The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors Part 7

"Oh, Chloe, why didn't you take them out?" and poor Helen thought maybe she was going to weep with exasperation.

"You nebber tol' me ter do mo'n look at 'em. My maw an' Sis Tempy both done caution me not to be too frisky 'bout doin' things 'til the white folks tells me. Tempy says white folks laks ter boss 'bout ev'ything."

"Oh, for a trained monkey!" thought Helen. "I could at least give one a good switching."

Chloe had only two characteristics to work on: one was perfect good-nature, the other unbounded health and strength. Helen wondered if she had enough material to go on to evolve even a pa.s.sable servant.

Anyhow she meant to try. She determined to do the cooking herself for a little while with Chloe as scullion, and also to have the girl do the housework.

Of course Mrs. Carter was of absolutely no a.s.sistance. She held to her purpose of semi-invalidism. The family would not listen to her when she offered the only sane suggestion for the winter: that they should oust the tenant and move back into their own pretty, comfortable, well-furnished home; Douglas to make her debut in Richmond society and the other girls continue at school. As for money--why not just make bills? They had perfectly good credit, and what was credit for but to use? Dr. Wright had been so stern with her, and Douglas so severe and unfilial, and they had intimated that she wanted to kill her dear Robert, so she had just let them have their own way. She insisted she had not the strength to cope with these changed conditions and took on the habits of an invalid.

Helen, remembering how Susan, who was supposed to help with the cooking at the camp, had been kept busy waiting on her mistress, feared Chloe would be pressed into lady's maid service, too. Indeed Mrs. Carter attempted it, but Chloe proved too rough for the job, and that poor lady was forced to run the ribbons in her lingerie herself.

Chloe's cleaning was even worse than her cooking if such a thing was possible. She spread up the beds, leaving great wrinkles and b.u.mps, which proved to be top sheets and blankets that she had not thought fit to pull up. When Helen remonstrated and made her take all the covers off to air before making the beds she obeyed, but put the covers back on regardless of sequence, with counterpanes next to the mattress and sheets on top, with blankets anywhere that her fancy dictated. She swept the dirt safely under the rugs; wiped up the floor with bath towels; and the crowning glory of her achievement was sticking all the tooth-brushes together.

Now when we remember that Helen herself had perhaps never made up a bed in her whole life until about eight months before this time, we may indeed have sympathy for her in her tribulations. Her days were full to running over, beginning very early in the morning and ending only after the family was fed at night. The cooking was not so difficult, as she had a genius for it and consequently a liking. Chloe could wash dishes after a fas.h.i.+on and clean the kitchen utensils, which was some comfort.

Mr. Carter always carried his wife's breakfast tray to her room and waited on her like a devoted slave. He would even have run the ribbons in had she trusted him. All he could do for her now was wait on her and spoil her, and this he did to perfection. She was the same lovely little creature he had married and he was not unreasonable enough to expect her to be anything else. He did not think it strange that his little canary could not turn herself into a raven and feed him when he was hungry.

His tenderness to his wife was so great that his daughters took their keynote from him and their patience towards their mother was wonderful.

They vied with one another in their attentions to the parent that they would not let themselves call selfish.

Helen cooked her little dainties; Nan kept her in light literature from the circulating library in town; Lucy scoured the fields for mushrooms that a late fall had made plentiful; Douglas always brought her the choice fruit and flowers that her pupils showered on her; even Bobby did his part by bringing her ripe persimmons that the frost had nipped just enough to make delicious. Mr. Carter was often able to bring her in a partridge or a young hare. On the whole life wasn't so bad. When one felt perfectly well, semi-invalidism was a pretty pleasant state. As for society: the count was a frequent visitor and the ladies from Grantly most attentive. The Suttons had called, too, several times, and other county families were finding the Carters out. It was easy to treat the fact that they were living in the overseer's house as a kind of joke. Of course, anyone could tell that they were not the kind of persons who usually lived in overseers' houses.

Chloe was the thorn in the flesh, the fly in the ointment for Mrs.

Carter. Chloe could not be laughed away,--Chloe was no joke. Accustomed to trained, highly-paid servants to do her bidding, this rough, uncouth ourang-outang was more than the dainty little lady could stand.

The very first time Count de Lestis called, Mrs. Carter happened to be alone in the house except for Chloe, Mr. Carter having gone to Preston for much-needed nails and Helen having run up to Grantly to ask the advice of Miss Ella on the best way to preserve some late pears. A knock and Chloe promptly fell down the steps in her eagerness to get to the door. She had been up in Douglas's and Helen's room attempting to make up the bed to suit Miss Helen.

"Thank Gawd I fell down instidder up! If'n I had 'a' fell up I wouldn't 'a' got ma'ied dis year," and she picked herself up and dived at the front door.

"Are Mr. and Mrs. Carter and the young ladies at home?" Mrs. Carter heard in the count's fine baritone.

"Nawsir! The boss is done gone ter Preston ter fetch some nails ter try ter bolster up this here ole shack, an' Miss Douglas is done gone ter her teachin' job an' Miss Helen is done stepped up to see Miss Ellanlouise 'bout 'zervin' some ole hard pears----"

"And how about Mrs. Carter?" in an amused voice.

"Oh, she is a-layin' on the sofy tryin' ter git sick."

"Is she ill?" solicitously.

"Naw! She is jes' plum lazy. She's too lazy ter chaw an' has ter have all her victuals fixed soft like."

"Well, will you please take her this card?"

"That there ticket?"

Imagine Mrs. Carter's mortification, when the grinning Chloe came running into the sitting-room with the count's card crushed in her eager hand, to discover that the wretched girl was in her stocking feet; capless, with her wrapped plaits sticking out all over her head like quills upon the fretful porcupine; her ap.r.o.n on hind part before.

"Chloe! Where is your cap?" exclaimed that elegant lady.

"Well, lawsamussy! I done forgot about it. It do make my haid eatch so I done pulled it off."

"And your shoes?"

"I's savin' them fer big meetin' nex' year."

"And why do you wear your ap.r.o.n in the back? Put it on right this minute."

"Well, Ole Miss, my dress was siled an' my ap'on was clean, so I jes'

slid it 'roun' behinst so it wouldn't git siled, too."

Nothing but the fact that the count was cooling his heels on the front porch kept Mrs. Carter from weeping outright. Old Miss, indeed! All she could do was feebly tell Chloe to ask the gentleman in.

If Count de Lestis had been ushered in by a butler in livery he could not have entered in a more ceremonious manner. He bowed low over the fair lady's hand, kissing her finger-tips lightly. Even the spectacle of Chloe's walking off, with her clean ap.r.o.n on hind part before and her shoeless condition disclosing large holes in the heels of her stockings, did not upset his gravity. He, too, realized that Chloe was no joke.

Afterwards Chloe said to Helen:

"That sho' is a pretty man what comed ter see you alls. I ain't knowin'

yit what made him stoop over an' smell yo' ma's hand. Cose she mus'

smell pow'ful good with never put'n her hands in nothin' mo' than her own victuals." Helen was weak with laughter.

"What fer they call him a count, Miss Helen? Is it 'cause he spen' all his time a-countin' out money? They do say he is pow'ful good an' kin'

ter the n.i.g.g.e.rs. Some say he likes n.i.g.g.e.rs better'n what he does white folks, but I says that is plum foolish. Anyhow, he talks mighty sweet to 'em an' don't never call 'em low down triflin' black rascals whin they gits kinder lop-sided with liquor, like some of the county gents does whin hands gits so fur gone they can't git in the c.r.a.ps. He done started a night school over at Weston what his secondary is teachin'."

"I didn't know he had a secretary," exclaimed Helen, "but it certainly is kind of him to try and help the poor colored people. I wish you could go to night school, Chloe."

"Lawd, Gawd, no! Miss Helen! I ain't got no call to larn."

"Can't you read at all, Chloe?"

"Well, I kin read whin they is picters ter go by. I done been ter school mos' six months countin' the diffunt years what I started, but my ma, she say my haid was too hard an' she 'fraid it might git cracked open if'n teacher tried to put any mo' in it. She say some folks is got sof'

haids what kin stretch an' they ain't so ap' ter bus' open, haids kinder like hog bladders what you kin keep on a-blowin' up."

"Wouldn't you like me to teach you to read, Chloe?" asked Helen, feeling rather ashamed that this foreigner should come to Virginia and take more interest in the education of the negroes than she should ever have done.

"I believe I could teach you without breaking your head open."

"Anything you says do I'll do, but I tell you now I ain't got no mo'

notion er readin' than a tarrapin. A tarrapin kin git his haid out'n the sh.e.l.l an' you might git a little larnin' in it, but my haid is groun'

what you gotter break up with a grubbin' hoe."

"I am willing to try. Let's begin now! First we will learn how to spell things right here in the kitchen and then you can soon be reading recipes," said Helen kindly. "Now we are making biscuit, so we will begin with that. First take two cups of flour," and she wrote on the whitewashed wall of the kitchen: "2 cups of flour."

Chloe was delighted with this kind of school, very different from her former experiences where she was made to sit for hours on a hard bench saying the same thing over and over with no conception of what it was all about. Now "2 cups of flour" had some sense in it, so had "2 spoons of baking powder." "Lard the size of an egg" was a brilliant remark; "1 spoon of salt" had a gleam of intelligence, too; "1 cup of milk" was filled with gumption. In less than a week the girl could read and write the recipe for biscuit and was eagerly waiting for her beloved Miss Helen to advance her to cake.

CHAPTER VII

BOBBY'S BLAME DAY