Of course as the days pa.s.sed we became desperately uneasy about Annie.
It seemed a perfect age since they had sailed and still no news of the safe arrival of the vessel. I was at Bracken, away from the constant calling of extras that was the rule in the city during those stirring war times. Tweedles told me they rushed out in the night to purchase a paper every time an extra was called, fearing news of a disaster to the _Lancaster_, the old-fashioned wooden boat the Pores had taken.
Zebedee had promised to telephone to them if news came to his paper concerning the steamer, news either of disaster or safety. The following is the letter I received from Dee written in the excitement of a message but that moment received from her father.
_Richmond, Va._
DEAREST PAGE:
Zebedee has just cabled me that he has had a telephone message from Liverpool that a mine had struck the _Lancaster_ about five hours out from port and the open boats had to take to the pa.s.sengers. All on board were saved although some of the pa.s.sengers were much shaken up. (I hope Arthur Ponsonby was one of the much shaken.) We are greatly excited about poor Annie. She is so afraid of water. It is feared all baggage is lost. (Good-by to the Gladstone bag!)
Dum and I can hardly wait for the cable that we just know Sleepy will send us as soon as he can. Aren"t we glad, though, that Sleepy was along? He will take care of Annie no matter what happens. It may be weeks and months before we can get a letter from Annie, telling us all about it. We are awfully sorry it should have happened to Annie, but Dum and Zebedee and I just wish we had been along. I bet you do, too!
These times are so stirring, I don"t see how we can all of us sit still. If our country ever gets pulled into the mix-up I tell you I"m going to get in the dog fight, too. Zebedee says he is, too, and so is Dum. I want to study veterinary surgery so I can help the poor horses when they get wounded and look after the dear dogs who work so hard to bring in the wounded.
Zebedee is afraid that is man"s work but I tell him bosh! plain bosh! There is no such thing as man"s work any more in this world. He says I"m an emanc.i.p.ated piece and I tell him I"m glad he realizes it. Dum and I are hard at work at war relief work. We go three times a week and roll bandages. I like the work but Dum sits up and lets tears drop on the bandages, thinking about all the poor soldiers they are to bind up. I cry a little, too, sometimes. Zebedee says if we bawl over new bandages, what would we do over real wounds? I tell him salt is a good antiseptic and a few sincere tears won"t hurt the poor wounded.
Dum and I have adopted a French war orphan between us.
Ten cents keeps one for a day and it does seem mean of us not to give that much. We always waste that much money, and more, every day of our lives. It means only letting up a bit on the movies or drinking water instead of limeade when one is thirsty. Zebedee has got himself one all by himself and he is going to keep it by letting up on one cigar a day. He says his smoke is bitter to him now that he realizes that every time he lights a ten cent cigar he might be feeding a little Belgian baby. We offered to get him some rabbit tobacco and dry it nicely so he could smoke it in a pipe, but he said never mind. Poor Zebedee is so choosey about his smoke that he would rather give it up altogether than not have it good.
We"ve got a scheme on hand for a jaunt but I"m going to let Zebedee have the pleasure of springing it on you if the plan works out. Dum says I"m not leaving a thing for her to tell. She says it is not ethical for one member of a family to write such a long letter to a person that other members correspond with, but I tell her I have told you very little news and that my letter has been more taken up with psychology and the conduct of life.
Of course I started this letter to tell you about Annie and the good ship _Lancaster_, but since all I know about it is that it hit a mine and all hands were saved in open boats I could not enlarge on that bit of news much. We will let you know when we hear more.
Zebedee and Dum and Brindle send you much love. Give mine to Dr. Allison and Mammy Susan, also many hugs to the dogs.
Affectionately, DEE.
CHAPTER XVI
THINGS HAPPENING
ONE of the delights of leaving home is coming back, at least so I always felt about my beloved Bracken. I indulged in many little jaunts during the summer but each home-coming was as pleasant as the trips. First there had been the house-party at Maxton, which had been so full of good times, then a short stay at home and almost before I had settled myself, a hurry call from the Tuckers to go to a mountain camp run by some very s.p.u.n.ky girls from Richmond, the Carters.
Those days in camp were a delightful experience and quite an eye-opener as to what girls can do if it is up to them. The Carter girls had been brought up in extravagant luxury, but when their father had a nervous breakdown and they suddenly found themselves with no visible means of support, they jumped in and ran a week-end boarding camp on the side of a mountain in Albemarle, and actually supported the whole family and made some money besides.
They were the busiest people I ever saw, but they managed to tuck in a lot of fun along with it. I certainly hope to see more of those girls, as they interested me tremendously. Douglas was the oldest; she seemed to be the balance wheel for the family. I never saw such poise in a young girl,--not a bit "society," either. She had given up college and was going to stay at home and help. Helen was the next, a stylish creature with more clash and swing to her than even my beloved Tweedles.
She was the one who directed the cooking as though she had been catering to boarders all her life, and I was told that she had never thought of such a thing until the spring before, when her father got ill. She evidently had no head for money and I am afraid had an extravagant way with her that gave poor Douglas some trouble.
Then came Nan, a perfect love of a little thing, all poetry and charm but with a conscience that made her do her duty in spite of preferring to live in the clouds. Lucy was the youngest girl and showed promise of being perhaps the best-looking of all the very handsome sisters, but she was too young to say for certain. At any rate, she was a very attractive child. Then there was Bobby, the little brother, an _enfant terrible_ and a perfect little duck.
Mr. Carter was the most pathetic figure I have ever seen: a big, strong man, accustomed to action and power, reduced to letting his daughters make a living for him. He seemed to have lost the power of concentration, somehow. Mr. Tucker said he thought he would get well but it was going to take a long time. He had worked beyond mental endurance trying to keep his family in luxury.
Mrs. Carter was the kind of woman who reconciles one to being a half-orphan, not that my little mother would ever have been that kind, but I mean it is better to be motherless than to have the kind she was.
I thought she was very pretty, very gracious, with a wonderful social gift, but the kind of woman who flops at the first breath of disaster.
Those Carter girls will have her on their hands just like a baby until the end of time. Whenever she was crossed, she simply went to bed in a ravishing boudoir cap and bed sacque and there she lolled until she carried her point.
The Carters were so interesting to me that I should like to tell more about them but they really should be in a book all to themselves, they and their week-end camp. I had never been right in the mountains before, but after my stay among them I felt that I liked it even better than the seash.o.r.e. Father said that the last wonderful thing I saw was always the most wonderful thing in the world. He also said that that was just as it should be. That when persons begin to look backward all the time instead of forward, the sutures of their skulls are too firmly knit together and all of their pleasures have to be of memory. New things make no impression on their brains. He said he intended to keep his skull in a semi-pliable state like a baby"s and go on looking at the world as a rattle for him to have a good time with.
I had often thought that my dear father spent a terribly humdrum existence for a man of his ability and intense interest in current events. While I loved the country in general and Bracken in particular, I also loved to get out into the world occasionally and get a new outlook, a different view-point as it were; get somewhere where things were happening. Nothing much ever seemed to me to happen in the country.
One day I said as much to him. He smiled and drew me to him.
"Why, honey, things are happening all the time in the country just as much as in town. I like to get away occasionally, too, but not because I want to be where things are happening,--in fact, I like to get away from so many things happening at once as they do in my life here as a country doctor. The things that happen in cities I feel more impersonal about."
"But you like to read about the things that happen in cities."
"Yes, and city people like to read about the things that happen in the country, too. Aren"t all the popular magazines filled with stories of rural life?"
"Ye-s! But they are romances that are made up."
"But not made up out of whole cloth! Come and go with me to-day on my rounds."
"Oh, I"d love to, but Miss Pinkie Davis has come to sew for me and I have to be here to help."
"Let her stay and we will give her a holiday. Poor Miss Pinkie has precious few holidays. She can read all the new magazines and rest her busy fingers."
Of course Miss Pinkie was agreeable to the arrangement. She did have very few holidays and no time to read the romances she craved. We left her ensconced in a hammock on the shady porch with a pile of magazines beside her and a beatific smile on her paper doll countenance. Something interesting was already happening in the country, at least something interesting to Miss Pinkie.
It was a wonderful day in late September. The winter corn had been cut and stacked in shocks that always reminded me of Indian wigwams. The tobacco had been housed the week before and now from each tobacco barn arose a mist of blue smoke. Groups of men could be seen standing around every barn gathered there to take part in the sacred rite of curing the green tobacco. A steady fire must be kept up day and night, and all the men in the countryside seemed to feel it could not be done without the personal supervision of each and every one of them.
"Suppose the women had some important steady cooking to do where the fire had to be kept up day and night, do you think they would have to call in all the other women in the county to a.s.sist?" laughed Father.
"Men are funny animals."
"The tobacco crop was pretty good, wasn"t it?" I asked.
"Fine! Never saw a better. I guess many a poor soldier in the trenches will be thankful that it is so. They say this war is being fought on the wheat and tobacco crops." I thought Father gave me a sly glance, but when I asked him what he was looking at he said nothing much, he only thought my nose was growing a little.
Everybody had a word of greeting for Dr. Allison as we drove by. We were stopped again and again, sometimes for a word of advice from the family physician as to Jim"s sore throat or Mary"s indigestion; sometimes to prescribe for a hog or cow that was indisposed, and once to decide if San Jose scale had attacked a peach orchard. We could not stop long with each person as we were on a hurry call, but Father always had a moment to spare; and then the colt had to make up for lost time and was given free rein at every good stretch of road.
The colt was the colt by courtesy and habit. He had long ago pa.s.sed the skittish age, but his spirit was one of eternal youth and his ways so coltish that no other name seemed to suit him. One could as soon think of Cupid"s growing up to be an old gentleman as the colt"s ever becoming a safe, steady nag. Enough things happened in the country for him, and he thought that each thing that happened was something for him to dance and prance about. A flock of belated blackbirds twittering in an oak tree was enough to make him get the bit in his teeth and run a quarter of a mile. A rabbit running across the road was something to shy over,--and I agree with the colt in that. As many times as I have seen it, there is something about a Molly Cottontail as she lopes across the road that always startles me. She bobs up so suddenly from nowhere and disappears as rapidly into the nowhere.
Driving the colt was an excitement in itself that must have kept life from becoming dull to my dear father. There could be no loafing on that job. Reins had to be well up in hand and the driver must be fully cognizant of things that the imaginative animal no doubt looked upon as possible enemies. Sometimes I think he was playing a game with himself and making excitement to keep his existence from being humdrum. At any rate, it was great fun to be behind the spirited animal on that crisp September morn. No one could drive so well as Father. He had a sure, steady, gentle but firm touch on the rein that soothed the most nervous horse. Father"s driving always reminded me of Zebedee"s dancing.
Our hurry call was to a young farmer"s wife. The gates were wide open as though we were expected and no obstacles were to delay us. The husband, Henry Miller, was waiting for us at the stile block. His face was drawn and white and great tears were rolling down his weather-beaten cheeks.
"She"s awful bad off, Doctor. I"m afraid she"s gonter die," he whispered huskily.
"Oh no, my son! I have no idea of such a thing. Maybe you had better unhitch my horse. He is not much on the stand. Page, you help him, please."
Now Father knew perfectly well that I could look after the colt by myself, but he simply wanted to occupy Mr. Miller. Silently we undid the straps and led him to the stable. I realized he was feeling too deeply to listen to my chatter, so I kept very quiet. When we started back to the house I told him he must not bother about me,--that I had a book and would just make myself at home out in the summer-house.
"I will come, too," he faltered. "Looks like I"ll go crazy if I have to stay alone."
"Oh, do come! Maybe you would like me to read to you."