CHAPTER VII
BOBBY’S BLAME DAY
Dr. George Wright was making a name for himself in his chosen profession. Older men were beginning to look upon him as an authority on nervous cases and now he had been asked to come in as partner in a sanitarium starting in the capital city of Virginia. Certainly he had been very successful in his treatment of Robert Carter’s case, so successful that even Mrs. Carter could not but admire him. She was still very much in awe of him, but he had her respect and she depended upon him. The daughters felt the same way without the awe. Douglas and Nan and Lucy were openly extravagant in their praise of him. Helen was a little more guarded in her expressions of admiration, but she had a sincere liking for him and deep gratitude not only for what he had done for her father but for his service to her.
She could never forget that it was Dr. Wright who had brought her to her senses when her father was first taken ill, making her see herself as a selfish, extravagant, vain girl. It takes some generosity of spirit to like the person who makes you see the error of your ways, but Helen Carter had that generosity. There were times when her cheeks burned at the memory of what Dr. Wright must have thought of her. How silly he must have found her, how childish!
After the experience in the mountains when the rattlesnake bit her on the heel and Dr. Wright had come to her assistance with first aid to the injured, which in the case of a snake bite means sucking the wound, Helen began to realize that what the young physician thought of her made a great deal of difference to her. His approval was something worth gaining.
Douglas had not told her she had written the letter to Dr. Wright as Bobby’s employer. She had a feeling that her dignity as teacher was involved and she must not confide in her family. She was waiting, hoping to hear from him, rather expecting him to write to Bobby and call him to account for his misdemeanors.
Bobby had been especially unruly all week. There was nothing he had not thought of doing in the way of mischief, and thinking mischief was almost identical with doing mischief where Bobby Carter was concerned. The deed was no sooner conceived than accomplished and the other children, who were inclined to be naughty, thought up extra things for him to do.
Putting a piece of rubber on the stove was certainly not Bobby’s idea, nor slipping chestnut burrs in the desk-seats while the girls were not looking, causing howls of anguish when they inadvertently sat down on the same. Bobby manfully took the blame for all of these things, however, confidently certain that no punishment worth speaking of would be meted out to him.
“He is honest, at least,” sighed Douglas, “and owns up every time.”
Friday afternoon on the way home she felt that maybe Nan’s name for their place was a good one. She was almost a dead warrior if not quite one.
“Oh, for a Valkyrie to bear me to Valhalla!”
Bobby was trudging along by her side looking as though butter would not melt in his mouth. What a sturdy little fellow he was growing to be! Douglas looked down on his jaunty, erect figure.
“Bobby, you are getting right fat.”
Bobby slapped his pockets. “That ain’t fat, that’s blame pay!”
“Blame pay! What on earth?”
“Oh, them is the gif’s I gits fer saying I done it ev’y time you asks us to hol’ up our han’s who done it.”
“Oh, Bobby!”
“You see, the big fellers say you ain’t man enough to whup ’em an’ you is too soft to whup me, so I don’t run no risk nohow. This is a top string I got for ’tendin’ like I put the rubber on the stove, – this here is a big apple I got for not fillin’ the girls’ desks with chestnut burrs, – this here pile er oak balls I come mighty near not gettin’. I sho’ did want to turn the fleas loose on Minnie Brice but the big boys was afraid I might not be able to open the little purse right and so one of them done it.”
“Fleas on Minnie Brice?”
“Yes, you never did fin’ out about it, so I didn’t have to own up. You know what a funny thin neck Minnie’s got, just like a mud turkle, and how she wears a stiff collar kinder like a shell and it sets out all around, fur out from her neck?”
“Yes, I know,” said Douglas, struggling with a laugh.
“Well, the fellers caught some fleas off’n ol’ Blitz’s houn’ dog an’ then they put ’em in a teensy money purse with a tight clasp, an’ while Minnie was leaning over studying her joggerfy, Tim Tenser dumped ’em all down her back.”
“Poor Minnie! No wonder she missed all of her lessons today. I could not imagine what was the matter with her. Bobby, you wouldn’t have done such a cruel thing as that surely!”
“Shoo! That ain’t nothin’. It might ’a’ been toads, ’cep’n the little ones is all growed up big now. We are a-savin’ up the toad joke ’til spring. First the fellers said I didn’t ’serve no blame money ’cause Minnie jes’ cried when she missed her lessons an’ didn’t scratch none, only wiggled, an’ teacher never did ask us to hol’ up our han’s who done it. But Ned Beatty said I was a dead game spo’t an’ I took the chanst an’ I mus’ have my blood money, an’ so I got all these here oak balls.”
“Bobby, do you realize that you must take all of these blame gifts back to the boys?”
“Blamed if I will!”
“Please don’t talk that way! Don’t say: ‘Blamed if you will.’”
“Well, wasn’t you a-talkin’ that way? Didn’t you say, ‘blame gif’s,’ with your own mouth? I’d like to know why I have to take them back.”
“Well, you got them for taking the blame and now you no longer take the blame but have told on the ones who did the naughty things.”
“But I ain’t a-tellin’ teacher! I’m a-tellin’ my own sister Douglas. You ain’t teacher ’cep’n when you is in school.”
“Oh, so that is the way you look at it! I suppose you think I am not your own sister while I am teacher, either, and when you worry me sick at school it is only teacher and not Douglas you are distressing so much,” and Douglas sat down on the roadside and burst out crying.
Now Douglas Carter was no weeper. I doubt if her little brother had ever seen her shed a tear in all of his seven years. And he, Robert Carter, Jr., had done this thing! He had made his sister Douglas cry. When she was playing teacher, she had feelings just as much as she did when she turned into his sister Douglas again. And what was this thing she was saying about his having to give back the blood money? Had he told on the boys after having received pay for taking the blame? Why, that was a low-down, sneaky trick!
“Don’t cry, Douglas, please don’t cry! I’m a-gonter take back all the things – ’cep’n the apple – I done et into that a leetle bit.”
But the flood gates were opened and Douglas could not stop crying. Like most persons who cry with difficulty, when she once began she kept it up. Now she was crying for all the times she might have cried. She had had enough to make her cry but had held in. She was crying now for all the days and nights of anxiety she had spent in thinking of her sick father; she was crying for the stern way in which she had been forced to deal with her mother over extravagancies; she was crying for having to make Helen understand that there was no money for clothes; she was crying for having to be the adamant sister who forced Nan and Lucy to go on to school; she was crying because her own dream of college was to come to nothing; she was crying very little because of Bobby’s naughtiness, but he, of course, thought that it was all because of him.
One of her biggest grievances was against herself: why had she been so priggish with her cousin, Lewis Somerville? Last August he had come to her on the eve of his enlistment to go with the troops to the Mexican border and had plead so earnestly with her to try to love him just a little bit and to let him go off engaged to her, and she had turned him down with absurd talk of friendship and the like. He had astonished her when he made love to her, but she knew perfectly well in her heart of hearts that it would have astonished her a great deal more if he had made love to someone else.
No doubt that was what he was doing that minute: making love to someone else. A young man who looked like a Greek god was not going to be turned down by every girl. How good Lewis had always been to her and how well he had understood her! He thought she was cold and unfeeling now, she just knew he did. She had received no letters from him for weeks, at least it seemed weeks. Oh well, if he wanted to make love to other girls, why she wasn’t going to be the one to care!
“Douglas, I hear a auto a-comin’. If’n you don’t stop bawlin’ folks will see you.”
A car was coming! She could hear its chug as it climbed the hill half a mile off.
“Please wet my handkerchief in that little branch so I can wash my face,” she begged Bobby, while she smoothed her ruffled hair and wished she had one of Helen’s precious dorines to powder her red nose.
“Yo’ hankcher is as wet as water already. I don’t see what you want it any wetter for,” said Bobby, who might have quoted: “‘Too much of water hast thou, my poor Ophelia,’” had he known his Hamlet.
“I ain’t a-gonter be bad no mo’, Douglas,” declared Bobby as he brought the little handkerchief back from the brook dripping wet. “You mos’ cried yo’ face away, didn’t you, Dug?” and with that Douglas had to laugh.
“Feel better now?” he said with quite the big brother air. “That there car is jes’ roun’ the bend. I reckon if you turn yo’ face away the folks in it won’t know you is been a-bawlin’.”
The car slowed up, then stopped when the driver recognized Douglas, and Count de Lestis sprang out to greet her. The signs of the recent storm were still visible on her pretty face in spite of all the water Bobby had brought from the brook. Douglas tried to hold her head down so the count could not see her disfigured countenance, but such floods of weeping could not but be noticed.
“My dear Miss Carter, you are in distress!” He looked so truly grieved and anxious that already Douglas felt somewhat comforted. Sympathy is a great balm.
“It is nothing! I am a foolish, weak girl.”
“Not that! You are very intelligent and far from weak. Are you not the staunch ally? The poor Kaiser would not find you weak.”
“I done it all! I made her cry!” declared Bobby.
The count looked at the youngster, amused. “And so! Do little American gentlemen make their sisters cry?” Bobby hung his head. “Well, come on and let me take you home, and then I’ll take your sister for a little ride and wipe all the tears away with the wind.”
“Let me go riding, too. I don’t want to go home.”
“No, not this time. My little red car doesn’t like to take for long rides boys who make their sisters cry.”
So Bobby had to climb meekly in to be ignominiously dumped at the yard gate while Douglas was whisked off in the count’s natty little red roadster.
“Now you are looking like your beautiful self,” he declared, slowing down his racer and turning to gaze into Douglas’s face. “What is it that made you weep so profusely? Not the little brother. Beautiful damsels do not weep so much because of little brothers.”
Douglas smiled.
“Ah, the sun has come out! Now I am happy. I am so distressed by tears that I can hardly bear it.”
“You must have a very tender heart.”
“Yes, perhaps! Now tell me what caused your grief.”
How handsome this man was and how kind! He seemed like an old friend. He really did care what was troubling her and it would be a relief to pour out all of her foolish griefs. Douglas missed her father’s sympathy. She knew that he was as ready as ever with his love and solicitude for her, but she felt that she must not add to his worries one iota. Her mother was out of the question and Helen was too young. Before she knew it, she was trying to tell Count de Lestis all about it, all but about Lewis Somerville – somehow that was something she could not mention. Her grievances sounded very small when she tried to put them into words. Naturally she could not dwell upon her mother’s extravagancies or this man would think her poor little mother was selfish; Helen was such a trump, the fact that she longed for stylish clothes certainly was not enough to make a grown girl sit on the roadside and dissolve in tears; while Nan and Lucy were commuting to school like little soldiers. It ended by being a humorous account of Bobby and his blame pay.
Of course the count knew perfectly well that that was not all that had made this lovely girl give way so to grief. No doubt Bobby’s misbehavior was the last straw, but there had been a heavy load to carry before Douglas’s camel of endurance had got his back broken. He laughed merrily over the fleas and Douglas forgot all about her worries and laughed, too.
“Poor little Minnie! She did squirm so, and think of her being too ladylike to scratch, and how she must have disappointed those bad boys by refraining!”
“Yes, if all women would just squirm and not scratch it would take much from the pleasure of teasing them,” laughed de Lestis. “What amuses me is how boys are alike all the world over. The discipline of my school days was very strict, but a thing like that might have happened among boys in Berlin as much as here in a rural school in Virginia.”
“Berlin! But you are Hungarian!”
“So! So – but Hungarians can go to school in Berlin. Even Americans have profited by the educational advantages offered there.”
Douglas thought her companion’s tone sounded a little harsh. She bent her candid gaze on him and met his glowing eyes. Blue eyes looked unflinchingly into black until the steering of the red car forced him to give his attention to the wheel.
“I wish the count’s moustache did not turn up quite so much at the corners,” thought the girl. “It makes him look a wee bit like the Kaiser; of course, though, he is kind and the Kaiser is cruel.”
“Perhaps we had better turn around now,” she suggested gently, contrite that even for a moment she had thought this kind friend could resemble the hated Kaiser.
Certainly the wind had wiped away all traces of the emotional storm from Douglas’s countenance. The young man by her side could but admire the pure profile presented to him, with its soft, girlish lines but withal a look of strength and determination. Her loosened hair was like sunlight and her cheeks had the pink of the Cherokee rose. Profiles were all well enough, but he would like another look into those eyes as blue as summer skies after a shower.
“Of course, my dear Miss Carter, I know that the little rascal Bobby must have been very annoying but I cannot but think that you have not entrusted to me your real troubles.”
Douglas stiffened almost imperceptibly.
“When one finds a beautiful damsel sitting by the roadside in such grief that her charming face is convulsed with weeping, one cannot but divine that some affair of the heart has touched her. Tell me, has some bold cavalier trifled with her affections?”
Douglas stiffened more perceptibly.
“Your father told me of a young cousin, a Mr. Somerville, who is now on the Mexican border – ”
“Father told you! I don’t believe it.”
“My dear young lady, he only told me there was such a cousin; you have told me the rest. Now! Now! Don’t let your sweet eyes shed another tear for him. He is not worth it! If he can find amusement in the ladies of Mexico, who are, when all is told, an untidy lot, why should you worry? There are other fish in the sea!”
If the Count de Lestis wished to see something more of Douglas’s eyes he had his desire fulfilled now. She turned and once more blue eyes looked unflinchingly into black. This time the black eyes had a mischievous gleam and the blue ones looked more like winter ice than summer skies.
“Now I have made you angry.” Once more his car took his attention for the moment.
“Not at all!” icily.
“You wish you had not come with me.”
“I appreciate your kindness in bringing me for the drive very much,” still cold and formal in tone.
“I guessed too well, that is where I sinned.”
Douglas was silent, but she still looked at her companion.
“She is like the little Minnie: she squirms but will not scratch.”
“I was just thinking,” said Douglas, changing the subject with a swiftness that disarmed the count, “your moustache certainly turns up at the ends just like Emperor William’s.”
CHAPTER VIII
SATURDAY
“Isn’t it glorious to be living and for it to be Saturday?” yawned Lucy.
“Yes, and not to have to catch that old train,” and Nan snuggled down luxuriously under the bedclothes. “I used to think Saturday was a pretty good institution when we lived in town, but now – Oh, ye gods! Now!”
“Did you know that Saturday was decreed a half-holiday in the days of the Saxon King Edgar 958 A. D.?” asked Lucy, who had a way of springing historical facts on people.
“No, but I know it’s going to be a whole holiday for Nan Carter in the year of grace 1916. I intend to do nothing but laze the whole day long, laze and read.”
“I bet you won’t. I bet you go nutting with Mag and me, because if we go it means Billy goes along, and if he goes along he’ll be in a terrible grouch unless you go, too.”
October had delightfully spread over into November. The weather had obligingly stayed good, and although our Carters had been at Valhalla more than a month, they had experienced no real bad days.
Nippy, frosty nights had put Mr. Carter wise to the many cracks that he must stop up. Weather strips must be put on windows and doors, panes of glass must be puttied in. Suspicious stains on walls and ceilings warned him of leaks, but he had to wait for a rain to locate them. He found himself almost as busy as he had been before his breakdown, but busy in such a different way.
“I’m glad it’s Saturday! I think I won’t work today,” he had remarked to his wife at about the same time Nan and Lucy were having their talk. “Come and walk in the woods with me.”
That lady had graciously consented, if he promised not to go far and to lift her over fences.
“I think I’ll wash my hair today; and darn the stockings; and go over the accounts; and write some letters; and read the Saturday Evening Post,” said Douglas as she and Helen dressed hurriedly. Their little attic room was hot in summer and cold in winter.
Douglas had been thinking a great deal about her ride with the count. Had he only meant to tease her? Was he trying to flirt with her? Did she like him at all or did she in a way distrust him? She asked herself all of these questions. Of course she liked him! Why should she distrust a man because of the way his moustache grew? Of course he was teasing her, and who could help teasing a silly goose of a girl who sat on the roadside and bawled until her nose was disgracefully red, and then insisted it was all because her little brother had aided and abetted in the crime of putting fleas down a little girl’s neck? He had made a good guess about Lewis Somerville, because no doubt her father had told him that she and Lewis had been chums from the time they were babies.
“I only hope I will be able to make up to him for my discourtesy by being very polite to him the next time I see him,” she thought.
“Count de Lestis is coming to lunch with us today,” said Helen, almost as though she had been reading her sister’s mind. “Father asked him.”
“That’s good! Isn’t it nice for Father to have such a congenial friend?”
“And Mumsy! She enjoys his visits so much. I am going to try and have a scrumptious luncheon, but I tell you I am going to leave mighty little of it to Chloe.”
“I think she is improving, Helen.”
“Of course she is improving. She is trying so hard to do what I want her to and I am trying so hard to be patient. I think I am improving some myself.”
“Oh, honey, you are simply splendid. I think you have the hardest job of all and I think you are doing better than any of us.”
“Nonsense!” But Helen looked very happy over her sister’s praise. “I’d rather do general housework for six dollars a month than go every day and teach thirty little nincompoops a-b, ab.”
“But the thing is you are doing general housework for nothing a month.”
“I am doing a little teaching of a-b, ab, too, only my methods are different. I have evolved a very advanced style of teaching and Chloe, too, is learning to spell. My method is somewhat that of Dotheboys’ Hall – you remember: ‘W-i-n-d-o-w, window – Go wash them.’ I make her spell and write all the kitchen utensils. She learns while she is working and it makes her take an interest in becoming educated.”
“Oh, Helen, you are so clever! You must let me help about the luncheon.”
“How about washing your head; and writing your letters; and casting up the household accounts; and the Saturday Evening Post?”
“Well, the letters and Post will keep!”
On Saturday the rule was that the dead warriors must make up their own beds and clean their own rooms, so shortly after breakfast there was a general scramble in process. Helen turned Chloe loose in the dining-room to have it swept and garnished for their distinguished visitor.
What a pretty room it was, much the most attractive in the house, with the exception of the sitting-room, perhaps! Low, rough-hewn rafters were frankly exposed to view. The walls were sealed with pine boards. Walls and ceiling were both painted a very soft, pleasing grey-green. On the high mantel was an old-fashioned wooden clock with painted door, and this was flanked on both sides by funny old vases with large raised roses and gilt ears. Two high windows and a glass door, opening on a covered passage leading to the kitchen, gave a soft and insufficient light.
Douglas had just put the finishing touch to the table: a bunch of cosmos sent down by the Misses Grant. Nan had made the mayonnaise; and Lucy had found a great basket of mushrooms and peeled them for Helen to cream. Truly they were to have a scrumptious luncheon. The count had arrived and was playing lady-come-to-see, so Lucy said, with Mrs. Carter.
The whir of a motor drew the attention of all.
“Who on earth!” exclaimed Helen. “Surely not callers at this hour, just when my popovers are almost ready to eat!”
“Mo’ comply!” declared Chloe. “Dat ol’ red rooster what yo’ paw set so much sto’ by is been a-crowing halleluja all mornin’. I been a-tryin’ ter make him hesh, ’cause we ain’t got no mo’ cheers fer comply.”
“That’s so, there aren’t but eight dining-room chairs,” laughed Helen.
“My ’ployer done come and a soger is in with him!” cried Bobby, tearing excitedly by the dining-room in his race to open the gate for his beloved Dr. Wright.
Helen ran out in her pink bungalow apron, first peeping into the oven, not trusting Chloe yet to keep things from burning.
“Douglas!” she called excitedly, but Douglas, with flushed cheeks, bent over the bowl of cosmos.
“A soldier with him! What soldier? Could it be Lewis?” she asked herself.
It was Lewis Somerville, looking very handsome and upstanding indeed in his khaki uniform, with his face burned a deep bronze so that his eyes looked very blue and his teeth very white. He clambered out over the great basket of fruit Dr. Wright was bringing to Mrs. Carter, dropped the boxes and parcels piled in around him and hugged and kissed all the female cousins in sight, Helen, Nan and Lucy. He shook Bobby by the hand, knowing full well that that youngster would sooner die than be hugged and kissed.
“Douglas, where is Douglas?” he whispered to Helen.
“In the dining-room! You can get there around at the back of the house – in the basement. We thought you were still in Mexico.”
Lewis did not wait to tell her that he wasn’t, but doing double quick time he streaked around the house, and finding the basement stairs without any trouble, he was down them in one stride.
“Douglas!”
“Oh, Lewis!”
Douglas forgot that not so very many months before this time she had informed her cousin that she was too big to be kissed and that he was not close enough kin to warrant indiscriminate hugging. Certainly she was no younger than she had been eight months before and Lewis was no closer kin, but now she submitted to his embraces and even clung to him for a moment.
It was so wonderful to have him back safe and sound. She could hardly believe it was only yesterday that she had sat on the roadside and wept. He was her same Lewis, too. She felt instinctively that the count’s suggestion in regard to Mexican beauties was ridiculous.
“And Lewis, sergeant stripes on your sleeve, too! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did! Didn’t you get my letter?”
“No, not for weeks and weeks!”
“Strange! I must say I am not crazy about that letter’s being lost.”
“Can’t you tell me what was in it?”
“Sure! I’m telling you now,” and the young man caught her to him once more, but Douglas suddenly remembered she was too old to be kissed by a second cousin, once removed. “I’m not crazy about having anyone but you read that letter, though, not only because of my telling you this,” and he took another for luck, “but,” as Douglas recovered her maidenly reserve and pushed him from her laughing, “I said some other things in that letter that I wouldn’t like anyone and everyone to see.”
“State secrets?”
“Well, a newly-made sergeant would hardly have such things intrusted to him! It was only my opinion concerning the state of affairs down there on the border. I may be wrong about things, but a soldier has no right to blab his conclusions about conditions in belligerent countries, especially when the press is wary in its comments.”
“I wouldn’t worry a moment about it. If you could see the road that our R. F. D. has to come over you would not wonder that some 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!”