The Carter Girls Part 5

"Bermuda in the summer! Nonsense! Tell me when I can see him, as it is of the greatest importance. I should think you could see that I am in trouble and not stand there teasing me," and since it was to be a day of tears, Cousin Lizzie burst out crying, too.

"Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I am so sorry! I did not mean to tease. I am not teasing. Father is ill, you must have noticed how knocked up he has been looking lately, and the doctor has taken him with Mother to New York.

They have just gone, and they are to sail on a slow steamer to Bermuda and Panama in the morning. Please let us help you if we can."

"You help! A lot of silly girls! It is about my nephew Lewis!" and the poor lady wept anew.

CHAPTER V.

LEWIS SOMERVILLE.

"Lewis! What on earth can be the matter with him?" chorused the girls.

"Matter enough! He has been s.h.i.+pped!"

"s.h.i.+pped? Oh, Cousin Lizzie, you can't mean it!" exclaimed Douglas, drying her eyes as she began to realize that she was not the only miserable person in the world whose ambitions had gone awry.

"I am sure if he has been fired, it is from no fault of his own,"

declared Nan, who was a loyal soul and always insisted that her friends and relatives were in the right until absolute proof to the contrary was established.

"Well, whether it was his fault or not, I am not prepared to say. 'Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire.'"

The girls had to smile at this, as there was never a time when Cousin Lizzie did not have a proverb ready to suit the occasion.

"Yes, but the fire might not have been of his kindling," insisted Nan.

"Please tell us what the trouble is, Cousin Lizzie, if you don't mind talking about it," begged Douglas. "Has Lewis really left West Point for good? I can't believe it."

"The trouble is: 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' If Lewis had not been with the companions that he has chosen, he would not have gotten into this trouble. Surely Solomon was wise indeed when he said: 'Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son, but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.' I am glad my poor brother is dead and not here to witness his son's disgrace."

"Cousin Lizzie, I do not believe that Lewis has done anything disgraceful," insisted Nan, speaking almost quickly for once.

"Well, it is a disgrace in my mind for the son and grandson of Confederate soldiers to be dismissed from a Yankee inst.i.tution, whether he was in fault or not. 'As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place.' A Somerville's place is in the South and it was always against my wishes that Lewis went to West Point."

"Please tell us what the trouble is, what Lewis did or didn't do at West Point," said Helen in the determined voice that usually made Cousin Lizzie stop her proverbs long enough to give the information required.

"'Hazing a plebe,' is what he said. What a plebe is or what hazing is I do not know, but whatever it is, Lewis says he was not mixed up in it, but he, with eight other second cla.s.smen, were let out. The words are his, not mine. All I know is that he was discharged and is at my house now in a state of dejection bordering on insanity."

"Poor boy! We are so sorry for him. What is he going to do now?" asked Douglas.

Here was another disappointment for Douglas. Her cousin, Lewis Somerville, was one of the dearest friends she had in the world. He was two years her senior and had made it his business since they were tiny tots to protect her and look after her on all occasions. They had had a plan for the following year that now, of course, had fallen through. She was to have come to West Point from Bryn Mawr to the finals. He would then have been a third cla.s.sman and able to make her have a rip-roaring time, as he had expressed it.

Lewis in a state of dejection bordering on insanity! That was unbelievable. If there ever was a gayer, happier person than Lewis, she had never seen him.

"Do? Goodness knows!"

"Well, all I can say," put in Nan, "is that Uncle Sam is a fool not to know that Lewis is a born soldier, and if he wants to prepare himself to defend his country, he should be allowed to do so. Oh, I don't care what he has done--I just know he hasn't done it!"

"I'm going to 'phone him this minute and tell him to come around here!"

and Helen jumped up from her seat, thereby waking Lucy, who had dropped asleep on her shoulder, worn out with the stress of emotion.

"If you are, so am I--whatever it is," declared Lucy, rubbing her eyes, as determined as ever to keep up with Helen or die in the attempt.

"h.e.l.lo! is this you, Lewis?" as the connection was quickly made.

"Well," in a tired, dreary voice. "What is it?"

"This is me, Lewis, Helen Carter! We are all sitting up here dressed in our best waiting for you to come to see us. Douglas says if you don't hurry she, for one, is going to bed."

"What's that?" in a little brisker tone.

"Say, Lewis, we are in an awful lot of trouble. You know Father is ill and has had to go away and we don't know what is to become of us. We need your advice terribly----"

"Be 'round in a jiffy," and so he was.

"That was very tactful of you, Helen," said Cousin Lizzie lugubriously.

"You know 'Misery loves company.'" But a peal from the front door bell interrupted further quotations and Lewis Somerville came tearing into the house in answer to Helen's S. O. S.

He did look as dejected as one of his make-up could. It is hard to be dejected very long when one is just twenty, in perfect health, with naturally high spirits and the strength to remove mountains tingling in the veins. A jury of women could not have s.h.i.+pped the young would-be soldier, and it must have taken very hard-hearted men, very determined on maintaining discipline, deliberately to have cut this young fellow's career in two. Our army must be full of very fine young men if they can so lightly give up such a specimen as this Lewis Somerville. Imagine a young giant of n.o.ble proportions, as erect as an ash sapling that has had all the needed room in which to grow, a head like Antinous and frank blue eyes that could no more have harbored a lie than that well-cut, honest mouth could have spoken one.

"I didn't do it and just to let me know that you don't believe I did, you have got to kiss me all around."

"Nonsense, Lewis! Helen and I are too old to kiss you even if you are a cousin," and Douglas got behind Cousin Lizzie.

"Quite right, Douglas, 'The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge.'

Lewis is not such very close kin, besides."

"Why, Aunt Lizzie, I did not expect you to desert me."

"'It is not good to eat much honey, so for men to search their own glory is not glory.'"

"Well, Nan and Lucy will kiss me, anyhow. They believe I did not do it."

"We are sure you are telling the truth," said Douglas gravely. "We do not know yet what they say you did."

"They say I helped a lot of fellows tie a plebe to a tree and drop ice down his back, making out it was red hot pennies, until the fellow fainted from his fancied injuries. I never did it, but if I had, it wouldn't have been a patching on the things the second cla.s.smen did to me last year when I was a plebe, and wild horses would not have dragged a complaint from me. It was done by some men who are my chums, but I declare I was not with the crowd."

"We know it! we know it!" from all the girls.

"But I don't want to talk about myself--I am so anxious to hear what is the matter with Cousin Robert. Let's let up on me and talk about your trouble, and if I can help, please command me."

"Father is very ill," said Douglas soberly. "He has been working too hard for a long time and now his nerves have just given way and he has had to stop and go on a trip. Dr. Wright a.s.sures us that he has stopped in time and a sea trip and a year's rest will completely restore him. It has come on us so suddenly that we have not had time to catch our breath even."

"And who is this Dr. Wright?" asked Cousin Lizzie. "I thought Dr. Davis was your family physician. Some Yankee, I'll be bound, with all kinds of new notions."

"He is from Was.h.i.+ngton recently, but I believe he came originally from New York State."