The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary Read online

  CHAPTER TWO - JACK

  The news was conveyed to Aunt Mary through private advices from Mr.Stebbins (who had been hastily summoned to the city for purposes of bail);she was very angry indeed, this time--primarily at the indignity done herflesh and blood by arresting it. Then, as she re-read the lawyer's letter,other reflections crowded to the fore in her mind.

  "Funny! Whatever could have made the boy get up and go downtown at threein the morning, anyway?" she said. "Seems kind of queer, don't you think,Arethusa? Do you suppose he was ill and huntin' for a drug store?"

  Arethusa had been sent for the second day previous because Lucinda'syoungest sister's youngest child had come down with scarlet fever, and thefamily wanted Lucinda to enliven the quarantine. Arethusa had sentinvitations out for a dinner party, but she had recalled them and hastenedto obey the summons. It was an evil hour for her, for she loved herbrother and was mightily distressed at the bad news.

  "I don't believe he can have been ill," she said, at the top of her voice;"if he'd been ill he wouldn't have had the strength to hit the cab driverso hard."

  "I don't blame him for hittin' the cab driver," said Aunt Mary warmly. "Asnear as I can recollect, I've often wanted to do that myself. But I can'tmake out where he got the man to hit, or why he was there to hit him. Ican't make rhyme or reason out of it. I wish we knew more. Well, I presumewe will, later."

  Her surmise was correct. They knew much more later. They knew more fromMr. Stebbins, and they knew profusely more from the evening papers.

  "I think our boy'd better have come home for his Easter," Aunt Maryremarked, with a species of angry undertow threading the current of herspeech. "There's no sayin' what this will cost before we're done with it."

  Arethusa choked; it was all so very terrible to her.

  "What is it that the cabman wants, anyhow?" her aunt demanded presently.

  "He doesn't want anything," yelled the unhappy sister. "He's going todie."

  "Well, who is going to sue me, then?"

  "It's his wife; she wants five thousand dollars damages."

  Aunt Mary's lips tightened.

  "Five thousand dollars!" she said, with a bitter patience. "I can see thatthis is goin' to be an awful business. Five thousand dollars! Dear, dear!I must say that that wife sets a pretty high price on her husband--atleast, a'cordin' to my order of thinkin', she does. From what I've seen ofcabmen, I'd undertake to get her another just as good for a tenth of themoney, any day."

  Arethusa was silent, staring thoughtfully at the newspaper cuts of a greatTammany leader and a noted pugilist, which had been labeled as theprincipals in the family tragedy.

  Aunt Mary turned over another of the many papers received, and scanned itssensational columns afresh.

  "Arethusa," she exclaimed suddenly, "do you know, I bet anythin' I knowwhat this editor means to insinuate? It just strikes me that he's tryin'to give the impression that our boy's been drinkin'."

  "Perhaps so," Arethusa screamed.

  "Well, I don't believe it," said Aunt Mary firmly, "and I ain't goin' tobelieve it. And I ain't goin' to pay no five thousand dollars for nocabman's brains, neither. You write to Mr. Stebbins to compromise on twoor maybe three."

  She stopped and bit her lips and shook her head. "I don't see why Jackgrows up so hard," she murmured, half in anger and half in sorrow. "Edwardand Henry never had such times. Oh, well," she sighed, "boys will be boys,I suppose; an' if this all results in the boy's settlin' down it'll bemoney well spent in the end, after all. Maybe--probably--most likely."

  The days that followed were anxious days, but at last the cabman ralliedand concluded not to die, and Jack went off yachting with a light heartand a choice collection of good advice from Mr. Stebbins and Aunt Mary.

  Nothing happened to mar his holiday. He ran a borrowed steam launch on tosome rocks with rather heavy consequences to his aunt's exchequer, andreturned from the West Indies so late that she never had a visit from himat all that summer; but, barring these slightly unwelcome incidents, hedid remarkably well, and when he returned to college in the fall he wasregarded as having become, at last, a stable proposition.

  "I wonder whether our boy's comin' home for Christmas?" Aunt Mary askedher niece, Mary, as that happy period of family reunions drew near. Maryhad come up to stay with her aunt while Lucinda went away to bury a secondcousin. Mary was very different from Arethusa, having a voice that, whenraised, was something between an icicle and a steam whistle, and atemperament so much on the order of her aunt's that neither could abidethe other an hour longer than was absolutely necessary. But Arethusa had asprained ankle, so there was no help for existing circumstances.

  "No, he isn't," said Mary, who had no patience at all with her brother,and showed it. "He's going West with the glee club."

  "With the she club!" cried poor Aunt Mary, in affright.

  Mary explained.

  "I don't like the idea," said the old lady, shaking her head. "Somethin'will be sure to happen. I can feel it runnin' up and down my bones thisminute."

  "Oh, if he can get into trouble, of course, Jack will," said Marycheerfully.

  Aunt Mary didn't hear her, because she didn't raise her voiceparticularly. Besides, the old lady was absorbed for the nonce in the mostdismal sort of prognostications.

  And they all came true, too. Something unfortunate beyond all expectationscame to pass during the glee club's visit to Chicago, and the result wasthat, before the new year was well out of its incubator Jack had papers ina breach-of-promise suit served on him. He wrote Mr. Stebbins that it wasall a joke, and had merely been a portion of that foam which a train ofyouthful spirits are apt to leave in their wake; but the girl stood solidfor her rights, and, as she had never heard from her fiance since thenight of the dance, her family--who were rural, but sharp--thought it wouldtake at least fifteen thousand dollars to patch the crack in her heart. Ifthe news could have been kept from Aunt Mary until after Mr. Stebbins hadlooked into the matter, everything might have resulted differently. Butthe Chicago lawyer who had the case took good care that the wealthy auntknew all as quickly as possible, and it seemed as if this was the finalstraw under which the camel must succumb.

  And Aunt Mary did appear to waver.

  "Fifteen thousand dollars!" she cried, aghast. "Heaven help us! Whatnext?"

  It was Lucinda who was seated calmly opposite at this crisis.

  "Do you suppose he really did it?" the aunt continued, after a minute ofappalled consideration.

  "It's about the only thing he ain't never done," the tried and trueservant answered, her tone more gratingly penetrative than ever.

  Aunt Mary eyed her sharply, not to say furiously.

  "I wish you'd give a plain answer when I ask you a plain question,Lucinda," she said coldly. "If you'd ever got a breach-of-promise suit inthe early mail you'd know how I feel. Perhaps--probably."

  "I ain't a doubt but what he done it," Lucinda screamed out; "an' if I washer an' he wouldn't marry me after sayin' he would I'd sue him for ahundred thousand, an' think I let him off cheap then."

  Aunt Mary deigned to smile faintly over the subtlety of this speech; butthe next minute she was frowning blacker than ever.

  "A girl from Kalamazoo, too, just up in Chicago for a week--just up inChicago long enough to come down on me for fifteen thousand dollars."

  "Maybe she'll take five thousand instead," Lucinda remarked.

  "Maybe!" ejaculated her mistress, in fine scorn. "Maybe! Well, if youdon't talk as if money was sweet peas an' would dry up if it wasn'tpicked!"

  Lucinda screwed up her face.

  Aunt Mary gave her one awful look.

  "You get me some paper an' my desk, Lucinda," she said. "I think it'sabout time I was takin' a hand in it myself. I've been pretty patient, an'I don't see as it's helped matters any. Now I'm goin' to write that boy aletter that'll settle him an' his cats, an' his cooks, an' his cabmen, an'his Kalamazoo, just once for all. I guess I can do what I set out to do.Pretty generally--most a
lways."

  Lucinda brought the desk, and Aunt Mary frowned fearfully and began towrite the letter.

  It developed very strongly. As her pen sized up the situation in black andwhite, the old lady seemed to realize the iniquities of the case more andmore plainly; and as the letter grew her wrath grew also. The whole came,in the end, to a threat--made in good earnest--to take a very serious stepindeed if any more "foolishness" developed.

  Aunt Mary prided herself on her granite-like will. She had full faith inher ability to slay her nearest and dearest if it seemed right and best todo so.

  She sealed her letter tight, stuck the stamp on square and hard, and bidLucinda convey it to Joshua and tell him never to quit it until he saw itsafe on to the evening train.

  "She's awful mad at him for sure, this time," said Lucinda after she haddelivered her message, and while Joshua was considering the front and backof the letter with a deliberateness born of long servitude.

  "I sh'd think she would be," he said.

  As nearly all of Jack's private difficulties were printed in everynewspaper in America, Joshua naturally was on the inside of all theirhistory.

  "She scrinched up her face just awful over that letter," Lucindacontinued. "I'm sure I wish he'd 'a' been by to 'a' taken warnin'."

  "He ain't got nothin' to really fret over," said Joshua serenely; "heknows it, 'n' I know it, 'n' you know it, too."

  "You don't know nothin' of the sort," said Lucinda. "She's madder'n usualthis time. She's good an' mad. You mark my words, if he goes off on a'nother spree this spring he'll get cut out o' her will."

  Joshua laughed.

  "You mark my words!" rasped Lucinda, shaking her finger in witchlikewarning.

  Joshua laughed again.

  "Them laughs best what laughs last," said Aunt Mary's handmaiden. Sheturned away, and then returned to give Joshua a look that proved that thepeppery mistress had inculcated some cayenne into the souls of those abouther. "You mark my words--them laughs best what laughs last, an' there'll belittle grinnin' for him if he ain't a chalk-walker for one while now."

  Joshua laughed.

  But, as a matter of fact, Jack's situation was suddenly become extremelyprecarious.

  "There ain't no sense in it," said Aunt Mary to herself, with an emphasisthat screwed her face up until she looked quite like Lucinda; "that lifethose young men lead on their little vacations is to blame for everything.Cities are wells of iniquity; they're full of all kinds of doin's thatrespectable people wouldn't be seen at, and I'm proud to say that Ihaven't been in one myself for twenty-five years. I'm a great believer inkeepin' out of trouble, an' if Jack'd just stuck to college an' let townsgo, he'd never have met the cabman and the Kalamazoo girl, an' I'd haveoverlooked the cook an' the cat. As it is, my patience is done. If he goesinto one more scrape he'll be done too. I mean what I say. So my young manhad better take warnin'. Probably--most likely--pretty certainly."