“Aunt Mary en fête” (May Robson as “Aunt Mary”)
“‘Do not let us play any longer,’ she said. ‘Let us be in earnest’”
“‘She’s goin’ to the city all alone!’ Lucinda’s voice suddenly proclaimed behind him”
Aunt Mary and Her Escorts
“The carriage stopped three hundred feet below the level of a roof-garden”
“And now the fun’s all over and the work begins”
“‘Yesterday I played poker until I didn’t know a blue chip from a white one’”
“Aunt Mary had also had her eyes open”
Chapter One
Introducing Aunt Mary
The first time that Jack was threatened with expulsion from college his
Aunt Mary was much surprised and decidedly vexed—mainly at the college.
His family were less surprised, viewing the young man through a clearer
atmosphere than his Aunt Mary ever had, and knowing that he had barely
escaped similar experiences earlier in his career by invariably leaving
school the day before the board of inquiry convened.
Jack’s preparatory days having been more or less tempestous, his family
(Aunt Mary excepted) had expected some sort of after-clap when he
entered college. Nevertheless, they had fervently hoped that it would
not be quite as bad as this.
Jack’s sister Arethusa was visiting her aunt when the news came. Not
because she wanted to, for the old lady was dreadfully deaf and
fearfully arbitrary, but because Lucinda had said that she must go to
her cousin’s wedding, and the family always had to bow to Lucinda’s
mandates. Lucinda was Aunt Mary’s maid, but she had become so
indispensable as a sitter at the off-end of the latter’s ear-trumpet
that none of the grand-nephews or grand-nieces ever thought for an
instant of crossing one of her wishes. So it was to Arethusa that the
explanations due Aunt Mary’s interest in her scapegrace fell, and she
bowed her back to the burden with the resignation which the
circumstances demanded.
“Whatever is the difference between bein’ expelled and bein’
suspended?” Aunt Mary demanded, in her tone of imperious impatience.
“Well, why don’t you answer? I was brought up to speak when you’re
spoken to, an’ I’m a great believer in livin’ up to your bringin’ up—if
you had a good one. What’s the difference, an’ which costs most? That’s
what I want to know. I do wish you’d answer me, Arethusa; there’s two
things I’ve asked you now, an’ you suckin’ your finger an’ puttin’ on
your thimble as if you were sittin’ alone in China.”
“I don’t know which costs most,” Arethusa shrieked.
“You needn’t scream so,” said Aunt Mary. “I ain’t so hard to hear as
you think. I ain’t but seventy, and I’ll beg you to remember that,
Arethusa. Besides, I don’t want to hear you talk. I just want to hear
about Jack. I’m askin’ about his bein’ expelled and suspended, an’
what’s the difference, an’ in particular if there’s anything to pay for
broken glass. It’s always broken glass! That boy’s bills for broken
glass have been somethin’ just awful these last two years. Well, why
don’t you answer?”
“I don’t know what to answer,” Arethusa screamed.
“What do you suppose he’s done, anyhow?”
“Something bad.”
Aunt Mary frowned.
“I ain’t mad,” she said sharply. “What made you think I was mad? I
ain’t mad at all! I’m just askin’ what’s the difference between bein’
expelled an’ bein’ suspended, an’ it seems to me this is the third time
I’ve asked it. Seems to me it is.”
Arethusa laid down her work, drew a mighty breath, very nearly got into
the ear-trumpet, and explained that being suspended was infinitely less
heinous than being expelled, and decidedly less final.
Aunt Mary looked relieved.
“Oh, then he’s gettin’ better, is he?” she said. “Well, I’m sure that’s
some comfort.”
And then there was a long pause, during which she appeared to be
engaged in deep reflection, and her niece continued her embroidery in
peace. The pause endured until a sudden sneeze on the part of the old
lady set the wheels of conversation turning again.
“Arethusa,” she said, “I wish you’d go an’ get the ink an’ write to Mr.
Stebbins. I want him to begin to look up another college with good
references right away. I don’t want to waste any of the boy’s life, an’
if bein’ suspended means waitin’ while the college takes its time to
consider whether it wants him back again or not I ain’t goin’ to wait.
I’m a great believer in a college education, but I don’t know that it
cuts much figure whether it’s the same college right through or not.
Anyway, you write Mr. Stebbins.”
Arethusa obeyed, and the authorities having seen fit to be uncommonly
discreet as to the cause of the young man’s withdrawal, no great
difficulty was experienced in finding another campus whereon Aunt
Mary’s pride and joy might freely disport himself. Mr. Stebbins threw
himself into the affair with all the tact and ardor of an experienced
legal mind and soon after Lucinda’s return to her home allowed Arethusa
to follow suit, the hopeful younger brother of the latter became a
candidate for his second outfit of new sweaters and hat bands that
year.
Aunt Mary wrote him a letter upon the occasion of his new start in
life, Mr. Stebbins delivered him a lecture, and things went smoothly in
consequence for three whole weeks. I say three whole weeks because
three whole weeks was a long time for the course of Jack’s life to flow
smoothly. At the end of a fortnight affairs were always due to run more
rapidly and three weeks produced, as a general thing, some species of
climax.
The climax in this case came to time as usual his evil genius inciting
the young man to attempt, one very dark night, the shooting of a cat
which he thought he saw upon the back fence. Whether he really had seen
a cat or not mattered very little in the later development of the
matter. He was certainly successful as far as the going off of the gun
was concerned, but the damage that resulted, resulted not to any cat,
but to the arm of a next-door’s cook, who was peacefully engaged in
taking in her week’s wash on the other side of the fence. The cook
ceased abruptly to take in the wash, the affair was at once what is
technically termed looked into, and three days later Jack became the
defendant in a suit for damages.
Naturally Mr. Stebbins was at once notified and he had no choice except
to write Aunt Mary.
Aunt Mary was somewhat less patient over the third escapade than she
had been with the first two.
The letter found her alone with Lucinda and she read it to herself
three times and then read it aloud to her companion. Lucinda, whose
thorough knowledge of the imperious will and impervious eardrums of her
mistress rendered her, as a rule, extremely monosyllabic, not to say
silent, vouchsafed no comment upon the contents of the epistle, and
after a few minutes Aunt Mary herself took the field:
“Now, what do you suppose possessed that boy to shoot at a cook?” she
asked, regarding the letter with a portentous frown. “Cooks are so
awful hard to get nowadays. I don’t see why he didn’t shoot a tramp if
he had to shoot somethin’.”
“He wa’n’t tryin’ to shoot a cook, ’pears like,” then cried
Lucinda—Lucinda’s voice, be it said, _en passant_, was of that sibilant
and penetrating timbre which is best illustrated in the accents of a
steamfitter’s file—“’pears like he was tryin’ for a cat.”
“Not a bat,” said her mistress correctively; “it was a cat. You look at
this letter an’ you’ll see. And, anyway, how could a man shootin’ at a
cat hit a cook?—not ’nless she was up a tree birds’-nestin’ after owls’
eggs. You don’t seem to pay much attention to what I read to you,
Lucinda; only I should think your commonsense would help you out some
when it comes to a boy you’ve known from the time he could walk, an’ a
strange cook. But, anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. The question
that bothers me is, what’s to pay with this damage suit? I think myself
five hundred dollars is too much for any cook’s arm. A cook ain’t in no
such vital need of two arms. If she has to shut the door of the oven
while she’s stirrin’ somethin’ on the top of the stove, she can easy
kick it to with her foot. It won’t be for long, anyway, and I’m a great
believer in making the best of things when you’ve got to.”
Lucinda screwed up her face and made no comment. Lucinda’s face in
repose was a cross between a monkey’s and a peanut; screwed up, it was
particularly awful, and always exasperated her mistress.
“Well, why don’t you say somethin’, Lucinda? I ain’t askin’ your
advice, but, all the same, you can say anything if you’ve got a mind
to.”
“I ain’t got a mind to say anythin’,” the faithful maid rejoined.
“I guess you hit the nail on the head that time,” said Aunt Mary,
without any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm; then
she re-read the note and frowned afresh.
“Five hundred dollars is too much,” she said again. “I’m going to write
to Mr. Stebbins an’ tell him so to-night. He can compromise on two
hundred and fifty, just as well as not. Get me some paper and my desk,
Lucinda. Now get a spryness about you.”
Lucinda laid aside her work and forthwith got a spryness about her,
bringing her mistress’ writing-desk with commendable alacrity. Aunt
Mary took the writing-desk and wrote fiercely for some time, to the end
that she finally wrote most of the fierceness out of herself.
“After all, boys will be boys,” she said, as she sealed her letter,
“and if this is the end I shan’t feel it’s money wasted. I’m a great
believer in bein’ patient. Most always, that is. Here, Lucinda you take
this to Joshua and tell him to take it right to mail. Be prompt, now.
I’m a great believer in doin’ things prompt.”
Lucinda took the letter and was prompt. “She wants this letter took
right to the mail,” she said to Joshua, Aunt Mary’s longest-tried
servitor.
“Then it’ll be took right to mail,” said Joshua.
“She’s pretty mad,” said Lucinda.
“Then she’ll soon get over it,” replied the other, taking up his hat
and preparing to depart for the barn forthwith.
Lucinda returned to Aunt Mary with a species of dried-up sigh. One is
not the less a slave because one has been enslaved for twenty years,
and Lucinda at moments did sort of peek out through her bars—possibly
envying Joshua the daily drives to mail when he had full control of
something that was alive.
Lucinda had been, comparatively speaking, young when she had come to
wait upon the pleasure of the Watkins millions, and her waiting had
been so pertinent and so patient that it had endured over a quarter of
a century. Aunt Mary had been under fifty in the hour of Lucinda’s
dawn; she was over seventy now. Jack hadn’t been born then; he was in
college now; and Jack’s older brothers and sisters and his
dead-and-gone father and mother had been living somewhere out West
then, quite hopeful as to their own lives and quite hopeless as to the
stern old great-aunt who never had paid any attention to her niece
since she had chosen to elope with the doctor’s reprobate son. Now the
father and mother were dead and buried, the brothers and sisters
reinstated in their rights and had all grown up and become great
credits to the old lady, whose heart had suddenly melted at the arrival
of five orphans all at once. And there was only Jack to continue to
worry about.
Jack was not anything particularly remarkable; he was just one of those
lovable good-for-nothings that seem born to get better people into
trouble all their lives long. He had been spoiled originally by being
ten years younger than the next youngest in the family; and then, when
the children had been shipped on to Aunt Mary’s tender mercies, Jack
had won her heart immediately because she accidentally discovered that
he had never been baptized, and so felt fully justified in re-naming
him after her own father and having the name branded into him for keeps
by her own religious apparatus. It followed naturally that John
Watkins, Jr., Denham, for so her father’s daughter had insisted that
her youngest nephew should be called, was the favorite nephew of his
aunt.
And it was lucky for him that he was the favorite, for Aunt Mary, who
was highly spiced at fifty, became peppery at sixty, and almost biting
at seventy. And yet for Jack she would sign checks almost without a
murmur. Mr. Stebbins was much more censorious and impatient with the
young man than she ever was; and to all the rest of the world Mr.
Stebbins was an urbane and agreeable gentleman, whereas to all the rest
of the world Aunt Mary was a problem or a terror. But Mr. Stebbins
needed to be a man of tact and management, for he was the real manager
of that fortune of which “Mary, only surviving child of John Watkins,
merchant and ship owner,” was the legal possessor; and so tactful was
Mr. Stebbins that he and his powerful client had never yet clashed, and
they had been in close business relations for almost as many years as
Lucinda had been established on the hearthstone of the Watkins home.
Perhaps one reason why Mr. Stebbins endured so well was that he had a
real talent for compromising, and that he had skillfully transformed
Aunt Mary’s inherited taste for driving a bargain into an acquired
pleasure in what is really a polite form of the same action.
So, when it came to the matter of Jack’s difficulties, Mr. Stebbins
could always find a half-way measure that saved the situation; and when
he received the letter as to the cook and her claim he hied himself to
the city at once, and wrote back that the claim could be settled for
three hundred dollars.
“And enough, I must say,” Aunt Mary remarked to Lucinda upon receipt of
the statement; “three hundred dollars for one cat—for, after all, Jack
blames the whole on the cat, an’ he didn’t hit it, even then.”
Lucinda did not answer.
“But if the boy settles down now I shan’t mind payin’ the three—Where
are you goin’?”
For Lucinda was walking out of the room.
“I’m goin’ to the door,” said she raspingly. “The bell’s ringin’.”
After a minute or two she came back.
“Telegram!” she announced, handing the yellow envelope over.
Aunt Mary put on her glasses, opened it, and read:
Cook has blood poison. Sues for a thousand. Probable amputation.