Speed Nell
The Carter Girls

CHAPTER III
SILK STOCKINGS AND LAMB CHOPS

“Well! What are we to do about it?” queried Nan as the front door closed on the doctor and their precious torment.

“Do? Do what has come to us to do as quickly as we can. I am going to see that mother’s clothes are packed and father’s, too. It does seem strange to be looking after his things. Oh, girls, just think how we have always let him do it himself! I can’t remember even having darned a sock for him in all my life,” and Douglas gave a little sob. “This is no time for bawling, though, I am going to let Dr. Wright see that I am not just a doll baby.”

“Dr. Wright, indeed!” sniffed Helen. “Hateful, rude thing!”

“Why, Helen, I don’t see why you need have it in for him. I think he was just splendid! But I can’t wait to tell you what I think about him; I must get busy.” Douglas picked up her burden with very much her father’s look and hastened off to do her young and inexperienced best.

“As for saying we can’t see Father before he goes, it is nothing but his arbitrariness that dictates such nonsense,” stormed Helen to the two younger girls. “He is just constituting himself boss of the whole Carter family. I intend to see Father and let him know how much I love him. I’d like to know how it would help any to have poor dear Daddy go off without once seeing his girls. Hasn’t he always been seeing us and haven’t we always taken all our troubles to him? How would we like it if he’d let us go on a trip and not come near to wish us bon voyage? You silly youngsters can be hoodwinked by this bumptious young doctor if you like, but I just bet you he can’t control me! I’ve a great mind to go up to Father’s room right this minute.”

“If you go, I’m going, too,” from Lucy.

“Neither one of you is going,” said Nan quietly. “Helen, you are acting this way just because you are ashamed of yourself. You ought to be ashamed. I know I am so mortified I can hardly hold up my head. We have been actually criminal in our selfishness. I don’t intend ever as long as I live to get a new dress or a new hat or a new anything, and when I do, I’m going to shop on the wrong side of Broad and get the very cheapest and plainest I can find.”

“Nonsense! What does this ugly young man know of our affairs and what money Daddy has in the bank? I don’t see that he is called on to tell us when we shall and shan’t make bills. He is pretending that our own Father is crazy or something. Won’t answer for the consequences! I reckon he won’t. Why should he be right in his diagnosis any more than Dr. Davis or Dr. Drew or Dr. Slaughter or any of the rest of them? Nervous prostration! Why, that is a woman’s disease. I bet Daddy will be good and mad when he finds out what this young idiot is giving him. How we will tease him!”

“But Dr. Wright is not an idiot and is not ugly and is doing the very best he can do. Do you think he liked giving it to us so? Of course he didn’t. I could see he just hated it. He would have let us alone except he sees we haven’t a ray of sense among us, except maybe Douglas. She showed almost human intelligence.”

“Speak for yourself, Miss Nan. Maybe you haven’t any sense, but, thank you, I’ve got just as much as Douglas or that nasty old Dr. Wright or anybody else, in fact.”

“Well, take in your sign then! You certainly are behaving like a nut now.”

“And you? You think it shows sense to say that man is not ugly? Why, I could have done a better job on a face with a hatchet. He’s got a mug like Stony Man, that big mountain up at Luray that looks like a man.”

“That’s just what I thought,” said Nan, “and that is what I liked about him. He looked kind of like a rocky cliff and his eyes were like blue flowers, growing kind of high up, out of reach, but once he smiled at me and I knew they were not out of reach, really. When he smiled sure enough and showed his beautiful white teeth, it made me think of the sun coming out suddenly on the mountain cliff.”

“Well, Nan, if you can get some poetry out of this extremely commonplace young man you are a wonder. I am going down to see about my new hat, so I’ll bid you good-by.”

“If you are getting another new hat, I intend to have one, too!” clamored Lucy.

“Helen,” said Douglas, coming back into the library. “Of course you are going to countermand the order for the hat that, after all, you do not really need.”

“Countermand it! Why, please?”

“You heard what Dr. Wright said, surely. You must have taken in the seriousness of this business.”

“Seriousness much! I heard a very bumptious young doctor holding forth on what is no doubt his first case, laying down the law to us as though he were kin to us about what we shall eat and wear!”

“Helen, you astonish me! I thought you thought that you loved Father more than any of us.”

“So I do! None of you could love him as much as I do. I love him so much that I do not intend to stand for this nonsense about his going off for months on a dirty old boat without ever even being allowed to hug his girls. I bet he won’t let this creature boss him any more than I will. Daddy said I could have another hat just so I get a blue one. He doesn’t think the one I got is becoming, either,” and Helen flounced off up to her room.

“Douglas, what do you think is the matter with her? I have never seen Helen act like this before,” said Nan anxiously.

“I think she is trying to shut her eyes to Father’s condition. Helen never could stand anything being the matter with Father. You know she always did hate and despise doctors, too. Has ever since she was a little girl when they took out her tonsils. She seemed to think it was their fault. She will come to herself soon,” and Douglas wiped off another one of the tears that would keep coming no matter how hard she tried to hold them back.

Indeed, Helen was a puzzle to her sisters, and had they met her for the first time as you, my readers have, no doubt they would have formed the same opinion of her as you must have: a selfish, heartless, headstrong girl. Now Helen was in reality none of these terrible things, except headstrong. Thoughtless she was and spoiled, but generous to a fault, with a warm and loving heart. Her love for her father was intense and she simply would not see that he was ill. As Douglas said, she disliked and mistrusted all doctors. If the first and second and third were wrong in their diagnoses, why not the fourth? As for this absurd talk about money – what business was it of this young stranger to put his finger in their financial pie?

She shut her mind up tight and refused to understand what Dr. Wright had endeavored to explain to them, that there was no time to call in consultation their old friends and relatives. Besides, he wanted no excitement for the sick man, no adieux from friends, no bustle or confusion. He just wanted to spirit his patient away and get him out of sight of land as fast as possible.

How could a perfect stranger understand her dear father better than she, his own daughter, did? Nervous prostration, indeed! Why, her father had nerves of steel. You could fire a pistol off right by his ear and he would not bat an eyelash! She worked herself up even to thinking that they were doing a foolish thing to allow this beetle-browed young man to carry off their mother and father, sending them to sea in a leaky boat, no doubt, with some plot for their destruction all hatched up with this ship’s surgeon, this one time classmate.

“To be sure, he was nice to Bobby,” she said to herself as she sat in her room, undecided whether to go get the new hat in spite of Douglas or perhaps twist the other one around so it would be more becoming. “That may be part of his deep laid scheme – to get the confidence of the child and maybe kidnap him.

“I’ll give in about the hat, but I’ll not give in about seeing Daddy before he goes – I’m going to see him right this minute and find out for myself just how sick he is, and if he, too, is hypnotized into thinking this doctor man is any good. He shan’t go away if he doesn’t want to. Poor little Mumsy is too easy and confiding.”

So Helen settled this matter to her own satisfaction, convincing herself that it was really her duty to go see her father and unearth the machinations of this scheming Dr. Wright, who was so disapproving of her. That really was where the shoe pinched with poor Helen: his disapproval. She was an extremely attractive girl and was accustomed to admiration and approval. Her youngest sister, Lucy, was about the only person of her acquaintance who found any real fault with her. Why, that young man seemed actually to scorn her! What reason had he to come pussy-footing into the library where she and her sisters were holding an intimate conversation, and all unannounced speak to them with his raucous voice so that she nearly jumped out of her skin? Come to think of it, though, his voice was not really raucous, but rather pleasant and deep. Anyhow, he took her at a disadvantage from the beginning and sneered at her and bossed her, and she hated him and did not trust him one inch.

“Daddy, may I come in?”

Without knocking, Helen opened her father’s door and ran into his room. He was lying on the sofa, covered with a heavy rug, although it was a very warm day in May. His eyes were closed and his countenance composed and for a moment the girl’s heart stopped beating – could he be dead? He looked so worn and gaunt. Strange she had not noticed it before. She had only thought he was getting a little thin, but she hated fat men, anyhow, and gloried in her father’s athletic leanness, as she put it. Most men of his age, forty-three, had a way of getting wide in the girth, but not her father. Forty-three! Why, this man lying there looked sixty-three! His face was so gray, his mouth so drawn.

Robert Carter opened his eyes and sighed wearily.

“Who is that?” rather querulously. “Oh, Helen! I must have been asleep. I dreamed I was out far away on the water. Just your mother and I, far, far away! It was rather jolly. Funny I was trying to add up about silk stockings and I made such a ridiculous mistake. You see there are five of you who wear silk stockings, not counting Bobby and me. I wasn’t counting in socks. Five persons having two legs apiece makes ten legs – silk stockings cost one dollar apiece, no, a pair – fifty cents apiece – that makes five dollars for ten legs. Everybody has to put on a new pair every day, so that makes three hundred and sixty-five pairs a year, three hundred and sixty-six in leap year, seven hundred and thirty stockings – that makes one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars – thirty, in leap year – just for stockings. Seems preposterous, doesn’t it? But here was my mistake, right here – people don’t have to put on a new pair every day but just a clean pair, so I have to do my calculating all over. You can help me, honey. How many pairs of silk stockings does it take to run one of you? You just say one, and I can compute the rest.”

“Oh, Daddy, I don’t know,” and Helen burst out crying.

“Well, don’t cry about it. It seems funny for stockings to make any one cry. Do you know, I’ve been crying about them, too? It is so confusing for people to have two legs and for leap year to have one more day, so some years people have to have more – maybe not have more, but change them oftener. I cry out of one eye about stockings, and the other sheds tears about French chops. I feel very much worried about French chops. It seems they sell them by the piece and not by the pound as they do loin chops – ten cents apiece, so the bills say. We usually get a dozen and a half for a meal – eighteen – that’s a dozen and a half. Now there are seven of us and the four servants, that makes eleven, not quite a dozen. What I am worried about is that some of you don’t get two chops apiece. I am wondering all the time which ones don’t eat enough. There is nothing at all on one little French chop, although I’m blessed if I could make one go down me now. But, honey, promise me if your mother and I do take this trip that this young man, whose name has escaped me, is going to arrange for us, that you will find out who it is among you who eats only one chop and make ’em eat more. I am afraid it is Nan and Bobby. They are more like your mother, and of course fairies don’t really eat anything to speak of – but it must be of the best – always of the best. She has never known anything but luxury, and luxury she must have. What difference does it make to me? I love to work – but the days are too short. Take some off of the night then – six hours in bed is enough for any man. Edison says even that is too much. What’s that young man’s name? Well, whatever it is, I like him. He should have been an architect – I bet his foundations would have gone deep enough and the authorities would never have condemned one of his walls as unsafe. That’s what they did to me, but it wasn’t my fault – Shockoe Creek was the trouble – creeping up like a thief in the night and undermining my work.”

As Robert Carter rambled on in this weird, disconnected way, the tears were streaming down his face and Helen, crouched on the floor by his side, was sobbing her heart out. Could this be her Daddy? This broken, garrulous man with the gray face and tears, womanish tears, flowing shamelessly from his tired eyes? Dr. Wright was right! Their father was a very ill man and one more ounce of care would be too much for his tired brain. Had she done him harm? Maybe her coming in had upset his reason, but she had not talked, only let him ramble on.

A car stopping at the door! The doctor and Bobby returning with the notary public! What must she do? Here she was in her father’s room, disobeying the stern commands of the physician who could see with half his professional eye that she had harmed his patient. She had time to get out before the doctor could get upstairs – but no! not sneak!

“I may be a murderess and am a selfish, headstrong, bad, foolish, vain, extravagant wretch, but I am not a sneak and I will stay right here and take the ragging that I deserve – and no doubt will get,” remembering the lash that Dr. Wright had not spared.

The doctor entered the room very quietly, “Pussy-footing still,” said Helen to herself. He gave her only a casual glance, seeming to feel no surprise at her presence, but went immediately to his patient, who smiled through his tears at this young man in whom he was putting his faith.

“I’ve been asleep, doctor, and thought I was out on the water. When Helen came in I awoke, but I was very glad for her to come in so she could promise me to look into a little matter of French chops that was worrying me. She and I have been having a little crying party about silk stockings. They seem to make her cry, too. Funny for me to cry. I have never cried in my life that I can remember, even when I got a licking as a boy.”

“Crying is not so bad for some one who never has cried or had anything to cry for.” Helen had a feeling maybe he meant it for her but he never looked at her. “And now, Mr. Carter, I have a notary public downstairs and I am going to ask you to sign a paper giving to your daughter, Douglas, power of attorney in your absence. You get off to New York this evening and sail to-morrow.”

“But, Dr. Whatsyourname, I can’t leave until I attend to tickets and things,” feebly protested the nervous man.

“Tickets bought; passage on steamer to Bermuda and Panama engaged; slow going steamer where you can lie on deck and loaf and loaf!”

“Tickets bought? I have never been anywhere in my life where I have not had to attend to everything myself. It sounds like my own funeral. I reckon kind friends will step in then and attend to the arrangements.”

“Well, let’s call this a wedding trip instead of a funeral. I will be your best man and you and your bride can spend your honeymoon on this vessel. The best man sometimes does attend to the tickets and in this case even decided where the honeymoon should be spent. I chose a Southern trip because I want you to be warm. Very few persons go to Bermuda in May, but I feel sure you will be able to rest more if you don’t have to move around to keep warm.”

“Yes, that’s fine, and Annette is from the extreme South and delights in warmth and sunlight. I feel sure you have done right and am just lying down like a baby and leaving everything to you,” and Robert Carter closed his eyes, smiling feebly.

At a summons from the doctor, Douglas and the notary public entered the room. Helen, who had stayed to get the blowing up that she had expected from Dr. Wright, not having got it, still stayed just because she did not know how to leave. No one noticed her or paid the least attention to her except the notary, who bowed perfunctorily.

“This is the paper. You had better read it to see if it is right. It gives your daughter full power to act in your absence.” Dr. Wright spoke slowly and gently and his voice never seemed to startle the sick man.

“Is Miss Carter of age?” asked the notary. “Otherwise she would have some trouble in any legal matter that might arise.”

“Of age! No! I am only eighteen.”

“I never thought of that,” said Mr. Carter.

“Nor I, fool that I am,” muttered the young physician.

“Oh, well, let me make you her guardian, or better still, give you power of attorney,” suggested Mr. Carter.

“Me, oh, I never bargained for that!” The patient feebly began to weep at this obstacle. You never can tell what is going to upset a nervous prostrate. “Well, all right. I can do it if it is up to me,” the doctor muttered. “Put my name in where we have Miss Carter’s,” he said to the notary. “George Wright is my name.”

“I’m so glad to know your name; that is one of the things that has been worrying me,” said the patient, as he signed his name and the notary affixed his seal after the oaths were duly taken.

CHAPTER IV
GONE!

“I am waiting, Dr. Wright,” said Helen, after the notary public had taken his departure and Douglas had gone to put finishing touches to the very rapid packing of steamer trunks, Mrs. Carter helping in her pathetically inefficient way. Helen stood at the top of the stairs to intercept the doctor as he left the patient’s room.

“Waiting for what?”

“For you to tell me you were astonished to find me in my father’s room when you had given express orders that none of us were to see him.”

“But I was not astonished.”

“Oh, you expected to find me?”

“I did not know whether I should find you, but I knew very well you would go there.”

“So you thought I would sneak in and sneak out?”

“I did not call it sneaking but I was pretty sure you had no confidence in me and would do your own sweet will. I hope you are satisfied now that it was best not to excite your father.”

“But I did not excite him. He just talked in that terrible way himself. You are cruel to say I made him worse!”

“But I did not say so. Certainly, however, you made him no better. He said himself he waked when you came in and you did not deny it. Of course, sleep is always ‘kind Nature’s sweet restorer.’ If you will let me pass, I will now go to see Miss Douglas about ordering your car for the train this evening. We have only about an hour’s time and there is still a great deal to do. There is the expressman now for the trunks.”

“Can’t even trust me to order the chauffeur to have the car at the door,” cried Helen bitterly to herself as the doctor went past her. “I am of no use to any one in the whole world and I wish I were dead.”

The look of agony in the girl’s face made an impression on the young man in spite of the strong resentment he felt toward her. He was somewhat like Helen in that he was not accustomed to disapproval, and being flouted by this schoolgirl was not a pleasant morsel to swallow. He felt sure of his diagnosis of Mr. Carter’s case, for, having served for several years as head assistant in a large sanitarium in New York, he was well acquainted with the symptoms of nervous prostration. Of course, his sending the patient on a sea voyage instead of placing him in a sanitarium was somewhat of a risk, but he felt it was the best thing to do, reading the man’s character as he had.

Helen’s scorn and doubt of him and her seeming selfishness had certainly done little to recommend her in his eyes, but gentleness and sympathy were the strongest points in George Wright’s make-up, and as he went by the girl he could read in her face agony, extreme agony and desperation. He went up the steps again, two at a time, and said gently:

“Miss Helen, would you be so kind as to see about the car for me? Order it for 7.45. I am going to put them on at the downtown station and get them all installed in the drawing-room with the door shut so they need not see all the Richmond people who are sure to be taking this night train to New York and getting on at Elba, the uptown stop.”

“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.