Chapter 20

Aunt Mary’s Return

Joshua was at the station to meet his mistress, and Lucinda, full to the brim with curiosity, sat on the back seat of the carryall.

Aunt Mary quitted the train with a dignity which was sufficiently overpowering to counteract the effect of her bonnet’s being somewhat awry. She greeted Joshua with a chill perfunctoriness that was indescribable, and her glance glided completely over Lucinda and faded away in the open country on the further side of her.

Lucinda did not care. Lucinda was of a hardy stock and stormy glances neither bent nor broke her spirit.

“I’m glad to see you come back looking so well,” she screamed, when Aunt Mary was in and they were off.

Aunt Mary raised her eyebrows in a manner that appeared a trifle indignant, and riveted her gaze on the hindquarters of the horse.

“I thought it was more like heaven myself,” she said coldly. “Not that your opinion matters any to me, Lucinda.”

Then she leaned forward and poked the driver.

“Joshua!” she said.

Joshua jumped in his seat at the asperity of her poke and her tone.

“What is it?” he said hastily.

“Jus’ ’s soon as we get home I want you to take the saw—that little, sharp one, you know—and dock Billy’s tail. Cut it off as close as you can; do you hear?”

“I hear,” was the startled answer.

“Did you have a good time?” Lucinda had the temerity to ask, after a minute.

“I guess I could if I tried,” the lady replied; “but I’m too tired to try now.”

“How did you leave Mr. Jack?”

“I couldn’t stay forever, could I?” asked the traveler impatiently. “I thought that a week was long enough for the first time, anyhow.”

Lucinda subsided and the rest of the drive was taken in silence. When they reached the house Aunt Mary enveloped everything in one glance of blended weariness, scorn and contempt, and then made short work of getting to bed, where she slept the luxurious and dreamless sleep of the unjust until late that afternoon.

“My, but she’s come back a terror!” Lucinda cried to Joshua in a high whisper when he brought in the trunk. “She looks like nothin’ was goin’ to be good enough for her from now on.”

“Nothin’ ain’t goin’ to be good enough for her,” said Joshua calmly.

“What are we goin’ to do, then?” asked Lucinda.

“We’ll have enough to do,” said Joshua, in a tone that was portentous in the extreme, and then he placed the trunk in its proper position for unpacking and went away, leaving Lucinda to unpack it.

Aunt Mary awoke just as the faithful servant was unrolling the green plaid waist, and the instant that she spoke it was plain that her attitude toward life in general was become strangely and vigorously changed, and that for Lucinda the rack was to be newly oiled and freshly racking.

This attitude was not in any degree altered by the unexpected arrival of Arethusa that evening. Strange tales had reached Arethusa’s ears, and she had flown on the wings of steam and coal dust to see what under the sun it all meant. Aunt Mary was not one bit rejoiced to see her and the glare which she directed over the edge of the counterpane bore testimony to the truth of this statement.

“Whatever did you come for?” she demanded inhospitably. “Lucinda didn’t send for you, did she?”

Arethusa screamed the best face that she could onto her visit, but Aunt Mary listened with an inattention that was anything but flattering.

“I don’t feel like talkin’ over my trip,” she said, when she saw her niece’s lips cease to move. “Of course I enjoyed myself because I was with Jack, but as to what we did an’ said you couldn’t understand it all if I did tell you, so what’s the use of botherin’.”

Arethusa looked neutral, calm and curious. But Aunt Mary frowned and shook her head.

“S’long as you’re here, though, I suppose you may as well make yourself useful,” she said a few minutes later. “Come to think of it, there’s an errand I want you to do for me. I want you to go to Boston the very first thing to-morrow morning an’ buy me some cotton.”

Arethusa stared blankly.

“Well,” said the aunt, “if you can’t hear, you’d better take my ear-trumpet and I’ll say it over again.”

“What kind of cotton?” Arethusa yelled.

“Not _stockin’s!_” said Aunt Mary; “Cotton! Cotton! C-O-T-T-O-N! It beats the Dutch how deaf everyone is gettin’, an’ if I had your ears in particular, Arethusa, I’d certainly hire a carpenter to get at ’em with a bit-stalk. Jus’s if you didn’t know as well as I do how many stockin’s I’ve got already! I should think you’d quit bein’ so heedless, an’ use your commonsense, anyhow. I’ve found commonsense a very handy thing in talkin’ always. Always.”

Arethusa launched herself full tilt into the ear-trumpet.

“What—kind—of—cotton?” she asked in that key of voice which makes the crowd pause in a panic.

Aunt Mary looked disgusted.

“The Boston kind,” she said, nipping her lips.

Arethusa took a double hitch on her larynx, and tried again.

“Do you mean thread?”

Aunt Mary’s disgust deepened visibly.

“If I meant silk I guess I wouldn’t say cotton. I might just happen to say silk. I’ve been in the habit of saying silk when I meant silk and cotton when I meant cotton, for quite a number of years, and I might not have changed to-day—I might just happen to not have. I might not have—maybe.”

Arethusa withered under this bitter irony.

“How many spools do you want?” she asked in a meek but piercing howl.

“I don’t care,” said Aunt Mary loftily. “I don’t care how many—or what color—or what number. I just want some Boston cotton, and I want to see you settin’ out to get it pretty promptly to-morrow morning.”

“But if you only want some cotton,” Arethusa yelled, with a force which sent crimson waves all over her, “why can’t I get it in the village?”

Aunt Mary shot one look at her niece and the latter felt the concussion.

“Because—I—want—you—to—get—it— in—Boston,” she said, filling the breaks between her words with a concentrated essence of acerbity such as even she had never displayed before. “When I say a thing, I mean it pretty generally. Quite often—most always. I want that cotton and it’s to be bought in Boston. There’s a train that goes in at seven-forty-five, and if you don’t favor the idea of ridin’ on it you can take the express that goes by at six-five.”

Arethusa pressed her hands very tightly together and carried the discussion no further. She went to bed early and rose early the next morning and Joshua drove her in town to the seven-forty-five.

“It doesn’t seem to me that my aunt is very well,” the niece said during the drive. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think anything about her,” said Joshua with great candor. “If I was to give to thinkin’ I’d o’ moved out to Chicago an’ been scalpin’ Indians to-day.”

“I wonder if that trip to New York was good for her?” Arethusa wondered mildly.

Joshua flicked Billy with the whip and refused to voice any opinion as to New York’s effect on his mistress.

Arethusa was well on her way to Boston when Aunt Mary’s bell, rung with a sharp jangle, summoned Lucinda to open her bedroom blinds. While Lucinda was leaning far out and attempting to cause said blinds to catch on the hooks, which habitually held them back against the side of the house, her mistress addressed her with a suddeness which showed that she had awakened with her wits surprisingly well in hand.

“Where’s Joshua? Is he got back from Arethusa? Answer me, Lucinda.”

Lucinda drew herself in through the open window with an alacrity remarkable for one of her years.

“Yes, he’s back,” she yelled.

Aunt Mary looked at her with a sort of incensed patience.

“Well, what’s he doin’? If he’s back, where is he? Lucinda, if you knew how hard it is for me to keep quiet you’d answer when I asked things. Why in Heaven’s name don’t you say suthin’? Anythin’? Anythin’ but nothin’, that is.”

“He’s mowin’,” Lucinda shrieked.

“Sewin’!” exclaimed Aunt Mary. “What’s he sewin’? Where’s he sewin’? Have you stopped doin’ his darnin’?”

Lucinda gathered breath by compressing her sides with her hands, and then replied, directing her voice right into the ear-trumpet:

“He’s mowin’ the back lawn.”

Aunt Mary winced and shivered.

“My heavens, Lucinda!” she exclaimed, sharply. “I wish’t there was a school to teach outsiders the use of an ear-trumpet. They can’t seem to hit the medium between either mumblin’ or splittin’ one’s ear drums.”

Lucinda was too much out of breath from her effort to attempt any audible penitence. Her mistress continued:

“Well, you find him wherever he is, and tell him to harness up the buggy and go and get Mr. Stebbins as quick as ever he can. Hurry!”

Lucinda exited with a promptitude that fulfilled all that her lady’s heart could wish. She found Joshua whetting his scythe.

“She wants Mr. Stebbins right off,” said Lucinda.

“Then she’ll get Mr. Stebbins right off,” said Joshua. And he headed immediately for the barn.

Lucinda ran along beside him. It did seem to Lucinda as if in compensation for her slavery to Aunt Mary she might have had a sympathizer in Joshua.

“I guess she wants to change her will,” she panted, very much out of breath.

“Then she’ll change her will,” said Joshua. And as his steady gait was much quicker than poor Lucinda’s halting amble, and as he saw no occasion to alter it, the conversation between them dwindled into space then and there.

Half an hour later Billy went out of the drive at a swinging pace and an hour after that Mr. Stebbins was brought captive to Aunt Mary’s throne.

She welcomed him cordially; Lucinda was promptly locked out, and then the old lady and her lawyer spent a momentous hour together. Mr. Stebbins was taken into his client’s fullest confidence; he was regaled with enough of the week’s history to guess the rest; and he foresaw the outcome as he had foreseen it from the moment of the rupture.

Aunt Mary was very sincere in owning up to her own past errors.

“I made a big mistake about the life that boy was leadin’,” she said in the course of the conversation. “He took me everywhere where he was in the habit of goin’, an’ so far from its bein’ wicked, I never enjoyed myself so much in my life. There ain’t no harm in havin’ fun, an’ it does cost a lot of money. I can understand it all now, an’ as I’m a great believer in settin’ wrong right whenever you can, I want Jack put right in my will right off. I want—” and then were unfolded the glorious possibilities of the future for her youngest, petted nephew. He was not only to be reinstated in the will, but he was to reign supreme. The other four children were to be rich—very rich,—but Jack was to be _the_ heir.

Mr. Stebbins was well pleased. He was very fond of Jack and had always been particularly patient with him on that account. He felt that this was a personal reward of merit, for it cannot be denied that Jack had certainly cashed very large checks on the bank of his forbearance.

When all was finished, and Joshua and Lucinda had been called in and had duly affixed their signatures to the important document, the buggy was brought to the door again and Mr. Stebbins stepped in and allowed himself to be replaced where they had taken him from.

Joshua returned alone.

“There, what did I tell you!” said Lucinda, who was waiting for him behind the wood-house,—“she did want to change her will.”

“Well, she changed it, didn’t she?” said Joshua.

“I guess she wants to give him all she’s got, since that week in New York,” said Lucinda.

“Then she’ll give him all she’s got,” said Joshua.

Lucinda’s eyes grew big.

“An’ she’ll give it to you, too, if you don’t look out and stay where you can hear her bell if she rings it,” Joshua added, with his usual frankness, and then he whipped up Billy and drove on to the barn.

Arethusa returned late in the afternoon, very warm, very wilted. Aunt Mary looked over the cotton purchase, and deigned to approve.

“But, my heavens, Arethusa,” she exclaimed immediately afterwards, “if you had any idea how dirty and dusty and altogether awful you do look, you wouldn’t be able to get to soap and water fast enough.”

At that poor Arethusa sighed, and, gathering up her hat, and hat-pins, and veil, and gloves, and purse, and handkerchief, went away to wash.