Zebedee had not yet scented out Louis as a possible lover, but when he did I was sure to hear from him. They one and all brought their grievances to me. I used to think if any of them ever should unite themselves to anyone in the holy bonds of matrimony, they would have to have a triple wedding to keep the persons the Tuckers were marrying from getting their eyes scratched out. If they were all in the same boat, they would have to behave and sit steady.
In the meantime, Dee"s influence over Louis was certainly a wholesome one. Whether his love for her was of the undying brand or just the calf kind, it was very sincere and ardent, so ardent that Dee must soon wake up and realize that she had done a right serious thing when she put out her girlish hand and drew back that poor boy"s soul just as it was getting ready for the journey to the Great Beyond. She was in a measure responsible for him now, and the time would come when she would have to be a woman and no longer a wooden Indian, have to treat Louis with a different manner from the one she had for Brindle and Oliver; that is, of course, provided Louis" love turned out to be the undying brand and not the calf kind. When it was said that Dee Tucker treated anyone like a dog, it meant the highest praise for that person. She treated all dogs with a great deal more consideration than she did most people.
Every flower Dee admired, Louis immediately wanted to give her, but she persuaded him to let them go on blooming where they belonged. He had a greenhouse in the back of the garden, where some wonderful roses bloomed all the year round. A great Jaqueminot filled one side of the house, its crimson blooms beautiful to behold. Louis cut one and brought it out to Dee. I was glad I was the only one who heard him as he gave it to her, as I am sure Dum would have "acted up," as Mammy Susan calls it. Dum had gone to the tea table to put down her cup, and Mrs. Green had detained her a moment, while I wandered on in the maze of gravel walks. An oleander hid me from Louis and Dee as he handed her the marvelous open rose, and with a voice that even a wooden Indian would have remarked, he said:
"When I send thee a red, red rose, The sweetest flower on earth that grows, Think, dear heart, how I love thee.
Listen to what the red rose saith With its crimson leaf and fragrant breath: "Love, I am thine in life and death!
Oh, my love, doth thou love me?""
"Humph! Going some!" I thought, and backed down the walk, thereby running into Dum, who smeared a lettuce sandwich on my back in the encounter; but she did not know what I had heard.
CHAPTER XX
MORE LETTERS
Mrs. Edwin Green, from Mrs. Kent Brown.
NEW YORK, April .., 19...
MOLLY DARLING:
Your letter was good to get. Kent and I had begun to feel like -in-laws, it had been so long since you had written. Mother Brown, the usually faithful chronicler of all the doings and sayings of the family, had cut us off with a postal. Now that we know she is "keepin" keer" of little Mildred, we can understand her silence better.
When Mother Brown does anything, she does it all over, and I am sure when she is doing such a thing as attend to anything so precious as her beloved grandchild she has no time for mere letter writing.
Kent and I were greatly interested in what you had to tell us of the charming Virginians you have met in Charleston. It was almost uncanny, in a way, to hear from you of these people, as we had just been hearing of them from a very nice young man with whom Kent has struck up an acquaintance at the Y.
M. C. A. gym, where Kent goes regularly to keep from getting flabby. The young man"s name is Reginald Kent. It was the name Kent that they had in common (one in front and one behind) that first brought them together. They were always getting mixed up on account of it, my Kent answering when the other Kent was called, and vice versa.
This young Mr. Kent is an ill.u.s.trator and advertising artist. He really is very clever and very wide-awake. He was dining with us at the very time that your letter was brought to me, on the last mail. I had to open it and read part of it aloud. He had just been telling us of some cousins named Winn he visits in the country in Virginia, and of some Richmond girls whom he has met staying with Page Allison, and these girls are no other than your Tucker twins. He says the first time he met them he went on a deer hunt and that Miss Dum Tucker actually shot a deer. I was slightly incredulous, he thought, and to prove his story he took out of his pocketbook two kodak pictures, one of a very handsome, spirited-looking girl with her hair coming down and a rifle raised to her shoulder, and the other a fallen buck with a young girl kneeling beside him, her arms around his neck and her face buried on his shoulder. That one, he said, was Miss Dee, who wept buckets over the death of the buck, but managed afterward to partake of some of the venison.
I have an idea Mr. Reginald Kent thinks that Miss Dum Tucker is about the most attractive person he ever met. He is certainly very attractive himself, singularly wholesome and clean in appearance and mind. He seemed very happy at the prospect of this paragon of a girl"s coming to New York to study. I will be very glad to be of any use to your friends I can, and if they do decide to come I will find board for them and mother them, too, if they need it. I know you are grinning at the idea of my mothering anything--I, the harum-scarum, the flibberty-jibberty--but I am really very much settled down. I am so steady and good that Kent is afraid I am sick.
Caroline is doing the work very well for us. I am the envy of all the people we know because I can boast a really, truly Kentucky Bluegra.s.s cook. She is awfully funny about New York, but I think is beginning to like it very well. Gas scared her nearly to death for a few days. She seemed to think there was some kind of magic in it, and I had to light the stove for her a million times a day. I found she was just keeping it burning all the time to save matches, and when I told her to turn it out if she wasn"t using it, she almost cried, because, it seems, she was afraid of the pop it gave when she lit it. Then she began calling on me every time she wanted to light it, but after a week or so of such humoring she has learned to do it herself, and now everything is going along swimmingly. I find she is saving the burnt matches, though, to make some kind of bracket with--something she saw back in "Kaintucky."
I think the greatest shock she ever had was when she found out that in New York you had to pay for onions. "I nebber hearn tell of no sich a place.
If"n you ain"t made out ter grow none yo"se"f, looks ter me lak some er yo" neighbors mought be ginerous enough to gib yer a han"ful fer seasonin", not fer fryin" or b"ilin". I wouldn"
spec a whole mess er onions as a gif"--but it do seem a shame ter hab ter buy a dash er seasonin"."
She almost got her head knocked off with the dumb-waiter the other day. She thought it was down, and it was up, and she put her head in the shaft to watch for it, all the time giving the most vigorous pulling to the rope. The dumb-waiter descended with great force and hit her squarely on the top of the head. I heard a great b.u.mp and flew to the kitchen. "Caroline! Caroline! What is the matter?" I cried. ""Tain"t nothin" much, Miss Judy, but it mought "a" been. That there deaf-and-dumb dining-room servant done biffed me a lick that pretty near knocked a hole in his flo"."
"Did it hurt very badly?" "No"m, it didn"t ter say hurt none. It jes" dizzified me a leetle. You see, Miss Judy, it jes" hit me on the haid."
Just on the head!
I think Caroline is almost as much afraid of Aunt Mary"s disapproval now that the old woman is dead as she was in her lifetime. Whenever she pa.s.ses the picture I did of Aunt Mary on the back porch of Chatsworth sh.e.l.ling peas, she suddenly gets in a great hurry. She is not as a rule very energetic, but at the sight of Aunt Mary she gets a great move on her. She came in the other day from some jaunt she had been on, it being her afternoon off, and said: "Looks lak wherever I goes folks seem to "vine I"m from de Souf. I ast a colored gemman how he guessed it an" he said it was my sof" accident what gimme away. I"s goin"
ter try ter speak mo" Yankeefied an" see if"n I can"t pa.s.s fer Noo York."
Caroline"s first attempt at being Yankeefied was almost fatal. She made friends with some of the white maids in the apartment house, some Scandinavians, and in her endeavor to become New Yorky she swapped recipes with them, and the next morning served for breakfast the result: corn bread with sugar in it! You can picture Kent.
Kent and I are seeing some very pleasant people, but both of us are working very hard. I work every morning at the Art Students" League from 9 to 12.
That means I leave the house with Kent. I go to market on the way to the League and get back to luncheon. Sometimes he comes in to luncheon, too, but he is usually too busy. In the afternoon I sew or read or go shopping or to the matinee, always something to do in New York, and then we have dinner at 6:30 and long, delightful evenings together, usually at home; but sometimes we take in a show and sometimes we dine at a restaurant.
We have callers in the evening often and also return calls, but Kent is not much of a caller, as you know.
We have company to dinner, too, quite often now that Caroline has found herself. Kent delights in bringing home unexpected company. He has a notion he is still living in Kentucky and that this little two-by-four flat is Chatsworth itself.
Caroline is fortunately accustomed to it, but I am afraid she will soon become corrupted by these Scandinavians, who would not put up with it one moment. Of course I don"t mind how many companies he brings home, and if we are short on rations I can do like the immortal Mrs. Wiggs and just put a little more water in the soup. This idiosyncrasy of my young husband, however, has taught me to keep a supply of canned soups, asparagus tips, etc., in the store-room. My friends among the young married set tell me they market day by day and never have anything like that on the shelves as it makes the servants wasteful. Maybe it does, but I feel quite safe with Caroline and the canned goods, as she has never yet learned how to use a can-opener.
Please give the learned professor my best love.
Kent sends his love to you both. This is such a long letter I am sure it will take two stamps to send it.
Your ever devoted, JUDY KEAN BROWN.
Page Allison from Dr. James Allison of Milton, Va.:
BRACKEN, April .., 19...
MY DEAR DAUGHTER:
Mammy Susan and I were very glad to hear from you.
You are a nice girl to write such a fine, long letter to a mere afterthought. If you write that splendid a letter to a mere afterthought, what would you do for a beforethought?
Your new friends sound delightful. I wish I might know them. The only kick I have about being nothing but a country doctor is that I meet so few new people. Of course it is interesting work, and I am not out of love with it, but sometimes I do get a weeny, teeny bored with poor Sally Winn"s aches and pains, and wish either she had some new aches or she could tell about them in a more scintillating manner. Some new people are moving into our neighborhood, the Carters. Of course, as the name indicates, they are not new people except to our neighborhood. They have taken the old overseer"s cottage on the Grantly estate, leased it from the two Miss Grants for a year, and are coming bag and baggage in a few days. I don"t know how many of them there are, but I believe it is quite a family of girls and one or more boys and a mother and father, one of them an invalid. More pink pump water to be concocted by yours truly, I fancy. I hope they will be agreeable, since no doubt we will have to see something of them. The cottage is in miserable repair, and I only hope it will not tumble down on them. If they are coming to our county for fresh air, they will get it there winter and summer, as there are cracks in the walls as big as those in a corn crib. Pretty lawn, though, about the prettiest I know of anywhere, and trees that make me think of Tennyson"s "immemorial elms." I shall not call on these new neighbors until you come home--that is, unless I am sent for to come and bring some pink pump water.
I have had a letter from General Price, Harvie"s grandfather, asking for the pleasure of your company in the month of July on a house-party he is giving his grandson. It is such a dignified, ponderous epistle that I am afraid I shall have to send to Richmond for the proper stationery with which to reply. Nothing less than crested vellum could possibly carry my acceptance. The King of England could not observe more form were you being invited to put in two weeks at Windsor. It is very kind of him, however, to ask my little girl, and I hope by the aid of the dictionary to express myself with ease and verbosity in acknowledging the honor. Of course you want to go?
I shall be pleased to have the volume of Henry Timrod"s poems. I"d like to see the Coogler poems, too. I enjoyed the extracts immensely. I have often heard of him and remember reading some reviews of his stuff when it came out years ago, before you were born, but I have never seen any of it. His efforts were so impossible that the reviewers treated him, one and all, with mock seriousness, and I believe I have heard he took them all seriously and thought he was being praised when they were only poking fun at him. It is rather pathetic, I think, although of course he was an awful blockhead.
Mammy Susan was pleased at your account of the flowers in Charleston, and hopes you can send her a few clippin"s. Her things are doing very well, and her lemon verbena has grown so that I tell her we shall have to build a lean-to to keep it in.
She misses you very much and is beginning to count the days to the middle of May, when I a.s.sure her you will be back with us.
I hope your ankle is behaving itself. You do not mention it, so I fancy it is. Please remember me most kindly to all the Tuckers--father and daughters. I hope you are not bothering Jeffry Tucker by being with them too much. I think there is such a thing as the best friend wearing out her welcome by staying too long. I am sending you a check for your expenses. You have not divulged how much your board will be, but if I do not make the check large enough, please inform me directly.
A sickly winter means a little more money in the bank in the spring for a country doctor. Thank goodness, however, the spring seems to be a healthy one. I"d like to be a Chinese doctor and be paid only when my patients stay well. Sometimes it saddens me to feel that my living depends on disease.
Good-by, my dear little daughter.
FATHER.
CHAPTER XXI
THE SUMMING UP
Charleston had taken a strong hold on all our affections. The spirit of the place seemed to possess us as we lazed away the hours in Miss Arabella"s tangled old garden or in Louis" more combed and brushed one.