“Adolph Herz is too German in sound,” the Anglo-Saxon in her cried out. “And then his mouth! It is so red!”
“Certainly I’ll enjoy drawing plans for bird houses,” laughed Mr. Carter. “I shall even take pleasure in carpentering them. They are really lots of fun to make.”
“I agree with you,” said Herz. “Simply drawing a design is never so much pleasure ascarrying it out. How a sculptor can be willing to do only the clay modeling of his statue and then let someone else carve the marble is more than I can understand. When I think of something to be done, I must do it myself—trust it to no one.”
“Well, I am a lazy bones myself and anyone can do my work,” laughed the count. “Now Adolph here has drawn the plan for a pigeon house and he wants to build it himself. I tell him it is absurd, that any carpenter can carry out his ideas, but he will not listen to me. Adolph is a very stubborn man, Miss Carter.” He addressed this remark to Douglas who smiled at the young secretary. He was frowning heavily and his full lips were drawn into a hard red line. The count caught his eye and gave him a bantering look in return.
“Come on, Adolph, and show Mr. Carter your plans for the pigeon house!”
“They are not completed,” he answered sullenly.
“I am quite a pigeon fancier,” went on themaster of Weston. “They are charming birds to raise and one can make much money on squabs. We are going into pigeon raising quite seriously. I think we shall build a very large house. Eh, Adolph?”
“Where will you put the pigeon house?” asked Mr. Carter.
“Right there on the roof, about in the centre of the house,” said the count, pointing to the top of the mansion.
“Not there! Surely you would not do such a thing!” cried Helen incredulously.
“Why not?”
“It would ruin the architectural effect of Weston,” declared Mr. Carter.
“I think not!”
“Well, I know it would,” maintained the architect stoutly. “Why, de Lestis, all of my work would be as nothing if you should put a pigeon house there. I beg of you not to!”
“But, my dear Mr. Carter, I am a pigeon fancier and want my pigeons at a point whereI can watch them twirling and dipping. I love their cooing, too.”
“All right! It is your house and you can do as you choose with it, but please do not mention me as the architect who restored the place. I cannot stand for such a piece of Philistinism.” Mr. Carter laughed as he made the above remark, but his daughters knew by a certain look in his eyes that he was angry.
“Are you to have carrier pigeons?” asked Douglas, hoping to relieve the company of an embarrassment that seemed to have fallen upon it.
The secretary still had his mouth drawn in a stern line although he had smoothed his frowning brow. Helen was plainly put out at the count’s daring to go against her father’s artistic taste, while Count de Lestis seemed to be taking a kind of delight in teasing everybody.
“If you will promise to send me a message, I will,” he answered gallantly.
“Oh, that would be great fun! I have never seen a carrier pigeon.”
The count then devoted himself to Douglas for the rest of the visit, showing her the pantry shelves that he had on one occasion expressed himself as desirous for Helen to pass on.
“All we need now is a lady of the manor,” he said in a low tone. “It is not meet for man to live alone.”
Douglas looked at him quite frankly, her blue eyes steady as she gazed into his black ones. “Can’t your mother come and keep house for you?” she asked quite simply.
There was no flirting in Douglas Carter’s make-up. Herz, who refused to go far from her in spite of the count’s sudden devoted attentions, relaxed his grim expression that he had held ever since the pigeon house had been the subject of conversation. His mouth broke into a smile and his easy manner returned.
The Carters soon took their departure, although the master of the house was insistent that they should stay to tea with them.
“We must get back to Valhalla,” declared Douglas.
“Valhalla! Is that the name of your place?” asked Herz.
“That is the name my sister Nan gave it. She says we are all more or less dead warriors when the day is over. I don’t like giving it such a German name myself, but Nan says poetry is universal and—— Oh! I beg your pardon!” The girl had forgotten that her companion was of German birth.
“Do you dislike the Germans so much?” he asked.
“Not the German people——” she stammered. “Just the Imperial Government!”
“But aren’t the people the Government?”
“I hope not.”
“Ah, so Miss Carter has opened fire on you, too, has she?” laughed de Lestis. “If there were more fighters like her among the Allies, poor Germany would have her banners trailing in the dust by now.”
“I did not mean to be rude to Mr. Herz,” said Douglas. “I am too prejudiced in favor of France and England to remember my manners.If I have injured you, I beg your pardon,” and she gave the secretary her hand in good-by.
He blushed like a schoolgirl and stammered out some unintelligible something.
De Lestis renewed his attentions to Helen just as though he had not been hovering over her sister with tender nothings.
“He is a flirt!” thought Helen. “I think I can give him as good as he sends, but I am beginning to hate him.” She dimpled to his remarks, however, and as she bade him good-by at the door she smiled saucily into his eyes.
“To think of that man’s being willing to ruin his roof line,” sighed Mr. Carter as he and his daughters started on their homeward walk. “Just look how beautiful it is,” pointing to the old chimneys where the roof melted into the sky.
“It is a shame,” cried Helen. “But how cold it is! There now, I left my gloves on the library table.”
“Run back and get them, honey; Douglas and I will wait for you here by the stile.”
Helen ran back. Once more she glanced into the library where on their arrival they had caught a glimpse of the two men bending over the papers. Now what was her astonishment to see the secretary actually shaking the count, who was laughing heartily. The secretary’s eyes were flashing as he blurted out the words:
“Fool! Fool!”
The count opened the door quickly this time at her knock.
“Your gloves! I found them and almost hoped you would leave them with me, but the little hands would have been so cold. Indeed, they are so cold,” and he gallantly kissed them.
Helen seized her gloves and with glowing cheeks raced back to her father and sister. She gave her hands a vigorous rubbing on her grey corduroy skirt before she put on her gloves as though she might rub off the kiss. In the excitement over the dénouement of the visit she forgot for the time being that she had caught the secretary shaking his employer and calling him a fool.
The winter wore on. Our warriors were fighting the good fight and each night as they gathered round the cheerful fire in the great chimney in the living-room at Valhalla they had tales to tell of difficulties overcome. Of course there were failures, many of them, but each failure meant a lesson learned and better luck next time.
Douglas had days when the little ideas refused to shoot and her pupils seemed to be just so many wooden dolls, but she learned the rare lesson, that teachers must learn if they are to be successful: when a class won’t learn, and can’t learn, and doesn’t want to learn, there is something the matter with the teacher. When she came to this realization she took herself to task, and the dark days came farther and farther apart.
The letter she had written Dr. Wright had had a most salutary effect on Bobby. That young physician had taken the naughty boy for a long ride and had given him a man to man talk, first temporarily dismissing him from his employ and sternly forbidding him to hold out his hand when they were going around corners. He was not allowed to blow the horn at dangerous curves and all of his honors were stripped from him.
“It nearly killed me to do it,” George Wright confessed to Helen. “I couldn’t look him in the eye for fear of weakening, but he took it like the little man he is. I fancy Douglas will have no more trouble with him for a while. I am glad she asked me to help her out. It is no joke to teach your own flesh and blood. Bobby says he thought that Douglas was just playing school and he didn’t know he was really bothering her. He knows now and is even prepared to lick any boy not twice his size who disturbs his sister.”
Count de Lestis seemed to have much business that took him away from Weston. Sometimeshe was gone for several weeks at a time, but when he returned he would drop in at Valhalla as though he had not been away at all. He was always a welcome visitor. Mrs. Carter greeted him as a long lost friend. He seemed to be the incarnation of the social world to the poor little lady, destined to spend her days out of her element. Mr. Carter had almost forgiven him the pigeon house, but not quite.
“There is something lacking, somehow, in a man who would do such a thing,” he had declared to Helen.
The pigeon house was built by the secretary, according to his own plans and specifications, and placed on the roof, where it loomed an eyesore to the artistic. Truly they seemed to be going into pigeon raising in good earnest. It was a huge affair, large enough to accommodate many pigeons; and then, with the careless expenditure of money that seemed to characterize the master of Weston, crates of pigeons arrived and were installed in their new quarters.
“The carrier pigeons have not come, but whenthey do I’ll bring one to you,” the count said to Douglas, “and you must promise to send me a message.” The girl laughingly promised.
The count was still doing what Helen called “browsing.” He flitted from sister to sister, whispering his tender nothings and for the moment seeming all devotion to the one with whom he happened to be.
“Thank goodness, I found out in time what a flirt he is!” Helen whispered to her inmost self. “Once, for just a fraction of a second, I was jealous of Douglas and of Nan, too. His house is so lovely and he is so rich and handsome and so fascinating, and I do so hate to be poor! But I can’t abide a male flirt!”
Nevertheless, Helen was very glad to see the count when he called at Valhalla and she was very successful in hiding her real feelings from that gentleman, who twirled his saucy moustache in masculine satisfaction when he thought of the attractive girl who so courteously received his attentions. Douglas’s indifference rather piqued him and he was constantly trying to breakthrough it, but no matter what flattering remarks he made to her she never seemed to know they were intended for her, Douglas Carter.
“That young soldier is at the bottom of it!” he would exclaim to himself after trying his best to get an answering spark from this girl who appeared so altogether lovely in his eyes, more lovely and desirable because of her indifference, and then, too, because he knew instinctively that Herz was hopelessly in love with her; and many men are like sheep and go where others lead.
The secretary was becoming a real nuisance to Douglas, who in a way liked him, but who never got over his very German name and his red, red mouth. He so often seemed to know exactly the moment when she was to dismiss school and would appear as she locked the schoolhouse door and quietly join her on the walk home. He was very interesting and Douglas much preferred him to the count, who could not be with any female for more than a few moments without bordering on love-making of some kind. Herz had a great deal of information and this hewould impart to Douglas in quite the manner of a professor as he walked stiffly by her side.
Bobby was not at all in favor of sharing the walks home with this tall, stiff stranger. Ever since Dr. Wright’s talk with him he had considered himself Douglas’s protector, and he liked to pretend that as they went along the lonesome road and skirted the dark pine woods he was going to shoot imaginary bandits who infested their path. He couldn’t play any such game with this matter-of-fact man stalking along by their side, explaining to Douglas some intricate point in philosophy.
“Say, kin you goose step?” he asked one day when Herz was especially irritating to him. Bobby had a “bowanarrow” hid in the bushes by the branch, with which he had intended to kill many Indians on their homeward walk.
“Yes, of course!” came rather impatiently from Herz, who thought children should be seen and not heard and that this especial child would be well neither seen nor heard.
“Well, do it!”
“Bobby, don’t bother Mr. Herz,” Douglas admonished.
“He kin talk an’ goose step at the same time,” Bobby insisted.
Herz began solemnly to goose step, expounding his philosophy as he went. Bobby shrieked with delight. This wasn’t such a bad companion, after all. It was so ridiculous that Douglas could hardly refrain from shouting as loud as Bobby.
“Is that the way the German soldiers really walk?” asked Bobby.
“So I am told.”
“Where did you learn to do it?” asked Douglas.
“I—I—at a school where I was educated.”
“Oh, but you are an American, so the count told me.”
“I am an American.” This was uttered in a very dead tone. The man suddenly turned on his heel and with a muttered good-by disappeared.
“Ain’t he a nut, though?” exclaimed Bobby.
“He is peculiar,” agreed Douglas.
“Do you like for him to walk home with you, Dug?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not.”
“Well, I don’t like it a bit, ’cep’n, of co’se, when he goose steps an’ then it’s great. I seen a colored fellow a-goose steppin’ the other day, an’ he says he learned it at the count’s school what Mr. Herz is a-teachin’. He says they call it settin’ up exercises, but he would like to do some settin’ down exercise. I reckon he was tryin’ to make a kinder joke.”
Every American will always remember that winter of 1917 as being one of extreme unrest. Would we or would we not be plunged into the World War? Should we get in the game or should we sit quietly by and see Germany overrun land and sea?
Valhalla was not too much out of the world to share in the excitement, and like most of the world was divided in its opinions. Douglas and her father were for the sword and no more pens. Helen and Mrs. Carter felt it was a pity to mix up in a row that was not ours, although in her secret soul Helen knew full well that the row was ours and if war was to be declared she would be as good a fighter as the next. Nan was an out and out pacifist and declared the world was too beautiful to mar with all of this bloodshed.Lucy insisted that Nan got her sentiments from Count de Lestis, who had been “hogging” a seat by her sister quite often in the weeks before that day in March when diplomatic relations with Germany were broken off by our country. As for Lucy: she could tell you all about the causes of the war and was quite up on Bismarck’s policy, etc. She delighted her father with her knowledge of history and her logical views of the present situation. She and Mag were determined to go as Red Cross nurses if we did declare war, certain that if they tucked up their hair and let down their dresses no one would dream they were only fourteen. Bobby walked on his toes and held his head very high, trying to look tall, hoping he could go as a drummer boy or something if he could only stretch himself a bit.
“Good news, girls!” cried Helen one evening in February when they had drawn their seats around the roaring fire piled high with wood cut by Mr. Carter, whose muscles were getting as hard as iron from his outdoor work.
“What?” in a chorus from the girls, always ready for any kind of news, good or bad.
“The count is going to have a ball!”
“Really? When?”
“On the twenty-second of February! He says if he gives a party on Washington’s birthday nobody can doubt his patriotism.”
“Humph! I don’t see what business he has with patriotism about our Washington,” muttered Lucy.
“But he does feel patriotic about the United States, he told me he did,” said Nan.
“I think he means to take out his naturalization papers in the near future,” said Mr. Carter.
“He tells me he feels very lonesome now that he is in a way debarred from his own country,” sighed Mrs. Carter. “That book he wrote has made the Kaiser very angry.”
“Well, after the war is over that book will raise him in the estimation of all democracies,” suggested Douglas.
“Mag says that Billy wrote to Brentano’s to try and get him that book and they say theycan’t find it; never heard of it,” blurted out Lucy.
“It has perhaps not been translated into English,” said Helen loftily.
“Mag says that that’s no matter. Brentano will get you any old book in any old language if it is in existence.”
“How can they when a book has been suppressed? I reckon the Kaiser is about as efficient about suppressing as he is about everything else. Well, book or no book, I’m glad to be going to a ball. He says we must ask our friends from Richmond and he is going to invite everybody in the county and have a great big splendid affair, music from Richmond, and supper, too.”
“Kin I go?” asked Bobby, curling up in Helen’s lap, a way he had of doing when there was no company to see him and sleep was getting the better of him.
“Of course you can, if you take a good nap in the daytime.”
“Daddy and Mumsy, you will go, surely,” said Douglas.
“Yes, indeed, if your mother wants to! I’m not much of a dancer these days, but I bet she can outdance any of you girls. Eh, Mother?”
“Not as delicate as I am now; but of course I shall go to the ball to chaperone my girls,” said the little lady plaintively. “I doubt my dancing, however.”
“He says we must ask Dr. Wright and Lewis and any other people we want. He says he is really giving this ball to us because we have been so hospitable to him,” continued Helen.
“We haven’t been any nicer to him than Miss Ella and Miss Louise,” said Lucy, who seemed bent on obstructing.
“But they are too old to have balls given to them,” laughed Helen. “They are going, though. I went to see them this afternoon with Count de Lestis and they are just as much interested as I am. They asked the privilege of making the cakes for the supper and he was so tactful that he did not tell them he was to have a grand caterer to do the whole thing. The oldladies just love to do it, and one is to make angel’s food and one devil’s food.
“The Suttons are going,” and Helen held the floor without interruptions because of the subject that was interesting to all the family. “Mr. Sutton says if the roads permit he will send his big car to take our whole family, and if the roads are too bum he will have the carriage out for Mrs. Sutton and Mumsy, and all of us can go in the hay wagon.”
“Grand! I hope the roads will be muddy up to the hubs!” cried Lucy. “Hay wagons are lots more fun than automobiles.”
“Hard on one’s clothes, though,” and Helen looked a little rueful. The question of dress was important when one had nothing but old last year’s things that were so much too narrow.
“What are you going to wear to the ball?” asked Douglas that night when she and Helen were snuggling down in their bed in the little room up under the roof.
“I haven’t anything but my rose chiffon. It is pretty faded looking and hopelessly out ofstyle, but I am going to try to freshen it up a bit. Ah me! I don’t mind working, but I do wish I were not an unproductive consumer. I’d like to make some money myself and sometimes buy something.”
Douglas patted her sister consolingly. “Poor old Helen! I do feel so bad about you.”
“Well, you needn’t! But I did see such a love of a dancing frock when we were down town that day with Cousin Elizabeth: white tulle over a silver cloth with silver girdle and trimmings. It was awfully simple but so effective. I could just see myself in it. I ought to be ashamed to let clothes make so much difference with me, but I can’t help it. I am better about it than I was at first, don’t you think?”
“I think you are splendid and I also think you have the hardest job of all to do: working all the time and never making any money.”
The next morning Douglas held a whispered conversation with Nan before they got off to their respective schools.
“See what it costs but don’t let Helen know.She will be eighteen tomorrow, and if it isn’t worth a million, I am going to take some of my last month’s salary and get it for her.”
When Nan, who was not much of a shopper, approached the great windows of Richmond’s leading department store, what was her joy to see the very gown that Douglas had described to her displayed on Broad Street and marked down to a sum in the reach of a district school teacher.
“It looks so like Helen, somehow, that I can almost see her wearing it in place of the wax dummy,” exclaimed Nan.
“Must I charge it, Miss Carter?” asked the pleasant saleswoman as she took the precious dress out of the show-window.
“Please, Miss Luly, somehow I’d rather not charge it, but I haven’t the money today. Couldn’t you fix it up somehow so I could take it with me and bring you the money tomorrow? We don’t charge any more, but if I don’t buy it right now I’m so afraid somebody else might get it.”
The smiling saleswoman, who had been waitingon the Carters ever since the pretty Annette Sevier came a bride to Richmond, held a conference with the head of the firm on how this could be managed.
“Miss Nan Carter is very anxious not to charge, but can’t pay until tomorrow.”
“Ummm! A little irregular! What Carter is it?”
“Mr. Robert Carter’s daughter!”
“Let her have it and anything else she wants on any terms she wishes. Robert Carter’s name on a firm’s books is the same as money in the bank. I have wondered why his account has been withdrawn from our store,” and the head of the firm immediately dictated a letter to his former patron, requesting in polite terms that he should run up as big a bill as he wished and that he could pay whenever he got ready. So very polite was the letter that one almost gathered he need not pay at all.
Mr. Carter laughed aloud when he read the letter, remembering those days not yet a year gone by when the bills used to pile in on the firstof every month and he would feel that they must be paid immediately and the only way to do it was redouble his energy and work far into the night.
The flat box with the precious dancing dress was not an easy thing to carry on stilts, but the lane was muddy and Nan had to do it somehow. With much juggling she got safely over the dangers of the road and smuggled it into the house without Helen’s seeing it.
“I got it!” Nan whispered to Douglas when she could get her alone.
“But you didn’t have the money! I asked you to find out the price first,” said Douglas, fearing Nan, in her zeal, had overstepped the limit in price. “I didn’t want anything charged. I am so afraid we might get started to doing it again.”
“Never! I just kind of borrowed it until tomorrow. You see I struck a sale and they couldn’t save it for me because there were only a few of them. I told them I couldn’t charge but would bring the money tomorrow, and MissLuly fixed it up for me, somehow, and told me I could have the whole department store on any terms I saw fit to dictate.”
Morning dawned on Helen’s eighteenth birthday but found her in not very jubilant spirits. It isn’t much fun to have an eighteenth birthday when you have to bounce out of bed and rush into your clothes to see that a poor ignorant country servant doesn’t make the toast and scramble the eggs before she even puts a kettle of water on for coffee. Chloe always progressed backwards unless Helen was there to do the head work.
Helen found Chloe had already descended her perilous ladder and had the stove hot and the kettle on as a birthday present to her beloved mistress. Chloe really adored Helen and did her best to learn and remember. The breakfast table was set, too, and Chloe’s eyes were shining as though she had something to say but wild horses would not make her say it.
The sisters came in at the first tap of the bell and her father was in his place, too. Helenstarted to seat herself at her accustomed place, but at a shout from Lucy looked before she sat. Her chair was piled high with parcels.
“Happy birthday, honey!” said Douglas.
“Happy birthday, daughter!” from Mr. Carter.
“Happy birthday! Happy birthday!” shouted all of them in chorus.
“Why, I didn’t know anybody remembered!” cried Helen.
“Not remember your eighteenth birthday! Well, rather!” said Mr. Carter.
Then began the opening of the boxes while Chloe stood in the corner grinning for dear life.
A pearl pin from Mrs. Carter, one she had worn when she first met her husband, was in the small box on top. An old-fashioned filigree gold bracelet was Mr. Carter’s gift. It had belonged to his mother, for whom Helen was named.
“It will look very lovely on your arm, my dear,” he said when Helen kissed him in thanks.
Cousin Elizabeth Somerville had sent her tendollars in gold; Lewis, some new gloves; there was a vanity box from Lucy with a saucy message about always powdering her nose; a little thread lace collar from Nan, made by her own hands; and to balance all was a five-pound box of candy from Dr. Wright.
“I had a big marble for you, but it done slipt out’n my pocket,” said Bobby, and then he had to give a big hug and a kiss, which Helen declared was better than even a marble.
“But you haven’t opened your big box, the one at the bottom,” insisted Nan. It had got covered up with papers and Helen had overlooked it. “Please hurry up and open it because Lucy and I have to beat it. It will be train time before we know it.”
As Helen untied the strings and unwrapped the tissue paper that was packed around the contents of the big box you could have heard a pin drop in that dining-room at Valhalla. She eagerly pulled aside the papers and then shook out the glimmering gown.
“Oh, Douglas! Douglas! You shouldn’thave done it! It is even prettier than I remembered it to be!”
“Mind out, don’t splash on it,” warned Nan just in time to keep the two great tears that welled up into Helen’s eyes from spotting the exquisite creation.
“My Miss Helen’s gwinter look like a angel whin she goes ter de count’s jamboree,” declared Chloe.
“Well, your Miss Douglas is the angel and she’s going to have to have a new dress with slits in the shoulder-blades to let her wings come through,” sobbed Helen, laughing at the same time as she held the dress up in front of her and danced around the table. She had thought nobody remembered her eighteenth birthday and now found nobody had forgotten it.
“You shouldn’t have afforded it, Douglas. I can’t keep it. It would be too selfish of me.”
“Marked down goods not sent on approval,” drawled Nan.
Sergeant Somerville and Private Tinsley accepted the invitation to the count’s ball with alacrity. Their company had been mustered out just in the nick of time for them to obtain indefinite leave. It was rumored that they were to be taken in again, this time as regulars, but the certainty of having no military duties to perform for the time being was very pleasant to our two young men.
The Carter girls had taken the count at his word and invited several friends from Richmond to stay at Valhalla and attend the ball. Dr. Wright was eager to come and with the recklessness of physicians who use their cars for business and not for pleasure, he made the trip in his automobile. He had a new five-seated car, taking the place of his former runabout.
“M. D.’s and R. F. D.’s have to travel whether roads are good or bad,” he had declared.
The two young soldiers and Tillie Wingo had the hardihood to risk their necks with him, and at the last minute he picked up Skeeter Halsey and Frank Maury, who had been invited by Lucy so that she and Mag would not have to be wall flowers. Six persons in a five-passenger car insures them from much jolting, as there is no room to bounce.
Tillie was in her element with five pairs of masculine ears to chatter in. She and Bill were still engaged “in a way,” as she expressed it, although neither one of them seemed to regard it very seriously. Tillie insisted upon making a secret of it as much as she was capable, so that in Bill’s absence she might not be laid on the shelf.
“The fellows don’t think much of an engaged girl,” she said frankly, “and I have no idea of taking a back seat yet awhile.”
The recklessness of the guests in coming over Virginia roads in an automobile in the month of February was nothing to the recklessness of theCarters in inviting six persons to spend the night with them when they possessed but one small guest chamber.
“We can manage somehow,” Helen declared, “and, besides, we will be out so late dancing there won’t be much use in having a place to sleep, because we won’t have any time to sleep.”
“Only think of all of those bedrooms at Grantly with nobody in them!” exclaimed Lucy. “Those old ladies might just as well ask some of us up there, but they will never think of it, I know.”
“If they do, they will disagree about which ones to ask and which rooms to put them in, and we will never get the invitation,” laughed Helen. “Anyhow, they are dear old ladies and I am mighty fond of them.” Helen often ran up to the great house to ask advice from the Misses Grant about household affairs and was ever welcome to the lonely old women.
“They are certainly going to the ball, aren’t they?” asked Douglas.
“They wouldn’t miss it for worlds. Theyare having a time just now, though, because Tempy has left them. They can’t find out what her reason is and feel sure she didn’t really want to go; now her sister Chloe is so near she seemed quite content, but for weeks she has been in a peculiar frame of mind and the last few days they have caught her in tears again and again. They sent for Dr. Allison, who lives miles and miles from here, but Miss Ella and Miss Louise will trust no other doctor. He says as far as he can tell she is not ill. Anyhow, she has gone home, and today their man-servant departed, also. Of course they might draw on the field hands for servants, but they hate to do it because they are so very rough. They have had this man-servant for years and years, ever since he was a little boy, and they can’t account for his going, either. He had a face as long as a ham when he left them and gave absolutely no excuse except that his maw was sick, and as Miss Ella says, ‘His mother has been dead for ten years, and she ought to know, since she furnished the clothes in which she was buried.’ Miss Louisesaid she had only been dead eight, and they were her clothes, but they agree that she is dead at least, and can’t account for Sam’s excuse.”
“Poor old ladies, I am sorry for them,” said Douglas.
On the day of the ball, there was much furbishing up of finery at Valhalla. Mr. Carter’s dress suit had to be pressed and his seldom used dress studs unearthed. Mrs. Carter forgot all about being an invalid and was as busy and happy as possible, trying dresses on her daughters to see that their underskirts were exactly the right length and even running tucks in with her own helpless little hands.
“It is a good thing I don’t have to think about my own outsides,” said Helen, “as all of my time must be spent in planning for our guests’ insides. I tell you, six more mouths to fill is going to keep Chloe and me hustling.”
“It sho’ is an’ all them dishes ter wash is goin’ ter keep me hustlin’ some mo’,” grumbled Chloe. “An’ then I gotter go ter the count’s an’ stir my stumps.”
“I am sorry, but I am going to give you a nice holiday after it is all over,” said her young mistress kindly. The count had asked Helen to bring Chloe to look after the ladies in the dressing-room.
“I ain’t a-mindin’ ’bout dishes. I’s jes’ a-foolin’—— Say, Miss Helen, what does potatriotic mean?”
“Patriotic? That means loving your country and being willing to give up things for it and help save it. Everybody should be patriotic.”
“But s’posin’ yer ain’t got no country?”
“Why, Chloe, everybody has a country, either the place where you were born or the place where you have been living long enough to love and feel that it is yours.”
“But niggers is been livin’ here foreveraneveramen, an’ still they ain’t ter say got no country.”
“Why, you have! Don’t you think Uncle Sam would look after you and fight for you if you needed his help?”
“I ain’t got no Uncle Sam, but I hear tellthat he wouldn’t raise his han’ ter save a nigger, but yit if’n they’s a war that he’ll ’spec’ the niggers ter go git shot up fer him.”
“Why, Chloe! How can you say such a thing?”
“I ain’t er sayin’ it—I’s jes’ a-sayin’ I hears tell.”
“Who told it to you?”
“Nobody ain’t tol’ it ter me. I jes’ hearn it.”
“Well, it’s not true.”
“I hearn, too, that they’s plenty er money ter go ’roun’ in this country, but some folks what thinks they’s better’n other folks has hoarded an’ hoarded ’til po’ folks can’t git they han’s on a nickel. An’ I hearn that they’s gonter be distress an’ misery, an’ wailin’ an’ snatchin’ er teeth ’til some strong man arouses an’ makes these here rich folks gib up they tin. Nobody ain’t a-gonter know who dat leader will be, he mought be white an’ thin agin he mought be black, but he’s a-gonter be a kinder sabior.”
“How is he going to manage?” asked Helen, amused at what sounded like a sermon the girlmight have heard from the rickety pulpit of the brick church.
“I ain’t hearn, but I done gib out ter all these niggers that my white folks ain’t got no tin put away here in this Hogwallow or whatever Miss Nan done named it. They keeps their money hot a-spendin’ it, I tells ’em all.”
Helen laughed, and with a final touch at the supper table and a last peep at the sally lunn muffins, which were rising as they should, she started to go help her mother with the dancing frocks and their petticoats that would show discrepancies.
“Say, Miss Helen, is you sho’ Miss Ellanlouise is goin’ ternight?” asked Chloe, following her up the steps.
“Yes, Chloe, I’m sure.”
“An’, Miss Helen, if’n folks ain’t got no country ter love what ought they do?”
“Why, love one another, I reckon. Love the people of their own race, and try to help them.”
“Oughtn’t folks ter love they own color better’n any other?”
“Why, certainly!”
“If’n some of yo’ folks got into trouble, what would you do?”
“Why, I’d help them out if I could.”
“Even if’n they done wrong?”
“Of course! They would still be my own people.”
“If they ain’t ter say done it but is a-gonter do it, thin what would you do?”
“I’d try to stop them.”
“Would you tell on ’em?”
“I’d try to stop them first. Who has done wrong or is going to do it, Chloe?”
“Nobody ain’t done wrong an’ I ain’t a-never said they is. I ain’t said a word. This talk was jes’ some foolishness I done made up out’n my haid. But say, Miss Helen,—I’d kinder like ter stop at Mammy’s cabin over to Paradise befo’ I gits ter de count’s. I kin take my foot in my han’ an’ strike through the woods an’ beat the hay wagin thar, it goin’ roun’ by the road.”
“All right, Chloe!”
Helen rather fancied that Chloe wanted to seeher sister, who was evidently contemplating some imprudence. She had been threatening to marry James Hanks, but her people had shown themselves very much opposed to it. Perhaps the girl was on the eve of an elopement which had called forth all of the above conversation from her sister. Where did she get all of those strange socialistic ideas? Was Lewis Somerville right and was the little learning a dangerous thing for these poor colored people? Surely she had helped Chloe by the little teaching she had given her. The girl was like another creature. She seemed now to have self-respect, and Helen felt instinctively that her loyalty to her and her family was almost a religion with her.
“How are Miss Ella and Louise going?” asked Douglas, as she stooped for a parting glance in the mirror which the sloping ceiling necessitated hanging so low that a girl as tall as Douglas could not see above her nose without bending double.
“In their phaeton,” answered Helen. “They don’t mind driving themselves. I asked them. You see with Sam gone they can’t get out the big old rockaway.”
“They must keep along near the hay wagon. Such old ladies should not be alone on the road,” said Douglas.
“I dare you to tell them that! They have no fear of anything or anybody. They say they have lived alone in this county for so many, many years that they are sure nobody will ever harm them.”
“Well, I am sure nobody ever would,” said Nan.
The girls had decided that the only way to take care of so many guests was to double up “in layers,” as Lucy called it. Bobby was sent over into the new house with Lewis and Bill, his old tent mates, for whom Nan and Lucy had vacated their room while they came over to the old house and brought Tillie Wingo with them.
“Three in a double bed and two in a single bed wouldn’t be so bad after a ball,” Nan had declared.
Dressing for the ball was the more difficult feat, however. The ceiling was so low and sloping and Tillie Wingo did take up so much room with her fluffy ruffles. The Carter girls were glad to see the voluble Tillie. She was such a gay, good-natured person and seemed so pleased to be included in this pleasure party. She looked as pretty as a pink in a much beruffled painted chiffon; and while they were dressing, she obligingly showed Helen the very latest steps in dancing.
Helen was charming in her birthday present dress. Nan declared she looked like the princess in the fairy tale with the dress like the moonlight.
“With all my finery, I don’t look nearly so well as you do, Douglas,” Helen declared.
Indeed Douglas was beautiful. She had on the graduating dress, the price of which had caused her so much concern the spring before. With careful ripping out of sleeves and snipping down of neck, Mrs. Carter had converted it into an evening dress with the help of a wonderful lace fichu, something left over from her own former splendor.
The sight of her eldest daughter all dressed in the ball gown brought tears of regret to poor Mrs. Carter’s eyes.
“What a débutante you would have made!” she sighed. “You have a queenly something about you that is quite rare in a débutante and might have made the hit of the season.”
“Oh, Mumsy, I’m a much better district school teacher!” and Douglas blushed with pleasure at her mother’s rare praise.
The girl had seen a subtle difference in her mother’s manner to her ever since she had felt it her duty to take a stand about their affairs. Mrs. Carter was ever gentle, ever courteous, but Douglas knew that she looked upon her no longer as her daughter somehow,—rather as a kind of taskmistress that Fate had set over her.
The young men were gathered in the living-room waiting for the girls and when they burst upon them in all the glory of ball gowns they quite dazzled them.
“Douglas!” gasped Lewis in an ill-concealed whisper, “you somehow make me think of an Easter lily.”
“Well, I don’t feel like one a bit. I can’t fancy an Easter lily’s dancing, and I mean to dance every dance I get a chance and all the others, too.”
“I reckon I can promise you that,” grinned her cousin.
Bill Tinsley made no ado of taking the pretty Tillie in his arms and opening the ball with a whistled fox trot.
“I’m going to get the first dance with you, and to make sure I’ll just take it now, please.”
“Don’t you like my dress?” asked Helen, twirling around on her toe before Dr. Wright, whose eyes plainly showed that he not only liked the dress but what was in the dress rather more than was good for the peace of mind of a rising young nerve specialist.
“Lovely!” he exclaimed, not looking at the dress at all, but at the charming face above the dress.
“Douglas gave it to me for a birthday present,—it was her extravagance, not mine. I think she is about the sweetest thing in all the world. The only thing that worries me is mashing it all up in the Suttons’ hay wagon.”
“Are the roads so very bad? Why not go in my car?”
“They are pretty bad, but no worse than the road from Richmond. It certainly is strange how that road changes. It was fine when the agent brought us out here to see the place. Wasn’t it?”
“It was, but I don’t think it is such a very bad road now. It may be because I like to travel on it. But come on and go with me in my car. If you will trust your dress and neck to me.”
“I will, since you put my dress first! Somehow that makes me feel you will be careful of it and respect it.”
A rattle of wheels and Billy Sutton came driving up in a great hay wagon filled with nice, clean straw, and close on his heels were Mr. and Mrs. Sutton in their carriage, which was to take Mr. and Mrs. Carter sedately to the ball.
“Helen and I are going in my car. Does anyone want to occupy the back seat?” asked George Wright, hoping he would be paid for his politeness by a refusal.
“No indeed, I adore a hay wagon! It’s so nice and informal,” cried Tillie.
Douglas did want to go, but felt perhaps it was up to her to chaperone the youngsters in the hay wagon, so for once Dr. Wright thought he was to get Helen for a few moments to himself.
“Chloe must go with us,” declared Helen.“She wants to stop in Paradise to see her mother.”
Dr. Wright cracked a grim joke to himself which concerned Chloe and the antipodes of Paradise, but he smothered his feelings and opened the door for the delighted colored girl, who had never been in an automobile before.
What a gay crowd they were in that hay wagon! Billy Sutton had contrived to get Nan on the front seat with him, where she was enthroned high above the others, looking down on the horses’ backs as they strained and pulled the great wagon through the half-frozen mud. Billy had some friends out from town who immediately attached themselves to Tillie Wingo, who was to beaux just as a honey-pot to bees. They stopped and picked up two families of young folks on the way to the count’s, and by the time they got them all in, the wagon was quite full.
“I am glad Helen didn’t trust her new dress to this,” Douglas whispered to Lewis.
“Well, I am glad you didn’t have on such fineclothes and came this way,” he whispered back. “Wright is too reckless for me on these country roads. Not that I am afraid myself, but I certainly should hate to see you turned over.”
“Whar Miss Ellanlouise?” asked Chloe, when she could get her breath after the first mad plunge into the delights of motoring.
“Oh, there! How selfish of me! I should have thought of it and asked them to go with us,” said Helen.
“We can go back for them,” suggested the doctor, who had begun to feel that he never would have a chance to see Helen alone.
“Oh, no, we needn’t mind. They are coming in their phaeton, and no doubt have started long before this. They are so good to me, I should have thought of them.”
Chloe was put out at Paradise, assuring her mistress she would come up through the woods in a few moments and no doubt be at her post in the dressing-room before the guests should arrive.
Paradise was very dark and lonesome. Thefew scattered cabins showed not a gleam. There was a dim light trickling from the windows of the club, but as they approached that rickety building, that disappeared. Helen saw some dark forms up close to the wall when she looked back after passing that place of entertainment.
“I reckon they are going to initiate someone tonight,” she thought.
“Chloe had such a strange talk with me today,” she told her companion and then repeated the conversation she had had with the colored girl. “I can’t quite understand her.”
“Perhaps this count is instilling some kind of silly socialistic notions in their heads,” suggested the doctor, who held the same opinion Lewis Somerville did of the gentleman who was to be their host for the evening. Indeed, he so cordially mistrusted him that only the fact he was to be with Helen had reconciled him to spending an evening under his roof.
“Oh, no, I can hardly think that, and besides, the count does not do the teaching. That is done by a Mr. Herz, his secretary. He is an American,born in Cincinnati. He seems to be very intelligent and certainly has taken a shine to Douglas. I don’t know just what she thinks of him, but she lets him walk home from school with her every now and then.”
“I don’t like the name much!”
“Well, the poor man can’t help his name. You speak as though we were already at war with Germany. I am trying to preserve our neutrality until war is declared.”
“My neutrality has been nothing but a farce since I have realized that Germany is at war with us.”
“You sound just like Douglas and Father. Will you go to war if it comes?”
“Why, of course! Would you have me do otherwise?”
“I—I—don’t know,” and Helen wished she had not asked the question that had called forth this query. This night was to be one of pleasure, feasting and dancing. War had no place in her thoughts when she had on her new dress and the music was coming from Richmond.
“Music and lights put me all in a flutter!” exclaimed Helen as they approached the broad and hospitable mansion.
Already there were several buggies and carriages in the gravelled driveway. The guests were arriving early, as sensible country people should. Let the city folks wait until far in the night to begin their revels, but those living in the country as a rule feel that balls should start early and break up early.
“Do you care so much for parties?”
“I think I must. I have not been to very many balls, because you see I am not out in society yet. I reckon I’ll never make my début now,” and Helen gave a little sigh.
“Does it make so very much difference to you?”
“Well, not so much as it would have a year ago. I used to feel that making one’s début was a goal that was of the utmost importance, but somehow now I do feel that there are things a little bit more worth while.”
“What for instance?”
“Getting Father well, and—and——”
“And what?”
“You might think I am silly if I tell you,—silly to talk about it.”
“I promise to think you are you no matter what else it is, and you are—well, never mind what you are.”
“Well, somehow I have begun to feel that helping people to be gay is important, like cheering up Miss Ella and Miss Louise. They have such stupid times. I really believe they quarrel just to make life a little gayer. I go to see them every day and it makes me feel good all over to know how much they like to have me come.”
“And you were afraid I’d think that was silly?” asked George Wright as he halted his car down under a great willow oak, well away fromthe other vehicles. How he wished they were to stay out under that tree all evening! Music and dancing were nothing to him compared to the pleasure he obtained from talking to this girl.
“Let’s sit here until the others come,” he suggested.
“And waste all that good music!”
Dr. Wright began to envy the Misses Grant whom Helen wanted to make happy.
“Of course not! I forgot how seldom you have a chance to dance.”
Weston was wonderfully beautiful. The electric lights may have been an anomaly, but they certainly helped to make the old house show what it was capable of. The dead and gone colonials who had built the place had been forced either to have their balls by daylight or to content themselves with flickering candles, which no doubt dropped wax or even tallow on the handsome gowns of the beauties and belles. The broad hall with the great rooms on each side seemed to be made for dancing. The floor was polished to a dangerous point for the unwary,but the unwary had no business on a ballroom floor.
The count seemed in his element as he received his guests, but Herz looked thoroughly out of place and ill at ease.
“Ah, Miss Helen! I am so glad to welcome you—and Dr. Wright—it is indeed kind of you to come! I am depending upon you, Miss Helen, to help me entertain these people who have come so promptly. They neither dance nor speak. Herz is about as much use to me on this occasion as a porcupine would be. Only look around the room at my guests!”
They did indeed look most forlorn. One old farmer was almost asleep while his wife sat bolt upright by his side with a long sad face and a deep regret in her eyes. No doubt, she was regretting the comfortable grey wrapper she had discarded for the stiff, best, green silk, and the broad easy slippers that had been replaced by the creaking shoes. Several girls with shining eyes and alert expressions were evidently wondering what ailed the young men who stoodagainst the wall as though it might fall down if they budged an inch.
“Why are they wasting all this good music?” demanded Helen.
“As you say in America: ‘Seek me!’” laughed the host.
“Search me, you mean.”
“Ah, but is it not almost the same? What do you say, Dr. Wright?”
“Well, I’d rather someone would seek me than search me.”
“So! And now, Miss Helen, if you will discard your wraps and return quickly and help me I shall be most grateful. If these poor people do not get started they will go to sleep.”
Helen flew up to the dressing-room which, sure enough, Chloe had reached before her. The girl was huddled down in a corner of the room looking the picture of woe.
“Did you see Tempy?” asked Helen, taking for granted that Chloe had been speaking of her sister when she had asked about one’s duty to one’s own people.
“No’m!”
“Wasn’t she at your mother’s?”
“I don’t know, ’m!”
“Was your mother there?”
“Yassum!”
There was never any use in trying to make Chloe talk when she had decided not to, so Helen threw off her wraps and with a peep in the mirror where one could see from top to toe, she hastened to the aid of Count de Lestis.
“Mother will be along soon and she can do wonders with people who are bashful,” declared Helen, “but I’ll try my hand at it until she comes. They must dance, then they will thaw out.”
“Certainly, and will you dance with me to show them how?”
Helen forgot all about the fact that she had come with Dr. Wright and he might reasonably expect to claim the first dance.
“Yes, but you must introduce me to all these people and I’ll ask some of the girls to dance while you go get the young men to come fall in the breach.”
The shiny-eyed girls were willing enough and the young men seemed to think if the count didn’t mind his walls falling down, far be it from them to hold them up, so in a few moments the sad crowd were in a gale of good humor. The old farmer waked up and his wife looked as though she might try her new creaky shoes on the waxed floor if anyone would only ask her.
Dr. Wright looked on rather grimly as Helen was whisked from under his very nose. He might have stood it better if the count had not been such a perfect dancer and so very handsome. He had a way of whispering to his partner during the dance that was also a sore trial to the young physician.
“What could he be saying to Helen to make her dimple and blush?”
The arrival of the carriage containing Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Carter with their rather bored husbands was a welcome interruption to the poor young man. Soon came the lumbering hay wagon with its giggling, chattering load, and then Helen was at liberty to dance with him,since the count perforce must again play the gracious host.
“Isn’t it perfect?” she exclaimed. “The floor, the music, and everything!”
“Not quite so perfect now as when you had the count for a partner, I am afraid,” he muttered, bending over to make her hear. He was too tall to converse while dancing with Helen. He had never regretted his inches before.
“Nonsense! You dance just as well as he does, and he talks so much while he is dancing. I hate to dance and talk, too,—just dancing is enough for me.”
“Me, too, then!” and once more he felt the satisfaction that a man who measures over six feet can’t help feeling.
Helen was right. Mrs. Carter was a born entertainer and she had hardly taken the social reins in her hands before the ball was running smoothly. Even Bobby found a partner, a funny little girl with such bushy hair that anyone could tell at a glance it had been put up in curl papers for several days. She looked like apink hollyhock in her starched book-muslin that stood out like a paper lamp shade. Her round black eyes seemed very lovely to the gallant Bobby, who took her into the back hall where they turned round and round in imitation of the dance, and when dancing palled on them they showed each other how to make rabbits out of their handkerchiefs.
“This is the kind of party I like,” said the wholesome Mrs. Sutton. “Every Jill has her Jack and there are some Jacks to spare. Deliver me from parties where girls must sit against the wall and wait for partners to be released.”
“When you get the vote you can do the asking, and then parties where the females predominate will be more popular,” teased her husband.
“Nonsense! We can still do the asking if we care to. Come on and dance with me, sir!” and Mr. Sutton delightedly complied.
Mrs. Carter did not have to spend all the evening making other people have a good time. She was asked to dance by the count and her pretty little figure and graceful bearing attracted otherpartners, and she was soon tripping the light fantastic toe as untiringly as any of her daughters. Tillie Wingo herself did not get broken in on oftener.
Herz stood in corners, looking like one of the men out of Noah’s ark, Nan declared, so stiff and wooden.
“I don’t know which one he resembles most, Shem, Ham, or Japheth,” she whispered to Billy Sutton, “but I wonder if you licked him if the paint would come off.”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to try. I can’t abide that Dutchman. I believe he thinks he is superior to all of us, even his precious count. Jehoshaphat! I believe he is asking Douglas to dance.”
So he was. The secretary was stalking across the room, determination on his noble brow and his full mouth drawn together in a tight red line. He stopped in front of Douglas and placing one hand on his breast and the other one on his waist line in the back, he shut up like a jack-knife.
Douglas looked a little astonished, not knowingexactly what the young man wanted, and then the memory of the early days at dancing school came to her when the little boys were forced to bow to the little girls before they danced with them.
“Certainly,” she said, excusing herself from Lewis, who looked a little sullen, having expected to claim this particular waltz with his cousin, but who had neglected to do so, being too intent on gazing at her pretty flushed face.
Herz clasped her around the waist and began to twirl in a most astonishing manner. She could hardly keep her footing and very early lost her breath. Skilful guiding was not necessary, although when they arose to dance the floor was well filled with other couples, but these, knowing full well that discretion was the better part of valor, gave the spinning pair the right of way. The man never lost his gravity or dignity, but his mouth broke from the hard red line to its usual full-lipped curve. Douglas felt as though that dance would never end. His strong arm held her like an iron ring as round and round they went.