Kitabı oku: «The Carter Girls», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XIV
THE WEEK-ENDERS

“If the weather only holds!” exclaimed Douglas. “This first week-end is the most important of all. If the boarders have a good time they will want to come back, and then they will give us such a good name that others will want to come, too.”

“People who can’t rise above mere weather should be taught a lesson,” declared Helen.

“Nonsense, child!” from Miss Somerville. “Weather is something no one can rise above. A week of rain in these mountains would make all of us ready to kill each other and then commit suicide.”

“I hope we won’t be put to the test,” said Nan.

“I should hope not! ‘Continual dripping on a rainy day’ is a proverbial evil. I hope some bridge players will be numbered among the guests. I am hungry for a game.”

“Why, Cousin Lizzie, you know we don’t mind playing a bit,” said Helen. “Why don’t you ask us whenever you want to?”

“Don’t mind playing? Bless you, child! Who wants to play with people who play because they ‘don’t mind playing’? I can see that game now! ‘What’s trumps?’ ‘Whose play is it?’ ‘I thought I had played!’ ‘I must have reniged as I find I have a heart, after all.’ No, no! When I play cards, I want the game made up of devotees. How would you like a partner in the dance who danced merely out of good-nature and kept forgetting whether he was dancing the schottische or mazurka?”

As no one had danced either of those obsolete dances for at least thirty years, the girls could not help a few sly smiles.

How rapidly that first week had flown! They had settled now into regular camp life, even Miss Somerville. She had secretly decided that Nature was not half bad and had once found herself admiring a sunset. She had kept her admiration to herself, however, for fear some over-zealous person might make her get up and see a sunrise.

Oscar and Susan, with Gwen doing the head work, had managed the cooking beautifully for the few people they had to serve. It remained to be seen how things would go when the boarders poured in for the week-end.

Pour in they did, six more than the girls had prepared for; but Lewis and Bill with their ready inventions made beds for the boys of spruce boughs, and immediately put in an order for more cots and an extra tent.

There were two careful mammas who had come along to look after their daughters and an old bachelor who had a niece in tow; so Cousin Lizzie made up her table of bridge and every one was happy, especially the daughters of the careful mammas and the niece who was in tow. If one must be chaperoned, it is certainly pleasant to have the chaperone interested in something besides chaperoning.

The Mountain Goat made three round trips to the station to meet passengers on the afternoon train on that first Friday, and other enthusiastic campers walked up the mountain. Josephus was very busy with a cart full of bags and bundles. One of the stipulations that the girls had made in their advertisements was that every one must bring his or her own blankets. This was at the instigation of Dr. Wright, who said it would be very difficult to furnish blankets enough; and also for sanitary reasons he knew it to be wise. Sheets are easy to have washed, but blankets are not so simple a proposition.

The twenty week-enders were all young with the exception of the two careful mammas, the old bachelor with the niece in tow, and two stiff-backed spinsters who must have had some good reason of their own for coming to camp in the mountains but they did not give it. They looked very grim and uncompromising as they sat on the back seat of the Goat with a plump and pleasing little stenographer, who was to take her much-needed holiday at the camp, wedged in between them.

“They must be geologists,” whispered Douglas to Lewis. Douglas and Lucy had gone to the station to meet the newcomers, while Helen and Nan were to receive them at camp. “One of them had a little hammer sticking out of her pocket.”

“Well, let’s hope they will keep their hammers for rocks and not knock the camp with them.”

“Do you know, I did an awfully foolish thing? I put Tillie Wingo on the front seat with Bill and forgot to introduce them. Helen would never have done such a tactless thing.”

“Well, a small thing like an introduction here or there won’t stop Tillie. I bet she talks poor Bill blue in the face,” laughed Lewis.

So she did. Miss Hill, the pleasant stenographer, told Helen that not for one moment did Tillie stop talking on that zig-zag ride up the mountain. She poured forth a stream of delightful high-pitched nothings into Bill’s crimson ear. Bill, as was his habit, said nothing, and, like the tar baby, kept on saying nothing. She had his ear; his eye must perforce remain on the perilous road; his tongue was his to hold, and he held it. Once he let forth a great laugh which had the effect of shutting Tillie up for almost thirty seconds; but it was not time to go to sleep yet and Tillie was accustomed to talk until she went to sleep and sometimes even afterwards.

“A week-end camp is a most original idea and every one in Richmond is simply wild about it. You see, the Carters are very popular and if they decide to do something, lots of people will want to be doing it, too. Helen Carter is considered the best dressed girl in Richmond, not that she dresses more than any of the other girls but she has such good taste. All of us girls are wild about her clothes. I adore camping! I’d join the Camp-Fire but somehow khaki is not becoming to me. Do you know, I do not think that muddy tan is becoming to decided blondes – not that I am such a very decided blonde. I know lots of girls who wear it who are not near so highly colored as I am – but somehow I think tan takes all the life out of a blonde. Of course, one can wear white up close to the face, but even then the tan kind of ruins a blonde complexion. I prefer blue and pink and lavender and green and, of course, yellow, and I think grey is just sweet for a blonde. I am wild for a black dress but my mother is so old-fashioned she thinks no one under thirty should wear black unless, of course, there happens to be a death in the family. Under those circumstances, I fancy she would let me wear black. I would not wear heavy mourning but just some diaphanous, gauzy thing with tulle – although I do think that organdy collars and cuffs set one off terrifically well. I think I would make a splendid widow – don’t you?”

It was here that Bill gave his great guffaw, but it was also at a particularly ticklish place in the road, so he could not look at his blonde passenger.

Tillie stopped for the aforesaid thirty seconds and then decided that the dumb young man running the car was a common chauffeur and perhaps she had better change her form of conversation to one not suggesting equality. It never entered her head to stop talking.

“Richmond is just running over with jitneys now. They make such a dust you can’t see whether they are coming or going. Did you ever run a jitney? They say there is lots of money in them. I should think you would do better doing that than doing this – of course, though, you know best, and perhaps you get your board thrown in up here. Mamma said she knew that the Carter girls would not know how to feed people because they have always led such soft lives, but I said I was coming, anyhow. I am dying to fall off. I really should have walked up the mountain instead of riding as that would be a good way to start, but I had on my best shoes and I knew it would ruin them. Douglas Carter wrote me to be sure and bring a blanket, but I simply could not get one in my grip and I said I would sleep cold before I would be seen carrying a great old blanket over my arm like lots of these people. It was horribly hot in Richmond and I did not think it could be cold coming just this little way. I think it is so brave and noble for the Carter girls to try to help their father this way. They do say he is dippy and was quite wild-eyed. I have a friend who was on the sleeper with Mr. and Mrs. Carter when they went to New York, and he says they shut themselves up in the drawing room and acted awful queer. He didn’t say just how, but it must have been something fierce. What is this funny looking place? Is this the camp? My, ain’t it odd? I am very much obliged to you for bringing me up. Please look after my suitcase for me – it is the large one, really a small trunk, but I had no idea of mashing my new pink into a pulp just for the sake of reducing my luggage. Here, this is for you – and please get my baggage,” and Tillie handed the astonished Bill a quarter.

“Didn’t know what to say, so I just took it,” Bill told Lewis afterward. “First money I’ve earned since I was a kid and picked blackberries for Grandmother to jam, at five cents a quart. Dog, if I would not rather pick the berries, briars and all! I felt like hollering to somebody to throw something over the cage, that the canary was making such a fuss I couldn’t think.”

Josh, too, was the victim of tips but he indignantly returned the money that was proffered him with this remark:

“We uns ain’t beholden to nobody, but is employed regular by Mr. Somerville, we uns and Josephus.”

That is often the spirit of the mountaineer. He will sell anything but cannot stomach a tip.

Helen and Nan received the guests as they piled out of the Mountain Goat or came up the winding road on foot. It was a very exciting moment for our girls. This was really the beginning of their great adventure. Were they to succeed or not? The week-enders were there, for once at least, but could these girls make it so agreeable that they would want to come back?

“Do look at Tillie Wingo, Nan! Did you ever see such a goose? She has on ten dollar champagne shoes and a blue Georgette crêpe that would melt in a mist!”

“Yes, she is some goose, but she will pay us just as sensible board as anybody else, so we must not be too critical,” and Nan went forward to meet the pretty blonde Tillie and the stiff-backed spinsters and the pleasant Miss Hill, and Helen smothered her indignation at Tillie’s bad taste in being so unsuitably dressed for camping and did her best to make it pleasant for her, Georgette crêpe, champagne shoes and all.

There was much enthusiasm from the new arrivals as they inspected the camp. Every one went into ecstasies over the view and the arrangements. Miss Somerville awaited them in the pavilion, where she stood as at a reception, receiving the guests with great formality.

“These young persons must understand fully that I am the chaperone, and I think a dignified reception of them will be conducive to good behavior on their part,” she had said to Helen as she dressed herself in a black silk afternoon gown and arranged her beautiful white hair in its shining puffs.

At Gwen’s instigation, afternoon tea was served as soon as the formal reception was over – tea for those so inclined and grape-juice-lemonade for the more frivolous.

A card table was unfolded for Miss Somerville, the two anxious mothers and the old bachelor with a niece in tow.

“Quite like the springs,” whispered Cousin Lizzie to Helen, as she got brand new packs of cards for the opening game of the season.

Our girls had thought they would have to be quite busy entertaining the week-enders, but they found to their delight that they could entertain themselves. There were more than enough of the male element to go around and in an incredibly short time they had sorted themselves to their mutual satisfaction and were either dancing to the latest record, which Tillie Wingo had put in her bursting semi-trunk, in lieu of a blanket, or were roaming over the mountain side.

Lil Tate, Lucy’s boon companion and school-mate, had come and the two girls had gone off arm in arm, while Frank Maury, a callow youth of fifteen, walked shyly after them, hoping they would take him in their train and fearing every moment that they might. His hopes and fears were both realized and by supper time the three were sworn allies; Frank had determined to come up the next week and bring Skeeter, his chum, and Lil had declared she was going to make her mother let her spend the whole summer with Lucy.

“Mamma’s an awful ’fraid cat about me and just would come along. Thank goodness, she and Miss Somerville have got cards to occupy ’em and she has forgotten there isn’t but one of me,” laughed Lil, who was a sprightly little brunette. “I wisht I had been born triplets and then she wouldn’t have to be so particular.”

“Gee, I’m glad I ain’t a girl – but I like girls a lot – ” stammered Frank. “Skeeter and I think they are just great,” and so they chattered on.

Bobby was not so happy. His friend Josh was too busy with Josephus and the luggage to have him around, and no boon companion had arrived for him. He had been made to wash and dress, which, he considered, was a great breach of faith on the part of his sisters. He had it firmly placed in his memory that he had been promised by some one that when he got to the mountains he would never have to wash and dress. He sat with a very disconsolate mien in a corner of the pavilion, watching Tillie’s pretty little feet in their champagne shoes twirling round and around, every few moments with another pair of masculine shoes accompanying them, as Tillie was never long without a flock of the opposite sex in her wake. She could hardly get around the pavilion before the dance was broken into by some eager swain. She was noted as being able to dance down more partners than any girl in Richmond, and it was slyly hinted that she was so long-winded because of her never ceasing practice in conversation.

Bobby looked gloomily at the twinkling feet. They were too clean for him, those champagne-colored shoes. His own feet were disgustingly clean, too. Maybe he could rectify that with a judicious sprinkling of grape juice and then some clay sifted over them. He would try! Just then the stiff-backed spinsters, who turned out to be educators off on a botanical and geological spree, bore down on him and seating themselves on each side of him began:

“Little boy, are you enjoying your stay in the mountains?”

“Naw!”

“Ah, perhaps you are too idle and need occupation. Can you read and write?”

“Naw, I can’t read writin’ but I can read readin’.”

“You should have a task set you every day and then vacation would not hang so heavily on your hands. Some useful bit of information imparted to you would be edifying and useful.”

“Pshaw! That’s the way Cousin Lizzie talks. She’s our chapel roan an’ knows mo’n anybody ’bout Solomon an’ all his glory. She done learnt me a verse already onct this mornin’.”

“Ah, indeed! And can you repeat it to us?”

“Yes! I reckon ’twas the grape juice an’ victrola that made her choose this one: ‘Wine is a mucker an’ strong drink is rag time.’ I kin learn mos’ anything,” and Bobby hastened off to put the clay on his feet before the grape juice bath had time to dry.

CHAPTER XV
LETTERS FROM WEEK-END CAMP

From Tillie Wingo to Her Best Friend Grace

Greendale, Va.

Saturday Morning.

My darling Grace:

Such a time as we are having – I’ve almost danced up my new ten dollar shoes, but I am sure glad I wore them as they have been much admired. There are oodlums of men up here and some of the prettiest dancers I have ever met.

I must tell you what a terrible break I made. There is a man here named Bill Tinsley, and do you know I took him for a jitney driver the first day I got here and gave him a tip – twenty-five cents. He took it like a mutt and now he has a hole in it and wears it around his neck and everybody thinks it is an awful joke on me. I must say that it is hard to tell one kind of man from another when nobody introduces you. He is awful dum but dances like Volinine. He never opens his face except to feed it and to laugh and he laughs louder and more than anybody I have ever met before.

Speaking of feeding, the eats are fine. I don’t see how the Carter girls ever learned how to do it but they have the best things! I hoped it would be bum as I want to fall off. I have always been a perfect thirty-six and must say I don’t relish taking on flesh, but I can’t resist fried chicken and waffles.

I am almost sorry I brought my new pink as I really need some kind of outing dress, but I did not have room for so many things and I do think that it is best to have plenty of dancing frocks rather than sport suits that after all do not become me very much.

We have chaperones to burn as Miss Elizabeth Somerville is here and Mrs. Tate may stay a long time so Lil can be here with Lucy Carter. I am dying to stay but $2.00 per is right steep for yours truly. I don’t think that is much for what you get and I think the Carter girls are real smart to charge a good price as long as they are giving you good things. Helen Carter does a lot of the cooking and has the sweetest little bungalow aprons to cook in. They are pink and blue, just my style, and when I get a trousseau I intend to have one.

We danced last night until eleven and then old Miss Somerville made all of us go to bed. She couldn’t see to play cards was the reason she was so proper. Little dinky kerosene lamps that blow out in the wind are not much for card playing but they do fine for dancing. The boys say they are going to bring up some electric lanterns the next week-end so the old lady can see to play and she will forget the time.

Did you ever sleep in a tent, Grace? Well, it is great – I was real sorry I didn’t have a blanket when it blew up so cold. It was right down nippy. I wasn’t going to say a thing but I was sorry I hadn’t even brought a sweater – one of the fellows didn’t have a blanket either but I heard him say he was going to sleep in his clothes. A blue Georgette crêpe and a pink chiffon wouldn’t help me much and all of my clothes are diaphanous this summer. I am sharing a tent with two old maids and a sten from Richmond. Do you know when I went to my tent I found six blankets on my cot and Susan the maid brought me two more? It had got out among the men that I didn’t have a blanket, how I can’t imagine, and they sent me theirs. Now wasn’t that too sweet of them? I sent them all back but a lovely cadet blue – it was so becoming I chose that. It turned out to be Mr. Tinsley’s so I believe he is not mad about the tip I gave him.

We are going on a walk this morning over to a terrible place called the Devil’s Gorge. I am going to wear Lucy Carter’s shoes and Nan’s skirt and Helen’s middy blouse and Douglas has a hat for me. The sten in the tent with me lent me some stockings. You see I brought nothing but silk ones. After we got to bed last night and I was almost asleep but was talking to the sten, who is a very nice agreeable girl – the old maids were both snoring – we heard a car chugging up the hill and it seems two more men had arrived, motored all the way from Richmond. It was a Dr. Wright and a boy named Dick. I heard Helen Carter, in the next tent, just raising Cain and saying he was very inconsiderate to come in on them at night that way, but before they could so much as get up to see where they were to sleep, they got a message that the new comers had brought their own blankets and hammocks and no one was to stir for them. I met Dr. Wright at breakfast and I think he is real cute. Helen Carter is mighty rude to him and I can’t see how he stands it. Helen has lovely manners usually but she certainly does pick him up quick. He is a general favorite with the rest of the family though, and Bobby is just wild about him. No more at present. I don’t see how I ever wrote this much as there has been a lot of noise and I know ten times I have been begged to stop writing and come dance. It looks like rain but I do hope it won’t. My blue will melt I know if it rains.

Your best friend,

Tillie Wingo.

Skeeter from Frank Maury

Hello Skeeter!

Come in, the water’s fine! Say, Skeeter, what’s the reason you can’t light right out and come up to camp? Be sure and bring a blanket, the nights are cold as flugians. Miss Douglas Carter says that they call it a week-end camp just for cod, but we can stay through the week if we’ve a mind. Bully eats and plenty of ’em, and say, Skeeter, two mighty prime girls – no nonsense about them but spunky and up to snuff. They are named Lucy Carter and Lil Tate. They say they’d like to meet you a lot. If you come we can play five hundred when we are not climbing the mountains and hunting bee trees. Lucy has some chores she has to do but Lil and I help and we get through in a jiffy. It is just fun. I talk like I been here a month and it is just one night. Anyhow, Lil and I helped this morning and we are going to do it every morning. You see, these Carter girls are running this camp for the spondulix they can get out of it and it means all of them have got to spit on their hands and turn in. Lucy has to help wipe the dishes when they have many folks. I blew in the glasses and polished them so fine that Miss Helen said she would like to hire me. I ain’t going to tell you more of the camp because I am sure you will be here yourself soon. It beats the beach all hollow. These girls are sure slick, these Carter girls. They have a camp fire going all the time to make it look al frescoish, but they do their cooking mostly on stoves and in fireless cookers. They roast the potatoes in the camp fire and bring them to the table with ashes on ’em to make ’em look more campyfied; and they have a big iron pot hanging over the fire but they never have anything in it but water. Say, Skeeter, when you come, bring your fish lines as there is a stream that looks like fish. Let a fellow know when to look for you.

Yrs. truly,

Frank Maury.

Susan Jourdan to Melissa Thompson, the former cook at the Carters’.

Dere ant Melisser?

i am sogournin hear most profertably to all consearned. me and uncle Oscur is took over the Brunt of the laber but the yung ladys is very konsiderable of us and all of them healps at every chanst. miss Helun is astonishun in her caperbilitys, morn what we thort posserble. We had upwards of thirty last night for super and it took a sight of vittles to fill them folks. We want countin on morn twenty-four and want countin’ on them eatin quite so much but miss Helun took holt and stirred up some batty kates and got em started to fryin befoar the waffles give out and all the folks turned in then and et batty kates like they aint never already filled up on waffles. White folks are sure quick to think in times of stress. Niggers jest lay down and give up when anything suddint turns up like extry stomiks but white gals aint nocked out by sich things. Now uncle Oscur and me would have to know long time befoar han about batty kates but miss Helun just waltzed in and made em. it war the las think they learnt her to make at the XYWZ whar she tuck a coarse in culminary cookin. Theys a yung lady here named miss Guen who is a mistery to me and uncle Oscur. she is bar futed and dressed in a dress no biggern a flower sax but she talks properern miss Lizy sumervil and hoalds up her haid ekal to mis Carter herself, she is a gret han at cookin and shen Me together kin git up a sweet meel. She was floared by the Nos. last nite tho and shen Me was bout givin up when miss Helun stept in. miss Helun looks Sweet in her bugaboo apern i think dr. Right thinks so too but when he started to say something to her bout it she pritty near bit his haid off. she is got it in for him good and wright but the others is dafty bout Him and Bobby thinks he is the angle Gabrul hisself. I aint writ you bout a low flung mounting boy up hear what put a hornets nest under my baid the fust nite we sogourned hear. he is impruved now because of mr. Lewis who sayed his say to Him and thin made him take a bath when it want morn Chewsday. We gits along with him by gittin out of his Way. Ill give it to him that he is smart enuf and kin work. He is got strange notions tho and whin some of the compny handed him a little change for his trouble in totin up they bags he got insulted. uncle Oscur and I says we would like some of them insults heeped on us. no more from yours in haste at preasant. I dreemed bout teeth last nite wich is sure sine of death but miss Nan sayed it was because i sleapt with a wad of chueing gum in my mouth and it sprung my Gaw and maid my teeth ake. we are xpecting a large Crowd for the 4th of july. it air a strange thing to me that white folks should make so mutch noise on the day that our rase was given its freedom. The folks is all lawd in prase of my biskit which is no trubble at all to roll out. the yung folks is all gone on a walk what they calls a hyke. They is going to a fearsum spot known as the devilsgorge. twas there that miss Guens paw made way with his life. miss Guen and i is to serve lunch for miss Lizzie sumervil and some ladies and a gent who is too crepit to hyke. They is endorsed in cards and done forgot to chapperroon. thaint none here what needs watching. that pretty miss Tillie wingo is mighty flity but thaint no meanness in her. the bows act like beas round a honie pot with her. She don’t talk nothin but fulishnes and gigglin but men fokes is sometimes took with that sawt of tainment. miss Nan done say she thinks twould be good bizness if they ask miss Tillie to stay on as a gest. She earns her keep and weakenders will come here jest cause of her. miss Duglas say so too but miss Helun says let her stay but make her get sum sootable duds as shes got no i dear of lending her her noo accordeonroy skurt perchused specally for the mountings and she sayed she seen miss Tillie eying it with Mutt Ise. I am enjoyn poar helth and hope it finds you the same.

respeect.

Susan Jourdan.