“You take the high road,I’ll take the low.”
“You take the high road,I’ll take the low.”
“You take the high road,I’ll take the low.”
With all of its beauties, Grantly was undergoing a process of slow decay. Lack of paint and neglected leaks were getting in their insidious work. There never seemed to be money enough for the owners to afford the needed repairs, and if there ever was any money at all, they could never come to an agreement on which repairs were the most urgent.
The overseer’s house was suffering in the same way. A kind of dry rot had attacked portions of it. Weather-boarding was so loose in places that Bobby could pull it off. Steps groaned and floors creaked; shutters had lost fastenings; putty had dropped from the window panes, which were insecurely held in place with tacks; mop-boarding and floors had parted company many years before. All of these little details had escaped the inexperienced eyes of Douglasand Helen when they decided that this was the place of all others to spend the winter. Dr. Wright, who had accompanied them, had been more noticing, but had wisely decided to say nothing, as he wanted his patient to become interested in tinkering at small jobs, and he could see that this little farm would keep Mr. Carter busy.
The ladies of Grantly had promised to have everything in order before the tenants should arrive, but disagreeing on which workman they should employ, the time had slipped by and nothing had been done.
The pump to the well had lost its sucker and had to be primed before water could be got. This meant that the person who pumped must remember to fill a can of water and leave it for the next pumper. The yard gate shut with difficulty and opened with more. The stovepipe in the kitchen had a large hole in one side and if the wind shifted, so did the smoke, seeking an outlet through the nearest aperture.
All of these disagreeable features dawnedgradually on our girls. They saw nothing to be complained of in those rare October days. Accustomed as they had become to camp life, they made light of any inconveniences. Their father was happy and getting better every day, so any small hardships that might fall to their share were to be lightly borne.
That was the name Nan gave to the little winter home.
“Valhalla is the place where the dead warriors go, and that is what we all of us are after the day’s work is done.”
Commuting at first was very tiring for both Nan and Lucy. Catching trains was hard on their nerves and the trip seemed interminable, but in a few weeks they fell into the attitude of mind of all commuters and just accepted it as part of the daily routine. It became no more irksome than doing one’s hair or brushing one’s teeth.
The girls made many friends on the train and before the winter was over really enjoyed the time spent going to and from school. Billy Sutton was Nan’s devoted cavalier. He managed, if possible, to sit by her and together they wouldstudy. He helped her with her mathematics, and she, quick at languages, would correct his French exercises. Those were sad mornings for Billy when the seat by Nan was taken before they reached Preston. He cursed his luck that Preston should not have been beyond Grantly instead of a station nearer to town. Coming home he always saw to it that no “fresh kid” got ahead of him in the choice of seats. He would get to the station ahead of time and watch with eagle eye for Nan’s sedate little figure; then he would pounce on her like a veritable eagle and possess himself of her books and parcels. Thereafter no power could have separated him from her short of the brakeman who cruelly called out: “P-errr-reston!”
Billy’s younger sister Mag was of great assistance to her big brother in his manœuvres. She struck up a warm friendship with Lucy, and since the two younger girls were together, what more natural than that he and Nan should be the same?
“How would you like me to run you over tosee Lucy for a while this afternoon?” he would ask in the lordly and nonchalant manner of big brothers, and Mag would be duly grateful, all the time laughing in her sleeve, as is the way with small sisters.
The only person who ever got ahead of Billy on the homeward voyage was Count de Lestis. That man of the world with lordly condescension permitted Billy to carry all the books and parcels and then quietly appropriated the seat by Nan. That was hard enough, but what was harder was to see how Nan dimpled under the compliments the count paid her, and how gaily she laughed at his wit, and how easily she held her own in the very interesting conversation into which they plunged. Billy, boiling and raging, could not help catching bits of it. Actually Nan was quoting poetry to the handsome foreigner. With wonder her schoolboy friend heard her telling the count of how she had gone up in an aeroplane the preceding summer and what her sensations were. She had never told him all these things.
“And why is it you like so much to fly?” the count asked. “Is it merely the physical sensation?”
“Oh no, there is something else. I’ll tell you a little bit of poetry I learned the other day from a magazine. That is the way I feel, somehow:
“‘Well, good-by! We’re going!Where?Why there is no knowingWhere!We’ve grown tired, we don’t know why,Of our section of the sky,Of our little patch of air,And we’re going, going!Where?“‘Who would ever stop to care?—Far off land or farther seaWhere our feet again are free,We shall fare all unafraidWhere no trail or furrow’s made—Where there’s room enough, room enough, room enough for laughter!And we’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming at a long day’s close,We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming—perhaps, who knows?To-morrow—or the next day—or maybe the day after!“‘So good-by! We’re going!Why?O, there is no knowingWhy!Something’s singing in our veins,Something that no book explains.There’s no magic in your air!And we’re going, going!Where?“‘Where there’s magic and to spare!So we break our chains and go.Life? What is it but to knowSouthern cross and Pleiades,Sunny lands and windy seas;Where there’s time enough, time enough, time enough for laughter!We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming, so away! Away!We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming—or at least we may—Tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after!’”
“‘Well, good-by! We’re going!Where?Why there is no knowingWhere!We’ve grown tired, we don’t know why,Of our section of the sky,Of our little patch of air,And we’re going, going!Where?“‘Who would ever stop to care?—Far off land or farther seaWhere our feet again are free,We shall fare all unafraidWhere no trail or furrow’s made—Where there’s room enough, room enough, room enough for laughter!And we’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming at a long day’s close,We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming—perhaps, who knows?To-morrow—or the next day—or maybe the day after!“‘So good-by! We’re going!Why?O, there is no knowingWhy!Something’s singing in our veins,Something that no book explains.There’s no magic in your air!And we’re going, going!Where?“‘Where there’s magic and to spare!So we break our chains and go.Life? What is it but to knowSouthern cross and Pleiades,Sunny lands and windy seas;Where there’s time enough, time enough, time enough for laughter!We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming, so away! Away!We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming—or at least we may—Tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after!’”
“‘Well, good-by! We’re going!Where?Why there is no knowingWhere!We’ve grown tired, we don’t know why,Of our section of the sky,Of our little patch of air,And we’re going, going!Where?
“‘Who would ever stop to care?—Far off land or farther seaWhere our feet again are free,We shall fare all unafraidWhere no trail or furrow’s made—Where there’s room enough, room enough, room enough for laughter!And we’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming at a long day’s close,We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming—perhaps, who knows?To-morrow—or the next day—or maybe the day after!
“‘So good-by! We’re going!Why?O, there is no knowingWhy!Something’s singing in our veins,Something that no book explains.There’s no magic in your air!And we’re going, going!Where?
“‘Where there’s magic and to spare!So we break our chains and go.Life? What is it but to knowSouthern cross and Pleiades,Sunny lands and windy seas;Where there’s time enough, time enough, time enough for laughter!We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming, so away! Away!We’ll find our Land o’ Dreaming—or at least we may—Tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe the day after!’”
Nan Carter was a very charming girl at any time, but Nan Carter reciting poetry was irresistible. So the count found her. Her eyes looked more like forest pools than ever and the trembling Billy was very much afraid the handsome nobleman was going to fall into said pools. He gritted his teeth with the determination to beon the spot ready to pull him out by his aristocratic and well-shod heels if he should take such a tumble.
“Ah, you have the wanderlust, too! I’d like to go with you to your Land o’ Dreaming.” Fortunately Billy did not hear this remark, as the brakeman opened the door at this juncture and shouted the name of a station.
For once Billy was glad when the brakeman finally called: “P-err-reston!” If he had to get out, so had the hated count. He never had taken as much of a fancy to de Lestis as the other members of the neighborhood had, anyhow, and now he knew why he had never liked him.
“He is a selfish, arrogant foreigner,” he raged on in his boyish way. “He might have let me sit with Nan part of the way, anyhow.”
Nan went home quite pleased with the interesting conversation she had had on the train. The count was rapidly becoming a warm friend of the family. Everybody liked him but Lucy, and she had no especial reason for disliking him.
“He’s got no time for me and I guess that’sthe reason,” she said when questioned. “Mag doesn’t cotton to him much, either.”
“Well, I should think you would be glad for Father to have somebody to talk to,” said Helen. “You and Mag are too young to have much in common with a grown-up gentleman.”
“Pooh, Miss Grandmother! I’m most as old as Nan and he cottons to her for fair. I know why he doesn’t think much of Mag and me—it is because he knows we know he is nothing but a Dutchman.”
“Dutchman! Nonsense! Dutchmen proper come from Holland and Count de Lestis is a Hungarian.”
“Well, he can talk Dutch like a Prussian, anyhow. You oughter hear him jabbering with that German family that live over near Preston. He brings old Mr. Blitz newspapers all the time and they laugh and laugh over jokes in them; at least, they must be jokes to make them laugh so.”
“Of course the count speaks German. He speaks a great many languages,” declared Helenwith the dignified air that she thought necessary to assume when she and Lucy got in a discussion.
“Well, what’s the reason he ain’t fighting for his country? Tell me that! Mag says that Billy says that if his country was at war you wouldn’t catch him buying farms in strange countries, like this de Lestis. He says he’d be in the fight, if he couldn’t do anything but beat a drum.”
“But you see he is not in sympathy with the cause, child. All of the Austrians and Hungarians are not on the Kaiser’s side. A whole lot of them believe in a more democratic form of government than Emperor William wants. The count explained all that to Father. He says he could not conscientiously fight with Prussia against democracy.”
“All that sounds mighty fine but I like men that fight,” and Lucy tossed her head. “Me and Mag both like men that fight.”
“Mag and I,” admonished Helen.
The gentleman in question had just been off on a business trip. He had much business inNew York and Washington and sometimes made flying visits to Chicago. He was interested in a land agency and was hoping to import some Hungarian and Serbian families to the United States. He had bought up quite a tract of land in Virginia, making cash payments that showed he had unlimited means.
“They make excellent servants,” he told the Misses Grant, “far superior to your negroes. The Serbs are especially fine farmers. It is really a nation of yeomen. They could make the barren tracts of Virginia blossom like the rose.”
“Well, bring them over then.” The sisters almost agreed about this but they had a diverging point in that Miss Ella thought she would rather have a family of Hungarians, since that was the count’s nationality; while Miss Louise fancied some Serbs, because they were at least fighting on the side of the Allies.
But to return to “Valhalla.”
Douglas did not at all approve of the name Nan had given the little home. “I am not adead warrior when the day is over nor do I mean to be one ever,” she declared.
She started in on her winter of teaching with all the energy and vim of the proverbial new broom. She gloried in the fact that she was able to turn her education to some account; and while the remuneration of a country school teacher is certainly not munificent, it helped a great deal towards the family expenses.
The rent from the Carters’ pretty home in Richmond was all they had to live on now, except for a small sum in bank left over from the camp earnings. It would be possible to manage if no clothes had to be bought, and one and all promised to do with last year’s suits.
Only a born teacher could make a real success of a country school where thirty children must be taught in all grades up to high-school standing. It took infinite patience, boundless good humor, and a systematic saving of time, together with a keen sense of fun to get Douglas over each day. She found the school in a state of insurrection, due to having proved too much for the firstteacher, who had found urgent business elsewhere, and then for a series of substitutes until the present incumbent, Miss Douglas Carter, was installed.
She made a little speech the first morning, telling the pupils quite frankly that this was her first year of teaching but that it was not going to be her last; that she was determined to make good and she asked their help; that she was willing to give them all she had in the way of knowledge and strength but that they must meet her half-way and do their best. She gave them to understand from the very first that she intended to have good order and that obedience was to be the first lesson taught.
Most of the children fell into her plans with enthusiasm. Of course there were the reactionaries who had to be dealt with summarily. Bobby was one of them. He was very difficult to manage in school. Never having been under the least restraint before in all of his seven years, it was hard on him to have to sit still and pretend to study, and he made it harder on Douglas.The faction opposed to government in any form egged him on. They laughed at his impertinent remarks to the teacher and bribed him to do and say many outrageous things.
Poor Douglas was tempted to confess herself beaten as far as her little brother was concerned and give up trying to teach him. He was rather young for school, she almost fooled herself into believing; but there was a sturdiness and determination in Douglas Carter’s make-up that would not let her succumb to difficulties.
“I will succeed! He shall learn! My pupils must respect me, and if I can’t make my own little brother obey me, how can I expect to control the rest of them?”
She asked herself what she would do with any other pupil, not her brother, who gave her so much trouble.
“Write a note to his mother or father, of course,” she answered.
“But I can’t bear to bother Father, and Mother would blame me and no doubt pet Bobby. I’ll write a note to Dr. Wright and hisdisapproval will hurt Bobby more than anything that could happen.”
And so she wrote the following letter to Bobby’s employer:
Preston, Va., R. F. D. Route 1.November 1, 1916.Dear Dr. Wright:I am sorry to inform you that your chauffeur, Robert Carter, Jr., is misbehaving at school in such a way that his teacher is afraid he will have to be expelled. She has done everything in her power to make him be more considerate but he is very, very naughty and tries to worry his teacher all the time.Very sincerely,Douglas Carter.
Preston, Va., R. F. D. Route 1.November 1, 1916.
Dear Dr. Wright:
I am sorry to inform you that your chauffeur, Robert Carter, Jr., is misbehaving at school in such a way that his teacher is afraid he will have to be expelled. She has done everything in her power to make him be more considerate but he is very, very naughty and tries to worry his teacher all the time.
Very sincerely,Douglas Carter.
Dr. Wright telephoned that he would be down to see them on Saturday after receiving Douglas’s note; but the message was sent via Grantly, as the Carters had no telephone, and Miss Ella and Miss Louise could not agree just what his name was or when he said he was coming. So the matter was lost sight of in the wrangle that ensued and the word was not delivered until too late.
To Helen had fallen the most difficult and trying part of the program: training a cheap, country servant to the ways of civilization. Many times did she think of Miss Louise’s trained monkey as she labored with Chloe, with whom she had to start all over every day.
A seven o’clock breakfast must be ready for Nan and Lucy, and the one morning that she left it to Chloe the girls had to go off with nothing more comforting on their little insides than cold bread and milk. That was when the new maid had first arrived and Helen had not sounded the depths of her incompetence and ignorance.
“What would you have done in your own home if you had had to have an early breakfast for someone?” asked Helen, curious to know if the girl knew how to do anything.
“I’d ’a’ done what I done this mornin’: let ’um fill up on what col’ victuals they was lef’ on de she’f.”
Helen endeavored to introduce Chloe to the mysteries of the fireless cooker, which they had brought with them from camp, but the girl seemed to think there was some kind of magic in a thing that cooked without fire and would none of it.
“I ain’t a-goin’ ter tetch no sich hoodoo doin’s as dat ’ere box,” she asserted. “It mus’ hab a kinder debble in it ter keep it hot ’thout a piece er dry wood or nothin’.”
Helen was lifting out the pot full of steaming oatmeal that she had put in the cooker the night before, determined that her sisters should not have to go off again with such cold comfort.
“All right, you keep up the wood fire and I’ll attend to the fireless cooker,” laughed Helen. “What makes the stove smoke? It was burning all right yesterday.”
“Smoking ’cause dat hoodoo debble done gotin it,” and Chloe rolled her great eyes until nothing showed but the whites.
“Smoking because you’ve got the damper turned down,” and Helen righted the appliance. “Have you set the table?”
“Yassum!”
“Put everything on it just as I showed you yesterday?”
“Nom! I ain’t put nothin’ on it. I jes’ sot the cheers up to it, but all the gals is got ter do is jes’ retch the things off’n the sidebo’d.”
That meant that Helen must run and get the table set as quickly as possible as it was three minutes to seven.
Chloe followed her meekly to the dining-room to do her bidding.
“Run back to the kitchen, Chloe, and look at the biscuit, and see if they are burning,” cried Helen as she rapidly placed the silver on the table.
A few minutes later, having set the table she hastened to the kitchen. An ominous odor greeted her.
“Chloe, did you look at the biscuit?”
“Yassum! They was gettin’ ready to burn. I guess they is ’bout burned by now.”
“Oh, Chloe, why didn’t you take them out?” and poor Helen thought maybe she was going to weep with exasperation.
“You nebber tol’ me ter do mo’n look at ’em. My maw an’ Sis Tempy both done caution me not to be too frisky ’bout doin’ things ’til the white folks tells me. Tempy says white folks laks ter boss ’bout ev’ything.”
“Oh, for a trained monkey!” thought Helen. “I could at least give one a good switching.”
Chloe had only two characteristics to work on: one was perfect good-nature, the other unbounded health and strength. Helen wondered if she had enough material to go on to evolve even a passable servant. Anyhow she meant to try. She determined to do the cooking herself for a little while with Chloe as scullion, and also to have the girl do the housework.
Of course Mrs. Carter was of absolutely noassistance. She held to her purpose of semi-invalidism. The family would not listen to her when she offered the only sane suggestion for the winter: that they should oust the tenant and move back into their own pretty, comfortable, well-furnished home; Douglas to make her début in Richmond society and the other girls continue at school. As for money—why not just make bills? They had perfectly good credit, and what was credit for but to use? Dr. Wright had been so stern with her, and Douglas so severe and unfilial, and they had intimated that she wanted to kill her dear Robert, so she had just let them have their own way. She insisted she had not the strength to cope with these changed conditions and took on the habits of an invalid.
Helen, remembering how Susan, who was supposed to help with the cooking at the camp, had been kept busy waiting on her mistress, feared Chloe would be pressed into lady’s maid service, too. Indeed Mrs. Carter attempted it, but Chloe proved too rough for the job, and thatpoor lady was forced to run the ribbons in her lingerie herself.
Chloe’s cleaning was even worse than her cooking if such a thing was possible. She spread up the beds, leaving great wrinkles and bumps, which proved to be top sheets and blankets that she had not thought fit to pull up. When Helen remonstrated and made her take all the covers off to air before making the beds she obeyed, but put the covers back on regardless of sequence, with counterpanes next to the mattress and sheets on top, with blankets anywhere that her fancy dictated. She swept the dirt safely under the rugs; wiped up the floor with bath towels; and the crowning glory of her achievement was sticking all the tooth-brushes together.
Now when we remember that Helen herself had perhaps never made up a bed in her whole life until about eight months before this time, we may indeed have sympathy for her in her tribulations. Her days were full to running over, beginning very early in the morning and ending only after the family was fed at night.The cooking was not so difficult, as she had a genius for it and consequently a liking. Chloe could wash dishes after a fashion and clean the kitchen utensils, which was some comfort.
Mr. Carter always carried his wife’s breakfast tray to her room and waited on her like a devoted slave. He would even have run the ribbons in had she trusted him. All he could do for her now was wait on her and spoil her, and this he did to perfection. She was the same lovely little creature he had married and he was not unreasonable enough to expect her to be anything else. He did not think it strange that his little canary could not turn herself into a raven and feed him when he was hungry. His tenderness to his wife was so great that his daughters took their keynote from him and their patience towards their mother was wonderful. They vied with one another in their attentions to the parent that they would not let themselves call selfish.
Helen cooked her little dainties; Nan kept her in light literature from the circulating library in town; Lucy scoured the fields for mushroomsthat a late fall had made plentiful; Douglas always brought her the choice fruit and flowers that her pupils showered on her; even Bobby did his part by bringing her ripe persimmons that the frost had nipped just enough to make delicious. Mr. Carter was often able to bring her in a partridge or a young hare. On the whole life wasn’t so bad. When one felt perfectly well, semi-invalidism was a pretty pleasant state. As for society: the count was a frequent visitor and the ladies from Grantly most attentive. The Suttons had called, too, several times, and other county families were finding the Carters out. It was easy to treat the fact that they were living in the overseer’s house as a kind of joke. Of course, anyone could tell that they were not the kind of persons who usually lived in overseers’ houses.
Chloe was the thorn in the flesh, the fly in the ointment for Mrs. Carter. Chloe could not be laughed away,—Chloe was no joke. Accustomed to trained, highly-paid servants to do her bidding, this rough, uncouth ourang-outangwas more than the dainty little lady could stand.
The very first time Count de Lestis called, Mrs. Carter happened to be alone in the house except for Chloe, Mr. Carter having gone to Preston for much-needed nails and Helen having run up to Grantly to ask the advice of Miss Ella on the best way to preserve some late pears. A knock and Chloe promptly fell down the steps in her eagerness to get to the door. She had been up in Douglas’s and Helen’s room attempting to make up the bed to suit Miss Helen.
“Thank Gawd I fell down instidder up! If’n I had ’a’ fell up I wouldn’t ’a’ got ma’ied dis year,” and she picked herself up and dived at the front door.
“Are Mr. and Mrs. Carter and the young ladies at home?” Mrs. Carter heard in the count’s fine baritone.
“Nawsir! The boss is done gone ter Preston ter fetch some nails ter try ter bolster up this here ole shack, an’ Miss Douglas is done gone ter her teachin’ job an’ Miss Helen is done steppedup to see Miss Ellanlouise ’bout ’zervin’ some ole hard pears——”
“And how about Mrs. Carter?” in an amused voice.
“Oh, she is a-layin’ on the sofy tryin’ ter git sick.”
“Is she ill?” solicitously.
“Naw! She is jes’ plum lazy. She’s too lazy ter chaw an’ has ter have all her victuals fixed soft like.”
“Well, will you please take her this card?”
“That there ticket?”
Imagine Mrs. Carter’s mortification, when the grinning Chloe came running into the sitting-room with the count’s card crushed in her eager hand, to discover that the wretched girl was in her stocking feet; capless, with her wrapped plaits sticking out all over her head like quills upon the fretful porcupine; her apron on hind part before.
“Chloe! Where is your cap?” exclaimed that elegant lady.
“Well, lawsamussy! I done forgot about it.It do make my haid eatch so I done pulled it off.”
“And your shoes?”
“I’s savin’ them fer big meetin’ nex’ year.”
“And why do you wear your apron in the back? Put it on right this minute.”
“Well, Ole Miss, my dress was siled an’ my ap’on was clean, so I jes’ slid it ’roun’ behinst so it wouldn’t git siled, too.”
Nothing but the fact that the count was cooling his heels on the front porch kept Mrs. Carter from weeping outright. Old Miss, indeed! All she could do was feebly tell Chloe to ask the gentleman in.
If Count de Lestis had been ushered in by a butler in livery he could not have entered in a more ceremonious manner. He bowed low over the fair lady’s hand, kissing her finger-tips lightly. Even the spectacle of Chloe’s walking off, with her clean apron on hind part before and her shoeless condition disclosing large holes in the heels of her stockings, did not upset his gravity. He, too, realized that Chloe was no joke.
Afterwards Chloe said to Helen:
“That sho’ is a pretty man what comed ter see you alls. I ain’t knowin’ yit what made him stoop over an’ smell yo’ ma’s hand. Cose she mus’ smell pow’ful good with never put’n her hands in nothin’ mo’ than her own victuals.” Helen was weak with laughter.
“What fer they call him a count, Miss Helen? Is it ’cause he spen’ all his time a-countin’ out money? They do say he is pow’ful good an’ kin’ ter the niggers. Some say he likes niggers better’n what he does white folks, but I says that is plum foolish. Anyhow, he talks mighty sweet to ’em an’ don’t never call ’em low down triflin’ black rascals whin they gits kinder lop-sided with liquor, like some of the county gents does whin hands gits so fur gone they can’t git in the craps. He done started a night school over at Weston what his secondary is teachin’.”
“I didn’t know he had a secretary,” exclaimed Helen, “but it certainly is kind of him to try and help the poor colored people. I wish you could go to night school, Chloe.”
“Lawd, Gawd, no! Miss Helen! I ain’t got no call to larn.”
“Can’t you read at all, Chloe?”
“Well, I kin read whin they is picters ter go by. I done been ter school mos’ six months countin’ the diffunt years what I started, but my ma, she say my haid was too hard an’ she ’fraid it might git cracked open if’n teacher tried to put any mo’ in it. She say some folks is got sof’ haids what kin stretch an’ they ain’t so ap’ ter bus’ open, haids kinder like hog bladders what you kin keep on a-blowin’ up.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to teach you to read, Chloe?” asked Helen, feeling rather ashamed that this foreigner should come to Virginia and take more interest in the education of the negroes than she should ever have done. “I believe I could teach you without breaking your head open.”
“Anything you says do I’ll do, but I tell you now I ain’t got no mo’ notion er readin’ than a tarrapin. A tarrapin kin git his haid out’n the shell an’ you might git a little larnin’ in it, butmy haid is groun’ what you gotter break up with a grubbin’ hoe.”
“I am willing to try. Let’s begin now! First we will learn how to spell things right here in the kitchen and then you can soon be reading recipes,” said Helen kindly. “Now we are making biscuit, so we will begin with that. First take two cups of flour,” and she wrote on the whitewashed wall of the kitchen: “2 cups of flour.”
Chloe was delighted with this kind of school, very different from her former experiences where she was made to sit for hours on a hard bench saying the same thing over and over with no conception of what it was all about. Now “2 cups of flour” had some sense in it, so had “2 spoons of baking powder.” “Lard the size of an egg” was a brilliant remark; “1 spoon of salt” had a gleam of intelligence, too; “1 cup of milk” was filled with gumption. In less than a week the girl could read and write the recipe for biscuit and was eagerly waiting for her beloved Miss Helen to advance her to cake.
Dr. George Wright was making a name for himself in his chosen profession. Older men were beginning to look upon him as an authority on nervous cases and now he had been asked to come in as partner in a sanitarium starting in the capital city of Virginia. Certainly he had been very successful in his treatment of Robert Carter’s case, so successful that even Mrs. Carter could not but admire him. She was still very much in awe of him, but he had her respect and she depended upon him. The daughters felt the same way without the awe. Douglas and Nan and Lucy were openly extravagant in their praise of him. Helen was a little more guarded in her expressions of admiration, but she had a sincere liking for him and deep gratitude not only for what he had done for her father but for his service to her.
She could never forget that it was Dr. Wright who had brought her to her senses when her father was first taken ill, making her see herself as a selfish, extravagant, vain girl. It takes some generosity of spirit to like the person who makes you see the error of your ways, but Helen Carter had that generosity. There were times when her cheeks burned at the memory of what Dr. Wright must have thought of her. How silly he must have found her, how childish!
After the experience in the mountains when the rattlesnake bit her on the heel and Dr. Wright had come to her assistance with first aid to the injured, which in the case of a snake bite means sucking the wound, Helen began to realize that what the young physician thought of her made a great deal of difference to her. His approval was something worth gaining.
Douglas had not told her she had written the letter to Dr. Wright as Bobby’s employer. She had a feeling that her dignity as teacher was involved and she must not confide in her family. She was waiting, hoping to hear from him,rather expecting him to write to Bobby and call him to account for his misdemeanors.
Bobby had been especially unruly all week. There was nothing he had not thought of doing in the way of mischief, and thinking mischief was almost identical with doing mischief where Bobby Carter was concerned. The deed was no sooner conceived than accomplished and the other children, who were inclined to be naughty, thought up extra things for him to do.
Putting a piece of rubber on the stove was certainly not Bobby’s idea, nor slipping chestnut burrs in the desk-seats while the girls were not looking, causing howls of anguish when they inadvertently sat down on the same. Bobby manfully took the blame for all of these things, however, confidently certain that no punishment worth speaking of would be meted out to him.
“He is honest, at least,” sighed Douglas, “and owns up every time.”
Friday afternoon on the way home she felt that maybe Nan’s name for their place was agood one. She was almost a dead warrior if not quite one.
“Oh, for a Valkyrie to bear me to Valhalla!”
Bobby was trudging along by her side looking as though butter would not melt in his mouth. What a sturdy little fellow he was growing to be! Douglas looked down on his jaunty, erect figure.
“Bobby, you are getting right fat.”
Bobby slapped his pockets. “That ain’t fat, that’s blame pay!”
“Blame pay! What on earth?”
“Oh, them is the gif’s I gits fer saying I done it ev’y time you asks us to hol’ up our han’s who done it.”
“Oh, Bobby!”
“You see, the big fellers say you ain’t man enough to whup ’em an’ you is too soft to whup me, so I don’t run no risk nohow. This is a top string I got for ’tendin’ like I put the rubber on the stove,—this here is a big apple I got for not fillin’ the girls’ desks with chestnut burrs,—this here pile er oak balls I come mighty near notgettin’. I sho’ did want to turn the fleas loose on Minnie Brice but the big boys was afraid I might not be able to open the little purse right and so one of them done it.”
“Fleas on Minnie Brice?”
“Yes, you never did fin’ out about it, so I didn’t have to own up. You know what a funny thin neck Minnie’s got, just like a mud turkle, and how she wears a stiff collar kinder like a shell and it sets out all around, fur out from her neck?”
“Yes, I know,” said Douglas, struggling with a laugh.
“Well, the fellers caught some fleas off’n ol’ Blitz’s houn’ dog an’ then they put ’em in a teensy money purse with a tight clasp, an’ while Minnie was leaning over studying her joggerfy, Tim Tenser dumped ’em all down her back.”
“Poor Minnie! No wonder she missed all of her lessons today. I could not imagine what was the matter with her. Bobby, you wouldn’t have done such a cruel thing as that surely!”
“Shoo! That ain’t nothin’. It might ’a’ beentoads, ’cep’n the little ones is all growed up big now. We are a-savin’ up the toad joke ’til spring. First the fellers said I didn’t ’serve no blame money ’cause Minnie jes’ cried when she missed her lessons an’ didn’t scratch none, only wiggled, an’ teacher never did ask us to hol’ up our han’s who done it. But Ned Beatty said I was a dead game spo’t an’ I took the chanst an’ I mus’ have my blood money, an’ so I got all these here oak balls.”
“Bobby, do you realize that you must take all of these blame gifts back to the boys?”
“Blamed if I will!”
“Please don’t talk that way! Don’t say: ‘Blamed if you will.’”
“Well, wasn’t you a-talkin’ that way? Didn’t you say, ‘blame gif’s,’ with your own mouth? I’d like to know why I have to take them back.”
“Well, you got them for taking the blame and now you no longer take the blame but have told on the ones who did the naughty things.”
“But I ain’t a-tellin’ teacher! I’m a-tellin’my own sister Douglas. You ain’t teacher ’cep’n when you is in school.”
“Oh, so that is the way you look at it! I suppose you think I am not your own sister while I am teacher, either, and when you worry me sick at school it is only teacher and not Douglas you are distressing so much,” and Douglas sat down on the roadside and burst out crying.
Now Douglas Carter was no weeper. I doubt if her little brother had ever seen her shed a tear in all of his seven years. And he, Robert Carter, Jr., had done this thing! He had made his sister Douglas cry. When she was playing teacher, she had feelings just as much as she did when she turned into his sister Douglas again. And what was this thing she was saying about his having to give back the blood money? Had he told on the boys after having received pay for taking the blame? Why, that was a low-down, sneaky trick!
“Don’t cry, Douglas, please don’t cry! I’m a-gonter take back all the things—’cep’n the apple—I done et into that a leetle bit.”
But the flood gates were opened and Douglas could not stop crying. Like most persons who cry with difficulty, when she once began she kept it up. Now she was crying for all the times she might have cried. She had had enough to make her cry but had held in. She was crying now for all the days and nights of anxiety she had spent in thinking of her sick father; she was crying for the stern way in which she had been forced to deal with her mother over extravagancies; she was crying for having to make Helen understand that there was no money for clothes; she was crying for having to be the adamant sister who forced Nan and Lucy to go on to school; she was crying because her own dream of college was to come to nothing; she was crying very little because of Bobby’s naughtiness, but he, of course, thought that it was all because of him.
One of her biggest grievances was against herself: why had she been so priggish with her cousin, Lewis Somerville? Last August he had come to her on the eve of his enlistment to go with the troops to the Mexican border and hadplead so earnestly with her to try to love him just a little bit and to let him go off engaged to her, and she had turned him down with absurd talk of friendship and the like. He had astonished her when he made love to her, but she knew perfectly well in her heart of hearts that it would have astonished her a great deal more if he had made love to someone else.
No doubt that was what he was doing that minute: making love to someone else. A young man who looked like a Greek god was not going to be turned down by every girl. How good Lewis had always been to her and how well he had understood her! He thought she was cold and unfeeling now, she just knew he did. She had received no letters from him for weeks, at least it seemed weeks. Oh well, if he wanted to make love to other girls, why she wasn’t going to be the one to care!
“Douglas, I hear a auto a-comin’. If’n you don’t stop bawlin’ folks will see you.”
A car was coming! She could hear its chug as it climbed the hill half a mile off.
“Please wet my handkerchief in that little branch so I can wash my face,” she begged Bobby, while she smoothed her ruffled hair and wished she had one of Helen’s precious dorines to powder her red nose.
“Yo’ hankcher is as wet as water already. I don’t see what you want it any wetter for,” said Bobby, who might have quoted: “‘Too much of water hast thou, my poor Ophelia,’” had he known his Hamlet.
“I ain’t a-gonter be bad no mo’, Douglas,” declared Bobby as he brought the little handkerchief back from the brook dripping wet. “You mos’ cried yo’ face away, didn’t you, Dug?” and with that Douglas had to laugh.
“Feel better now?” he said with quite the big brother air. “That there car is jes’ roun’ the bend. I reckon if you turn yo’ face away the folks in it won’t know you is been a-bawlin’.”
The car slowed up, then stopped when the driver recognized Douglas, and Count de Lestis sprang out to greet her. The signs of the recent storm were still visible on her pretty face in spiteof all the water Bobby had brought from the brook. Douglas tried to hold her head down so the count could not see her disfigured countenance, but such floods of weeping could not but be noticed.
“My dear Miss Carter, you are in distress!” He looked so truly grieved and anxious that already Douglas felt somewhat comforted. Sympathy is a great balm.
“It is nothing! I am a foolish, weak girl.”
“Not that! You are very intelligent and far from weak. Are you not the staunch ally? The poor Kaiser would not find you weak.”
“I done it all! I made her cry!” declared Bobby.
The count looked at the youngster, amused. “And so! Do little American gentlemen make their sisters cry?” Bobby hung his head. “Well, come on and let me take you home, and then I’ll take your sister for a little ride and wipe all the tears away with the wind.”
“Let me go riding, too. I don’t want to go home.”
“No, not this time. My little red car doesn’t like to take for long rides boys who make their sisters cry.”
So Bobby had to climb meekly in to be ignominiously dumped at the yard gate while Douglas was whisked off in the count’s natty little red roadster.
“Now you are looking like your beautiful self,” he declared, slowing down his racer and turning to gaze into Douglas’s face. “What is it that made you weep so profusely? Not the little brother. Beautiful damsels do not weep so much because of little brothers.”
Douglas smiled.
“Ah, the sun has come out! Now I am happy. I am so distressed by tears that I can hardly bear it.”
“You must have a very tender heart.”
“Yes, perhaps! Now tell me what caused your grief.”
How handsome this man was and how kind! He seemed like an old friend. He really did care what was troubling her and it would be arelief to pour out all of her foolish griefs. Douglas missed her father’s sympathy. She knew that he was as ready as ever with his love and solicitude for her, but she felt that she must not add to his worries one iota. Her mother was out of the question and Helen was too young. Before she knew it, she was trying to tell Count de Lestis all about it, all but about Lewis Somerville—somehow that was something she could not mention. Her grievances sounded very small when she tried to put them into words. Naturally she could not dwell upon her mother’s extravagancies or this man would think her poor little mother was selfish; Helen was such a trump, the fact that she longed for stylish clothes certainly was not enough to make a grown girl sit on the roadside and dissolve in tears; while Nan and Lucy were commuting to school like little soldiers. It ended by being a humorous account of Bobby and his blame pay.
Of course the count knew perfectly well that that was not all that had made this lovely girl give way so to grief. No doubt Bobby’s misbehaviorwas the last straw, but there had been a heavy load to carry before Douglas’s camel of endurance had got his back broken. He laughed merrily over the fleas and Douglas forgot all about her worries and laughed, too.
“Poor little Minnie! She did squirm so, and think of her being too ladylike to scratch, and how she must have disappointed those bad boys by refraining!”
“Yes, if all women would just squirm and not scratch it would take much from the pleasure of teasing them,” laughed de Lestis. “What amuses me is how boys are alike all the world over. The discipline of my school days was very strict, but a thing like that might have happened among boys in Berlin as much as here in a rural school in Virginia.”
“Berlin! But you are Hungarian!”
“So! So—but Hungarians can go to school in Berlin. Even Americans have profited by the educational advantages offered there.”
Douglas thought her companion’s tone sounded a little harsh. She bent her candidgaze on him and met his glowing eyes. Blue eyes looked unflinchingly into black until the steering of the red car forced him to give his attention to the wheel.
“I wish the count’s moustache did not turn up quite so much at the corners,” thought the girl. “It makes him look a wee bit like the Kaiser; of course, though, he is kind and the Kaiser is cruel.”
“Perhaps we had better turn around now,” she suggested gently, contrite that even for a moment she had thought this kind friend could resemble the hated Kaiser.
Certainly the wind had wiped away all traces of the emotional storm from Douglas’s countenance. The young man by her side could but admire the pure profile presented to him, with its soft, girlish lines but withal a look of strength and determination. Her loosened hair was like sunlight and her cheeks had the pink of the Cherokee rose. Profiles were all well enough, but he would like another look into those eyes as blue as summer skies after a shower.
“Of course, my dear Miss Carter, I know that the little rascal Bobby must have been very annoying but I cannot but think that you have not entrusted to me your real troubles.”
Douglas stiffened almost imperceptibly.
“When one finds a beautiful damsel sitting by the roadside in such grief that her charming face is convulsed with weeping, one cannot but divine that some affair of the heart has touched her. Tell me, has some bold cavalier trifled with her affections?”
Douglas stiffened more perceptibly.
“Your father told me of a young cousin, a Mr. Somerville, who is now on the Mexican border——”
“Father told you! I don’t believe it.”
“My dear young lady, he only told me there was such a cousin; you have told me the rest. Now! Now! Don’t let your sweet eyes shed another tear for him. He is not worth it! If he can find amusement in the ladies of Mexico, who are, when all is told, an untidy lot, why should you worry? There are other fish in the sea!”
If the Count de Lestis wished to see something more of Douglas’s eyes he had his desire fulfilled now. She turned and once more blue eyes looked unflinchingly into black. This time the black eyes had a mischievous gleam and the blue ones looked more like winter ice than summer skies.
“Now I have made you angry.” Once more his car took his attention for the moment.
“Not at all!” icily.
“You wish you had not come with me.”
“I appreciate your kindness in bringing me for the drive very much,” still cold and formal in tone.
“I guessed too well, that is where I sinned.”
Douglas was silent, but she still looked at her companion.
“She is like the little Minnie: she squirms but will not scratch.”
“I was just thinking,” said Douglas, changing the subject with a swiftness that disarmed the count, “your moustache certainly turns up at the ends just like Emperor William’s.”
“Isn’t it glorious to be living and for it to be Saturday?” yawned Lucy.
“Yes, and not to have to catch that old train,” and Nan snuggled down luxuriously under the bedclothes. “I used to think Saturday was a pretty good institution when we lived in town, but now—Oh, ye gods! Now!”
“Did you know that Saturday was decreed a half-holiday in the days of the Saxon King Edgar 958A. D.?” asked Lucy, who had a way of springing historical facts on people.
“No, but I know it’s going to be a whole holiday for Nan Carter in the year of grace 1916. I intend to do nothing but laze the whole day long, laze and read.”
“I bet you won’t. I bet you go nutting with Mag and me, because if we go it means Billy goes along, and if he goes along he’ll be in a terrible grouch unless you go, too.”
October had delightfully spread over into November. The weather had obligingly stayed good, and although our Carters had been at Valhalla more than a month, they had experienced no real bad days.
Nippy, frosty nights had put Mr. Carter wise to the many cracks that he must stop up. Weather strips must be put on windows and doors, panes of glass must be puttied in. Suspicious stains on walls and ceilings warned him of leaks, but he had to wait for a rain to locate them. He found himself almost as busy as he had been before his breakdown, but busy in such a different way.
“I’m glad it’s Saturday! I think I won’t work today,” he had remarked to his wife at about the same time Nan and Lucy were having their talk. “Come and walk in the woods with me.”
That lady had graciously consented, if he promised not to go far and to lift her over fences.
“I think I’ll wash my hair today; and darnthe stockings; and go over the accounts; and write some letters; and read theSaturday Evening Post,” said Douglas as she and Helen dressed hurriedly. Their little attic room was hot in summer and cold in winter.
Douglas had been thinking a great deal about her ride with the count. Had he only meant to tease her? Was he trying to flirt with her? Did she like him at all or did she in a way distrust him? She asked herself all of these questions. Of course she liked him! Why should she distrust a man because of the way his moustache grew? Of course he was teasing her, and who could help teasing a silly goose of a girl who sat on the roadside and bawled until her nose was disgracefully red, and then insisted it was all because her little brother had aided and abetted in the crime of putting fleas down a little girl’s neck? He had made a good guess about Lewis Somerville, because no doubt her father had told him that she and Lewis had been chums from the time they were babies.
“I only hope I will be able to make up to himfor my discourtesy by being very polite to him the next time I see him,” she thought.
“Count de Lestis is coming to lunch with us today,” said Helen, almost as though she had been reading her sister’s mind. “Father asked him.”
“That’s good! Isn’t it nice for Father to have such a congenial friend?”
“And Mumsy! She enjoys his visits so much. I am going to try and have a scrumptious luncheon, but I tell you I am going to leave mighty little of it to Chloe.”
“I think she is improving, Helen.”
“Of course she is improving. She is trying so hard to do what I want her to and I am trying so hard to be patient. I think I am improving some myself.”
“Oh, honey, you are simply splendid. I think you have the hardest job of all and I think you are doing better than any of us.”
“Nonsense!” But Helen looked very happy over her sister’s praise. “I’d rather do general housework for six dollars a month than go everyday and teach thirty little nincompoops a-b, ab.”
“But the thing is you are doing general housework for nothing a month.”
“I am doing a little teaching of a-b, ab, too, only my methods are different. I have evolved a very advanced style of teaching and Chloe, too, is learning to spell. My method is somewhat that of Dotheboys’ Hall—you remember: ‘W-i-n-d-o-w, window—Go wash them.’ I make her spell and write all the kitchen utensils. She learns while she is working and it makes her take an interest in becoming educated.”
“Oh, Helen, you are so clever! You must let me help about the luncheon.”
“How about washing your head; and writing your letters; and casting up the household accounts; and theSaturday Evening Post?”
“Well, the letters andPostwill keep!”
On Saturday the rule was that the dead warriors must make up their own beds and clean their own rooms, so shortly after breakfast there was a general scramble in process. Helenturned Chloe loose in the dining-room to have it swept and garnished for their distinguished visitor.
What a pretty room it was, much the most attractive in the house, with the exception of the sitting-room, perhaps! Low, rough-hewn rafters were frankly exposed to view. The walls were sealed with pine boards. Walls and ceiling were both painted a very soft, pleasing grey-green. On the high mantel was an old-fashioned wooden clock with painted door, and this was flanked on both sides by funny old vases with large raised roses and gilt ears. Two high windows and a glass door, opening on a covered passage leading to the kitchen, gave a soft and insufficient light.
Douglas had just put the finishing touch to the table: a bunch of cosmos sent down by the Misses Grant. Nan had made the mayonnaise; and Lucy had found a great basket of mushrooms and peeled them for Helen to cream. Truly they were to have a scrumptious luncheon. The count had arrived and was playing lady-come-to-see,so Lucy said, with Mrs. Carter.
The whir of a motor drew the attention of all.
“Who on earth!” exclaimed Helen. “Surely not callers at this hour, just when my popovers are almost ready to eat!”
“Mo’ comply!” declared Chloe. “Dat ol’ red rooster what yo’ paw set so much sto’ by is been a-crowing halleluja all mornin’. I been a-tryin’ ter make him hesh, ’cause we ain’t got no mo’ cheers fer comply.”
“That’s so, there aren’t but eight dining-room chairs,” laughed Helen.
“My ’ployer done come and a soger is in with him!” cried Bobby, tearing excitedly by the dining-room in his race to open the gate for his beloved Dr. Wright.
Helen ran out in her pink bungalow apron, first peeping into the oven, not trusting Chloe yet to keep things from burning.
“Douglas!” she called excitedly, but Douglas, with flushed cheeks, bent over the bowl of cosmos.
“A soldier with him! What soldier? Could it be Lewis?” she asked herself.
It was Lewis Somerville, looking very handsome and upstanding indeed in his khaki uniform, with his face burned a deep bronze so that his eyes looked very blue and his teeth very white. He clambered out over the great basket of fruit Dr. Wright was bringing to Mrs. Carter, dropped the boxes and parcels piled in around him and hugged and kissed all the female cousins in sight, Helen, Nan and Lucy. He shook Bobby by the hand, knowing full well that that youngster would sooner die than be hugged and kissed.
“Douglas, where is Douglas?” he whispered to Helen.
“In the dining-room! You can get there around at the back of the house—in the basement. We thought you were still in Mexico.”
Lewis did not wait to tell her that he wasn’t, but doing double quick time he streaked around the house, and finding the basement stairs without any trouble, he was down them in one stride.
“Douglas!”
“Oh, Lewis!”
Douglas forgot that not so very many months before this time she had informed her cousin that she was too big to be kissed and that he was not close enough kin to warrant indiscriminate hugging. Certainly she was no younger than she had been eight months before and Lewis was no closer kin, but now she submitted to his embraces and even clung to him for a moment.
It was so wonderful to have him back safe and sound. She could hardly believe it was only yesterday that she had sat on the roadside and wept. He was her same Lewis, too. She felt instinctively that the count’s suggestion in regard to Mexican beauties was ridiculous.
“And Lewis, sergeant stripes on your sleeve, too! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did! Didn’t you get my letter?”
“No, not for weeks and weeks!”
“Strange! I must say I am not crazy about that letter’s being lost.”
“Can’t you tell me what was in it?”
“Sure! I’m telling you now,” and the young man caught her to him once more, but Douglas suddenly remembered she was too old to be kissed by a second cousin, once removed. “I’m not crazy about having anyone but you read that letter, though, not only because of my telling you this,” and he took another for luck, “but,” as Douglas recovered her maidenly reserve and pushed him from her laughing, “I said some other things in that letter that I wouldn’t like anyone and everyone to see.”
“State secrets?”
“Well, a newly-made sergeant would hardly have such things intrusted to him! It was only my opinion concerning the state of affairs down there on the border. I may be wrong about things, but a soldier has no right to blab his conclusions about conditions in belligerent countries, especially when the press is wary in its comments.”
“I wouldn’t worry a moment about it. If you could see the road that our R. F. D. has to come over you would not wonder that some ofour letters jolt out. There is one creek to cross that is like going down the Grand Canyon.”
“If it only jolted out there and found watery oblivion, I shan’t mind. But what a bully little shack this is! Wright was afraid we would not get here in time for luncheon, and he and I were determined to lie and say we had eaten, but gee, I’m glad not to have to perjure my soul!”