Aunt Crete looked round upon her visitors with a rested, rosy3 countenance4, which bloomed out under her fluff of soft, white hair, and quite startled her sister with its freshness and youth. Could it be possible that this was really her sister Crete; or had she made a terrible mistake, and entered the wrong apartment?
But a change came suddenly over the ruddy countenance of Aunt Crete as over the face of a child that in the midst of happy play sees a trouble descending5 upon it. A look almost of terror came over her, and she caught her breath, and waited to see what was coming.
“Why, Carrie, Luella!” she gasped6 weakly. “I thought you’d gone to bed. Marie’s just doing up my hair for night. She’s been giving me a face-massage.[118] You ought to try one. It makes you feel young again.”
Marie looked over Luella and her mother, beginning with the painfully elaborate arrangement of hair, and going down to the tips of their boots. Luella’s face burned with mortification8 as she read the withering9 disapproval10 in the French woman’s countenance.
“Let’s sit down till she’s done,” said Luella, dropping promptly11 on the foot of Aunt Crete’s bed and gazing around in frank surprise over the spaciousness12 of the apartment.
Thereupon the maid ignored them, and went about her work, brushing out and deftly13 manipulating the wavy14 white hair, and chattering15 pleasantly meanwhile, just as if no one else were in the room. Aunt Crete tried to forget what was before her, or, rather, behind her; but her hands trembled a little as they lay in her lap in the folds of the pretty pink and gray challis kimono she wore; and all of a sudden she remembered the unwhitewashed cellar, and the uncooked jam, and the unmade shirt-waists, and the little hot brick house gazing at her reproachfully from the distant[119] home, and she here in this fine array, forgetting it all and being waited upon by a maid—a lazy truant16 from her duty.
Did the heart of the maid divine the state of things, or was it only her natural instinct that made her turn to 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 impatience17 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 forth18 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 discreetly19 withdrew, having not only added to her generous income by a good bit of silver, but also having followed[120] out the dictates20 of her heart, which had taken kindly21 to the gentle woman of the handsome clothes and few pretensions22.
“Well, upon my word! I should think you’d be ashamed, Aunt Crete!” burst forth Luella, arising from the bed in a majesty23 of wrath24. “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 tragically25 over the handsome room, including the trunk standing26 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 swelling27 around as if you owned the earth, and daring to wear silk dresses[121] and real lace collars and expensive jewelry28, 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 winced29. She was devoted30 to the Woman’s Missionary31 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 whining32 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 inviting33 to her automobile34 rides and dinners? Think of you in your old purple calico washing the dishes at home, and scrubbing the kitchen, and ask yourself[122] 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 fascination35, while her great grief and horror poured down her sweet face in tears of anguish36 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 prospects37 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[123] 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:
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 retired40 at once after bidding Aunt Crete good night. He found letters and[124] 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 parlor41 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 tirade42.
His indignation knew no bounds, and he concluded his time had come to interfere43; 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 awe44.
No one spoke45, 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.
[125]
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 sobbed46 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 scathing47, 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[126] that!” burst out Luella with flashing eyes and crimson48 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 that? Yet it was entirely49 true. If she is not disposed to believe me either, I can call Mr. Grandon in to testify in the matter. He will come if I send for him. But I feel sure, after all, that that will not be necessary. It is probably true, as Aunt Crete says, that you were excited, Luella, and did not mean what you said; and after a good night’s sleep you will be prepared to apologize to Aunt Crete, and be sorry enough for worrying her. I am going to ask you to leave Aunt Crete now, and let her rest. She has had a wearying day, and needs to be quiet at once. She is my mother’s sister, you know, and I feel as if I must take care of her.”
“You seem to forget that I am your mother’s sister, too,” said Aunt Carrie coldly, as she stood stiff and disapproving50 beside the door, ready to pass out.
“If I do, Aunt Carrie, forgive me,” said Donald courteously51. “It is not strange when you remember that you forgot that I was your sister’s child,[127] and ran away from me. But never mind; we will put that aside and try to forget it. Good night, Aunt Carrie. Good night, Cousin Luella. We will all feel better about it in the morning.”
They bowed their diminished heads, and went with shame and confusion to the fourth floor back; and, when the door was closed upon them, they burst into angry talk, each blaming the other, until at last Luella sank in a piteous heap upon the bed, and gave herself over to helpless tears.
“Luella,” said her mother in a business-like tone, “you stop that bawling52, and sit up here and answer me some questions. Did you or did you not go riding with Mr. Clarence Grandon last winter in his automobile?”
“Why, it was a rainy day,” sobbed out the girl, “and I met him on the street in front of the public library the day I’d been to take back ‘The Legacy55 of Earl Crafton,’ and that other book by the same author——”
“Never mind what books; tell me what happened,” said the exasperated56 mother.
[128]
“Well, if you’re going to be cross, I sha’n’t tell you anything,” was the filial reply; and for a moment nothing was heard in the room but sobs.
However, Luella recovered the thread of her story, and went on to relate how in company with a lot of other girls she had met Mr. Grandon the day before at the golf-links, where a championship game was being played. She did not explain the various manœuvres by which she had contrived57 to be introduced to him, nor that he had not seemed to know her at first when she bowed in front of the library building. She had called out, “It’s a fine day for ducks, Mr. Grandon; isn’t it good the game was yesterday instead of to-day?” and he had asked her to ride home with him.
That was her version. Her mother by dint58 of careful questioning finally arrived at the fact that the girl had more than hinted to be taken home, having loudly announced her lack of rubbers and umbrella, though she seldom wore rubbers, and had on a rain-coat and an old hat.
“But how about the big box of chocolates he sent you, Luella? That was a very particular attention to show you if he was engaged.”
“O,” pouted59 Luella, “I don’t suppose that meant[129] anything either, for I caught him in a philopena on the way home that day. We said the same words at the same time, something like ‘It’s going to clear off,’ and I told him, when we girls did that, the one that spoke first had to give the other a box of chocolates; so the next day he sent them.”
“Luella, I never brought you up to do things like that. I don’t think that was very nice.”
“O, now, ma, don’t you preach. I guess you weren’t a saint when you were a girl. Besides, I don’t think you’re very sympathetic.” She mopped her swollen60 eyes.
“Luella, didn’t he ever pay you any more attention after that? I kind of thought you thought he liked you, by the way you talked.”
“No, he never even looked at me,” sobbed the girl, her grief breaking out afresh. “He didn’t even know me the next time we met, but stared straight at me till I bowed, and then he gave me a cold little touch of his hat. And down here he hasn’t even recognized me once. I suppose that lady mother of his didn’t like my looks.”
“Look here, Luella; I wish you’d act sensible. This has been pretty expensive trying to run around after the Grandons. Here’s the hotel bills, and all that dress-making, and now no telling how[130] Aunt Crete will act after we get home. Like as not she’ll think she’s got to have a maid, and dress in silks and satins. There’s one comfort; probably some of her clothes will fix over for you when she gets off her high horse and comes down to every-day living again. But I wish you’d brace61 up and forget these Grandons. It’s no use trying to get up in the world higher than you belong. There’s that nice John Peters would have been real devoted to you if you’d just let him; and he owns a house of his own already, and has the name of being the best plumber62 in Midvale.”
Luella sighed.
“He’s only a plumber, ma, and his hands are all red and rough.”
“Well, what’s that?” snapped her practical mother. “He may have his own automobile before long, for all that. Now dry up your eyes, and go to sleep; and in the morning do you go down real early, and apologize to your silly Aunt Crete, and make her understand that she’s not to disgrace us under any consideration by going in bathing while she’s here. My land! I expect to see her riding round on one of those saddle-ponies on the beach next, or maybe driving that team of goats we saw to-day, with pink ribbon reins63. Come now, Luella,[131] don’t you worry. Set out to show your cousin Donald how nice you can be, and maybe some of the silk dresses will come your way. Anyhow, this can’t last forever, and John Peters is at home when we get there.”
So Luella, soothed64 in spirit, went to bed, and arose very early the next morning, descending upon poor Aunt Crete while yet the dreams of sailing alone with Donald on a moonlit sea were mingling65 with her waking thoughts.
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1
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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massage
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| n.按摩，揉；vt.按摩，揉，美化，奉承，篡改数据 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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7
affronted
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| adj.被侮辱的，被冒犯的v.勇敢地面对( affront的过去式和过去分词 )；相遇 | |
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mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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spaciousness
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| n.宽敞 | |
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deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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wavy
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| adj.有波浪的，多浪的，波浪状的，波动的，不稳定的 | |
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15
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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16
truant
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| n.懒惰鬼，旷课者；adj.偷懒的，旷课的，游荡的；v.偷懒，旷课 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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21
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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24
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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tragically
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| adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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40
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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41
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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42
tirade
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| n.冗长的攻击性演说 | |
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43
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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44
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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45
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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46
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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47
scathing
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| adj.（言词、文章）严厉的，尖刻的；不留情的adv.严厉地，尖刻地v.伤害，损害（尤指使之枯萎）( scathe的现在分词) | |
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48
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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49
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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50
disapproving
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| adj.不满的，反对的v.不赞成( disapprove的现在分词 ) | |
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51
courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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52
bawling
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的现在分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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53
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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54
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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55
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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56
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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57
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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58
dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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59
pouted
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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61
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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62
plumber
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| n.(装修水管的)管子工 | |
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63
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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64
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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65
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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