Aunt Crete's Emancipation (7 page)

Donald looked up from his paper with a welcome in his eyes. It was the first time she had seen him in evening dress, and she thought him handsome as a king.

"You're a very beautiful woman, Aunt Crete; do you know it?" said Donald with satisfaction. He had felt that the French
maid
would know how to put just the right touch to Aunt Crete's pretty hair to take away her odd, "unused" appearance. Now she was completely in the fashion, and she looked every inch a
lady
. She somehow seemed to have natural intuition for gentle manners. Perhaps her kindly heart dictated them, for
surely
there can be no better manners than come wrapped up with the Golden Rule, and Aunt Crete had lived by that all her life.

They entered the great dining-hall, and made their way among the palms in a blaze of electric light, with the
head waiter
bowing obsequiously before them. They had a table to themselves, and Aunt Crete rejoiced in the tiny shaded candles and the hothouse roses in the centre, and lifted the handsome napkins and silver forks with awe. Sometimes it seemed as if she were still dreaming.

The party from Pleasure Bay had reached home rather late in the afternoon, after a tedious time in the hot sun at a place full of peanut-stands and merry - go - rounds and moving - picture shows. Luella had not had a good time. She had been disappointed that none of the young men in the party had paid her special attention. In fact, the special young man for whose sake she had prodded her mother into going had not accompanied them at all. Luella was thoroughly cross.

"Mercy, how you've burned your nose, Luella!" said her mother sharply. "It's so unbecoming. The skin is all peeling off. I do wish
you'd
wear a veil. You can't afford to lose your complexion, with such a figure as you have."

"O
, fiddlesticks!
I wish you'd let up on that, ma," snapped Luella. "Didn't you get a letter from Aunt Crete? I wonder what she's thinking about not to send that lavender organdie. I wanted to wear it to-night.
There's
to be a hop in the ballroom, and that would be just the thing. She ought to have got it done;
she's
had time enough since I telephoned. I suppose
she's
gone
to reading again. I do wish
I'd
remembered to lock up the bookcase. She's crazy for novels."

All this time Luella was being buttoned into
a pink
silk muslin heavily decorated with cheap lace. There were twenty-six tiny elusive buttons, and Luella's mother was tired.

"What on earth makes you so long, ma?" snarled Luella, twisting her neck to try to see her back. "We'll be so late we won't get served, and I'm hungry as a bear."

They hurried down, arriving at the door just as Aunt Crete and Donald were being settled into their chairs by the smiling
head waiter
.

"For goodness' sake!
those
must be swells," said Luella in a low tone. "Did you see how that waiter bowed and smiled? He never does that to us. I expect he got a big tip. See,
they're
sitting right next our table. Goodness, ma, your hair
is all slipped
to one side. Put it up quick.
No, the other side.
Say,
he's
an awfully handsome young man. I wonder if we can
get
introduced. I just know he dances gracefully. Say, mother,
I'd
like to get him for a partner to-night. I guess those stuck-up
Grandons
would open their eyes then."

"Hush, Luella; he'll hear you."

They settled into their places unassisted by the dilatory waiter, who came languidly up a moment later to take their order.

Aunt Crete's back was happily toward her relatives, and so she ate her dinner in comfort. The palms were all about, and the gentle clink of silver and glass, and refined voices. The soft strains of an orchestra hidden in a balcony of ferns and palms drowned Luella's strident voice when it
was raised
in discontented strain, and so Aunt Crete failed to recognize the sound.
But
Donald had been on the alert. In the first place, he had asked a question or two, and knew about where his relatives usually sat, and had purposely asked to be placed near them.
He studied Luella when she came in, and felt pretty sure she was the girl he had seen on the platform of the train the morning he arrived in Midvale; and finally in a break in the music he distinctly caught the name "Luella" from the lips of the sour woman in the purple satin with white question-marks all over it and plasters of white lace.

Aunt Carrie was tall and thin, with a discontented droop to her lips, and premature wrinkles. She wore an affected air of abnormal politeness and disapproval of everything. She was studying the silver-gray silk back in front of her and wondering what there was about that elegant
looking woman with the lovely white waved pompadour and puffs, and that exquisite real lace collar, to remind her of poor sister
Lucretia
. She always coupled the adjective "poor" with her sister's name when she thought of all her shortcomings.

Luella's discontent was somewhat enlivened by the sight of the young man that had not gone on the drive to Pleasure Bay. He stood in the doorway, searching the room with keen, interested eyes. Could it be that he was looking for her? Luella's heart leaped in a moment's triumph. Yes, he seemed to be looking that way as if he had found the object of his search, and he was surely coming down toward them with a real smile on his face. Luella's face broke into preparatory smiles. She would be very coy, and pretend not to see him; so she began a voluble and animated conversation with her mother about the charming time they had had that day,
which might have surprised the worthy woman if she had not been accustomed to her daughter's wiles. She knew it to be a warning of the proximity of some one that Luella wished to charm.

The young man came on straight by the solicitous waiters, who waved him frantically to various tables. Luella cast a rapid
side glance
, and talked on
gayly
with drooping head and averted gaze. Her mother looked up, wondering, to see what
was the cause of Luella's animation
. He was quite near now, and in a moment
more
he would speak. The girl felt excited thrills creeping up her back, and the color rushed into her cheeks, which were already red enough from the wind and sun of the day.

"Well, well," said the young man's voice in a hearty eagerness Luella had never hoped to hear addressed to
herself
, "this is too good to be true. Don, old man, where did you
drop from?
I saw your name in the register, and rushed right into the dining-room"

"Clarence
Grandon
, as true as I live!" said a pleasant voice behind Luella. "I thought you were in Europe, bless your heart. This is the best thing that could have happened. Let me introduce my aunt
--
"

Some seconds before this Luella's thrills had changed to chills. Mortification stole over her face and up to the roots of her hair. Even the back of her neck, where her
bathing-suit
was cut low and square, turned angry-looking. The pink muslin had a round neck, and showed a half-circle of whiter neck below the
bathing-suit
square.
But
Luella had the presence of mind to smile on to her mother in mild pretence that she had but just noticed the advent of the young man behind. An obsequious waiter was bringing an extra chair for Mr.
Grandon
, and he was to
be seated
so that he could look toward their table. Perhaps he would recognize her yet, and there might be a chance of introduction to the handsome stranger. Luella dallied with her dinner in fond hope, and her mother aided and abetted her.

The lovely old
lady
with the silver-gray silk and the real lace collar and beautiful hair had her back squarely toward the table where Luella and her mother sat. They could not see her face. They could only notice how interested both the young men were in her, and how courteous they were to her; and they decided she must be some very great personage indeed. They watched her half enviously, and began to plan some way to scrape an acquaintance with her. One glimpse they had of her face as the
head waiter
rushed to draw back her chair when she had finished her dinner. It was a fine, handsome face, younger than they had expected to see, with beautiful sparkling eyes full
of mirth and contentment. What was there in the face that reminded them of something? Had they ever met that old
lady
before?

Luella and her mother brought their dallied dessert to a sudden ending, and followed hard upon the footsteps of the three down the length of the dining-hall; but the lady in gray and her two attendants had disappeared already, and disconsolately they lingered about, looking up and down the length of piazzas in vain hope to see them sitting in one of the great rows of rockers, watching the many-tinted waves in the dying evening light; but there was no sign of them anywhere.

As they stood thus leaning over the balcony, a large automobile, gray, with white cushions, like a great gliding dove, slipped silently up to the entrance below them in the well-bred silence that an expensive machine knows how to assume under dignified owners.

Luella twitched her mother's sleeve. "That's
Grandon's
car," she whispered. "
P'raps
I'll get asked to go. Let's sit down here and wait."

The mother obediently sat down.

CHAPTER V

LUELLA AND HER MOTHER ARE MYSTIFIED

They had not long to wait. They heard the elevator door slide softly open, and then the gentle swish of silken skirts. Luella looked around just in time to
be recognized
by young Mr.
Grandon
if he had not at that moment been placing a long white broadcloth coat about his mother's shoulders. There were four in the party, and Luella's heart sank. He would not be likely to ask another one. The young man and the gray-silk, thread
-
lace woman from the other
dining-table
were going with them, it appeared. Young Mr.
Grandon
helped the gray-silk
lady
down the steps while the handsome stranger walked by Mrs.
Grandon
. They did not look around at the people on the piazza at all. Luella bit her lips in vexation.

"For pity's sake, Luella, don't scowl so," whispered her mother; "they might look up yet and see you."

This warning came just in time; for young Mr.
Grandon
just as he was about to start the car glanced up, and, catching Luella's fixed gaze, gave her a distant bow, which
was followed
by a courteous lifting of the stranger's hat.

Aunt Crete
was seated
beside Mrs.
Grandon
in the back seat and beaming her joy quietly. She was secretly
exulting
that Luella and Carrie had not been in evidence yet. She felt that her joy
was being lengthened
by a few minutes more, for she could not get away from the fear that her sister and niece would spoil it all as soon as they appeared upon the scene.

"I thought Aunt Carrie and Luella would be tired after their all-day trip, and we wouldn't disturb them to-night," said Donald in a low tone, looking back to Aunt Crete as the car glided smoothly out from the shelter of the wide piazza.

Aunt Crete smiled happily back to Donald, and raised her eyes with a relieved glance toward the rows of people on the piazza. She had been afraid to look her fill before lest she should see Luella frowning at her somewhere; but
evidently
they had not got back yet, or perhaps had not finished their dinner.

As Aunt Crete raised her eyes, Luella and her mother looked down into her upturned face enviously, but Aunt Crete's gaze had but just grazed them and fallen upon an old
lady
of stately mien
with white, fluffy hair like her own, and a white crepe de chine gown trimmed with much white lace. In deep
satisfaction
Aunt Crete reflected that, if Luella had
aught
to say against her aunt's wearing modest white morning-gowns, she would cite this model, who was evidently an old aristocrat if one might judge by her jewels and her general make-up.