Aunt Agatha

“ Agatha had fought Forbes' depression stubbornly while the week was young, and then as hope strengthened, with an audacious, irresistible gaiety that occasionally swept him off his feet. Never had it seemed so difficult to simulate age. A score of times a day she found it necessary to strangle a peal of girlish laughter, or tone it down to the subdued quaver appropriate to her years. It was incredibly irksome to subject her buoyant feet to the yoke of decorum. ”

“ I would keep you with me if I could, Merle, for you are just like my own child, but Ezra is not young;" and here Aunt Agatha's forehead grew puckered with anxiety.
"Oh, Aunt Agatha," I exclaimed, quite forgetting the gravity of my proposition in sudden, childish annoyance, "how can you call Uncle Keith, Ezra? It is such a hideous name."
"Not to my ears," she answered, quite calmly; "a wife never thinks her husband's name hideous. He loves to hear me say it, and I love to please him, for though you may not believe it, Merle, I think there are very few men to compare with your uncle." ”

“ Forbes' father."
Forbes took a step ahead, then halted, and stood with his feet a little apart, like one who balances himself on the deck of a heaving ship in a high sea. "But where," he stammered, "where is the other Miss Kent?"
"There is no other. My Great-aunt Agatha, for whom I was named, died twelve years ago."
There was a momentary palpitating silence which Julia was the first to break.
"And you mean," she arraigned her, "that all this summer you have been a deliberate impostor, palming yourself off on Mr. Forbes as an old woman, allowing him to think—oh, it's too shameful. ”

“ Her beautiful aunt, Lynn's mother, had made rather a mess of her life, in spite of the fact that she had had all and more than Agatha possessed in the way of beauty and fascination. One knew instinctively that Agatha would never fall into her mistakes. In the first place she would not wait till twenty-five before marrying; in the second place she would never dislike any man who fed and clothed her sumptuously; in the third place she would never be carried away by any indiscreet and expensive infatuation. ”

“ I have not been without my troubles; your uncle has been very ill, Merle, so ill that, at one time, I feared I might lose him; but Providence has been good to me and spared my dear husband.” And here Aunt Agatha’s voice trembled and her eyes grew misty. ”

“ We might telegraph him to make it Sunday week."
Agatha vetoed the suggestion. It was better that Mr. Warren should come as he had planned. "And besides," she added with swift return of her normal audacity, "if he is here you won't miss me so much."
"I shall miss you under any and all circumstances, dear lady." Forbes' air of animation had returned, and it was so great a relief to see him smiling again, that she resolutely shut her eyes to the pitfalls ahead.
"I shall get a girl from the neighborhood to do the cooking," explained Agatha. "And Miss Finch will mother you all in my place." ”

“ It makes me tired even to think of such a thing," admitted Agatha shamelessly. "But you don't get my point of view, Fritz. The kiss was to have been maternal or even grandmotherly. He thinks I am an old lady and in spite of everything, I regard myself from his standpoint. I never looked forward to a summer so much in all my life. It'll be like going to a play morning, noon and night."
Voices sounded on the stairs, a man's deep notes blending pleasantly with the fresh tones of a growing lad. Agatha seized Miss Finch's arm. ”

“ Forbes felt her figure stiffen against his arm, and instinct told him she was frightened. "What is the matter?" he cried, sickening with a new realization of his helplessness.
Agatha did not answer, but as she stared ahead she understood that doomsday had arrived unheralded. A young woman was tripping toward them, a handsome young woman, who even without beauty would have attracted all eyes by the distinction of her dress and bearing. It could be no other than Julia. ”

“ Agatha loved the orphanage and the orphans. The maternal instinct, always strong in her, exulted in the swarm of children on whom she could lavish herself. There was no urchin so refractory that Agatha could not find excuses for him, no little face so plain that she could not discern in it something of winsomeness. She saw the humor in the naughtiness of some unruly youngster where most of her associates perceived only irrefutable confirmation of the doctrine of original sin. Mrs. Van Horne, accustomed to aids who did their duty with automatic faithfulness, found Agatha too good to be true. ”

“ When we are unfit for work we are always incapable of pleasure; work is the wooing by which happiness is won.'"
"Yes, yes," I returned, rather impatiently, for Aunt Agatha, with all her perfections, was too much given to proverbial and discursive philosophy; "but to reduce this to practice, what work can I do in this weary world?"
"You cannot be a governess, not even a nursery governess, Merle," and here Aunt Agatha looked at me very gently, as though she knew her words must give me pain, and suddenly my cheeks grew hot and my eyelids drooped. Alas! I knew too well what Aunt Agatha meant ”

“ He died soon after, as you remember, but he often spoke of our week at Oak Knoll and his affectionate admiration for yourself.'"
A flicker of understanding illumined Miss Finch's blank face.
"I'm beginning to see daylight," she interrupted. "The man's fooled by the likeness of names. He thinks he's writing to your great-aunt, Agatha Kent. She'd be between sixty and seventy if she were living."
Agatha had already solved the puzzle. She nodded and read on, too interested to pause for discussion:
"'I have played in rather hard luck recently. ”

“ Agatha was crimson to her ears.
"It seems a shame," mused Forbes aloud. "Her whole life to be sacrificed for one step aside from the straight and narrow path. You and I know the world, Miss Kent. And we know—"
"Oh, please," protested Agatha faintly, "I don't know anything about it."
He leaned toward her quickly, touched by the appeal in her voice.
"Excuse me, Miss Kent. I know you belong to a generation whose women were trained to shut their eyes to a great many things. I don't believe in that theory of life, but I haven't any intention of violating your prejudices. ”

“ Aunt Agatha put a stop to it at last by taking my hand and putting me forcibly in Uncle Keith's big chair.
"Sit there and keep warm, Merle; the cab will not be here for another half hour; what is the use of our pretending that we are not exceedingly unhappy? My dear, you are leaving us with a sore heart, I can see that, and it only makes me love you all the better. Yes, indeed, Merle," for I was clinging to her now and sobbing softly under my breath; "and however things may turn out, whether this step be a failure or not, I will always say that you are a brave girl, who tried to do her duty." ”

“ Aunt Estelle caught her sleeve. "Can't you understand, Julia?" she hissed. "This place is a private asylum. That crazy old creature on the porch, and now him. It's perfectly plain. Let us go away at once."
Forbes caught most of this sibilant outburst. He turned white with anger. "Miss Kent?" he pleaded, and Agatha pulled herself together. Her voice was steady if slightly unnatural, as she answered, "Yes, I am here."
Forbes tried to laugh. The consciousness of being enveloped in baffling mystery made his blindness doubly intolerable. ”

“ Agatha looked after her darkly. She was instantly convinced that the speaker was the owner of a toy poodle.
A moment before the train pulled out, a man came into the Pullman and took his seat in the section opposite hers, glancing amiably at the promising little family across the aisle. Agatha shrank away from the look, feeling faint and sick. There was an ominous ringing in her ears. So strong was her sense of panic that if she had had another moment in which to act, she might have marshalled her brood off the train and trusted to finding some excuse that would satisfy Mrs. Van Horne. ”

“ Taking boarders is a good deal like getting married. There's a whole lot you've got to keep dark, or you might as well give up first as last."
Her outburst terminated in a sniff. Immediately the tip of her pale, seemingly bloodless little nose became as red as a cherry, the instantaneous sequel of tears, with Miss Finch.
[Pg 9]
"You're so smart, Agatha," she quavered. "If only you'd sell this house and wash your hands of Howard and me, who haven't the least claim on you, you could go to the city and look around and like enough find a husband. There's plenty of men who don't mind red hair." ”

“ Browne," said Agatha, laughing still.
"You must have precious little to love," said her aunt, knitting vigorously. She had known old Mr. Browne in her youth.
Agatha's laughter came to a sudden end. She sprang to her feet.
"Here is Edwy Darkham," said Agatha, moving to the window—"and looking so wild! Aunt Hilda, do come here! Oh!"—anxiously— "surely there is something wrong with him."
Across the lawn, running uncouthly, hideously—rolling from side to side—yet with astonishing speed, the idiot came. ”

“ In an argument he declares women always have the best of it, because they can talk the fastest, and never will own they are beaten; to raise objections would only be to strengthen you more in your purpose. I think," finished Aunt Agatha, in her softest voice, "that he hoped your plan would die a natural death, for he recommended me to withdraw all opposition."
Oh, the cunning of these men. I would not have believed all this of Uncle Keith. I was far too angry to talk any more to Aunt Agatha ”

“ No one could have guessed the fact of which she was so certain, that during the encounter she had ceased to be a girl, that she had leaped without any intervening [Pg 246] stages of maturity and middle life, straight to old age, that dreadful old age, beyond hope or joy, the age that is death in life. Agatha remembered wonderingly that once the mere flicker of sunshine through leaves, the mere fragrance of a flower, had a magic to quicken her pulses.
A little after three the carryall appeared. Howard was driving, and Forbes' suit-case and other impedimenta lay on the seat beside him. ”

“ Agatha was not thinking either of Warren or Forbes as she was bounced to the station, the baby in her arms and the three other children mixed in indistinguishably with the luggage. Children are an admirable antidote to unprofitable thinking, because of their capacity for demanding one's entire attention. There were two little girls between three and four years, who looked rather like twins, but were not even sisters, and there was a boy soon to be five. The baby was just getting old enough to be afraid of strangers and was fretful because of teething. ”

“ He sat down beside her, and looked at her little pale face, outlined against the western window, with such a depth of pity that it seemed to make his voice quieter and colder than ever when he spoke, because it required such an effort to speak at all.
"To-morrow, Agatha, I shall take you to your Aunt Irene. Every girl needs a woman's care, and she will watch over you as faithfully as if you were her own." ”

“ Deacon Wiggins, or Mrs. James Doolittle?"
"I'm afraid you're not as serious-minded as you ought to be, Agatha," chided Miss Finch. "Marriage is 'most anything you like except a joke, and you can't make a joke of it, no matter how hard you try." As she moved toward the house with her two letters, leaving Agatha to collect the widely scattered mail, her face wore a troubled, anxious look, as if the fateful solemnity of the married state already had reached out from the future and enveloped her. ”

“ In her spiritual make-up there is none of that subtle gosh-awfulness which renders such an exhibit as, say, my Aunt Agatha the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all. ”

“ It's what a man is himself that counts with me."
"Then I suppose it's the deacon," said Agatha, with youth's characteristic readiness to jump at conclusions.
"I don't know, I'm sure. Don't hurry a body so, Agatha." Miss Finch spoke more sharply than was her wont. "If you were picking out a husband at my time of life, you wouldn't want to be rushed so that, like enough, you'd pick the wrong man."
Agatha shook her head. "No, Fritz, if I ever became such a heart-breaker that I had a batch of proposals in a single mail, I'd take as long as I could to make up my mind. ”

“ And as her protest stirred him to a most uncharacteristic irritation, she yielded the point without further argument.
"Of course, if you really want to get rid of us, we'll go. Only I hate to leave you alone."
"I'm better company for myself than for others, dear lady. I'd rather be alone for a little. I'll try to sleep and perhaps I'll wake in a better humor."
Her only thought an impatient haste to have the ordeal over, Agatha started out, Howard in attendance. But her dejection yielded by degrees to the magic of the summer afternoon. ”

“ Charlie Briggs was the first to discover him. [Pg 330] "My man's come back," he shouted jubilantly and ran into Forbes' arms. Agatha's eyes followed him, and she stopped short, her flushed cheeks paling. For a moment Forbes thought her about to faint and started to his feet to assist her, but immediately she had regained her self-control and walked steadily to her seat, though as a matter of fact she did not feel the floor beneath her feet and was scarcely conscious of the child in her arms. He had come back and intuition told her why.
Forbes rose and crossed the aisle. ”