CHAPTER VI
CHLOE
To Helen had fallen the most difficult and trying part of the program:training a cheap, country servant to the ways of civilization. Manytimes did she think of Miss Louise's trained monkey as she labored withChloe, with whom she had to start all over every day.
A seven o'clock breakfast must be ready for Nan and Lucy, and the onemorning that she left it to Chloe the girls had to go off with nothingmore comforting on their little insides than cold bread and milk. Thatwas when the new maid had first arrived and Helen had not sounded thedepths of her incompetence and ignorance.
"What would you have done in your own home if you had had to have anearly breakfast for someone?" asked Helen, curious to know if the girlknew how to do anything.
"I'd 'a' done what I done this mornin': let 'um fill up on what col'victuals they was lef' on de she'f."
Helen endeavored to introduce Chloe to the mysteries of the firelesscooker, which they had brought with them from camp, but the girl seemedto think there was some kind of magic in a thing that cooked withoutfire and would none of it.
"I ain't a-goin' ter tetch no sich hoodoo doin's as dat 'ere box," sheasserted. "It mus' hab a kinder debble in it ter keep it hot 'thout apiece er dry wood or nothin'."
Helen was lifting out the pot full of steaming oatmeal that she had putin the cooker the night before, determined that her sisters should nothave to go off again with such cold comfort.
"All right, you keep up the wood fire and I'll attend to the firelesscooker," laughed Helen. "What makes the stove smoke? It was burning allright yesterday."
"Smoking 'cause dat hoodoo debble done got in it," and Chloe rolled hergreat eyes until nothing showed but the whites.
"Smoking because you've got the damper turned down," and Helen rightedthe appliance. "Have you set the table?"
"Yassum!"
"Put everything on it just as I showed you yesterday?"
"Nom! I ain't put nothin' on it. I jes' sot the cheers up to it, but allthe gals is got ter do is jes' retch the things off'n the sidebo'd."
That meant that Helen must run and get the table set as quickly aspossible as it was three minutes to seven.
Chloe followed her meekly to the dining-room to do her bidding.
"Run back to the kitchen, Chloe, and look at the biscuit, and see ifthey are burning," cried Helen as she rapidly placed the silver on thetable.
A few minutes later, having set the table she hastened to the kitchen.An ominous odor greeted her.
"Chloe, did you look at the biscuit?"
"Yassum! They was gettin' ready to burn. I guess they is 'bout burned bynow."
"Oh, Chloe, why didn't you take them out?" and poor Helen thought maybeshe was going to weep with exasperation.
"You nebber tol' me ter do mo'n look at 'em. My maw an' Sis Tempy bothdone caution me not to be too frisky 'bout doin' things 'til the whitefolks tells me. Tempy says white folks laks ter boss 'bout ev'ything."
"Oh, for a trained monkey!" thought Helen. "I could at least give one agood switching."
Chloe had only two characteristics to work on: one was perfectgood-nature, the other unbounded health and strength. Helen wonderedif she had enough material to go on to evolve even a passable servant.Anyhow she meant to try. She determined to do the cooking herself fora little while with Chloe as scullion, and also to have the girl dothe housework.
Of course Mrs. Carter was of absolutely no assistance. She held to herpurpose of semi-invalidism. The family would not listen to her whenshe offered the only sane suggestion for the winter: that they shouldoust the tenant and move back into their own pretty, comfortable,well-furnished home; Douglas to make her debut in Richmond society andthe other girls continue at school. As for money--why not just makebills? They had perfectly good credit, and what was credit for but touse? Dr. Wright had been so stern with her, and Douglas so severe andunfilial, and they had intimated that she wanted to kill her dearRobert, so she had just let them have their own way. She insisted shehad not the strength to cope with these changed conditions and took onthe habits of an invalid.
Helen, remembering how Susan, who was supposed to help with the cookingat the camp, had been kept busy waiting on her mistress, feared Chloewould be pressed into lady's maid service, too. Indeed Mrs. Carterattempted it, but Chloe proved too rough for the job, and that poorlady was forced to run the ribbons in her lingerie herself.
Chloe's cleaning was even worse than her cooking if such a thing waspossible. She spread up the beds, leaving great wrinkles and bumps,which proved to be top sheets and blankets that she had not thought fitto pull up. When Helen remonstrated and made her take all the covers offto air before making the beds she obeyed, but put the covers back onregardless of sequence, with counterpanes next to the mattress andsheets on top, with blankets anywhere that her fancy dictated. She sweptthe dirt safely under the rugs; wiped up the floor with bath towels; andthe crowning glory of her achievement was sticking all the tooth-brushestogether.
Now when we remember that Helen herself had perhaps never made up a bedin her whole life until about eight months before this time, we mayindeed have sympathy for her in her tribulations. Her days were full torunning over, beginning very early in the morning and ending only afterthe family was fed at night. The cooking was not so difficult, as shehad a genius for it and consequently a liking. Chloe could wash dishesafter a fashion and clean the kitchen utensils, which was some comfort.
Mr. Carter always carried his wife's breakfast tray to her room andwaited on her like a devoted slave. He would even have run the ribbonsin had she trusted him. All he could do for her now was wait on her andspoil her, and this he did to perfection. She was the same lovely littlecreature he had married and he was not unreasonable enough to expect herto be anything else. He did not think it strange that his little canarycould not turn herself into a raven and feed him when he was hungry.His tenderness to his wife was so great that his daughters took theirkeynote from him and their patience towards their mother was wonderful.They vied with one another in their attentions to the parent that theywould not let themselves call selfish.
Helen cooked her little dainties; Nan kept her in light literature fromthe circulating library in town; Lucy scoured the fields for mushroomsthat a late fall had made plentiful; Douglas always brought her thechoice fruit and flowers that her pupils showered on her; even Bobby didhis part by bringing her ripe persimmons that the frost had nipped justenough to make delicious. Mr. Carter was often able to bring her in apartridge or a young hare. On the whole life wasn't so bad. When onefelt perfectly well, semi-invalidism was a pretty pleasant state. As forsociety: the count was a frequent visitor and the ladies from Grantlymost attentive. The Suttons had called, too, several times, and othercounty families were finding the Carters out. It was easy to treat thefact that they were living in the overseer's house as a kind of joke. Ofcourse, anyone could tell that they were not the kind of persons whousually lived in overseers' houses.
Chloe was the thorn in the flesh, the fly in the ointment for Mrs.Carter. Chloe could not be laughed away,--Chloe was no joke. Accustomedto trained, highly-paid servants to do her bidding, this rough, uncouthourang-outang was more than the dainty little lady could stand.
The very first time Count de Lestis called, Mrs. Carter happened to bealone in the house except for Chloe, Mr. Carter having gone to Prestonfor much-needed nails and Helen having run up to Grantly to ask theadvice of Miss Ella on the best way to preserve some late pears. A knockand Chloe promptly fell down the steps in her eagerness to get to thedoor. She had been up in Douglas's and Helen's room attempting to makeup the bed to suit Miss Helen.
"Thank Gawd I fell down instidder up! If'n I had 'a' fell up I wouldn't'a' got ma'ied dis year," and she picked herself up and dived at thefront door.
"Are Mr. and Mrs. Carter and the young ladies at home?" Mrs. Carterheard in the count's fine baritone.
"Nawsir! The boss is done gone ter Preston ter fetch some nails ter tryt
er bolster up this here ole shack, an' Miss Douglas is done gone terher teachin' job an' Miss Helen is done stepped up to see MissEllanlouise 'bout 'zervin' some ole hard pears----"
"And how about Mrs. Carter?" in an amused voice.
"Oh, she is a-layin' on the sofy tryin' ter git sick."
"Is she ill?" solicitously.
"Naw! She is jes' plum lazy. She's too lazy ter chaw an' has ter haveall her victuals fixed soft like."
"Well, will you please take her this card?"
"That there ticket?"
Imagine Mrs. Carter's mortification, when the grinning Chloe camerunning into the sitting-room with the count's card crushed in her eagerhand, to discover that the wretched girl was in her stocking feet;capless, with her wrapped plaits sticking out all over her head likequills upon the fretful porcupine; her apron on hind part before.
"Chloe! Where is your cap?" exclaimed that elegant lady.
"Well, lawsamussy! I done forgot about it. It do make my haid eatch soI done pulled it off."
"And your shoes?"
"I's savin' them fer big meetin' nex' year."
"And why do you wear your apron in the back? Put it on right thisminute."
"Well, Ole Miss, my dress was siled an' my ap'on was clean, so I jes'slid it 'roun' behinst so it wouldn't git siled, too."
Nothing but the fact that the count was cooling his heels on the frontporch kept Mrs. Carter from weeping outright. Old Miss, indeed! All shecould do was feebly tell Chloe to ask the gentleman in.
If Count de Lestis had been ushered in by a butler in livery he couldnot have entered in a more ceremonious manner. He bowed low over thefair lady's hand, kissing her finger-tips lightly. Even the spectacle ofChloe's walking off, with her clean apron on hind part before and hershoeless condition disclosing large holes in the heels of her stockings,did not upset his gravity. He, too, realized that Chloe was no joke.
Afterwards Chloe said to Helen:
"That sho' is a pretty man what comed ter see you alls. I ain't knowin'yit what made him stoop over an' smell yo' ma's hand. Cose she mus'smell pow'ful good with never put'n her hands in nothin' mo' than herown victuals." Helen was weak with laughter.
"What fer they call him a count, Miss Helen? Is it 'cause he spen' allhis time a-countin' out money? They do say he is pow'ful good an' kin'ter the niggers. Some say he likes niggers better'n what he does whitefolks, but I says that is plum foolish. Anyhow, he talks mighty sweet to'em an' don't never call 'em low down triflin' black rascals whin theygits kinder lop-sided with liquor, like some of the county gents doeswhin hands gits so fur gone they can't git in the craps. He done starteda night school over at Weston what his secondary is teachin'."
"I didn't know he had a secretary," exclaimed Helen, "but it certainlyis kind of him to try and help the poor colored people. I wish you couldgo to night school, Chloe."
"Lawd, Gawd, no! Miss Helen! I ain't got no call to larn."
"Can't you read at all, Chloe?"
"Well, I kin read whin they is picters ter go by. I done been ter schoolmos' six months countin' the diffunt years what I started, but my ma,she say my haid was too hard an' she 'fraid it might git cracked openif'n teacher tried to put any mo' in it. She say some folks is got sof'haids what kin stretch an' they ain't so ap' ter bus' open, haids kinderlike hog bladders what you kin keep on a-blowin' up."
"Wouldn't you like me to teach you to read, Chloe?" asked Helen, feelingrather ashamed that this foreigner should come to Virginia and take moreinterest in the education of the negroes than she should ever have done."I believe I could teach you without breaking your head open."
"Anything you says do I'll do, but I tell you now I ain't got no mo'notion er readin' than a tarrapin. A tarrapin kin git his haid out'n theshell an' you might git a little larnin' in it, but my haid is groun'what you gotter break up with a grubbin' hoe."
"I am willing to try. Let's begin now! First we will learn how to spellthings right here in the kitchen and then you can soon be readingrecipes," said Helen kindly. "Now we are making biscuit, so we willbegin with that. First take two cups of flour," and she wrote on thewhitewashed wall of the kitchen: "2 cups of flour."
Chloe was delighted with this kind of school, very different from herformer experiences where she was made to sit for hours on a hard benchsaying the same thing over and over with no conception of what it wasall about. Now "2 cups of flour" had some sense in it, so had "2 spoonsof baking powder." "Lard the size of an egg" was a brilliant remark;"1 spoon of salt" had a gleam of intelligence, too; "1 cup of milk" wasfilled with gumption. In less than a week the girl could read and writethe recipe for biscuit and was eagerly waiting for her beloved MissHelen to advance her to cake.