Aunt Crete's Emancipation

Aunt Crete’s Emancipation

by

Grace Livingston Hill

Table of Contents

I. A Telegram And A Flight

II. The Backwoods
C
ousin

III. A Wonderful Day

IV. Aunt Crete Transformed

V. Luella And Her Mother Are Mystified

VI. An Embarrassing Meeting

VII. Luella's Humiliation

VIII. Aunt Crete's Partnership

List of Illustrations

“She Watched Luella's Dismayed Face
W
ith Growing Alarm"

“He Helped With
Vigor"

“Donald Watched Her With Satisfaction"

“She Beamed Upon The Whole Trainful Of People"

''Somewhere I Have Seen That Woman,” Exclaimed Luella's Mother"

“They Stood Face To Face With The Wonderful Lady In The Gray Gown"

“It's A Lie! I Say It's A Lie!”

“Aunt Crete Was At Last Emancipated"

Chapter 1

A Telegram and a Flight

Who’s
at the front door? Asked Luella’s mother, coming in from the kitchen with a
dish-towel
in her hand. “I thought I heard the door-bell.”

“Luella’s gone to the door,” said her sister from her
vantage-point
at the
crack of the sitting-room door.
“It looks to me like a telegraph boy.”

“It couldn’t be, Crete,” said Luella’s mother impatiently, coming to see for herself. “Who would telegraph now that Hannah’s dead?”

Lucretia
was short and dumpy, with the comfortable, patient look of the maiden aunt that knows she is indispensable because she will meekly take all the burdens that no one else wants to bear. Her sister could easily look over her head into the hall, and her gaze was penetrative and alert.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Carrie,” said
Lucretia
apprehensively; “but I’m all of a tremble. Telegrams are dreadful things.”

“Nonsense, Crete, you always
act
like such a baby. Hurry up, Luella.
Don’t
stop to read it. Your aunt Crete will have a fit.
Wasn’t
there anything to pay? Who is it for?”

Luella, a rather stout young woman in stylish attire, with her mother’s keen features
unsoftened
by sentiment, advanced, irreverently tearing open her mother’s telegram and reading it as she came.
It was one of the family grievances that Luella was stout like her aunt instead of
tall
and slender like her mother. The aunt always felt secretly that they somehow blamed her for being of that type. “It makes one so hard to fit,” Luella’s mother remarked frequently, and adding with a disparaging glance at her sister’s dumpy form, “So impossible!”

At such
times
the aunt always wrinkled up her pleasant little forehead into a V upside down, and trotted off to her kitchen, or her buttonholes, or whatever was the present task, sighing helplessly. She tried to be the best that she could
always; but one
couldn’t
help one’s figure, especially when one was partly dependent on one’s family for support, and dressmakers and tailors took so much money. It was bad enough to have one stout figure to fit in the family without two; and the aunt always felt called upon to have as little dressmaking done as possible, in order that Luella’s figure might be improved from the slender treasury. “Clothes do make a big difference,” she reflected.
And
sometimes when she was all alone in the twilight, and there was really nothing that her alert conscience could possibly put her hand to doing for the moment, she amused herself by thinking what kind of dress she would buy, and who should make it, if she should suddenly attain a fortune.
But
this was a harmless amusement, inasmuch as she never let it make her discontented with her lot, or ruffle her placid brow for an instant.

But
just now she was “all of a tremble,” and the V in her forehead was rapidly becoming a double V. She watched
Luella’s
dismayed face with growing alarm.

“For goodness’ sake alive!” said Luella, flinging herself into the most comfortable rocker, and throwing her mother’s telegram on the table. “That’s not to be tolerated!
Something’ll
have to be done.
We’ll
have to go to the shore at once, mother. I should die of mortification to have a country cousin come around just now. What would the
Grandons
think if they saw him? I
can’t
afford to ruin all my chances for a cousin I’ve never seen. Mother, you simply must do something. I won’t stand it!”

“What in the world are you talking about, Luella?” said her mother impatiently. “Why didn’t you read the telegram aloud, or why didn’t you give it to me at once? Where are my glasses?”

The aunt waited meekly while her sister found her glasses, and read the telegram.

“Well, I declare! That is provoking to have him turn up just now of all times. Something
must be done
, of course. We
can’t
have a gawky Westerner around in the way.
And
, as you say, we’ve never seen him. It
can’t
make much difference to him whether he sees us or not. We can hurry off, and be conveniently out of the way. It’s
probably  only
a ‘duty visit’ he’s paying, anyway.
Hannah’s
been dead ten years, and I always heard the child was more like his father than his mother. Besides, Hannah married and went away to live when I was only a little girl. I really
don’t
think Donald has much claim on us. What a long telegram! It must have cost a lot.
Was it paid for
? It shows he knows nothing of the world, or he would have put it in a few words. Well, we’ll have to get away at once.”

She crumpled the telegram into a ball, and flung it to the table again; but it fell wide of its mark, and dropped to the floor instead. The aunt patiently stooped and picked it up, smoothing out the crushed yellow paper.

“Hannah’s boy!” she said gently, and she touched the yellow
paper
as it had been something sacred.

“Am taking a trip
East
, and I shall make you a little visit if convenient.
Will be with you sometime on Thursday.
                                               Donald Grant.”

She sat down suddenly in the nearest chair.
Somehow
the relief from anxiety had made her knees weak. “Hannah’s boy!” she murmured again, smoothing down a torn place in the edge of the paper.

Luella and her mother were discussing plans. They had decided that they must leave on the early train the next morning, before there was any chance of the Western
visitor’s
arriving.

“Goodness! Look at Aunt Crete,” said Luella, laughing. “She looks as if she had seen a ghost. Her lips are all white.”

“Crete, you oughtn’t to be such a fool.
As if a telegram would hurt you!
There’s nobody
left to be worried
about like that. Why don’t you use your reason a little?”

“Hannah’s boy is really coming!” beamed Aunt Crete, ignoring their scorn of
herself
.

“Upon my word!
Aunt Crete, you look as if it were something to be glad about, instead of a downright calamity.”

“Glad; of course I’m glad, Luella.
Wouldn’t
you be glad to see your oldest sister’s child? Hannah was always very dear to me. I can see her now the way she looked
when she went away, so tall and slim and pretty---
“

“Not if she’d been dead for a century or so, and I’d never seen the child, and he was a gawky, embarrassing creature who would spoil the prospects of the people I was supposed to
love,” retorted Luella. “Aunt Crete, don’t you care the least bit for my happiness? Do you want it all spoiled?”

“Why, of course not,
dearie
,” beamed Aunt Crete, “but I don’t see how it will spoil your happiness.
I should think you’d want to see him yourself.”

“Aunt Crete!
The idea!
He’s
nothing to me. You know
he’s
lived away out in the wild West all of his life.
He
probably
never had much schooling, and doesn’t know how to dress or behave in polite society. I heard he went away off up in the Klondike somewhere, and worked in a mine. You can imagine just what wild, ignorant creature he will be. If Clarence
Grandon
should see him, he might imagine my
family were
all like that; and then where would I be?”

“Yes, Crete, I’m surprised at you. You’ve been so anxious all along for Luella to shine in society, and now you talk just as if you didn’t care in the least what happened,” put in Luella’s mother.

“But what can you do?” asked Aunt Crete. “You can’t tell him not to come—your own sister’s child!”

“O, how silly you are, Crete!” said her sister. “No, of course we can’t very well tell him not to come, as he hasn’t given us a chance; for this telegram is evidently sent on the way. It is dated ‘Chicago,’ and he
hasn’t
given us a trace of an address. He
doesn’t
live in Chicago.
He’s
very likely almost here, and may arrive any time tomorrow. Now you know
we’ve
simply go to go to the shore next week, for the rooms are all engaged at the hotel, and paid for; and we might as well hurry up and get off tonight or early in the morning, and escape him. Luella would die of mortification if she had to cousin that fellow and give up her trip to the shore. As you
weren’t
going anyway, you can receive him, It will keep him quietly at home for he won’t expect an old woman to go out with him, and show him the sights; so nobody will notice him much, and there won’t be a lot of talk. If he looks very ridiculous, and that prying Mrs. Brown next door speaks of it, you might explain he’s the son of an old school friend who went out West to live years ago—“

“O Carrie!” exclaimed Aunt Crete, “that wouldn’t be true; and, besides, he can’t be
so
very bad as that. And even if he is, I shall love him—for he’s Hannah’s boy.”

“Love him all you want to,” sniffed her sister, “but for pity’s sake don’t let the neighbors know what relation he is.”

“That’s just like you, Aunt Crete,” said Luella in a hurt tone. “You’ve known me and pretended to love me all your life. I’m almost like you own child, and yet you take up with this unknown nephew, and say you’ll love him in spite of all the trouble he’s making me.”

Aunt Crete doubled the V in her forehead, and wiped away the beads of perspiration.
Somehow
it always seemed that she was in the wrong.
Would she be understood
in heaven?
she
wondered.

Luella and her mother went on planning. They told off what Aunt Crete was to do after they left.

“There’s the raspberries and blackberries not done up yet, Crete, but I guess you can manage alone. You always do the biggest part of the canning, anyway.
I’m
awfully sorry about your sewing, Crete. I meant to fit you two thin dresses before we went away, but the dressmaker made Luella’s things so much more elaborate than I expected that we really
haven’t
had a minute’s time, what with all the lace insertion she left for us to sew on. Perhaps you better run down to Miss Mason, and see if she has the time to fit them, if you think you
can’t
wait till we get back. You’ll hardly be going out much while we’re gone, you know.”