The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary by Anne Warner

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Author of "A Woman's Will," "Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop,"
"Susan Clegg and a Man in the House," etc.
_NEW EDITION_
_With Additional Pictures from the Play_

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1910

_Copyright, 1904,_
By Ainslee Magazine Company.

_Copyright, 1905,_
By Little, Brown, and Company.

_Copyright, 1907,_
By Little, Brown, and Company,

_All rights reserved_

Fourteenth Printing

Printers
S.J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

[_Frontispiece_]

Aunt Mary en Fete. May Robson as "Aunt Mary."

_Books by Anne Warner_
A Woman's Will 1904
Susan Clegg and Her 1904
Friend Mrs. Lathrop
The Rejuvenation of Aunt 1905
Mary
Susan Clegg and Her 1906
Neighbor's Affairs
Susan Clegg and a Man in 1907
the House
An Original Gentleman 1908
In a Mysterious Way 1909
Your Child and Mine 1909

CONTENTS

Illustrations
Chapter One - Introducing Aunt Mary
Chapter Two - Jack
Chapter Three - Introducing Jack
Chapter Four - Married
Chapter Five - The Day After Falling in Love
Chapter Six - The Other Man
Chapter Seven - Developments
Chapter Eight - The Resolution He Took
Chapter Nine - The Downfall of Hope
Chapter Ten - The Woes of the Disinherited.
Chapter Eleven - The Dove of Peace
Chapter Twelve - A Trap For Aunt Mary
Chapter Thirteen - Aunt Mary Entrapped
Chapter Fourteen - Aunt Mary En Fete
Chapter Fifteen - Aunt Mary Enthralled
Chapter Sixteen - A Reposeful Interval
Chapter Seventeen - Aunt Mary's Night About Town
Chapter Eighteen - A Departure And A Return
Chapter Nineteen - Aunt Mary's Return
Chapter Twenty - Jack's Joy
Chapter Twenty-One - The Peace and Quiet of the Country
Chapter Twenty-Two - "Granite"
Chapter Twenty-Three - "Granite" - Continued.
Chapter Twenty-Four - Two Are Company
Chapter Twenty-Five - Grand Finale

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Aunt Mary en fete" (May Robson as "Aunt Mary") _Frontispiece_
"'Do not let us play any longer,' she said. 'Let us be in earnest'"
"'She's goin' to the city all alone!' Lucinda's voice suddenly
proclaimed behind him"
Aunt Mary and Her Escorts
"The carriage stopped three hundred feet below the level of a
roof-garden"
"And now the fun's all over and the work begins"
"'Yesterday I played poker until I didn't know a blue chip from a
white one'"
"Aunt Mary had also had her eyes open"

THE REJUVENATION OF AUNT MARY

CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCING AUNT MARY

The first time that Jack was threatened with expulsion from college his
Aunt Mary was much surprised and decidedly vexed--mainly at the college.
His family were less surprised, viewing the young man through a clearer
atmosphere than his Aunt Mary ever had, and knowing that he had barely
escaped similar experiences earlier in his career by invariably leaving
school the day before the board of inquiry convened.

Jack's preparatory days having been more or less tempestous, his family
(Aunt Mary excepted) had expected some sort of after-clap when he entered
college. Nevertheless, they had fervently hoped that it would not be quite
as bad as this.

Jack's sister Arethusa was visiting her aunt when the news came. Not
because she wanted to, for the old lady was dreadfully deaf and fearfully
arbitrary, but because Lucinda had said that she must go to her cousin's
wedding, and the family always had to bow to Lucinda's mandates. Lucinda
was Aunt Mary's maid, but she had become so indispensable as a sitter at
the off-end of the latter's ear-trumpet that none of the grand-nephews or
grand-nieces ever thought for an instant of crossing one of her wishes. So
it was to Arethusa that the explanations due Aunt Mary's interest in her
scapegrace fell, and she bowed her back to the burden with the resignation
which the circumstances demanded.

"Whatever is the difference between bein' expelled and bein' suspended?"
Aunt Mary demanded, in her tone of imperious impatience. "Well, why don't
you answer? I was brought up to speak when you're spoken to, an' I'm a
great believer in livin' up to your bringin' up--if you had a good one.
What's the difference, an' which costs most? That's what I want to know. I
do wish you'd answer me, Arethusa; there's two things I've asked you now,
an' you suckin' your finger an' puttin' on your thimble as if you were
sittin' alone in China."

"I don't know which costs most," Arethusa shrieked.

"You needn't scream so," said Aunt Mary. "I ain't so hard to hear as you
think. I ain't but seventy, and I'll beg you to remember _that_, Arethusa.
Besides, I don't want to hear you talk. I just want to hear about Jack.
I'm askin' about his bein' expelled and suspended, an' what's the
difference, an' in particular if there's anything to pay for broken glass.
It's always broken glass! That boy's bills for broken glass have been
somethin' just awful these last two years. Well, why don't you answer?"

"I don't know what to answer," Arethusa screamed.

"What do you suppose he's done, anyhow?"

"Something bad."

Aunt Mary frowned.

"I ain't mad," she said sharply. "What made you think I was mad? I ain't
mad at all! I'm just askin' what's the difference between bein' expelled
an' bein' suspended, an' it seems to me this is the third time I've asked
it. Seems to me it is."

Arethusa laid down her work, drew a mighty breath, very nearly got into
the ear-trumpet, and explained that being suspended was infinitely less
heinous than being expelled, and decidedly less final.

Aunt Mary looked relieved.

"Oh, then he's gettin' better, is he?" she said. "Well, I'm sure that's
some comfort."

And then there was a long pause, during which she appeared to be engaged
in deep reflection, and her niece continued her embroidery in peace. The
pause endured until a sudden sneeze on the part of the old lady set the
wheels of conversation turning again.

"Arethusa," she said, "I wish you'd go an' get the ink an' write to Mr.
Stebbins. I want him to begin to look up another college with good
references right away. I don't want to waste any of the boy's life, an' if
bein' suspended means waitin' while the college takes its time to consider
whether it wants him back again or not I ain't goin' to wait. I'm a great
believer in a college education, but I don't know that it cuts much figure
whether it's the same college right through or not. Anyway, you write Mr.
Stebbins."

Arethusa obeyed, and the authorities having seen fit to be uncommonly
discreet as to the cause of the young man's withdrawal, no great
difficulty was experienced in finding another campus whereon Aunt Mary's
pride and joy might freely disport himself. Mr. Stebbins threw himself
into the affair with all the tact and ardor of an experienced legal mind
and soon after Lucinda's return to her home allowed Arethusa to follow
suit, the hopeful younger brother of the latter became a candidate for his
second outfit of new sweaters and hat bands that year.

Aunt Mary wrote him a letter upon the occasion of his new start in life,
Mr. Stebbins delivered him a lecture, and things went smoothly in
consequence for three whole weeks. I say three whole weeks because three
whole weeks was a long time for the course of Jack's life to flow
smoothly. At the end of a fortnight affairs were always due to run more
rapidly and three weeks produced, as a general thing, some species of
climax.

The climax in this case came to time as usual his evil genius inciting the
young man to attempt, one very dark night, the shooting of a cat which he
thought he saw upon the back fence. Whether he really had seen a cat or
not mattered very little in the later development of the matter. He was
certainly successful as far as the going off of the gun was concerned, but
the damage that resulted, resulted not to any cat, but to the arm of a
next-door's cook, who was peacefully engaged in taking in her week's wash
on the other side of the fence. The cook ceased abruptly to take in the
wash, the affair was at once what is technically termed looked into, and
three days later Jack became the defendant in a suit for damages.

Naturally Mr. Stebbins was at once notified and he had no choice except to
write Aunt Mary.

Aunt Mary was somewhat less patient over the third escapade than she had
been with the first two.

The letter found her alone with Lucinda and she read it to herself three
times and then read it aloud to her companion. Lucinda, whose thorough
knowledge of the imperious will and impervious eardrums of her mistress
rendered her, as a rule, extremely monosyllabic, not to say silent,
vouchsafed no comment upon the contents of the epistle, and after a few
minutes Aunt Mary herself took the field:

"Now, what do you suppose possessed that boy to shoot at a cook?" she
asked, regarding the letter with a portentous frown. "Cooks are so awful
hard to get nowadays. I don't see why he didn't shoot a tramp if he had to
shoot somethin'."

"He wa'n't tryin' to shoot a cook, 'pears like," then cried
Lucinda--Lucinda's voice, be it said, _en passant_, was of that sibilant
and penetrating timbre which is best illustrated in the accents of a
steamfitter's file--"'pears like he was tryin' for a cat."

"Not a bat," said her mistress correctively; "it was a cat. You look at
this letter an' you'll see. And, anyway, how could a man shootin' at a cat
hit a cook?--not 'nless she was up a tree birds'-nestin' after owls' eggs.
You don't seem to pay much attention to what I read to you, Lucinda; only
I should think your commonsense would help you out some when it comes to a
boy you've known from the time he could walk, an' a strange cook. But,
anyhow, that's neither here nor there. The question that bothers me is,
what's to pay with this damage suit? I think myself five hundred dollars
is too much for any cook's arm. A cook ain't in no such vital need of two
arms. If she has to shut the door of the oven while she's stirrin'
somethin' on the top of the stove, she can easy kick it to with her foot.
It won't be for long, anyway, and I'm a great believer in making the best
of things when you've got to."

Lucinda screwed up her face and made no comment. Lucinda's face in repose
was a cross between a monkey's and a peanut; screwed up, it was
particularly awful, and always exasperated her mistress.

"Well, why don't you say somethin', Lucinda? I ain't askin' your advice,
but, all the same, you can say anything if you've got a mind to."

"I ain't got a mind to say anythin'," the faithful maid rejoined.

"I guess you hit the nail on the head that time," said Aunt Mary, without
any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm; then she re-read
the note and frowned afresh.

"Five hundred dollars is too much," she said again. "I'm going to write to
Mr. Stebbins an' tell him so to-night. He can compromise on two hundred
and fifty, just as well as not. Get me some paper and my desk, Lucinda.
Now get a spryness about you."

Lucinda laid aside her work and forthwith got a spryness about her,
bringing her mistress' writing-desk with commendable alacrity. Aunt Mary
took the writing-desk and wrote fiercely for some time, to the end that
she finally wrote most of the fierceness out of herself.

"After all, boys will be boys," she said, as she sealed her letter, "and
if this is the end I shan't feel it's money wasted. I'm a great believer
in bein' patient. Most always, that is. Here, Lucinda you take this to
Joshua and tell him to take it right to mail. Be prompt, now. I'm a great
believer in doin' things prompt."

Lucinda took the letter and was prompt. "She wants this letter took right
to the mail," she said to Joshua, Aunt Mary's longest-tried servitor.

"Then it'll be took right to mail," said Joshua.

"She's pretty mad," said Lucinda.

"Then she'll soon get over it," replied the other, taking up his hat and
preparing to depart for the barn forthwith.

Lucinda returned to Aunt Mary with a species of dried-up sigh. One is not
the less a slave because one has been enslaved for twenty years, and
Lucinda at moments did sort of peek out through her bars--possibly envying
Joshua the daily drives to mail when he had full control of something that
was alive.

Lucinda had been, comparatively speaking, young when she had come to wait
upon the pleasure of the Watkins millions, and her waiting had been so
pertinent and so patient that it had endured over a quarter of a century.
Aunt Mary had been under fifty in the hour of Lucinda's dawn; she was over
seventy now. Jack hadn't been born then; he was in college now; and Jack's
older brothers and sisters and his dead-and-gone father and mother had
been living somewhere out West then, quite hopeful as to their own lives
and quite hopeless as to the stern old great-aunt who never had paid any
attention to her niece since she had chosen to elope with the doctor's
reprobate son. Now the father and mother were dead and buried, the
brothers and sisters reinstated in their rights and had all grown up and
become great credits to the old lady, whose heart had suddenly melted at
the arrival of five orphans all at once. And there was only Jack to
continue to worry about.

Jack was not anything particularly remarkable; he was just one of those
lovable good-for-nothings that seem born to get better people into trouble
all their lives long. He had been spoiled originally by being ten years
younger than the next youngest in the family; and then, when the children
had been shipped on to Aunt Mary's tender mercies, Jack had won her heart
immediately because she accidentally discovered that he had never been
baptized, and so felt fully justified in re-naming him after her own
father and having the name branded into him for keeps by her own religious
apparatus. It followed naturally that John Watkins, Jr., Denham, for so
her father's daughter had insisted that her youngest nephew should be
called, was the favorite nephew of his aunt.

And it was lucky for him that he was the favorite, for Aunt Mary, who was
highly spiced at fifty, became peppery at sixty, and almost biting at
seventy. And yet for Jack she would sign checks almost without a murmur.
Mr. Stebbins was much more censorious and impatient with the young man
than she ever was; and to all the rest of the world Mr. Stebbins was an
urbane and agreeable gentleman, whereas to all the rest of the world Aunt
Mary was a problem or a terror. But Mr. Stebbins needed to be a man of
tact and management, for he was the real manager of that fortune of which
"Mary, only surviving child of John Watkins, merchant and ship owner," was
the legal possessor; and so tactful was Mr. Stebbins that he and his
powerful client had never yet clashed, and they had been in close business
relations for almost as many years as Lucinda had been established on the
hearthstone of the Watkins home. Perhaps one reason why Mr. Stebbins
endured so well was that he had a real talent for compromising, and that
he had skillfully transformed Aunt Mary's inherited taste for driving a
bargain into an acquired pleasure in what is really a polite form of the
same action.

So, when it came to the matter of Jack's difficulties, Mr. Stebbins could
always find a half-way measure that saved the situation; and when he
received the letter as to the cook and her claim he hied himself to the
city at once, and wrote back that the claim could be settled for three
hundred dollars.

"And enough, I must say," Aunt Mary remarked to Lucinda upon receipt of
the statement; "three hundred dollars for one cat--for, after all, Jack
blames the whole on the cat, an' he didn't hit it, even then."

Lucinda did not answer.

"But if the boy settles down now I shan't mind payin' the three--Where are
you goin'?"

For Lucinda was walking out of the room.

"I'm goin' to the door," said she raspingly. "The bell's ringin'."

After a minute or two she came back.

"Telegram!" she announced, handing the yellow envelope over.

Aunt Mary put on her glasses, opened it, and read:

Cook has blood poison. Sues for a thousand. Probable amputation.

STEBBINS.

Aunt Mary dropped the paper with a gasp.

Lucinda looked at her with interest.

"It's that same arm again," said Aunt Mary, "just as I thought it was
settled for!" Her eyes seemed to fairly crackle with indignation. "Why
don't she put it in a sling an' have a little patience?"

Lucinda took the telegram and read it.

"'Pears like she can't," she commented, in a tone like a buzz saw; "'pears
like it's goin' to be took off."

Aunt Mary reached forth her hand for the telegram and after a second
reading shook her head in a way that, if her companion had been a
globe-trotter, would have brought matadores and Seville to the front in
her mind in that instant.

"I declare," she said, "seems like I had enough on my mind without a cook,
too. What's to be done now? I only know one thing! I ain't goin' to pay no
thousand dollars this week for no arm that wasn't worth but three hundred
last week. Stands to reason that there ain't no reason in that. I guess
you'd better bring me my desk, Lucinda; I'm goin' to write to Mr.
Stebbins, an' I'm goin' to write to Jack, and I'm goin' to tell 'em both
just what I think. I'm goin' to write Jack that he'd better be lookin'
out, and I'm goin' to write to Mr. Stebbins that next time he settles
things I want him to take a receipt for that arm in full."

The letters were duly written and Mr. Stebbins, upon the receipt of his,
redoubled his efforts, and did succeed in permanently settling with the
cook, the arm being eventually saved. Aunt Mary regarded the sum as much
higher than necessary, but still pleasantly less than that demanded of
her, and so life in general moved quietly on until Easter.

But Easter is always a period of more or less commotion in the time of
youth and leads to various hilarious outbreaks. Jack's Easter took him to
town for a "little time," and the "little time" ended in the station-house
at three o'clock on Sunday morning.

Accusation: Producing concussion of the brain on a cab driver.

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 her
flesh 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 three
in 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's
youngest sister's youngest child had come down with scarlet fever, and the
family wanted Lucinda to enliven the quarantine. Arethusa had sent
invitations out for a dinner party, but she had recalled them and hastened
to obey the summons. It was an evil hour for her, for she loved her
brother 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 driver
so hard."

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

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

"I think our boy'd better have come home for his Easter," Aunt Mary
remarked, with a species of angry undertow threading the current of her
speech. "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 to
die."

"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 that
this 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--at
least, a'cordin' to my order of thinkin', she does. From what I've seen of
cabmen, I'd undertake to get her another just as good for a tenth of the
money, any day."

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

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

"Arethusa," she exclaimed suddenly, "do you know, I bet anythin' I know
what 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' to
believe it. And I ain't goin' to pay no five thousand dollars for no
cabman's brains, neither. You write to Mr. Stebbins to compromise on two
or maybe three."

She stopped and bit her lips and shook her head. "I don't see why Jack
grows up so hard," she murmured, half in anger and half in sorrow. "Edward
and 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 be
money well spent in the end, after all. Maybe--probably--most likely."

The days that followed were anxious days, but at last the cabman rallied
and concluded not to die, and Jack went off yachting with a light heart
and 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 to
some rocks with rather heavy consequences to his aunt's exchequer, and
returned from the West Indies so late that she never had a visit from him
at all that summer; but, barring these slightly unwelcome incidents, he
did remarkably well, and when he returned to college in the fall he was
regarded as having become, at last, a stable proposition.

"I wonder whether our boy's comin' home for Christmas?" Aunt Mary asked
her niece, Mary, as that happy period of family reunions drew near. Mary
had come up to stay with her aunt while Lucinda went away to bury a second
cousin. Mary was very different from Arethusa, having a voice that, when
raised, was something between an icicle and a steam whistle, and a
temperament so much on the order of her aunt's that neither could abide
the other an hour longer than was absolutely necessary. But Arethusa had a
sprained 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 this
minute."

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

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

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

And Aunt Mary did appear to waver.

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

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

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