The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors

“Oh, I fancy not! A little water won’t hurt you,” said Helen, flying around the kitchen like a demented hen trying to scratch up a breakfast for her brood. “Hurry up and set the table, it is so late.”

“Won’t hurt me! Lawsamussy, Miss Helen! Don’t you know that niggers can’t wash they haids in winter time? They do say they wool has deeper roots than what white folks’ hair is got an’ the water what touches they haids dreens plum down inter they brains.”

“Brains, did you say?” said Helen, but her sarcasm was lost on Chloe. “If it leaked on your head why didn’t you move your bed? It leaked on Miss Douglas and me, too, but we moved the bed.”

“Well, I was in a kinder stupid an’ looks like I couldn’t raise han’ or foot.”

“I can well believe it,” muttered Helen. “Please set the table as fast as you can!”

“Helen,” cried Lucy, hurrying into the dining-room, “you’ll have to lend me your rubbers! I left mine in town.”

“Have to?”

“Well, please to!”

“I hate for you to stretch my rubbers all out of shape.”

“Stretch ’em much! Your feet are bigger than mine.”

“That being the case I certainly won’t lend them to be dropped off in the mud.”

“Children! Children!” admonished Douglas, hurrying to breakfast. “What are you quarreling about?”

“Who shall be Cinderella!” drawled Nan. “And it seems a strange subject to dispute about on such a morning. For my part, I wish my feet were a quarter of a mile long and I could take three steps and land at the station.”

“It leaked in our room last night,” said Lucy.

“And ours!” chorused Helen and Douglas.

“Mine, too! But I ain’t a-keerin’,” from Bobby.

“My haid is done soaked up with leaks,” grinned Chloe.

“I really think Miss Ella and Miss Louise should have had the roof mended before we came,” said Douglas.

“Well, tonight we can go to bed with our umbrellas up,” suggested Nan.

“Yes! An’ wake up a corp!” said Chloe dismally, as she handed the certainly not overdone biscuit. “It am sho’ death ter hist a umbrell in the house.”

Nan and Lucy were finally off, forlorn little figures with raincoats and rubbers and dripping umbrellas. Helen’s rubbers were a bit too small, much to that young lady’s satisfaction and to Lucy’s chagrin.

“My feet will slim down some as I grow older, the shoe man told me. I betcher when I am as old as you are my feet will be smaller,” said Lucy as she paddled off with the rubbers pulled on as far as she could get them.

The road was passable until they got within a hundred yards of the station and then they struck a soft stretch of red clay that was the consistency of molasses candy about to be pulled. Nan clambered up an embankment, balancing herself on a very precarious path that hung over the road, but Lucy kept to the middle of the pike.

“I hear the train!” cried Nan. “We must hurry!”

“Hurry, indeed! How can anyone hurry through fudge?” and poor Lucy gave a wail of agony. She was stuck and stuck fast.

“Come on!” begged Nan, but Lucy with an agonized countenance looked at her sister.

“I’m stuck!”

“If I come pull you out, I’ll get stuck, too! What on earth are we to do?”

“Throw me a plank,” wailed Lucy in the tones of a drowning man. Her feet were going in deeper and deeper. Helen’s rubbers were almost submerged and there seemed to be nothing to keep Lucy’s shoes and finally Lucy from going the way of the rubbers.

Nan dropped her books, umbrella and lunch on the bank and pulled a rail from the fence. Lucy clutched it and with a great pull and a sudden lurch which sent Nan backwards into the blackberry bushes, the younger girl came hurtling from what had threatened to become her muddy grave.

The train was whistling, so they had to forego the giggling fit that was upon them and run for the station. The small branch that they must pass before they got there, was swollen beyond recognition, but one stepping-stone obligingly projected above water and with a mighty leap they were over. The accommodating accommodation train reached the station of Grantly before they did, but the kindly engineer and conductor waited patiently while the girls, puffing and panting, raced up the hill.

They had hardly recovered their breath when Billy and Mag boarded the train at Preston.

“Well, if you girls aren’t spunky!” cried Billy admiringly as he sank in the seat by Nan, which Lucy had tactfully vacated, sharing the one with Mag. “Mag and I were betting you couldn’t make it this morning.”

“We just did and that is all,” laughed Nan, recounting the perils of the way.

“And only look at my boots! Did you ever see such sights?” cried Lucy. “Oh, Heavens! One of Helen’s rubbers is gone!”

“That must have happened when I fished you out with the fence rail. I heard a terrible sough but didn’t realize what it meant. They were so much too small for you,” said Nan.

“Small, indeed! They were too big. Their coming off proves they were too big,” insisted Lucy.

“I’m glad your feet didn’t come off too, then,” teased Nan. “At one time I thought they were going to.”

Billy produced a very shady handkerchief from a hip pocket and proceeded to wipe off the girls’ shoes, while he sang the sad song of the Three Flies:

“‘There were three flies inclined to roam,They thought they were tired of staying at home,So away they went with a skip and a hopTill they came to the door of a grocer-ri shop.“‘Away they went with a merry, merry buz-zz,Till they came to a tub of mo-las-i-uz,They never stopped a minuteBut plunged right in itAnd rubbed their noses and their pretty wings in it.“‘And there they stuck, and stuck, and stuck,And there they cussed their miserable luck,With nobody byBut a greenbottle flyWho didn’t give a darn for their miser-ri.’”

“But what I am worrying about,” he continued when his song had been applauded, “is how you are going to get home. Our car has been put out of commission for the winter. Mag and I had to foot it over the hill this morning, but our path is high and dry, while the road to Grantly is something fierce. If you get off at Preston and go home with us, I’ll get a rig and drive you over.”

“No, indeed, we couldn’t think of it,” objected Nan. “This is only the beginning of winter and we can’t get off at Preston every day and impose on you and your father’s horses to get us home. We shall just have to get some top boots and get through the mud somehow.”

“But you don’t know that stream. If it was high this morning, by afternoon it will be way up. The Misses Grant should have told you what you were to expect. They should have a bridge there, but it seems Miss Ella wants a rustic bridge and Miss Louise thinks a stone bridge would be better, so they go a century with nothing but a ford.”

“Going home I mean to pull another rail off the fence and do some pole vaulting,” declared Lucy. “I hope I can find Helen’s big old rubber I left sticking in the mud.”

“It may stay there until the spring thawing,” said Mag. “You had better stick to the path going home. It is better to stick than get stuck.”

“I wish I had some stilts,” sighed Nan. “They would carry me over like seven league boots.”

“Can you walk on them?” asked Billy.

“Sure! Walking on stilts is my one athletic stunt,” laughed Nan. “I haven’t tried for years but I used to do it with extreme grace.”

That afternoon Billy had a mysterious package that he stowed under the seats in the coach.

“What on earth is that?” demanded Mag.

“Larroes to catch meddlers!”

“Please, Billy!”

“Well, it’s nothing but some fence rails to help Nan and Lucy get home. I’m afraid the Misses Grant will object if they pull down a fence every time they get stuck in the mud.”

The parcel proved to contain two pairs of bright red stilts found at a gentleman’s furnishing store. They had been used to advertise a certain grade of very reliable trousers, of an English cut. Just before the train reached Preston Billy unearthed them and presented Nan and Lucy each with a pair.

“Here are some straps, too, to put on your books to sling them over your shoulders. You can’t walk on stilts and carry things in your hands at the same time. Tie your umbrellas to the stilts! So long!” and Billy fled from the coach before the delighted girls could thank him.

Going home over the muddy road was very different from the walk they had taken that morning. In the first place it had stopped raining and their umbrellas could be closed and tied to the stilts. The air was cold and crisp now and there was a hint of snow. They stopped in the little station long enough to strap their books securely and get their packs on their backs, and then, mounting their steeds, they started on their way rejoicing.

“I wonder if I can walk,” squealed Nan. “It has been years and years since I tried,” and she balanced herself daintily on the great long red legs.

“Of course you can! Once a stilt walker, always a stilt walker!” cried Lucy, starting bravely off.

Nan found the art was not lost and followed her sister down the muddy hill to the branch. Billy was right: it had been high in the morning but was much higher in the afternoon. The one stepping-stone that had kept its nose above water on their trip to town was now completely submerged.

“Ugggh!” exclaimed Lucy. “My legs are floating!” And indeed it was a difficult feat to walk through deep rushing water on stilts. They have a way of floating off unless you put them down with a most determined push and bear your whole weight on them as you step.

“Look at me! I can get through the water if I goose step!” cried Nan.

“Isn’t this the best fun ever? Oh, Nan, I pretty near love Billy for thinking of such a thing. Don’t you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say love exactly.”

“I would! I can’t see the use in beating ’round the bush about such matters. He is certainly the nicest person we know and does more kind things for us.”

“He is nice and I do like him a lot,” confessed Nan.

“Better than the count and Mr. Tom Smith?”

“I don’t see what they have to do with it,” and Nan got rosy from her exertion of goose stepping through the water and up the muddy hill.

“Well, the old count talked about taking a trip with you to the land of dreaming, wherever that is, and Tom Smith took you on fine flying bats, but Billy here, he gets some stilts for you and lets you help yourself through the mud. I say, give me Billy every time!”

“Billy is a nice boy; but Count de Lestis is an elegant, cultured gentleman; and Tom Smith – Tom Smith – he – he – ”

“I guess you are right – Tom Smith, Tom Smith he he! But flying machines wouldn’t do much good here in the mud, and stilts will get us over the branch dry shod. There’s Helen’s rubber!” and Lucy adroitly lifted the little muddy shoe out of the mire on the end of one of her stilts and with a skillful twist of the wrist flopped it onto dry ground.

When they reached the top of the hill where the road became better they hid their stilts in the bushes, up close to the fence, carefully covering them with dry leaves and brush.

“Our flamingo legs,” Nan called them. During that winter many times the girls crossed the swollen stream on those red stilts and truly thanked the kind Billy Sutton who had thought of them. They would cache them under the little station, there patiently and safely to await their return.

It was always hard to walk through the water and on one dire occasion when the stream was outdoing itself, having burst all bounds and spread far up on the road, poor Nan goose stepped too far and fell backwards in the water. Fortunately it was on her homeward journey and she could get to Valhalla and change her dripping garments. She came across the following limerick of Frost’s which she gleefully learned, feeling that it suited her case exactly:

“‘There was once a gay red flamingoWho said: By the Great Jumping Jingo!I’ve been in this climeAn uncommon long timeBut have not yet mastered their lingo.’”

CHAPTER XI

PARADISE

It was astonishing how quickly that winter of 1916 and ’17 passed for those sojourners in Valhalla in spite of the fact that they were at times thoroughly uncomfortable. It is not an easy matter for persons, brought up in a modern, steam-heated house with three bath rooms, every form of convenience and plenty of trained servants, to adapt themselves to the simplicity of country life and that in its most primitive state.

Hard as the life was it agreed with them, one and all. Douglas and Bobby walked to school, rain or shine, but their road lay in the uplands where the mud rarely got more than ankle deep. Nan and Lucy had to contend with much more serious conditions, but thanks to their flamingo legs they got by.

The weather wasn’t always bad by any means. There were wonderful clear sparkling days with the ground frozen hard, and then came the snow that meant sleigh rides with the Suttons and grand coasting parties.

Mr. Carter was growing very robust from his labors of stopping up cracks and cutting fire wood. He gradually mended the leaks in the roof; puttied in the window panes; replaced the broken hinges and fastenings to doors and shutters; propped up sagging porch floors; and patched the cracked and fallen plastering.

The Misses Grant viewed his efforts with mingled satisfaction and embarrassment.

“We have intended to do all this for you, Mr. Carter, but Ella was so stubborn about the carpenter. She never would agree to having that new man at Preston, who is really quite capable,” Miss Louise would explain.

“Certainly not! We knew nothing about him and have always employed Dave Trigg – ”

“But you know perfectly well that Dave Trigg is doubled up with rheumatism,” snapped Miss Louise.

“Yes, and you know perfectly well, too, that that man at Preston has moved away,” retaliated her tall sister, and so on would they wrangle.

“I enjoy doing it,” Mr. Carter would assure them. “My only fear is that I will get the place in such good order that you will raise our rent.”

Which sally would delight the souls of the ladies who were in danger of agreeing about one more thing, and that was the altogether desirability of the Carters and the especial desirability of Mr. Carter.

Accepting Mrs. Carter at the extremely high valuation of her patient family, they were ever kind and considerate of her. Many were the dainty little dishes they sent to Valhalla from the great house to tempt the palate of their semi-invalid tenant, vying with each other in their attentions.

“An’ she jes’ sets back an’ takes it,” Chloe would mutter. “Mis’ Carter done set back so much that settin’ back come nachel ter her now.

“‘My name is JimmieAn’ I take all yer gimme.’

“That’s my ol’ Mis’.”

Chloe and Helen had continued the lessons in reading and writing. The whitewashed kitchen walls bore evidence to much hard work on part of both teacher and pupil. Chloe had learned to cook many simple dishes and to write and spell all she cooked. By slow stages, so slow they were almost imperceptible, the girl was becoming an efficient servant. Her wages were raised to eight dollars a month in spite of the remonstrances of her sister Tempy, who thought she must serve as long as she had before she could make as much.

“Sis Tempy been a-goin’ over ter night school at the count’s ev’y time she gits a chanst but she ain’t ter say larned nothin’.”

Helen and Chloe were engaged in the delectable task of making mince pies for Christmas. Chloe had just electrified Helen by writing on the wall of her own accord: “Reseat fer miCe Pize.”

“What does she learn?” asked Helen, smiling as she deftly rolled the pastry.

“She say they done started a kinder ‘batin’ siety an’ ain’t ter say foolin’ much with readin’ an’ writin’ an’ sich. The secondary ain’t so patient as what you is, an’ he uster git kinder worked up whin the niggers wint ter sleep in school.”

“I fancy that would be trying.”

“They’s drillin’ ’em now an’ they likes that ’cause the secondary done promised them from the count that some day he’ll gib ’em uniforms. Niggers is allus keen on begalia.”

“Does Tempy drill, too?”

“Lawsamussy, no! Women folks jes’ sets an’ watches. Tempy say she done march aroun’ enough fer Miss Ellanlouise, an’ as fer flingin’ broomsticks – she does enough of that ’thout no German gemmun a-showin’ her nothin’ ’bout how ter do it.”

“Do they drill with broomsticks?”

“Yassum, that’s what they tell me, but they do say – ”

“Say what?” asked Helen as the colored girl hesitated.

“They don’t say nothin’!”

“You started to tell me something they say about broomsticks.”

“I ain’t started ter tell a thing!” and Chloe shut her mouth very tight and rolled her eyes back in a way she had that made you think she was going to turn herself inside out.

“What do they debate about?” asked Helen amused at Chloe’s sudden reserve.

“They ’spute ’bout the pros an’ cons of racin’.”

“Horse racing?”

“I ain’t so sho’, but from what Sis Tempy done tol’ me it mought be an’ agin it moughtn’t.”

“Does Tempy debate?”

“Sis Tempy! Yi! Yi!” and Chloe went off in peals of laughter. “Sis Tempy can’t argyfy with nothin’ but a rollin’ pin. She done put up a right good argymint only las’ Sunday with her beau, that big slue-footed nigger, Jeemes Hanks.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Jeemes he done say he’s jes’ as good as any white folks an’ some better’n a heap er them. He say his vote don’t count none an’ he ain’t able ter buy no good lan’ jes’ ’cause de white folks won’t sell him none up clost ter they homes, – an’ Sis Tempy ups an’ tells him that his vote ain’t no count ’cause he ain’t no count hisse’f. She tells him that buzzards lays buzzard eggs an’ buzzard eggs hatches out mo’ buzzards; an’ that made him hoppin’ mad ’cause that nigger Jeemes sho’ do set great sto’ by hisse’f.”

“Does James feel that white people ought to sell him land whether they want to or not?”

“’Zactly! He been wantin’ ter buy a strip from Miss Ellanlouise up yander by the clari’, not so fur from the great house. They’s glad enough ter sell some er that rocky lan’ off over by the gravel pit, but they don’t want no niggers fer clost neighbors.”

“And what did Tempy say?”

“She never said nothin’. She jes’ up’n driv him out’n the cabin with the rollin’ pin. She tells him while she’s a-lickin’ him, though, that he’s a-larnin’ his a-b-c’s upside down at the count’s school an’ fer her part she ain’t a-goin’ back.”

“Do you think the count is responsible for James’s nonsense?” asked Helen. “I can’t see how he got such notions from a gentleman like the count.”

“I ain’t a-sayin’! I ain’t a-sayin’!” and once more Chloe’s mouth went shut with a determined click and she rolled her great eyes.

Helen thought no more about it. Darkies were funny creatures, anyhow. Of course it was hard on James Hanks if he wanted to buy good ground and no one would sell it to him, but on the other hand one could hardly expect the Misses Grant to sell off their ancestral acres just to accommodate the slue-footed beau of their cook.

Miss Ella and Louise were entirely unreconstructed as far as the colored people were concerned. They were kind to them when they were ill and helped them in many ways, but they never for an instant lost sight of the fact that they were of an inferior race nor did they let the darkies lose sight of the fact. They were not very popular with their negro neighbors although they were mutually dependent. Grantly had to depend on colored labor and many families among them got their entire living from Grantly.

The medicine chest at the great house furnished castor oil and paregoric for all the sick pickaninnies for miles around; Miss Louise had to make up great jars of her wintergreen ointment so that the aching joints of many an old aunty or uncle might find some ease; while Miss Ella’s willow bark and wild cherry tonic warded off chills and fevers from the mosquito infested districts down in the settlement in the swamps.

The older members of the community of negroes appreciated the real goodness and kindness of the two old ladies and overlooked their overbearing ways, but the younger generation, who cared not for the ointment or tonic, could see nothing but arrogance in the really harmless old spinsters.

Most of the former slaves, who had at one time belonged to Grantly, had passed away. The few who remained were old and feeble and these had many arguments with the younger ones, trying to make them see the real kindness and goodness of Miss Ellanlouise.

“You done got fat on castor ile out’n the chist at Grantly whin you was a sickly baby,” old Uncle Abe Hanks would say to his refractory grandson Jeemes. “An’ you an’ yo’ paw befo’ you was pulled from the grabe by parrygoric from dat same chist, an’ now you set up here an’ say: ‘Down with southe’n ‘ristocrats!’ Humph! You’d better be a-sayin’: ‘Down with the castor ile an’ parrygoric!’ ‘Down with the good strong soup an’ fat back Miss Ellanlouise done sent yo’ ol’ gran’pap las’ winter whin there warn’t hide or har er his own flesh an’ blood come nigh him!’ Yes! They went down all right – down the red lane. You free niggers is got the notion you kin live ’thout the ’ristocrats. Why don’t you go an’ live ’thout ’em then? Nobody ain’t a-holdin’ you. As fer me – gib me ’ristocrats ev’y time!”

“The Count de Lestis is as ’ristocratical as those ol’ tabbies,” the grandson would reply sullenly, “and he doesn’t treat a colored gemman like he was a houn’ dog.”

“’Ristocratical much! That furrener? You ain’t got good sinse, boy. That there pretty little count didn’t even come from Virginny an’ all the ’ristocrats done come from Virginny one time er anudder. I done hear Ol’ Marster say dat time an’ time agin.”

“The count say he gonter sell us all the lan’ we want. An’ he say he gonter fetch over some nice, kind white folks ter live neighbors to us; white folks what is jes’ as good as these white folks ’roun’ here but who ain’t a-gonter hol’ theyselves so proudified like.”

“Yes! I kin see him now tu’nnin’ loose a lot er po’ white Guinnies what will take the bread out’n the mouth er the nigger. Them po’ white furreners kin live on buzzard meat, an’ dey don’ min’ wuckin’ day in an’ day out, an’ if’n dey gits a holt in the lan’ the nigger’ll hab ter go. As fer a-livin’ long side er niggers, – I tell you now, son, that the white folks what don’t min’ a-livin’ long side er niggers is wuss’n niggers, an’ I can’t say no mo’ scurrilous thing about them than that – wuss’n niggers!”

A strong discontent was certainly brewing among the younger generation of negroes. Conversations similar to the one between Uncle Abe Hanks and James were not uncommon in the settlement that lay midway between Grantly and Weston. This settlement was known by the exceedingly appropriate name of Paradise. There were about a dozen cabins there, some of them quite comfortable and neat, others very poor and forlorn.

There was a church, the pride of their simple hearts because it was built of brick; also a ramshackled old building known as “The Club.” This club had originally been a tobacco barn, built, of course, without windows, for the curing of tobacco. In converting it into a club house, windows had been cut in the sides but with no fixed plan. Wherever a member decided it would be nice to have a window, a window was cut. No two were the same size or on the same level. Most of them were more or less on the slant, giving the building the appearance of having survived an earthquake.

In this club house the secret societies met to hold their mysterious rites. Here they had their festivals and bazaars and sometimes, when the effects of protracted meetings had worn off and the ungodly were again to the fore, they would have dances that threatened to bring down the walls and roof of the rickety building. It was whispered through the county that a blind tiger was also operated there but this was not proven. Certainly there was much drunkenness at times in Paradise, considering the state was dry.

Count de Lestis was very popular in Paradise. He always had a kind word for old and young. Then, too, he had work for them and paid them well. His fame spread and actually there was a boom in Paradise. Other negroes in settlements near by were anxious to move to Paradise. Town lots were in demand and the club had a waiting list for membership. The church was full to overflowing when on Sunday Brother Si took his stand in the little pulpit.

Night school at Weston was something new and something to do, so the darkies flocked to it. Herz, the secretary, had his hands full trying to teach the mob that congregated three times a week to sit at the feet of learning. He did get angry occasionally when his pupils, tired out no doubt after a hard day’s work, would fall asleep with audible attestations.