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 circ.u.mstances.
"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 pa.s.s 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 succ.u.mb.
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.
"Do you suppose he really did it?" the aunt continued, after a minute of appalled consideration.
"It"s about the only thing he ain"t never done," the tried and true servant 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 in the 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 was her an" he wouldn"t marry me after sayin" he would I"d sue him for a hundred thousand, an" think I let him off cheap then."
Aunt Mary deigned to smile faintly over the subtlety of this speech; but the next minute she was frowning blacker than ever.
"A girl from Kalamazoo, too, just up in Chicago for a week-just up in Chicago long enough to come down on me for fifteen thousand dollars."
"Maybe she"ll take five thousand instead," Lucinda remarked.
"Maybe!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her mistress, in fine scorn. "Maybe! Well, if you don"t talk as if money was sweet peas an" would dry up if it wasn"t picked!"
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"s about 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 a letter 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 always."
Lucinda brought the desk, and Aunt Mary frowned fearfully and began to write the letter.
It developed very strongly. As her pen sized up the situation in black and white, the old lady seemed to realize the iniquities of the case more and more 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 step indeed if any more "foolishness" developed.
Aunt Mary prided herself on her granite-like will. She had full faith in her ability to slay her nearest and dearest if it seemed right and best to do so.
She sealed her letter tight, stuck the stamp on square and hard, and bid Lucinda convey it to Joshua and tell him never to quit it until he saw it safe on to the evening train.
"She"s awful mad at him for sure, this time," said Lucinda after she had delivered her message, and while Joshua was considering the front and back of 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 every newspaper in America, Joshua naturally was on the inside of all their history.
"She scrinched up her face just awful over that letter," Lucinda continued. "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; "he knows it, "n" I know it, "n" you know it, too."
"You don"t know nothin" of the sort," said Lucinda. "She"s madder"n usual this 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 witchlike warning.
Joshua laughed again.
"Them laughs best what laughs last," said Aunt Mary"s handmaiden. She turned away, and then returned to give Joshua a look that proved that the peppery mistress had inculcated some cayenne into the souls of those about her. "You mark my words-them laughs best what laughs last, an" there"ll be little 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 extremely precarious.
"There ain"t no sense in it," said Aunt Mary to herself, with an emphasis that screwed her face up until she looked quite like Lucinda; "that life those 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 that respectable people wouldn"t be seen at, and I"m proud to say that I haven"t been in one myself for twenty-five years. I"m a great believer in keepin" out of trouble, an" if Jack"d just stuck to college an" let towns go, he"d never have met the cabman and the Kalamazoo girl, an" I"d have overlooked the cook an" the cat. As it is, my patience is done. If he goes into one more sc.r.a.pe he"ll be done too. I mean what I say. So my young man had better take warnin". Probably-most likely-pretty certainly."
CHAPTER THREE - INTRODUCING JACK
It has been previously stated that Aunt Mary"s nephew, Jack, was a scapegrace, and as delightful as scapegraces generally are. It goes without saying that he was good-looking; and of course he must have been jolly and pleasant or he wouldn"t have been so popular. As a matter of fact, Jack was very good-looking, unusually jolly, and uncommonly popular.
He was one of the best liked men in each of the colleges which he had attended. There was something so winning about his smile and his eternal good humor that no one ever tried to dislike him; and if anyone ever had tried he or she would not have succeeded for very long. It is probably very unfortunate that the world is so full of this type of young man, but that which should cause us all to have infinite patience with them is the reflection of how much more unfortunate it would be if they were suddenly eliminated from the general scheme of things.
Like all college boys, Jack had a chum. The chum was Robert Burnett, another charming young fellow of one-and-twenty, whose education had been so cosmopolitan in design and so patriotic in practice that he always said "Sacre bleu" and "Donnerwetter" when he thought of it, and "Great Scott"
when he didn"t. He and Jack were as congenial a pair as ever existed, and they had just about as much in common as the aunt of the one and the father of the other had had to pay for.