The Carter Girls

“Oh, Dr. Wright! Don’t! Don’t!” wailed Douglas.

“Brute!” hissed Helen, but whether she meant the young doctor or Helen Carter she wasn’t herself quite certain.

“Your mother – ” he continued.

“Don’t you dare to criticise our mother!” interrupted Helen.

“My dear young lady, I was merely going to remark that your mother seems to be absolutely necessary to the peace and happiness of your father, otherwise I would insist upon his going away alone. Often in these cases it is best for the patient to get entirely away from all members of his family, but I think she has a good effect on him. I must go now and get the notary public so you can enter into your office of vice regent. I’ll also make arrangements for the railroad trip and long-distance my friend, the surgeon on the steamer. I’ll be back in a jiffy,” and Dr. Wright smiled very kindly at Douglas, whose young countenance seemed to have aged years in the last few minutes. “I am trusting you to keep the house quiet and get things in readiness without once appealing to your father.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all any one can do,” and George Wright was grateful that there was one person in the house he could look to for sense and calmness. He noted with added confidence that Douglas was very like her father in coloring and that the general shape of their features was similar. “I hope they won’t manage to break her in two as they have him,” he said to himself.

“We are going to help Douglas all we can,” drawled Nan.

“Indeed we are!” exclaimed Lucy. Helen said nothing and did not acknowledge the bow that included her as the young doctor made his exit from the room.

Piercing shrieks came from the rear before the front door was reached!

“Give it to me! Give it to me! I ain’t done makin’ my puddin’ an’ it’ll be ruint if you don’t give it to me! Marmer! Marmer! Make ’em give it to me!”

A door noisily opened above and a rather sharp call descended from the court of appeals.

“What does he want? Whatever it is, give it to him!”

“But, Mis’ Carter, he done been in de silber draw’ and ’stracted de tea strainer an’ dat new fangled sparrowgrass flapper an’ done took de bes’ fluted bum bum dish fer tow mold his mud pies. I done tol’ him not tow meddle in de mud no mo’ fo’ to-morrow as he is been washed an’ dressed in his las’ clean suit till de wash comes in. Jes’ look at him! An’ jes’ listen tow him.”

The irate old butler, Oscar, held by the hand the screaming, squirming Bobby. One could hardly help listening to him and it was equally hard to help looking at him. His beauty was almost unearthly: a slender little fellow of six, with dark brown hair that curled in spite of the barber’s shears, the mouth of a cherub and eyes that were the envy of all his sisters – great dark eyes that when once you looked in them you were forced to give up any anger you might feel for him and just tumble head over heels in love with him. That is what Dr. Wright did. He just fell in love with him. Enraged for a moment by the noise that he was trying so hard to make the household feel must be kept from his patient, he started angrily down the hall toward the angelic culprit with a stern:

“Shhh! Your father is ill! You must stop that racket!” But one look in those eyes, and he changed his tactics. Taking the naughty child by his dirty little hand, he said: “Say, Bob, how would you like to come out with me in my car and help me? I’ve a lot of work to do and need some one to blow my horn for me and stick out an arm when we turn the corners.”

“Bully! How much wages does you give?”

“A milk shake if you are good, and another kind if you are bad! Is it a go?”

“Sure!” And once more quiet reigned in the house. The upstairs door closed much more softly than it had opened, and Oscar cheerfully cleaned the silver that Bobby had left in such a mess.

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.”