Aunt Crete's Emancipation (11 page)

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 tele
phoned 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.

CHAPTER VII

LUELLA'S HUMILIATION

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 un
-
whitewashed cellar, and the uncooked jam, and the unmade shirt-waists, and the little hot brick house gazing at her reproachfully from the dis
tant 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 b
it of silver, but also having f
ollowed 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
---
"