Chapter 23

to mail them and the others agree to pay for the ink.

I wish to remark at once that we did not sleep any last night. Jack told us at dinner, and we spent the evening making a melancholy tour of places where we had been with you. If you had only been with us! The roof gardens are particularly desolate without you. The whole of the city seems to realize it. The watering carts weep from dawn to dark. All the lamp-posts are wearing black. It is sad at one extreme and sadder at the other.

You must brace up. If you can’t do that try a belt. Life is too short to spend in bed. My motto has always been “Spend freely everywhere else.” At present I recommend anything calculated to mend you. I may in all modesty mention that just before Christmas I shall be traveling north and shall then adore to stop and cheer you up a bit if you invite me. I have made it an invariable rule, however, not to stay over night anywhere when I am not invited, so I hope you will consider my feelings and send me an invitation.

My eyes fill as I think what it will be to sit beside you and recall dear old New York. It will be the next best thing to being run over by an automobile, won’t it?

Yours, with fondest recollections, HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.

Aunt Mary laid the letter down.

“Lucinda,” she said in a curiously veiled tone, “give me a handkerchief—a big one. As big a one as I’ve got.”

Lucinda did as requested.

“Now, go away,” said Aunt Mary.

Lucinda went away. She went straight to Joshua.

“She’s had a letter an’ read it an’ it’s made her cry,” she said.

“That’s better’n if it made her mad,” said Joshua, who was warming his hands at the stove.

“I ain’t sure that it won’t make her mad later,” said Lucinda. “Say, but she is a Tartar since she came back. Seems some days’s if I couldn’t live.”

“You’ll live,” said Joshua, and, as his hands were now well-warmed, he went out again.

After a while Aunt Mary’s bell jangled violently and Lucinda had to hurry back.

“Lucinda, did the doctor say anythin’ to you about how long he thought I might be sick?”

“Yes, he did.”

“What did he say? I want to know jus’ what he said. Speak up!”

“He said he didn’t have no idea how long you’d be sick.”

Aunt Mary threw a look at Lucinda that ought to have annihilated her.

“I want to see Jack,” she said. “Bring my writin’ desk. Right off. Quick.”

She wrote to Jack, and he came up and spent the next Sunday with her, cheering her mightily.

“I wish the others could have come, too,” she said once an hour all through his visit. Mitchell’s letter seemed to have bred a tremendous longing within her.

“They’ll come later,” said Jack, with hearty good-will. “They all want to come.”

“I don’t know how we could ever have any fun up here though,” said his aunt sadly. “My heavens alive, Jack,—but this is an awful place to live in. And to think that I lived to be seventy before I found it out.”

Jack took her hand and kissed it. He did sympathize, even if he was only twenty-two and longing unutterably to be somewhere else and kissing someone else at that very minute.

“Mitchell wrote me a letter,” continued Aunt Mary. “He said he was comin’. Well, dear me, he can eat mince pie and drive with Joshua when he goes for the mail, but I don’t know what else I can do with him. Oh, if I’d only been born in the city!”

Jack kissed her hand again. He didn’t know what to say. Aunt Mary’s lot seemed to border upon the tragic just then and there.

The next day he returned to town and Lucinda came on duty again. She soon found that the nephew’s visit had rendered the aunt harder than ever to get along with.

“I’m goin’ to town jus’’s soon as ever I feel well enough,” she declared aggressively on more than one occasion. “An’ nex’ time I go I’m goin’ to stay jus’’s long as ever I’m havin’ a good time. Now, don’t contradict me, Lucinda, because it’s your place to hold your tongue. I’m a great believer in your holding your tongue, Lucinda.”

Lucinda, who certainly never felt the slightest inclination toward contradiction, held her tongue, and the poor, unhappy one twisted about in bed, and bemoaned the quietude of her environment by the hour at a time.

“Did you say we had a calf?” she asked suddenly one day. “Well, why don’t you answer? When I ask a question I expect an answer. Didn’t you say we had a calf?”

Lucinda nodded.

“Well, I want Joshua to take that calf to the blacksmith and have him shod behind an’ before right off. To-day—this minute.”

“You want the calf shod!” cried Lucinda, suddenly alarmed by the fear lest her mistress had gone light-headed.

Aunt Mary glared in a way that showed that she was far from being out of her usual mind.

“If I said shod, I guess I meant shod,” she said, icily. “I do sometimes mean what I say. Pretty often—as a usual thing.”

Lucinda stood at the foot of the bed, petrified and paralyzed.

Then the invalid sat up a little and showed some mercy on her servant’s very evident fright.

“I want the calf shod,” she explained, “so’s Joshua can run up an’ down the porch with him.”

So far from ameliorating Lucinda’s condition, this explanation rendered it visibly worse. Aunt Mary contemplated her in silence for a few seconds, and she suddenly cried out, in a tone that was full of pathos:

“I feel like maybe—maybe—the calf’ll make me think it’s horses’ feet on the pavement.”

Lucinda rushed from the room.

“She wants the calf shod!” she cried, bursting in upon Joshua, who was piling wood.

For once in his life Joshua was shaken out of his usual placidity.

“She wants the calf shod!” he repeated blankly.

“Yes.”

“You can’t shoe a calf.”

“But she wants it done.”

Joshua regained his self-control.

“Oh, well,” he said, turning to go on with his work, “the calf’s gone to the butcher, anyhow. Tell her so.”

Lucinda went back to Aunt Mary.

“The calf’s gone to the butcher,” she yelled.

Aunt Mary frowned heavily.

“Then you go an’ get a lamp and turn it up too high an’ leave it,” she said,—“the smell’ll make me think of automobiles.”

Lucinda was appalled. As a practical housekeeper she felt that here was a proposition which she could not face.

“Well, ain’t you goin’?” Aunt Mary asked tartly. “Of course if you ain’t intendin’ to go I’d be glad to know it; ’n while you’re gone, Lucinda, I wish you’d get me the handle to the ice-cream freezer an’ lay it where I can see it; it’ll help me believe in the smell.”

Lucinda went away and brought the handle, but she did not light the lamp. The Fates were good to her, though, for Aunt Mary forgot the lamp in her disgust over the appearance of the handle.

“Take it away,” she said sharply. “Anybody’d know it wasn’t an automobile crank. I don’t want to look like a fool! Well, why ain’t you takin’ it away, Lucinda?”

Lucinda took the crank back to the freezer; but as the days passed on, the situation grew worse. Aunt Mary slept more and more, and awoke to an ever-increasing ratio of belligerency.

Before long Lucinda’s third cousin demanded her assistance in “moving,” and there was nothing for poor Arethusa to do but to take up the burden, now become a fearfully heavy one.

Aunt Mary was getting to that period in life when the nearer the relative the greater the dislike, so that when her niece arrived the welcome which awaited her was even less cordial than ever.

“Did you bring a trunk?” she asked.

“A small one,” replied the visitor.

“That’s something to be grateful for,” said the aunt. “If I’d invited you to visit me, of course I’d feel differently about things.”

Arethusa accepted this as she accepted all things, unpacked, saw Lucinda off, assumed charge of the house, and then dragged a rocking chair to her aunt’s bedside and unfolded her sewing. Ere she had threaded her needle Aunt Mary was sound asleep, and so her niece sewed placidly for an hour or more, until, like lightning out of a clear sky:

“Arethusa!”

The owner of the name started—but answered immediately:

“Yes, Aunt Mary.”

“When I die I want to be buried from a roof garden! Don’t you forget! You’d better go an’ write it down. Go now—go this minute!”

Arethusa shook as if with the discharge of a contiguous field battery. She had not had Lucinda’s gradual breaking-in to her aunt’s new trains of thought.

“Aunt Mary,” she said feebly at last.

Aunt Mary saw her lips moving; she sat up in bed and her eyes flashed cinders.

“Well, ain’t you goin’?” she asked wrathfully. “When I say do a thing, can’t it be done? I declare it’s bad enough to live with a pack of idiots without havin’ ’em, one an’ all, act as if I was the idiot!”

Arethusa laid aside her work and rose to quit the room. She returned five minutes later with pen and ink, but Aunt Mary was now off on another tack.

“I want a bulldog!” she cried imperatively.

“A bulldog!” shrieked her niece, nearly dropping what she held in her hands. “What do you want a bulldog for?”

“Not a bullfrog!” the old lady corrected; “a bulldog. Oh, I do get so sick of your stupidity, Arethusa,” she said. “What should I or any one else want of a bullfrog?”

Arethusa sighed, and the sigh was apparent.

“I’d sigh if I was you,” said her aunt. “I certainly would. If I was you, Arethusa, I’d certainly feel that I had cause to sigh;” and with that she sat up and gave her pillow a punch that was full of the direst sort of suggestion.

Arethusa did not gainsay the truth of the sighing proposition. It was too apparent.

The next day Aunt Mary slept until noon, and then opened her eyes and simultaneously declared:

“Next summer I’m goin’ to have an automobile!”

Then she looked about and saw that she had addressed the air, which made her more mad than ever. She rang her bell violently, and Arethusa left the lunch table so hastily that she reached the bedroom half-choked.

“Next summer I’m goin’ to have an automobile,” said the old lady angrily. “Now, get me some breakfast.”

Her niece went out quickly, and a maid was sent in with tea and toast and eggs at once. Their effect was to brace the invalid up and make the lot of those about her yet more wearing.

“I shall run it myself,” she vowed, when Arethusa returned; “an’ I bet they clear out when they see me comin’.”

It did seem highly probable.

“I don’t know how I can live if I don’t get away from here soon,” she declared a few minutes later. “You don’t appreciate what life is, Arethusa. Seems like I’ll go mad with wantin’ to be somewhere else. I can see Jack gets his disposition straight from me.”

There was a sigh and a pause.

“I shall die,” Aunt Mary then declared with violence, “if I don’t have a change. Arethusa, you’ve got to write to Jack, and tell him to get me Granite.”

“Granite!” screamed the niece in surprise.

“Yes, Granite. She was a maid I had in New York. I want her to come here. She must come. Tell him to offer her anything, and send her C.O.D. If I can have Granite, maybe I’ll feel some better. You write Jack.”

“I’ll write to-night,” shrieked Arethusa.

“No, you won’t,” said Aunt Mary; “you’ll get the ink and write right now. Because I’ve been meeker’n Moses all my life is no reason why I sh’d be willin’ to be downtrodden clear to the end. Folks around me’d better begin to look sharp an’ step lively from now on.”

Arethusa went to the desk at once and wrote:

DEAR JACK: Aunt Mary wants the maid that she had when she was in New York. For the love of Heaven, if the girl is procurable, do get her. Hire her if you can and kidnap her if you can’t. Lucinda has played her usual trick on me and walked off just when she felt like it. I never saw Aunt Mary in anything like the state of mind that she is, but I know one thing—if you cannot send the maid, there’ll be an end of me.

Your loving sister, ARETHUSA.

Jack was much perturbed upon receipt of this letter. He whistled a little and frowned a great deal. But at last he decided to be frank and tell the truth to Mrs. Rosscott. To that end he wrote her a lengthy note. After two preliminary pages so personal that it would not be right to print them for public reading, he continued thus:

I’ve had a letter from my sister, who is with Aunt Mary at present. She says that Aunt Mary is not at all well and declares that she must have Janice. What under the sun am I to answer? Shall I say that the girl has gone to France? I’m willing to swear anything rather that put you to one second’s inconvenience. You know that, don’t you? etc., etc., etc. [just here the letter abruptly became personal again].

Jack thought that he knew his fiancée well, but he was totally unprepared for such an exhibition of sweet ness as was testified to by the letter which he received in return.

It’s first six pages were even more personal than his own (being more feminine) and then came this paragraph:

Janice is going to your aunt by to-night’s train. Now, don’t say a word! It is nothing—nothing—absolutely nothing. Don’t you know that I am too utterly happy to be able to do anything for anyone that you—etc., etc., etc.

Jack seized his hat and hurried to where his lady-love was just then residing. But Janice had gone!