The Carter Girls
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“Yes – and thank you.”
“By Jove,” thought the young man, “that girl is some looker! If she had the sense of her sister Douglas, I believe she would be pretty nice, too.”
Helen’s whole countenance had changed. From the proud, scornful girl, she had turned again into her own self, the Helen her sisters knew and loved.
“You might see that Bobby is kept kind of quiet, too. Tell him I will take him out with me again soon and let him blow my horn and poke out his arm when we turn the corners, if he will be quiet for an hour.”
“All right,” said Helen meekly, wondering at her own docility in so calmly being bossed by this person whom she still meant to despise. She interviewed the chauffeur, ordering the car at the proposed time, and then captured Bobby, who was making his way to his father’s room. She inveigled him into the back yard where she kept him in a state of bliss, having her supper out there with him and playing tea party to his heart’s content, even pretending to eat his wonderful mud “pies an’ puddin’s.”
It was almost time for the dread departure and still she kept watch over Bobby. The mother came out in the back yard to kiss her children good-by. Poor little mother! The meadow brook has surely come on rocky places now. What effect is it to have? Perhaps the channel will be broadened and deepened when the shoals are past. Who knows?
Gone, at last! No one even to wave farewell, so implicitly did the Carter household obey the stern mandates of the doctor. Even the negro servants kept in the background while their beloved master and mistress were borne away by the smoothly rolling car.
“Seems mos’ lak a funeral,” sobbed Oscar, “lak a funeral in yellow feber times down in Mobile, whar I libed onct. Nobody went to them funerals fer fear er ketching sompen from de corpse. Saddes’ funerals ebber I seed.”
The girls were sure those funerals could not have been any sadder than this going away of their parents. Once more they gathered in the library, as forlorn a family as one could find in the whole world, they were sure. Their eyes were red and their noses redder. Douglas had had the brunt of the labor in getting the packing done and had held out wonderfully until it was all over, and now she had fallen in a little heap on the sofa and was sobbing her soul out.
Nan was doing her best to comfort her while Lucy was bawling like a baby on Helen’s shoulder, truce between the two declared for the time being.
“I feel just like the British would if the Rock of Gibraltar had turned into brown sugar and melted into the sea,” declared Helen, when the storm had blown itself out and a calmness of despair had settled down on all of them.
“That’s just it,” agreed Nan. “Father has always been just like Gibraltar to us. His picture would have done just as well for the Prudential Life Insurance ad as Gibraltar did.”
“If you could just have heard him talk as he did to me. Oh, girls, I feel as though I had killed him!” and Helen gave a dry sob that made Lucy put an arm around her. “I have sworn a solemn swear to myself: I am not going to wear a single silk stocking nor yet a pair of them until Father comes home, and not then unless he is well. I have some old cotton ones that I got for the Camp-Fire Girls’ hike, the only ones I ever had since I can remember, and I am going to wear those until I can get some more. I hate ’em, too! They make my toes feel like old rusty potatoes in a bag.”
This made the girls laugh. A laugh made them feel better. Maybe behind the clouds the sun was, after all, still shining and they would not have to wear rubbers and raincoats forever.
“You remind me of the old man we saw up at Wytheville who had such very long whiskers, having sworn never to cut them off or trim them until the Democrats elected a President,” drawled Nan. “Those whiskers did some growing between Cleveland’s and Wilson’s Administrations. You remember when Wilson was elected and he shaved them off, his wife made a big sofa cushion out of them; and the old man had become so used to the great weight on his chin, that now he was freed from it, his chin just naturally flew up in the air and made him look like his check rein was too tight.”
“Yes, I remember,” declared Lucy; “and his wife said she was going to strap the cushion back on where his whiskers used to be if he didn’t stop holding his head so haughty.” Another laugh and the sun came out in their hearts.
Dr. Wright had assured them that their father would be well. He had had many patients who had been in much worse condition who were now perfectly well. Mr. Carter’s case had been taken hold of in time and the doctor was trusting to his splendid constitution and the quiet of the ocean to work wonders in him. In the meantime, it was necessary for the girls to begin to think about what they were to do.
“I think we had better not try to come to any conclusion to-night,” said Douglas, “we are all of us so worn out, at least I am. We will sleep on it and then to-morrow get together and all try to bring some plan and idea. There was almost no money left in the bank after the tickets for the voyage were bought and money put in Mother’s bag for incidentals.”
“Poor little Muddy, just think of her having to be the purse bearer! I don’t believe she knows fifty cents from a quarter,” sighed Nan.
“Well, Mother will have to go to school just like the rest of us. I fancy we only know the difference in size and not much about the value of either. Dr. Wright wrote a check for the amount in bank, showing from Father’s check book, and after he had paid for the tickets, he left the rest for me to put to my account. I am awfully mortified, but I don’t know how to deposit money – and as for writing a check – I’d sooner write a thesis on French history. I know I could do it better.”
Douglas smothered a little sigh. This was no time to think of self or to repine about her private ambitions, but somehow the thought would creep in that this meant good-by to college for her. She had planned to take examinations for Bryn Mawr early in June and was confident of passing. She had her father’s ability to stick to a thing until it was accomplished, and no matter how distasteful a subject was to her, she mastered it. This was her graduating year at school. Now all joy of the approaching commencement was gone. She was sorry that her dress was already bought, and in looking over the check book, she had found it was paid for, too. Forty dollars for one dress and that of material that had at the best but little wearing quality! Beautiful, of course, but when a family had been spending money as freely as this family had always done, what business had one of them with a forty dollar white dress with no wear to it when the balance in the bank showed only eighty-three dollars and fifty-nine cents?
A sharp ringing of the front door bell interrupted Douglas’s musings and made all of the sisters conscious of their red eyes and noses.
“Who under Heaven? It is nine o’clock!”
“Cousin Lizzie Somerville, of course. She always rings like the house was on fire.”
It was Miss Elizabeth Somerville, a second cousin of their father. She came into the library in rather unseemly haste for one of her usual dignity.
“Where is your father?” she demanded, without the ceremony of greeting the girls. “I must see him immediately. Your mother, too, of course, if she wants to come down, but I must see your father.”
“But he is gone!”
“Gone where? When will he return?”
“In about two months,” said Helen coolly. Helen was especially gifted in tackling Cousin Lizzie, who was of an overbearing nature that needed handling. “He and Mother have gone to Bermuda.”
“Bermuda in the summer! Nonsense! Tell me when I can see him, as it is of the greatest importance. I should think you could see that I am in trouble and not stand there teasing me,” and since it was to be a day of tears, Cousin Lizzie burst out crying, too.
“Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I am so sorry! I did not mean to tease. I am not teasing. Father is ill, you must have noticed how knocked up he has been looking lately, and the doctor has taken him with Mother to New York. They have just gone, and they are to sail on a slow steamer to Bermuda and Panama in the morning. Please let us help you if we can.”
“You help! A lot of silly girls! It is about my nephew Lewis!” and the poor lady wept anew.
CHAPTER V
LEWIS SOMERVILLE
“Lewis! What on earth can be the matter with him?” chorused the girls.
“Matter enough! He has been shipped!”
“Shipped? Oh, Cousin Lizzie, you can’t mean it!” exclaimed Douglas, drying her eyes as she began to realize that she was not the only miserable person in the world whose ambitions had gone awry.
“I am sure if he has been fired, it is from no fault of his own,” declared Nan, who was a loyal soul and always insisted that her friends and relatives were in the right until absolute proof to the contrary was established.
“Well, whether it was his fault or not, I am not prepared to say. ‘Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire.’”
The girls had to smile at this, as there was never a time when Cousin Lizzie did not have a proverb ready to suit the occasion.
“Yes, but the fire might not have been of his kindling,” insisted Nan.
“Please tell us what the trouble is, Cousin Lizzie, if you don’t mind talking about it,” begged Douglas. “Has Lewis really left West Point for good? I can’t believe it.”
“The trouble is: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ If Lewis had not been with the companions that he has chosen, he would not have gotten into this trouble. Surely Solomon was wise indeed when he said: ‘Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son, but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.’ I am glad my poor brother is dead and not here to witness his son’s disgrace.”
“Cousin Lizzie, I do not believe that Lewis has done anything disgraceful,” insisted Nan, speaking almost quickly for once.
“Well, it is a disgrace in my mind for the son and grandson of Confederate soldiers to be dismissed from a Yankee institution, whether he was in fault or not. ‘As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place.’ A Somerville’s place is in the South and it was always against my wishes that Lewis went to West Point.”
“Please tell us what the trouble is, what Lewis did or didn’t do at West Point,” said Helen in the determined voice that usually made Cousin Lizzie stop her proverbs long enough to give the information required.
“‘Hazing a plebe,’ is what he said. What a plebe is or what hazing is I do not know, but whatever it is, Lewis says he was not mixed up in it, but he, with eight other second classmen, were let out. The words are his, not mine. All I know is that he was discharged and is at my house now in a state of dejection bordering on insanity.”
“Poor boy! We are so sorry for him. What is he going to do now?” asked Douglas.
Here was another disappointment for Douglas. Her cousin, Lewis Somerville, was one of the dearest friends she had in the world. He was two years her senior and had made it his business since they were tiny tots to protect her and look after her on all occasions. They had had a plan for the following year that now, of course, had fallen through. She was to have come to West Point from Bryn Mawr to the finals. He would then have been a third classman and able to make her have a rip-roaring time, as he had expressed it.
Lewis in a state of dejection bordering on insanity! That was unbelievable. If there ever was a gayer, happier person than Lewis, she had never seen him.
“Do? Goodness knows!”
“Well, all I can say,” put in Nan, “is that Uncle Sam is a fool not to know that Lewis is a born soldier, and if he wants to prepare himself to defend his country, he should be allowed to do so. Oh, I don’t care what he has done – I just know he hasn’t done it!”
“I’m going to ’phone him this minute and tell him to come around here!” and Helen jumped up from her seat, thereby waking Lucy, who had dropped asleep on her shoulder, worn out with the stress of emotion.
“If you are, so am I – whatever it is,” declared Lucy, rubbing her eyes, as determined as ever to keep up with Helen or die in the attempt.
“Hello! is this you, Lewis?” as the connection was quickly made.
“Well,” in a tired, dreary voice. “What is it?”
“This is me, Lewis, Helen Carter! We are all sitting up here dressed in our best waiting for you to come to see us. Douglas says if you don’t hurry she, for one, is going to bed.”
“What’s that?” in a little brisker tone.
“Say, Lewis, we are in an awful lot of trouble. You know Father is ill and has had to go away and we don’t know what is to become of us. We need your advice terribly – ”
“Be ’round in a jiffy,” and so he was.
“That was very tactful of you, Helen,” said Cousin Lizzie lugubriously. “You know ‘Misery loves company.’” But a peal from the front door bell interrupted further quotations and Lewis Somerville came tearing into the house in answer to Helen’s S. O. S.
He did look as dejected as one of his make-up could. It is hard to be dejected very long when one is just twenty, in perfect health, with naturally high spirits and the strength to remove mountains tingling in the veins. A jury of women could not have shipped the young would-be soldier, and it must have taken very hard-hearted men, very determined on maintaining discipline, deliberately to have cut this young fellow’s career in two. Our army must be full of very fine young men if they can so lightly give up such a specimen as this Lewis Somerville. Imagine a young giant of noble proportions, as erect as an ash sapling that has had all the needed room in which to grow, a head like Antinous and frank blue eyes that could no more have harbored a lie than that well-cut, honest mouth could have spoken one.
“I didn’t do it and just to let me know that you don’t believe I did, you have got to kiss me all around.”
“Nonsense, Lewis! Helen and I are too old to kiss you even if you are a cousin,” and Douglas got behind Cousin Lizzie.
“Quite right, Douglas, ‘The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge.’ Lewis is not such very close kin, besides.”
“Why, Aunt Lizzie, I did not expect you to desert me.”
“‘It is not good to eat much honey, so for men to search their own glory is not glory.’”
“Well, Nan and Lucy will kiss me, anyhow. They believe I did not do it.”
“We are sure you are telling the truth,” said Douglas gravely. “We do not know yet what they say you did.”
“They say I helped a lot of fellows tie a plebe to a tree and drop ice down his back, making out it was red hot pennies, until the fellow fainted from his fancied injuries. I never did it, but if I had, it wouldn’t have been a patching on the things the second classmen did to me last year when I was a plebe, and wild horses would not have dragged a complaint from me. It was done by some men who are my chums, but I declare I was not with the crowd.”
“We know it! we know it!” from all the girls.
“But I don’t want to talk about myself – I am so anxious to hear what is the matter with Cousin Robert. Let’s let up on me and talk about your trouble, and if I can help, please command me.”
“Father is very ill,” said Douglas soberly. “He has been working too hard for a long time and now his nerves have just given way and he has had to stop and go on a trip. Dr. Wright assures us that he has stopped in time and a sea trip and a year’s rest will completely restore him. It has come on us so suddenly that we have not had time to catch our breath even.”
“And who is this Dr. Wright?” asked Cousin Lizzie. “I thought Dr. Davis was your family physician. Some Yankee, I’ll be bound, with all kinds of new notions.”
“He is from Washington recently, but I believe he came originally from New York State.”
“Do you mean that you let a perfect stranger pick up your parents and send them off on a journey without consulting a soul?”
“But it was important to avoid all confusion and discussion. Dr. Wright has been lovely about it all. He even got a notary public so I could be given power of attorney to attend to any business that might come up. It so happened, though, that my being under age was a drawback and Father gave him power of attorney instead.”
“Douglas Carter! Do you mean to say that a strange young Yankee doctor that has only been living in Richmond a little while has the full power to sell your father out and do anything he chooses with his estate? Preposterous!”
“But there isn’t any estate,” objected Douglas, and Helen could not help a little gleam of satisfaction creeping into her eyes. She was not the only person who felt that Dr. Wright had been, to say the least, presumptuous.
“No estate! Why I thought Robert Carter was very well off. What has he done with his money, please?”
“We have just lived on it. We didn’t know,” sadly from Douglas.
“I never heard of such extravagance. ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’”
“We have got just exactly eighty-three dollars and fifty-nine cents in the bank. Father owns this house and a side of a mountain in Albemarle, and that is all.”
“Mercy, child! I can’t believe it.”
“We have got to live somehow, and I believe we all feel that it would be very bad for Father to come back and find debts to be paid off. He has such a horror of debt that he has always paid the bills each month. What do you think we could do – something to make money, I mean? Father was in such a nervous state we could not consult him, and Mother, poor little Mother, of course she does not understand business at all.”
“Humph! I should say not! And what do you chits of girls know about it, either? Are you meaning to stay alone, all un-chaperoned, until this Yankee doctor thinks it is time to let your parents return? Just as like as not there is nothing the matter with your father but a touch of malaria.”
“We had not thought of a chaperone, as we have been so miserable about Father we could not think of ourselves. If we are going to make a living, we won’t need chaperones, anyhow.”
“Make a living, indeed! You are to stay right here in your home and I will come stay with you, and you can curtail your expenses somewhat by dismissing one servant and giving up your car. Robert Carter is not the kind of man who would want his eighteen-year-old daughter and others even younger to go out into the world to make a living. He would rather die than have such a thing happen.”
“But we are not going to have him die,” broke in Helen. “I thought just as you do, Cousin Lizzie, until I saw him this afternoon and realized how worried he has been. We are going to do something and there are to be no debts awaiting him, either. What do you think of boarders? Do you think we could get any?”
“Who on earth would board with us, here in Richmond? Everybody knows what a trifling lot we are. If we have boarders, it will have to be on the side of the mountain in Albemarle,” said Nan, and as usual every one stopped to hear what she had to say. “Besides, a boarding house in summer shuts up shop in cities. Country board is the thing. Let’s rent our house furnished for a year and go to the mountains.”
“But there are nothing but trees and rocks on the side of the mountain in Albemarle,” objected Douglas; “not a piece of a house except a log cabin near the top built by the sick Englishman who used to live there.”
“No room for boarders in that, I know, as Father pointed it out to me once from the train when we were on our way to Wytheville. It had one room and maybe two. It must command a wonderful view. You could see it for miles and miles and when you get up there, there is no telling what you can see. It would make a great camp – Girls! Girls! Cousin Lizzie! Lewis! All of you! I’ve got a scheme! It just came to me!” and Helen jumped up and ran around and hugged everybody, even the cousin she and Douglas had grown too big to kiss.
“Well, cough it up! We are just as anxious as can be to share your idea, or is it so big it got stuck on the way,” laughed Lewis, accepting the caress as it was meant.
“Let’s have a boarding camp, with Cousin Lizzie to chaperone us! I know just lots of girls who would simply die to go, and Albemarle is close enough for week-enders to pour in on us.”
“Hurrah! Hurrah! And I bid to be man-of-all work! I know rafts of fellows who would want to come.”
“Yes, and let’s call it Week End Camp,” said Nan. “Week to be spelled W-E-A-K. What do you think of the plan, Cousin Lizzie? If you are to be chaperone, it seems to me you should be consulted the first thing.”
“Don’t ask me, child. Things are moving too rapidly for me. We must go a little more slowly,” and truly the old lady did look dazed indeed. “‘More haste, less speed,’ is a very good adage.”
“Well, Cousin Lizzie, it does sound crazy in a way, but do you know, I believe we could really do it and do it very well,” said Douglas. “I consider Helen a genius to have thought of such a thing. I don’t think the outlay need be very great, and surely the living would be cheap when once we get there.”
“But, my dear, at my age I could not begin to eat out of doors. I have not done such a thing since I can remember but once, and then I went with the United Daughters of the Confederacy on a picnic. The undertaker went ahead with chairs and tables so everything was done in decency and order.”
Nan’s “Funeral baked meats!” made them all laugh, even Cousin Lizzie.
“I am going to have a short khaki suit with leggins coming way up,” declared Helen, who could not contemplate anything without seeing herself dressed to suit the occasion.
“Me, too,” sleepily from Lucy, who was trying to keep awake long enough to find out what it all meant.
“Aunt Lizzie, I wish you would consent. It all depends on you. You could eat in the cabin and sleep in the cabin and not camp out at all. I could go up right away and build the camp. I’d just love to have something to do. Bill Tinsley, from Charlottesville, got shipped with me and I’m pretty sure he’d join me. You’d like Bill, he’s so quaint. We are both of us great carpenters and could make a peach of a job of it. Do, please, Aunt Lizzie!”
Could this be the young man who, only ten minutes ago, she had described as being in a state of dejection bordering on insanity? This enthusiastic boy with his eyes dancing in joyful anticipation of manual labor to be plunged into? If she consented to go to the mountains, thereby no doubt making herself very uncomfortable, she might save her beloved nephew from doing the thing that she was dreading more than all others, dreading it so much that she had been afraid to give voice to it: going to France to fight with the Allies.
“Well, Lewis, if this plan means that you will find occupation and happiness, I will consent. I can’t bear to think of your being idle. ‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.’”
“Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I think you are just splendid!” exclaimed Helen.
And, indeed, Miss Elizabeth Somerville was splendid in her way. She was offering herself on the altar of aunthood. It was a real sacrifice for her to consent to this wild plan of going to the mountains. She hated snakes, and while she did not confess that she hated Nature, she certainly had no love for her. Her summer outings had meant, heretofore, comfortable hotels at the springs or seashore, where bridge was the rule and Nature the exception. The promise of being allowed to sleep in the cabin and even eat in it was not any great inducement. A log cabin, built and lived in and finally, no doubt, died in, by a sick Englishman was not very pleasant to contemplate. Miss Lizzie was very old-fashioned in all her ideas with the exception of germs, and she was very up-to-date as to them. No modern scientist knew more about them or believed in them more implicitly. Oh, well! She could take along plenty of C. N. and sulphur candles and crude carbolic. That would kill the germs. She would find out the latest cure for snake bite, and with a pack of cards for solitaire perhaps she could drag out an existence until Robert Carter and Annette got home from this mad trip. All she hoped was that nobody would wake her up to see the sun rise and that she would not be called on to admire the moon every time there was a moon.
“I hope we can get the daily paper,” she moaned feebly. “I hate to go too far from the daily paper.”
“We’ll get it if I have to build a flying machine and fly to Richmond for it,” declared Lewis.