Cloudy Jewel & Aunt Crete's Emancipation. Grace Livingston Hill
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protect the pleasant little woman, in whose service she had already been well paid, against the two women that were so evidently of the common walks of life, and were trying to ape those that in the eyes of the maid were their betters? However it was, Marie prolonged her duties a good half-hour, and Luella’s impatience waxed furious, so that she lost her fear of the maid gradually, and yawned loudly, declaring that Aunt Crete had surely had enough fussing over for one evening.
They held in their more personal remarks until the door finally closed upon Marie, but burst forth so immediately that she heard the opening sentences through the transom, and thought it wise to step to the young gentleman’s door and warn him that his elderly relative of whom he seemed so careful was likely to be disturbed beyond a reasonable hour for retiring. Then she discreetly withdrew, having not only added to her generous income by a good bit of silver, but also having followed out the dictates of her heart, which had taken kindly to the gentle woman of the handsome clothes and few pretensions.
“Well, upon my word! I should think you’d be ashamed, Aunt Crete!” burst forth Luella, arising from the bed in a majesty of wrath. “Sitting there, being waited on like a baby, when you ought to be at home this minute earning your living. What do you think of yourself, anyway, living in this kind of luxury when you haven’t a cent in the world of your own, and your own sister, who has supported you for years, up in a little dark fourth-floor room? Such selfishness I never saw in all my life. I wouldn’t have believed it of you, though we might have suspected it long ago from the foolish things you were always doing. Aunt Crete, have you any idea how much all this costs?”
She waved her hand tragically over the handsome room, including the trunk standing open, and the gleam of silver-gray silk that peeped through the half-open closet door. Aunt Crete fairly cringed under Luella’s scornful eyes.
“And you, nothing in the world but a beggar, a beggar! That’s what you are—a beggar dependent upon us; and you swelling around as if you owned the earth, and daring to wear silk dresses and real lace collars and expensive jewelry, and even having a maid, and shaming your own relatives, and getting in ahead of us, who have always been good to you, and taking away our friends, and making us appear like two cents! It’s just fierce, Aunt Crete! It’s—it’s heathenish!” Luella paused in her anger for a fitting word, and then took the first one that came.
Aunt Crete winced. She was devoted to the Woman’s Missionary Society, and it was terrible to be likened to a heathen. She wished Luella had chosen some other word.
“I should think you’d be so ashamed you couldn’t hold your head up before your honest relatives,” went on the shameless girl. “Taking money from a stranger,—that’s what he is, a stranger,—and you whining round and lowering yourself to let him buy you clothes and things, as if you didn’t have proper clothes suited to your age and station. He’s a young upstart coming along and daring to buy you any—and such clothes! Do you know you’re a laughing-stock? What would Mrs. Grandon say if she knew whom she was inviting to her automobile rides and dinners? Think of you in your old purple calico washing the dishes at home, and scrubbing the kitchen, and ask yourself what you would say if Mrs. Grandon should come to call on you, and find you that way. You’re a hypocrite, Aunt Crete, an awful hypocrite!”
Luella towered over Aunt Crete, and the little old lady looked into her eyes with a horrible fascination, while her great grief and horror poured down her sweet face in tears of anguish that would not be stayed. Her kindly lips were quivering, and her eyes were wide with the tears.
Luella saw that she was making an impression, and she went on more wildly than before, her fury growing with every word, and not realizing how loud her voice was.
“And it isn’t enough that you should do all that, but now you’re going to spoil my prospects with Clarence Grandon. You can’t keep up this masquerade long; and, when they find out what you really are, what will they think of me? It’ll be all over with me, and it’ll be your fault, Aunt Crete, your fault, and you’ll never have a happy moment afterwards, thinking of how you spoiled my life.”
“Now, Luella,” broke in Aunt Crete solemnly through her tears, “you’re mistaken about one thing. It won’t be my fault there, for it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, poor child. I’m real sorry for you, and I meant to tell you just as soon as we got home, for I couldn’t bear to spoil your pleasure while we were here; but that Clarence Grandon belongs to some one else. He ain’t for you, Luella, and there must have been some mistake about it. Perhaps he was just being kind to you. For Donald knows him real well, and he says he’s engaged to a girl out West, and they’re going to be married this fall; and Donald says she’s real sweet and——”
But Aunt Crete’s quavering voice stopped suddenly in mild affright, for Luella sprang toward her like some mad creature, shaking her finger in her aunt’s face, and screaming at the top of her voice:
“It’s a lie! I say it’s a lie! Aunt Crete, you’re a liar; that’s what you are with all the rest.”
And the high-strung, uncontrolled girl burst into angry sobs.
No one heard the gentle knock that had been twice repeated during the scene, and no one saw the door open until they all suddenly became aware that Donald stood in the room, looking from one face to another in angry surprise.
Donald had not retired at once after bidding Aunt Crete good night. He found letters and telegrams awaiting his attention, and he had been busy writing a letter of great importance when the maid gave him the hint of Aunt Crete’s late callers. Laying down his pen, he stepped quietly across the private parlor that separated his room from his aunt’s, and stopped a moment before the door to make sure he heard voices. Then he had knocked, and knocked again, unable to keep from hearing the most of Luella’s tirade.
His indignation knew no bounds, and he concluded his time had come to interfere; so he opened the door, and went in.
“What does all this mean?” he asked in a tone that frightened his Aunt Carrie, and made Luella stop her angry sobs in sudden awe.
No one spoke, and Aunt Crete looked a mute appeal through her tears. “What is it, dear aunt?” he said, stepping over by her side, and placing his arm protectingly round the poor, shrinking little figure, who somehow in her sorrow and helplessness reminded him strongly of his own lost mother. He could not remember at that moment that the other woman, standing hard and cold and angry across the room, was also his mother’s sister. She did not look like his mother, nor act like her.
Aunt Crete put her little curled white head in its crisping-pins down on Donald’s coat-sleeve, and shrank into her pink and gray kimono appealingly as she tried to speak.
“It’s just as I told you, Donald, you dear boy,” she sobbed out. “I—oughtn’t to have come. I knew it, but it wasn’t your fault. It was all mine. I ought to have stayed at home, and not dressed up and come off here. I’ve had a beautiful time; but it wasn’t for me, and I oughtn’t to have taken it. It’s just spoiled Luella’s nice time, and she’s blaming me, just as I knew she would.”
“What does my cousin mean by using that terrible word to you, which I heard as I entered the room?”
Donald’s voice was keen and scathing, and his eyes fairly piercing as he asked the question and looked straight at Luella, who answered not a word.
“That wasn’t just what she’d have meant, Donald,” said Aunt Crete apologetically. “She was most out of her mind with trouble. You see I had to tell her what you told me about that Clarence Grandon being engaged to another girl——”
“Aunt Crete, don’t say another word about that!” burst out Luella with flashing eyes and crimson face.
“For mercy’s sake, Crete, can’t you hold your tongue?” said Luella’s mother sharply.
“Go on, Aunt Crete; did my cousin call you a liar for saying