“But, my dear Mr. Carter, I am a pigeon fancier and want my pigeons at a point where I 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.
CHAPTER XIII
GOOSE STEPPING
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. Sometimes he 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 when they 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 break through 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 he would 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.”
CHAPTER XIV
AN EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY
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 they can’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 old ladies 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 of style, 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 waiting on 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 first of 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 Miss Luly 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. Helen started 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 ten dollars 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’t have 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.