Nell Speed

“ Carter always was at her best in a parlor and now her beauty shone resplendent, framed in black lace and pearls. Her gracious manner and bearing marked her as one whose natural place was in society. Her gift was social and it did seem a great waste that such a talent should have to be buried under the bushel of an overseer’s cottage in an out-of-the-way spot in the [47] country, with a once prosperous husband to do the chores and a maid-of-all-work, chosen because of her cheapness and not her worth. ”

“ She comes to her with all kinds of questions to answer and problems of life to solve. Do you think these colored men would want to kill Helen just because they are angry with the Misses Grant?”
“No, my dear, I don’t think these colored men would want to kill anybody. God grant they are not drunk! That is the only danger I am fearing. I am not afraid of any sober negro alive, but a drunken one is to be avoided like a rattlesnake.”
“Well, Mrs. Sutton, I just feel somehow that God and Dr. Wright are going to take care of Helen,—and Miss Ella and Miss Louise, too.” ”

“ Well, somehow I have begun to feel that helping people to be gay is important, like cheering up Miss Ella and Miss Louise. They have such stupid times. I really believe they quarrel just to make life a little gayer. ”

“ DRESSING FOR THE BALL
“How are Miss Ella and Louise going?” asked Douglas, as she stooped for a parting glance in the mirror which the sloping ceiling necessitated hanging so low that a girl as tall as Douglas could not see above her nose without bending double.
“In their phaeton,” answered Helen. “They don’t mind driving themselves. I asked them. You see with Sam gone they can’t get out the big old rockaway.”
“They must keep along near the hay wagon. Such old ladies should not be alone on the road,” said Douglas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was never any use in trying to make Chloe talk when she had decided not to, so Helen threw off her wraps and with a peep in the mirror where one could see from top to toe, she hastened to the aid of Count de Lestis.
“Mother will be along soon and she can do wonders with people who are bashful,” declared Helen, “but I’ll try my hand at it until she comes. They must dance, then they will thaw out.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ George Wright confessed to Helen. “I couldn’t look him in the eye for fear of weakening, but he took it like the little man he is. I fancy Douglas will have no more trouble with him for a while. I am glad she asked me to help her out. It is no joke to teach your own flesh and blood. Bobby says he thought that Douglas was just playing school and he didn’t know he was really bothering her. He knows now and is even prepared to lick any boy not twice his size who disturbs his sister.” ”

“ This night school is a fad of Herz, my secretary.”
“Ah, but I know you do some, because Chloe tells me of how kindly you speak to the darkies,” insisted Helen. “She says you make beautiful talks to them sometimes and they are crazy about you.”
[129]
“They exaggerate!” shrugged the count. “They seem a simple, kindly folk, grateful for any crumb of learning.”
“Aren’t there any district schools here for the colored people?” asked George Wright.
“Yes, but no place for the older ones to learn. It is quite pathetic how they yearn for knowledge,—so Herz tells me.” ”

“ So Bobby had to climb meekly in to be ignominiously dumped at the yard gate while Douglas was whisked off in the count’s natty little red roadster.
“Now you are looking like your beautiful self,” he declared, slowing down his racer and turning to gaze into Douglas’s face. “What is it that made you weep so profusely? Not the little brother. Beautiful damsels do not weep so much because of little brothers.” ”

“ The negroes were dancing around the burning stack, led by a tall gangling man whom Helen recognized as Tempy’s slue-footed admirer, James Hanks. Some of them seemed to be rather the worse for drink, and all of them were wild-eyed and excited-looking.
“Come on, gent’men!” cried the leader. “Let’s git our loot while we’s got light a-plenty. The ol’ tabbies is safe at the count’s ball, safe an’ stuffin’.” ”

“ Carter. “I shall even take pleasure in carpentering them. They are really lots of fun to make.”
“I agree with you,” said Herz. “Simply drawing a design is never so much pleasure as [182] carrying it out. How a sculptor can be willing to do only the clay modeling of his statue and then let someone else carve the marble is more than I can understand. When I think of something to be done, I must do it myself—trust it to no one.”
“Well, I am a lazy bones myself and anyone can do my work,” laughed the count. “Now Adolph here has drawn the plan for a pigeon house and he wants to build it himself. ”

“ Count de Lestis seemed to have much business that took him away from Weston. Sometimes [191] he was gone for several weeks at a time, but when he returned he would drop in at Valhalla as though he had not been away at all. He was always a welcome visitor. Mrs. Carter greeted him as a long lost friend. He seemed to be the incarnation of the social world to the poor little lady, destined to spend her days out of her element. Mr. Carter had almost forgiven him the pigeon house, but not quite.
“There is something lacking, somehow, in a man who would do such a thing,” he had declared to Helen. ”

“ Douglas had days when the little ideas refused to shoot and her pupils seemed to be just so many wooden dolls, but she learned the rare lesson, that teachers must learn if they are to be successful: when a class won’t learn, and can’t learn, and doesn’t want to learn, there is something the matter with the teacher. When she came to this realization she took herself to task, and the dark days came farther and farther apart.
[190]
The letter she had written Dr. Wright had had a most salutary effect on Bobby. ”

“ No doubt Bobby’s misbehavior [103] was the last straw, but there had been a heavy load to carry before Douglas’s camel of endurance had got his back broken. He laughed merrily over the fleas and Douglas forgot all about her worries and laughed, too.
“Poor little Minnie! She did squirm so, and think of her being too ladylike to scratch, and how she must have disappointed those bad boys by refraining!”
“Yes, if all women would just squirm and not scratch it would take much from the pleasure of teasing them,” laughed de Lestis. “What amuses me is how boys are alike all the world over. ”

“ The count seemed in his element as he received his guests, but Herz looked thoroughly out of place and ill at ease.
“Ah, Miss Helen! I am so glad to welcome you—and Dr. Wright—it is indeed kind of you to come! I am depending upon you, Miss Helen, to help me entertain these people who have come so promptly. They neither dance nor speak. Herz is about as much use to me on this occasion as a porcupine would be. ”

“ Helen laughed, and with a final touch at the supper table and a last peep at the sally lunn muffins, which were rising as they should, she started to go help her mother with the dancing frocks and their petticoats that would show discrepancies.
“Say, Miss Helen, is you sho’ Miss Ellanlouise is goin’ ternight?” asked Chloe, following her up the steps.
“Yes, Chloe, I’m sure.”
“An’, Miss Helen, if’n folks ain’t got no country ter love what ought they do?”
“Why, love one another, I reckon. Love the people of their own race, and try to help them.” ”

“ Mag says that Billy says that if his country was at war you wouldn’t catch him buying farms in strange countries, like this de Lestis. He says he’d be in the fight, if he couldn’t do anything but beat a drum.”
“But you see he is not in sympathy with the cause, child. All of the Austrians and Hungarians are not on the Kaiser’s side. A whole lot of them believe in a more democratic form of government than Emperor William wants. The count explained all that to Father. He says he could not conscientiously fight with Prussia against democracy.” ”

“ Nan and Billy Sutton were the only persons at Weston who knew that Helen and Dr. Wright had left the house, and they, according to instructions, had kept mum.
“I hate for Helen to miss one teensy bit of the ball,” Nan said. “She does so adore dancing.”
“I should think she would. Anybody who can dance like that ought to like it. I think she is a ripper to go to those old grouches.”
“Now, Billy, that is no way to talk! Those old ladies are really lovely. ”

“ That’s the way Douglas and I feel. We wouldn’t have changed our dresses if Mother and Helen hadn’t made such a point of it.”
“Good for you, Nan!” and her father put his arm around her. “Of course you must dress as your mother sees fit, but don’t, for goodness’ sake, think a man, because he is a count or even a king, must be treated differently from any other gentleman of your acquaintance.” ”

“ During that luncheon de Lestis managed to antagonize both Lewis Somerville and George Wright. Douglas had smiled entirely too many times on this stranger to suit Lewis, and Helen had been much too eager to pass on the housekeeping arrangements to accord with George’s ideas of United States’ relations with Hungary.
“Why is he not fighting with his country?” each young man asked himself. ”

“ Douglas’s question of his nationality remained to be solved. “Count de Lestis” did not give the girls a clue to the country from which this interesting person hailed.
[46]
“He does not look German,” Douglas said to herself. “He is too dark and too graceful.”
She breathed a sigh of relief that her grey crêpe de chine had not been donned in honor of a German, count or no count. When she saw that the Misses Grant evidently considered their suppers worthy to be dressed up for, she was glad she had listened to the dictates of Helen. ”

“ Paradise was very dark and lonesome. The [229] few scattered cabins showed not a gleam. There was a dim light trickling from the windows of the club, but as they approached that rickety building, that disappeared. Helen saw some dark forms up close to the wall when she looked back after passing that place of entertainment.
“I reckon they are going to initiate someone tonight,” she thought.
“Chloe had such a strange talk with me today,” she told her companion and then repeated the conversation she had had with the colored girl. “I can’t quite understand her.” ”

“ Wright came closer to the nonplussed darky. “Perhaps God has appointed me to defend this home.”
“We is hyar fur our rights,” came from the extreme edge of the crowd in a growling voice.
“Your rights!”
“Yessah!” and James Hanks spoke up more bravely, emboldened by the support he felt the crowd was able to give him.
“Aw go on, Jeemes! He ain’t even armed,” cried the black brute who had been so free in his suggestions about breaking open the barrel of kerosene. “Gawd wouldn’t send nobody ’thout even a razor.”
Helen saw the crowd pushing forward. ”