cross, I sha’n’t tell you anything,” was the filial reply; and for a moment nothing was heard in the room but sobs.
However, Luella recovered the thread of her story, and went on to relate how in company with a lot of other girls she had met Mr. Grandon the day before at the golf-links, where a championship game was being played. She did not explain the various manœuvres by which she had contrived to be introduced to him, nor that he had not seemed to know her at first when she bowed in front of the library building. She had called out, “It’s a fine day for ducks, Mr. Grandon; isn’t it good the game was yesterday instead of to-day?” and he had asked her to ride home with him.
That was her version. Her mother by dint of careful questioning finally arrived at the fact that the girl had more than hinted to be taken home, having loudly announced her lack of rubbers and umbrella, though she seldom wore rubbers, and had on a rain-coat and an old hat.
“But how about the big box of chocolates he sent you, Luella? That was a very particular attention to show you if he was engaged.”
“O,” pouted Luella, “I don’t suppose that meant anything either, for I caught him in a philopena on the way home that day. We said the same words at the same time, something like ‘It’s going to clear off,’ and I told him, when we girls did that, the one that spoke first had to give the other a box of chocolates; so the next day he sent them.”
“Luella, I never brought you up to do things like that. I don’t think that was very nice.”
“O, now, ma, don’t you preach. I guess you weren’t a saint when you were a girl. Besides, I don’t think you’re very sympathetic.” She mopped her swollen eyes.
“Luella, didn’t he ever pay you any more attention after that? I kind of thought you thought he liked you, by the way you talked.”
“No, he never even looked at me,” sobbed the girl, her grief breaking out afresh. “He didn’t even know me the next time we met, but stared straight at me till I bowed, and then he gave me a cold little touch of his hat. And down here he hasn’t even recognized me once. I suppose that lady mother of his didn’t like my looks.”
“Look here, Luella; I wish you’d act sensible. This has been pretty expensive trying to run around after the Grandons. Here’s the hotel bills, and all that dress-making, and now no telling how Aunt Crete will act after we get home. Like as not she’ll think she’s got to have a maid, and dress in silks and satins. There’s one comfort; probably some of her clothes will fix over for you when she gets off her high horse and comes down to every-day living again. But I wish you’d brace up and forget these Grandons. It’s no use trying to get up in the world higher than you belong. There’s that nice John Peters would have been real devoted to you if you’d just let him; and he owns a house of his own already, and has the name of being the best plumber in Midvale.”
Luella sighed.
“He’s only a plumber, ma, and his hands are all red and rough.”
“Well, what’s that?” snapped her practical mother. “He may have his own automobile before long, for all that. Now dry up your eyes, and go to sleep; and in the morning do you go down real early, and apologize to your silly Aunt Crete, and make her understand that she’s not to disgrace us under any consideration by going in bathing while she’s here. My land! I expect to see her riding round on one of those saddle-ponies on the beach next, or maybe driving that team of goats we saw to-day, with pink ribbon reins. Come now, Luella, don’t you worry. Set out to show your cousin Donald how nice you can be, and maybe some of the silk dresses will come your way. Anyhow, this can’t last forever, and John Peters is at home when we get there.”
So Luella, soothed in spirit, went to bed, and arose very early the next morning, descending upon poor Aunt Crete while yet the dreams of sailing alone with Donald on a moonlit sea were mingling with her waking thoughts.
Luella did her work quietly, firmly, and thoroughly. She vanished before Marie had thought of coming to her morning duties.
At breakfast-time Donald found a sad, cowed little woman waiting for him to go down to the dining-room. He tried to cheer her up by telling her how nice a time they were to have in bathing that morning, for the water was sure to be delightful; but Aunt Crete shook her head sadly, and said she guessed she had better not go in bathing any more. Then she sighed, and looked wistfully out on the blue waves dancing in the sunshine.
“Don’t you feel well, Aunt Crete?” asked Donald anxiously.
“O, yes, real well,” she answered.
“Did it hurt you to go in yesterday, do you think?”
“No, not a mite,” she responded promptly.
“Then why in the name of common sense don’t you want to go in to-day? Has Luella been trying to talk some of her nonsense?”
“Well, Luella thinks my figger looks so bad in a bathing-suit. She says of course you want to be polite to me, but you don’t really know how folks will laugh at me, and make her ashamed of belonging to me.”
“Well, I like that!” said Donald. “You just tell Miss Luella we’re not running this vacation for her sole benefit. Now, Aunt Crete, you’re going in bathing, or else I won’t go, and you wouldn’t like to deprive me of that pleasure, would you? Well, I thought not. Now come on down to breakfast, and we’ll have the best day yet. Don’t you let Luella worry you. And, by the way, Aunt Crete, I’m thinking of taking a run up to Cape Cod, and perhaps getting a glimpse of the coast of Maine before I get through. How would you like to go with me?”
“Oh!” gasped Aunt Crete in a daze of delight. “Could I?” Then, mindful of Luella’s mocking words the night before: “But I musn’t be an expense to you. I’d just be a burden. You know I haven’t a cent of my own in the world; so I couldn’t pay my way, and you’ve done a great deal more than I ought to have let you do.”
“Now, Aunt Crete, once for all you must get that idea out of your head. You could never be a burden to me. I want you for a companion. If my mother were here, shouldn’t I just love to take her on a journey with me, and spend every cent I had to make her happy? Well, I haven’t mother here; but you are the nearest to mother I can find, and I somehow feel she’d like me to have you in her place. Will you come? Or is it asking too much to ask you to leave Aunt Carrie and Cousin Luella? They’ve got each other, and they never really needed you as I do. I’ve got plenty of money for us to do as we please, and I mean it with all my heart. Will you come and stay with me? I may have to take a flying trip to Europe before the summer’s over; and, if I do, it would be dreadfully lonesome to go alone. I think you’d like a trip on the ocean, wouldn’t you? and a peep at London, and perhaps Paris and Vienna and old Rome for a few days? And in the fall I’m booked for work in my old university. It’s only an assistant professorship yet, but it means a big thing for a young fellow like me, and I want you to come with me and make a cozy little home for me between whiles and a place where I can bring my friends when they get homesick.”
He paused and looked down for an answer, and was almost startled by the glory of joy in Aunt Crete’s face.
“O Donald, could I do that? Could I be that to you? Do you really think I could be of use enough to you to earn my living?”
He stooped and kissed her forehead reverently to hide the tears that had come unbidden to his eyes. It touched him beyond measure that this sweet life had been so empty of love and so full of drudgery that she should speak thus about so simple a matter. It filled him with indignation against those who had taken the sweetness from her and given her the dregs of a life instead.
“Dear aunt,” he said, “you could be of great use to me, and more than earn anything I could do for you many times over, just by being yourself and mothering me; but as for work, there is not to be one stroke done except just what you want to do for amusement. We’ll have servants to do all the work, and you shall manage them. I want you for an ornament in my home, and you are going to have a good rest and a continual vacation the rest of your life, if I know anything about it. Now come down to breakfast, so we can go in bathing early, and don’t you worry another wrinkle about Luella. You don’t belong to her any more. We’ll send her a parasol from New York and a party gown from Paris, and she won’t bother her pompadour any more about you, you may be sure.”
In a maze of delight Aunt Crete went down to breakfast, and dawned upon the astonished vision of her sister and niece in all the beauty of her dainty white morning costume. They were fairly startled at the vision she was in white, with her pretty white hair to match it. Luella gasped and held her disapproving breath, but Aunt Crete was too absorbed in the vision of joy that had opened before her to know or care what they thought of her in a white dress.
No girl in the new joy of her first love was ever in a sweeter dream of bliss than was Aunt Crete as she beamed through her breakfast. Luella’s looks of scorn and Luella’s mother’s sour visage had no effect upon her whatever. She smiled happily, and ate her breakfast in peace, for had she not been set free forever from the things that had made her life a burden heretofore, and shown into a large place of new joys where her heart might find rest?
After breakfast Donald made them all walk down the board walk to the various shops filled with curios, where he bought everything that Luella looked at, and lavished several gifts also upon her mother, including a small Oriental rug that she admired. They returned to the hotel in a good humor, and Luella began to have visions of luxurious days to come. She felt sure she could keep Aunt Crete down about where she wanted her, and her eyes gloated over the beautiful white dress that she hoped to claim for her own when they all went home and she had convinced Aunt Crete how unsuitable white was for old ladies.
She was quite astonished, after her morning talk with her aunt, to hear Donald say as he looked at his watch, “Come, Aunt Crete, it’s time for our bath,” and to see Aunt Crete walk smiling off toward the bath-houses, utterly regardless of her wrathful warning glances. It was rather disconcerting to have Aunt Crete become unmanageable right at the beginning this way. But in view of the fact that her hands were filled with pretty trifles bought by her cousin she did not feel like making any protest beyond threatening glances, which the dear soul whose mind was in Europe, and whose heart was in a cozy little home all her own and Donald’s, did not see at all.
Aunt Crete was happy. She felt it in every nerve of her body as she stepped into the crisp waves and bounded out to meet them with the elasticity of a girl.
Luella, following a moment later in her flashy bathing-suit of scarlet and white, watched her aunt in amazement, and somehow felt that Aunt Crete was drifting away from her, separated by something more than a few yards of blue salt water.
Donald kept up a continual flow of bright conversation during the noon meal, and managed to engage Luella and her mother on the long piazza in looking through the marine-glass at a great ship that went lazily floating by, while Aunt Crete was getting ready to go on the ride; and before Luella and her mother were quite aware of what was happening they stood on the piazza watching Aunt Crete in her handsome black crêpe de chine, which even boasted a modest train, and her black lace wrap and bonnet, being handed into the Grandon motor-car, while Donald carried her long new gray cloak on his arm. The gray car moved smoothly away out of sight, and Luella and her mother were left staring at the sea with their own bitter reflections.
The automobile party did not return until late that night, for the moon was full and the roads were fine; and Donald saw to it that Aunt Crete was guarded against any intrusion.
It was at breakfast next morning that Donald told them, and Aunt Crete sat listening with the rapt smile that a slave might have worn as he listened to the reading of the proclamation of emancipation.
“Aunt Carrie,” he began as pleasantly as if he were about to propose that they all go rowing, “Aunt Crete and I have decided to set up a permanent partnership. She has consented to come and mother me. I have accepted a position in my old university, and I am very tired of boarding. I think we shall have a cozy, pleasant home; and we’ll be glad to have you and Luella come and visit us sometimes after we get settled and have some good servants so that Aunt Crete will have plenty of time to take you around and show you the sights. In the meantime, it is very likely that I may have to take a brief trip abroad for the university. If so, I shall probably start in about a week, and before that I want to get a glimpse of the New England coast. I have decided to take Aunt Crete, and run away from you to-day. We leave on the noon train; so there is time for a little frolic yet. Suppose we go down to the board walk, and eat an ice-cream cone. I saw some delicious ones last night that made my mouth water, and we haven’t had that experience yet. We’ll get some rolling chairs so that Aunt Crete won’t be too tired for her journey. Come, Aunt Crete, you won’t need to go up-stairs again, shall you? I told Marie about the packing. It won’t be necessary for you to go back until it’s time for you to change to your travelling-garb.”
In a daze of anger and humiliation Luella and her mother climbed into their double rolling chair, and ate their ice-cream cones sullenly, propelled by a large, lazy colored boy; but Aunt Crete had a chair to herself, and was attended by Donald, who kept up a constant stream of delightfully funny conversation about the people and things they passed that made Aunt Crete laugh until the tears came into her happy eyes.
There was no opportunity for Luella and her mother to talk to Aunt Crete alone, even after they returned to the hotel; for Donald kept himself in evidence everywhere, until at last Luella made bold to declare that she didn’t see why Donald thought he had a right to come and take Aunt Crete away from them, when they had always taken care of her; and her mother added in an injured tone:
“Yes, you don’t seem to realize what a burden it’s been all these years, having to support Crete, and her so childish and unreasonable in a great many ways, and not having any idea of the value of money. I’ve spent a good deal on Crete, take it all in all; and now, when Luella’s going out, and has to have clothes and company, it’s rather hard to have her leave us in the lurch this way, and me with all the work to do.”
“That being the case, Aunt Carrie,” said Donald pleasantly, “I should suppose you’d be very glad to have me relieve you of the burden of Aunt Crete’s support, for it will be nothing but a pleasure to me to care for her the rest of her life. As for what you have spent for her, just run it over in your mind, and I shall be quite glad to re-imburse you. Aunt Crete is really too frail and sweet to have to work any longer. I should think my cousin was almost old enough to be a help to you now, and she looks perfectly strong and able to work.”
Luella flashed a vindictive glance at her cousin, and turned haughtily toward the window; then the porter came for the trunks, and the travellers said a hasty good-by, and flitted.
As Donald shook hands with Luella in parting, he looked merrily into her angry eyes, and said:
“I do hope, Luella, that it hasn’t been too much of a trial to have your ‘backwoods cousin’ spend a few days here. You’ll find a box of bonbons up in your room, if the porter did his duty, which may sweeten your bitter thoughts of me; and we hope you’ll have a delightful time the remainder of your stay here. Good-by.”
About three months after Donald had returned from Europe and settled to his Western university life Aunt Crete received a letter from her sister. It was brief and to the point, and Aunt Crete could read between the lines. It read:
“Dear Crete,—Aren’t you about sick of that nonsense, and ready to come home? Luella has decided that she can’t do better than take John Peters. He has promised to buy an auto next year, if the plumbing business keeps up. I think at least you might come home and help get her things ready; for there’s a great deal of sewing to do, and you know I can’t afford to hire it; and Luella’s out so much, now she’s engaged. Do come soon.
Your sister, Carrie.”
Aunt Crete looked sober; but Donald, looking over her shoulder, read, and then went to his desk for a moment. Coming back, he dropped a check for five hundred dollars into his aunt’s lap.