The Carter Girls' Week-End Camp Part 7

"Why, of course I will, Lewis! Haven't I always written to you?"

"Douglas, don't you think you could love me a little?"

"But, Lewis, I do love you a whole lot!"

"But I mean be engaged to me?"

"Lewis Somerville, would you want me to be engaged to you when you know perfectly well that I have never thought of you except as the very best friend I've got in the world, and if not as a brother, at least as a cousin who has been almost like a brother? If I did engage myself to you, you wouldn't have the least bit of respect for me and you know you wouldn't; would you?"

But Lewis would not answer. He just drew her arm in his and silently led her back to the pavilion. The big cloud had made its way in front of the moon and he took advantage of the darkness to kiss her hand, but he was very gentle and seemingly resigned to the brother business that he had so scorned. His youthful countenance was very sad and stern, however, as he turned and made his way to the tent that he shared with Bill and Bobby.

Bill Tinsley and Tillie Wingo, too, were walking on the mountainside, Bill as silent as the grave but in a broad grin while Tillie kept up her accustomed chatter. It flowed from her rosy lips with no more effort than water from a mountain spring.

"Do you know, Mr. Tinsley, that I have danced out five dresses this summer? As for shoes! If Helen had not given me some of her slippers, I would be barefooted this minute. I don't mind this rough dressing in the day time, but I must say when evening comes I like to doll up. I believe Mrs. Carter feels the same way. Isn't that a lovely dress she has on this evening? There is no telling what it cost. If their mother can buy such a frock as that, I think it is absurd for the girls to be working so hard--and believe me, they are some workers. Now, I'm real practical and know how to dress on very little and, if I do say it that shouldn't, I bet there is not a girl in Richmond who makes a better appearance on as little money as I spend, but I know what things cost--you can't fool me--and I'm able to tell across the room that that filmy lace effect that Mrs. Carter is sporting set her back a good seventy-five."

"Whew!" from Bill.

"Easy, seventy-five, I say, and maybe more! It would take a lot of week-enders to pay for it and I bet she no more thinks about it than she does about the air she breathes. Now she wants to bring Douglas out and you know she wouldn't be willing to let her come out like a poor girl--no sirree! Douglas would have to have all kinds of clothes and all kinds of parties. She would have to come out in a blaze of glory if her mother has a finger in it. Girls who come out that way don't have such a lot on the ones who just quietly crawl out--like I did, f'instance. I just quietly crawled--you could not call it coming----"

Here Bill gave one of his great laughs, breaking his vow of silence. At least it seemed as though he must have made such a vow as through all of Tillie's chatter he had uttered not one word more than the "Whew" over Mrs. Carter's extravagance. The picture of Tillie's quietly crawling got the better of his risibles.

"You needn't laugh! I can a.s.sure you I came out in home-made clothes and during the entire winter I had not one thing done for me to push me in society--not a cup of tea was handed in my name. One lady did put my card in some invitations she got out, trying to relaunch a daughter who had been out for three seasons and gone in again, but she had an inconvenient death in the family and had to recall the invitations; so I got no good of it after all. Not that I cared--goodness no! I had all the fun there was to have and I'm still having, although I'm not able to keep in the swim, giving entertainments and what not. Of course, I was not included in select luncheons and dinner dances and the like. Those expensive blowouts are given with a view of returning all kinds of obligations or of putting people in your debt so you are included in theirs--but I got to all the big things and got there without the least wire-pulling or working. Of course, I did get to some of the small things because I was run in a lot as subst.i.tute when some girl dropped out. I wasn't proud and did not mind in the least being second or third choice. People who never entertain need not expect to be on the original list. I just took a sensible view of the matter. I tell you, if a girl wants to have a good time she's got no business with a chip on her shoulder. Society is a give-and-take game and if you are poorish and want to get without giving, you've got to be willing to do a lot in the way of swallowing your pride. At least, I had no slights offered me where the dancing men were concerned. I made every german and that is something many a rich debutante can't say for herself."

Tillie paused for breath and then Bill opened his mouth to speak, but the loquacious Tillie got in before he could begin and he had to wait.

"Now I believe Douglas would have lots of attention even if her mother did nothing to help on, but Mrs. Carter would enjoy having a daughter in society more than a daughter would enjoy being there, I believe, and she would be entertaining and spending money from morning until night.

Of course, Lewis Somerville would be lots of help as he would stand ready to take Douglas anywhere that she did not get a bid from some other man----"

"But Lewis'll be gone," broke in Bill.

"Gone! Nonsense! Now that he is out of West Point I'll be bound he will just dance attendance on Douglas. He is dead gone on her. That helps a lot in a girl's first year: to have a devoted--that is, if he is not silly jealous."

"He'll be gone."

"Gone where?"

"Mexican border!"

"But he is out of soldiering."

"Both of us enlisting!" Tillie was absolutely silenced for a moment and Bill went on: "See here, Miss Wingo, Tillie! I'd be glad if you would--if--I'm stuck on you for sure."

"Oh, come off! You know you think I'm the silliest ever."

"I think you are about the prettiest, jolliest ever. I wish you would let me go off to Mexico engaged to you. It would make it lots easier to work and I mean to work like a whole regiment and make good. Won't you, Tillie?"

"Well, I don't care if I do. You are a fine dancer and I think a heap of you, Bill. I'd rather keep it dark, though, if you don't mind, as it queers a girl's game sometimes if she gets engaged."

"Lord, no! I don't mind just so I know it myself," and the happy Bill enfolded his enamorata in his arms, although she carefully admonished him not to crush her new dress.

"I never dreamed you were thinking about me seriously," she confessed as she emerged from his embrace.

"Honest? Been dotty about you ever since you took me for a jitney driver and tipped me a quarter. Got it yet."

"Look how dark it is! I believe we are going to have a storm. What a great black cloud! Let's hurry, as I have no idea of getting my frock wet."

Hurry they did and reached the pavilion just as great drops began to fall. Bill was in a state of happy excitement over his engagement, although it was something he must keep to himself. He felt like shouting it on the housetops, but instead he gave one of his great laughs that startled Mrs. Carter so she stopped dancing and hunted up Bobby.

"It sounded like bears and lions," she declared, "and I felt uneasy about my baby."

She found that youngster fast asleep cuddled up in his father's arms, the father looking very happy and peaceful. Robert Carter felt quite like a little child himself with his great girls taking care of him.

CHAPTER VII

THE STORM

That storm was always known as "The Storm" by everyone who was at the Week-End Camp on that night in August. Greendale had been singularly free from severe storms that season and the Carters had had no difficulty up to that time in keeping dry. They had had rain in plenty but never great downpours and their mountain had escaped the lightning that on several occasions had played havoc not many miles from them.

The day had been exceptionally warm but very clear. The full moon had taken the place of the sun when night came on and so brilliant was the glow from that heavenly orb, one could almost fancy heat was reflected as well as light. The great black cloud that came rolling over the mountain was as much an astonishment to the dancers in the pavilion as it was to the moon herself. They refused to recognize the fact that a storm was coming up and the moon also held her own for some time after the downpour was upon them. She kept peeping out through rifts in the clouds and once when the storm was at its fiercest she sailed clear of all clouds for a few moments, and then it was that the rarest of all beauties in Nature was beheld by the damp and huddled-up crowd of week-enders: a lunar rainbow.

It stretched across the valley, a perfect arc with the colors as clearly defined as a solar bow but infinitely more delicate than any rainbow ever beheld before.

There was no such thing as keeping dry. When Lewis Somerville and Bill Tinsley built the pavilion, they had kept exactly to the architect's plans, drawn so carefully by Robert Carter's a.s.sistant, Mr. Lane. The roof projected so far on every side that they had remarked at the time that nothing short of horizontal rain could find its way under that roof. Well, this rain was horizontal and it came in first one direction and then another until every bit of floor s.p.a.ce was flooded. The thunder sounded like stage thunder made by rolling barrels of bricks down inclined planes and helped out with the ba.s.s drum. Great clouds rested on the mountain tops and a wind, that seemed demoniacal in the tricks it played, bent over great forest trees as though they were saplings and then let them snap back into place with a deafening crack.

"Save the Victrola," whispered Tillie to Bill. "I want to dance with you once before you go off, and water will ruin it."

That was enough for the devoted Bill. He took off his coat and wrapped it tenderly over the top of the Victrola, which was still playing a gay dance tune as no one had had the presence of mind to stop it. Then he made a dash for the kitchen just as a river of water was descending and in a twinkling was back bearing in his arms a great tin tub. This he placed over the top of the precious music-maker. He felt very tender toward Tillie just then for although her new dress was being ruined, still her first thought had been for the Victrola so she could dance with him.

The storm having come up so suddenly found the crowd totally unprepared.

Tent flys had been left up and the windows and door of the cabin, where Mrs. Carter was installed, were wide open for the four winds of heaven to blow through. Sad havoc they played with the dainty finery that Mrs.

Carter and Susan had left spread out on the bed. The wonderful hat, brought as a present for Douglas, was picked up the next morning half way down the mountain; at least the ruin was supposed to be that hat but it was never quite identified as it had lost all semblance to a hat.

Lewis, after hearing the ultimatum from Douglas, as I have said, made his solitary way to his tent where he threw himself on his cot to fight it out with his disappointed self. A dash of rain on his tent aroused him and then a mighty gust of wind simply picked up the tent and wafted it away like thistledown.

"Well, of all----" but Lewis never finished of all the what, but in a twinkling he had rolled up the bed clothes belonging to himself and his tent mates, and then rus.h.i.+ng to the neighboring tents that were still withstanding the raging hurricane he rolled up blankets found there and piled cots on top of the bundles.

It was a real fight, strong man that he was, to make his way to the pavilion. Trees were bending before the wind and he found the only way to locomote was to crawl.

"Just suppose the pavilion doesn't hold!" was ringing in his mind; but the young men "had builded better than they knew." It did hold although the roof was straining at the rafters and Lewis and Bill feared every moment it might rise up and float off as their tent had done.

Lewis came under cover wetter than he would have been had he been in swimming, he declared. Swimming just soaks the water in but the rain had beat it in and hammered it down. The wind was still driving the rain in horizontal sheets and the pavilion was getting damper and damper. The week-enders were a very forlorn looking crowd and no doubt the majority of them were far from blessing the day that had brought them to the camp in Albemarle. They ran from corner to corner trying to get out of the searching flood.

"I know they are blaming it on us!" cried Nan to Mr. Tucker.