The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors
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 of our 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!”
CHAPTER IX
GOLDILOCKS’ CHAIRS
“Miss Hell-e-en! Miss Hell-e-en! Yo’ popovers is done popped over!” came in a wailing shriek from the kitchen.
Helen went so fast her pink bungalow apron looked like a rosy streak. Dr. Wright, fearing some dire calamity had befallen someone and his “first aid to the injured” might be in demand, ran after her. The popovers had popped just right, however, but must be devoured immediately; so luncheon was served as quickly as possible.
“Bring those two chairs from the kitchen, Chloe,” commanded Douglas as she deftly rearranged the table for ten persons instead of eight.
“Now, Miss Douglas, don’t you know ’bout dem cheers in de kitchen? Th’ ain’t got no mo’ seat to ’em dan a rabbit.”
“Bring them anyhow,” laughed Douglas. “I can sit in one and Miss Helen in the other.”
In the confusion of placing family and guests, Douglas forgot all about the bottomless chairs. After everyone was seated she suddenly remembered them with horror.
“Suppose the count got one of them!” It made very little difference about anyone else. But the count! All of that charm and elegance in a chair with no seat!
As soon as grace was said, Bobby, with a shriek of delight, suddenly collapsed and disappeared.
“One chair accounted for!” thought Douglas.
Bobby’s heels were sticking up and he peered saucily through his feet at the astonished company.
“I done got a Goldilocks’ cheer,” he announced. “‘An’ Goldilocks sat, an’ sat, an’ sat, an’ sat ’til she sat the bottom out of the little bar’s cheer.’”
“Bobby, take your seat!” commanded Mr. Carter, trying to look stern.
“I done took it!”
“Get up!”
Easier said than done! Bobby was fast stuck, “I reckon my ’ployer’ll have to op’rate on me,” he said plaintively, “’fo’ I kin eat.”
There was a roar of laughter at this and Dr. Wright, who was sitting between Helen and Bobby, extricated the youngster and then changed chairs with him, whereupon they proceeded to the business of eating popovers and creamed mushrooms and the other good things that Helen had planned for the repast.
Douglas then laughingly told of their predicament in having only eight whole straight chairs in the house and of her intention of sitting on one of the decrepit ones herself and of having Helen sit on the other.
“It is rather like playing ‘Thimble, thimble! Who’s got the thimble?’” she laughed. “I hope whoever has it is comfortable.”
“Don’t all speak at once!” said Lucy. “Of course some of the company’s got it, because home folks would put you out of misery at once.”
Still silence and Douglas was mortally certain the count had it and was too polite to say so.
“He certainly has beautiful manners,” she said to herself, and turning from Lewis, who was endeavoring to monopolize her, she smiled her sweetest on the courteous foreigner. She felt she must make up to him anyhow for telling him his moustache turned up like the Kaiser’s.
“Isn’t it strange, Cousin Robert,” said Lewis to Mr. Carter, “I wrote Douglas I was coming and she never got my letter?”
The count’s manner was a little distrait. Evidently he was trying to hear what Douglas was saying and to listen to the conversation between Lewis and Mr. Carter at the same time.
“Is that so? I am afraid our postman is careless. He seems to get the mail mixed sometimes. Every now and then our letters get left at Grantly.”
“But the ladies up there would send them down, I am sure,” said Mrs. Carter.
“You got my telephone message all right, didn’t you?” Dr. Wright asked Douglas.
“What message?”
“Why, I telephoned Grantly I would be out today!”
“No, they did not deliver it.”
“Perhaps they will send the letter with the message,” suggested the count in an amused tone.
Just then Chloe fell down the steps into the dining-room with a plate of hot popovers, which she adroitly caught before they reached the floor.
“Miss Ellanlouise done sent Sis Tempy down with the news that you alls is gonter hab some comply. They done dis’greed whether they is a-comin’ yesterday or tomorrow.”
“Who is it coming?” laughed Helen.
“They done ’sputed whether it is a doctor or a lywer, an’ they ain’t able t’ agree what his name is, but Miss Ella thinks it is Stites an’ Miss Louise she holds that it is Bright. Both on ’em was a-tryin’ ter listen at the ’phome ter onct so they done got kinder twis’ed like.”
“When was the message sent?” asked Douglas.
“Sis Tempy said Miss Ella said it come of a Chuseday an’ Miss Louise called her back an’ tol’ her not ter pay no ’tention ter Miss Ella, that she knows it come of a Thursday.”
“Why, that must be my message I sent on Wednesday!” exclaimed Dr. Wright. “I am either Lawyer Stites or Dr. Bright.”
“Of course!” and everyone laughed heartily over the mistake of the peculiar old sisters.
“Well, it doesn’t make any real difference since you are here, does it?” asked Helen.
“Not a bit! Being here is what is important to me. Does it make any difference to you?”
Dr. Wright was able to say this in a whisper to Helen. It seemed very difficult for him to have many words in private with this girl, who seemed to him to become more charming every day. Certainly adversity had improved her in his eyes. The character and determination she had shown when once the gravity of her father’s condition had been explained to her were really remarkable in one so young, and one who had up to that time never done a single thing she had not wanted to do. Tête-à-têtes with Helen were made difficult for him by reason of his popularity with the whole Carter family. Mr. Carter had various questions to discuss with him; Mrs. Carter must always tell him her symptoms; Douglas wanted his advice about many things; Nan found him very sympathetic and always had something to confide in him; Lucy, realizing that Helen no longer looked upon him as an enemy to the family, had come over to his camp and now considered him her company just as much as anybody’s and demanded his attention accordingly. Of course Bobby knew he belonged exclusively to him. Was he not his ’ployer?
“Does it make any difference to you?” he repeated.
Helen was on the point of answering him very kindly when Count de Lestis leaned over and engaged her attention.
“Miss Helen, do not forget the promise you made me to come to Weston some morning with your father. There are many things I want to show you. I want your advice, too, about some pantry arrangements I am contemplating. What does mere man know of pantry shelves?”
“Oh, I’d love to come!” exclaimed Helen, and the kind answer she was preparing to give Dr. Wright never was spoken.
That young physician looked at the Hungarian count as though he would cheerfully throttle him. Helen’s advice about pantry shelves, indeed! What business had this foreigner to draw Helen into his household arrangements?
During that luncheon de Lestis managed to antagonize both Lewis Somerville and George Wright. Douglas had smiled entirely too many times on this stranger to suit Lewis, and Helen had been much too eager to pass on the housekeeping arrangements to accord with George’s ideas of United States’ relations with Hungary.
“Why is he not fighting with his country?” each young man asked himself.
Chloe was waiting on the table remarkably well, much to Helen’s gratification. Only once had she fallen down the steps, and, thanks to her teacher’s vigilance, she usually remembered to pass things to the left.
“You must try to show the Count de Lestis how much you have learned,” Helen had told her while she was preparing the lunch; “remember how interested he is in educating colored people.”
Helen, seated at the head of the table, was pouring the tea, Mrs. Carter having resigned her place to her daughter when she resigned herself to be a semi-invalid.
“Hand this to Count de Lestis,” Helen said, having put in sugar to his taste.
“Here’s yo’ C-U-P, CUP of T-E, TEA,” shouted Chloe, as she balanced the cup precariously on the tray.
“Beg pardon!” exclaimed the honored guest in amazement.
“C-U-P, CUP! H-O-T, HOT! T-E, TEA!”
The count took the tea with a puzzled look on his handsome countenance and Chloe fled from the room, not in embarrassment but to impart to Sis Tempy how she had done made Miss Helen proud by showing the count how much she done learned her to spell.
Everybody roared, even Mrs. Carter, who had come to the realization that the most dignified way to treat Chloe was to recognize her as a joke.
“It is this way,” said Helen when she could speak. “You see, I have been trying to teach the poor thing to read and spell. She told me of the wonderful work you are doing,” to the count.
“I am doing?”
“Yes, in your night school at Weston! It made me ashamed to think you, a foreigner, should be doing so much for the colored race, and I doing nothing, so I determined to do what I could with my own servant at least. I can’t tell you how splendid I think it is of you and your secretary to give so much time to the poor country darkies.”
The count flushed a dark red. He seemed actually confused by this girl’s praise.
“All of us think it is fine,” said Nan.
“Speak for yourself!” whispered Lucy. “Mag and I think it is smart Alec of him and we bet he does it ’cause he wants to, not to help the colored people.”
“I beg your pardon! Did you speak to me?” asked the count, recovering himself from the evident confusion into which Helen’s and Nan’s approbration seemed to have plunged him.
“I – I – said – er – I said you and your kind secretary must enjoy the work,” stammered Lucy.
“Do you find they learn easily?” asked Dr. Wright, trying to hide his feelings and wishing he had put in his spare time in altruistic work among the colored brethren.
“The truth of the matter is I do no teaching myself. This night school is a fad of Herz, my secretary.”
“Ah, but I know you do some, because Chloe tells me of how kindly you speak to the darkies,” insisted Helen. “She says you make beautiful talks to them sometimes and they are crazy about you.”
“They exaggerate!” shrugged the count. “They seem a simple, kindly folk, grateful for any crumb of learning.”
“Aren’t there any district schools here for the colored people?” asked George Wright.
“Yes, but no place for the older ones to learn. It is quite pathetic how they yearn for knowledge, – so Herz tells me.”
“Well, my opinion is that too much learning is bad for them,” blurted out Lewis.
“Oh, Lewis!” exclaimed Douglas. “How can you say such a thing? Too much learning can’t be bad for anybody.”
“What I mean is too much and not enough. They get just enough to make them big-headed and not enough to give them any balance.”
“‘A little learning is a dangerous thing —Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring,’”murmured Nan.
“Exactly!” said Lewis gratefully. “I don’t want to hold the darky down, but I do think he should be taught very carefully or he will get wrong notions in his head, social equality with the whites and such stuff.”
“I find Americans very strange when one gets them on the subject of social equality,” and de Lestis suddenly seemed very superior and quite conscious of his own station in life. “There is much talk of being democratic but not so much practice. Your Declaration of Independence plainly states that all men shall be free and equal, and still, while you grant the black race freedom, you deny it equality.”
“I reckon you don’t understand the South very well,” answered Lewis, his blue eyes flashing.
“Ah!” was all the count said, but he said it with a toploftical manner that irritated Lewis.
“The colored soldiers are excellent, so I have heard,” put in Douglas, hoping to get the subject changed, if not too abruptly.
“Yes, they are good,” said Lewis, “but that is because they are trained well. That is drinking deep of Nan’s Pierian Spring. I think a military training in colored schools is almost more important than in the white ones. It gives them the kind of balance they don’t get in any other way.”
“Why don’t you give the pupils in your night school some drilling?” asked Helen.
“Thank you for the suggestion!” and the count bowed low over Helen’s hand as they arose from the table at a signal from Mrs. Carter, who began to think the conversation was getting entirely too serious and not at all social. “I shall profit by it immediately and introduce a kind of setting-up exercise at least.”
“Now we’ll find out who had the other busted cheer!” cried Bobby.
It was the count, and his tact and good manners in patiently sitting through the meal on what must have been a rather uncomfortable perch made the females of the party, excepting Lucy, admire him just that much more, but it did not make George Wright and Lewis Somerville think any more highly of the good-looking foreigner.
“He had much better be fighting for his country,” grumbled Lewis to his companion in misery, “even if it would be on the wrong side.” Which was not the proper remark for a soldier in the army of a neutral nation.
CHAPTER X
NOVEMBER
The mystery that will never be solved for the human race is why some days must be dark and dreary and why those days sometimes stretch themselves into weeks.
The weather that had been so perfect when our Carters first came to Valhalla had held for a long time. Frosty, crisp autumn mornings that made the blood tingle in one’s veins, followed by warmer days and then cold bracing nights when a fire in the great chimney of the living-room was most acceptable, had become so much the rule that when the exception occurred no one was prepared to accept it.
Morning after morning Nan and Lucy had trudged cheerfully over the fields and through the lane to Grantly Station to catch the early train, enjoying the walk and not minding at all that the quarter of a mile was really three-quarters. Coming home was happy, too. The train reached Grantly by half-past three, the pleasantest time in an autumn afternoon, and the girls would loiter along the road, stopping to eat wild grapes or to crack walnuts or maybe to get some persimmons, delicious and shriveled from the hard frosts. Sometimes Billy and Mag would have the good news for them that the Suttons’ car was to be at Preston and that meant that our girls were to get out at that station and be run home by Billy.
They were great favorites with both Mr. and Mrs. Sutton who encouraged the intimacy with their son and daughter. Suitable companions are not always to be found in rural communities and the coming of the Carters to the neighborhood was recognized by that worthy couple as a great advantage to their children.
“Nan is a charming girl, William,” Mrs. Sutton had said to her husband, “and even if Billy fancies himself to be in love with her it will do him no harm, only good, since she has such good sense and breeding.”
“Of course it will do him good and maybe it is not just fancy on his part. We Suttons have a way of deciding early and sticking to it. Eh, Margaret? I remember you had your hair in a plait and wore quite short skirts when I began to scheme how best to get a permanent seat by you on the train, and here I’ve got it!” and Mr. Sutton gave his portly wife a comfortable hug.
“And Mag is having a splendid time with Lucy,” continued that lady, accepting the hug with a smile. “Lucy is so quick and clever, no one could help liking her. I, for one, am glad the Carters have come.”
“What do you think is the matter with their mother? They always speak of her as an invalid. She looks well enough to me, although of course not robust like one beautiful lady I know.” Mr. Sutton admired his wife so much that the flesh she was taking on just made her that much more beautiful in his eyes. He thought there could not be too much of a good thing.
“Invalid indeed! She is just spoiled and lazy,” declared Mrs. Sutton who was all energy and industry. “She is attractive enough but I should hate to be her daughter.”
“Yes, and I’d hate to be her husband, too!”
The Suttons had been most pleasant and hospitable to their new neighbors, although there could not have been two women brought together so dissimilar as Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter considered her mission in life to be as beautiful as possible and also charming. Mrs. Sutton had never had time to think what her mission in life was, she was so busy doing the things it seemed important to do. She was first of all the wife of a successful farmer and that meant eternal vigilance on her part, as the success of a farm depends so much on the management of women. Next she was the mother of two healthy, normal children who must be trained in the way they should go. After that she was an important member of a community where her progressive spirit was needed and appreciated. Her home, Preston, was where the Ladies’ Aid met and worked and kept the little church out of debt; there was headquarters for the Traveling Library; there the Magazine Club read and swapped periodicals. She was president of the Preston Equal Suffrage League, a struggling but valorous band, and now that work of organizations was sorely needed for suffering humanity, this same league was rolling bandages and making comfort kits for the Allies, showing that votes for women was not the only thing it could work for. Truly Mrs. Sutton was a busy and happy woman.
But we are forgetting that the weather seemed destined to become our topic! Certainly the Suttons are a more agreeable subject than the weather our girls were fated to endure. Of course the sun can’t shine all the time and in the natural course of events October days must shorten into November days and they in turn into December, with nights growing longer and longer and days shorter and shorter and both of them colder and colder. Drizzling rains must fall, even if a trusting family has taken its abode in a weather-beaten old house, up a muddy lane that must be walked through to reach the station.
“‘In winter I get up at nightAnd dress by early candle light,’”yawned Nan one morning as the alarm went off, warning her it was time to rouse herself and Lucy. Lucy had curled up in a little ball, having gone to bed without quite enough cover. It had turned cold and damp during the night, a heavy rain had kept up for hours and now at six in the morning it was drizzling dismally.
“I don’t see how we can go to town to-day,” sighed Nan, peering out of the window. “It is so dark and gloomy.”
“I reckon the lane will be awfully muddy,” said Lucy, reluctantly uncurling herself, “and I believe I left my rubbers at school that time I took them in when I thought it was going to rain and it didn’t.”
“You’ll have to borrow Helen’s.”
“Gee! Isn’t it cold?” and Lucy drew back the foot she had tentatively poked out of bed. “I wish we could live in a steam-heated house again.”
Valhalla was heated by open fireplaces, drum stoves and the Grace of God, according to Chloe. There was a small stove in the younger girls’ room, but up to this time they had not felt the necessity of having a fire.
It seemed difficult on that rainy morning for everyone to awaken. Chloe’s feet and then her reluctant legs came through the trap-door of her attic room and slowly down the chicken steps leading into the kitchen long after Helen had started the kerosene stove and put on the kettle.
“I ain’t slep’ none,” she declared when Helen remonstrated with her because of her tardiness. “The rain done leaked in on my haid an’ I reckon I’s gonter die er the ammonia.”
