The Charlestown house was now put immediately into the hands of several
agents, for Mrs. Carey's lease had still four years to run and she was
naturally anxious to escape from this financial responsibility as soon
as possible. As a matter of fact only three days elapsed before she
obtained a tenant, and the agent had easily secured an advance of a
hundred dollars a year to the good, as Captain Carey had obtained a very
favorable figure when he took the house.
It was the beginning of April, and letters from Colonel Wheeler had
already asked instructions about having the vegetable garden ploughed.
It was finally decided that the girls should leave their spring term of
school unfinished, and that the family should move to Beulah during
Gilbert's Easter vacation.
Mother Carey gave due reflection to the interrupted studies, but
concluded that for two girls like Nancy and Kathleen the making of a new
home would be more instructive and inspiring, and more fruitful in its
results, than weeks of book learning.
Youth delights in change, in the prospect of new scenes and fresh
adventures, and as it is never troubled by any doubts as to the wisdom
of its plans, the Carey children were full of vigor and energy just now.
Charlestown, the old house, the daily life, all had grown sad and dreary
to them since father had gone. Everything spoke of him. Even mother
longed for something to lift her thought out of the past and give it
wings, so that it might fly into the future and find some hope and
comfort there. There was a continual bustle from morning till night, and
a spirit of merriment that had long been absent.
The Scotch have a much prettier word than we for all this, and what we
term moving they call "flitting." The word is not only prettier, but in
this instance more appropriate. It was such a buoyant, youthful affair,
this Carey flitting. Light forms darted up and down the stairs and past
the windows, appearing now at the back, now at the front of the house,
with a picture, or a postage stamp, or a dish, or a penwiper, or a
pillow, or a basket, or a spool. The chorus of "Where shall we put this,
Muddy?" "Where will this go?" "May we throw this away?" would have
distracted a less patient parent. When Gilbert returned from school at
four, the air was filled with sounds of hammering and sawing and filing,
screwing and unscrewing, and it was joy unspeakable to be obliged (or at
least almost obliged) to call in clarion tones to one another, across
the din and fanfare, and to compel answers in a high key. Peter took a
constant succession of articles to the shed, where packing was going on,
but his chief treasures were deposited in a basket at the front gate,
with the idea that they would be transported as his personal baggage.
The pile grew and grew: a woolly lamb, two Noah's arks, bottles and
marbles innumerable, a bag of pebbles, a broken steam engine, two china
nest-eggs, an orange, a banana and some walnuts, a fishing line, a
trowel, a ball of string. These give an idea of the quality of Peter's
effects, but not of the quantity.
Ellen the cook labored loyally, for it was her last week's work with the
family. She would be left behind, like Charlestown and all the old life,
when Mother Carey and the stormy petrels flitted across unknown waters
from one haven to another. Joanna having earlier proved utterly
unromantic in her attitude, Nancy went further with Ellen and gave her
an English novel called, "The Merriweathers," in which an old family
servant had not only followed her employers from castle to hovel,
remaining there without Wages for years, but had insisted on lending all
her savings to the Mistress of the Manor. Ellen the cook had loved "The
Merriweathers," saying it was about the best book that ever she had
read, and Miss Nancy would like to know, always being so interested,
that she (Ellen) had found a place near Joanna in Salem, where she was
offered five dollars a month more than she had received with the Careys.
Nancy congratulated her warmly and then, tearing "The Merriweathers" to
shreds, she put them in the kitchen stove in Ellen's temporary absence.
"If ever I write a book," she ejaculated, as she "stoked" the fire with
Gwendolen and Reginald Merriweather, with the Mistress of the Manor, and
especially with the romantic family servitor, "if ever I write a book,"
she repeated, with emphatic gestures, "it won't have any fibs in
it;--and I suppose it will be dull," she reflected, as she remembered
how she had wept when the Merriweathers' Bridget brought her savings of
a hundred pounds to her mistress in a handkerchief.
During these preparations for the flitting Nancy had a fresh idea every
minute or two, and gained immense prestige in the family.
Inspired by her eldest daughter Mrs. Carey sold her grand piano, getting
an old-fashioned square one and a hundred and fifty dollars in exchange.
It had been a wedding present from a good old uncle, who, if he had been
still alive, would have been glad to serve his niece now that she was in
difficulties.
Nancy, her sleeves rolled up, her curly hair flecked with dust and
cobwebs, flew down from the attic into Kathleen's room just after
supper. "I have an idea!" she said in a loud whisper.
"You mustn't have too many or we shan't take any interest in them,"
Kitty answered provokingly.
"This is for your ears alone, Kitty!"
"Oh! that's different. Tell me quickly."
"It's an idea to get rid of the Curse of the House of Carey!"
"It can't be done, Nancy; you know it can't! Even if you could think out
a way, mother couldn't be made to agree."
"She must never know. I would not think of mixing up a good lovely woman
like mother in such an affair!"
This was said so mysteriously that Kathleen almost suspected that
bloodshed was included in Nancy's plan. It must be explained that when
young Ensign Carey and Margaret Gilbert had been married, Cousin Ann
Chadwick had presented them with four tall black and white marble mantel
ornaments shaped like funeral urns; and then, feeling that she had not
yet shown her approval of the match sufficiently, she purchased a large
group of clay statuary entitled You Dirty Boy.
The Careys had moved often, like all naval families, but even when their
other goods and chattels were stored, Cousin Ann generously managed to
defray the expense of sending on to them the mantel ornaments and the
Dirty Boy. "I know what your home is to you," she used to say to them,
"and how you must miss your ornaments. If I have chanced to give you
things as unwieldy as they are handsome, I ought to see that you have
them around you without trouble or expense, and I will!"
So for sixteen years, save for a brief respite when the family was in
the Philippines, their existence was blighted by these hated objects.
Once when they had given an especially beautiful party for the Admiral,
Captain Carey had carried the whole lot to the attic, but Cousin Ann
arrived unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, and Nancy, with the
aid of Gilbert and Joanna, had brought them down the back way and put
them in the dining room.
"You've taken the ornaments out of the parlor, I see," Cousin Ann said
at the dinner table. "It's rather nice for a change, and after all,
perhaps you spend as much time in this room as in any, and entertain as
much company here!"
Cousin Ann always had been, always would be, a frequent visitor, for she
was devoted to the family in her own peculiar way; what therefore could
Nancy be proposing to do with the Carey Curse?
"Listen, my good girl," Nancy now said to Kathleen, after she had closed
the door. "Thou dost know that the china-packer comes early to-morrow
morn, and that e'en now the barrels and boxes and excelsior are
bestrewing the dining room?"
"Yes."
"Then you and I, who have been brought up under the shadow of those
funeral urns, and have seen that tidy mother scrubbing the ears of that
unwilling boy ever since we were born,--you and I, or thou and I,
perhaps I should say, will do a little private packing before the true
packer arriveth."
"Still do I not see the point, wench!" said the puzzled Kathleen, trying
to model her conversation on Nancy's, though she was never thoroughly
successful.
"Don't call me 'wench,' because I am the mistress and you my tiring
woman, but when you Watch, and assist me, at the packing, a great light
will break upon you," Nancy answered "In the removal of cherished
articles from Charlestown to Beulah, certain tragedies will occur,
certain accidents will happen, although Cousin Ann knows that the Carey
family is a well regulated one. But if there are accidents, and _there
will be_, my good girl, then the authors of them will be forever unknown
to all but thou and I. Wouldst prefer to pack this midnight or at cock
crow, for packing is our task!"
"I simply hate cock crow, and you know it," said Kathleen testily. "Why
not now? Ellen and Gilbert are out and mother is rocking Peter
to sleep."
"Very well; come on; and step softly. It won't take long, because I have
planned all in secret, well and thoroughly. Don't puff and blow like
that! Mother will hear you!"
"I'm excited," whispered Kathleen as they stole down the back stairs and
went into the parlor for the funeral urns, which they carried silently
to the dining room. These safely deposited, they took You Dirty Boy from
its abominable pedestal of Mexican onyx (also Cousin Ann's gift) and
staggered under its heavy weight, their natural strength being
considerably sapped by suppressed laughter.
Nancy chose an especially large and stout barrel. They put a little
(very little) excelsior in the bottom, then a pair of dumb-bells, then a
funeral urn, then a little hay, and another funeral urn, crosswise. The
spaces between were carelessly filled in with Indian clubs. On these
they painfully dropped You Dirty Boy, and on top of him the other pair
of funeral urns, more dumbbells, and another Indian club. They had
packed the barrel in the corner where it stood, so they simply laid the
cover on top and threw a piece of sacking carelessly over it. The whole
performance had been punctuated with such hysterical laughter from
Kathleen that she was too weak to be of any real use,--she simply aided
and abetted the chief conspirator. The night was not as other nights.
The girls kept waking up to laugh a little, then they went to sleep, and
waked again, and laughed again, and so on. Nancy composed several
letters to her Cousin Ann dated from Beulah and explaining the sad
accident that had occurred. As she concocted these documents between her
naps she could never remember in her whole life any such night of mirth
and minstrelsy, and not one pang of conscience interfered, to cloud the
present joy nor dim that anticipation which is even greater.
Nancy was downstairs early next morning and managed to be the one to
greet the china-packers. "We filled one barrel last evening," she
explained to them. "Will you please head that up before you begin work?"
which one of the men obligingly did.
"We'll mark all this stuff and take it down to the station this
afternoon," said the head packer to Mrs. Carey.
"Be careful with it, won't you?" she begged. "We are very fond of our
glass and china, our clocks and all our little treasures."
"You won't have any breakage so long as you deal with James Perkins &
Co.!" said the packer.
Nancy went back into the room for a moment to speak with the skilful,
virtuous J.P. & Co. "There's no need to use any care with that corner
barrel," she said carelessly. "It has nothing of value in it!"
James Perkins went home in the middle of the afternoon and left his son
to finish the work, and the son tagged and labelled and painted with all
his might. The Dirty Boy barrel in the corner, being separated from the
others, looked to him especially important, so he gave particular
attention to that; pasted on it one label marked "Fragile," one "This
Side Up," two "Glass with Care," and finding several "Perishables" in
his pocket tied on a few of those, and removed the entire lot of boxes,
crates, and barrels to the freight depot.
The man who put the articles in the car was much interested in the Dirty
Boy barrel. "You'd ought to have walked to Greentown and carried that
one in your arms," he jeered. "What is the precious thing, anyway?"
"Don't you mind what it is," responded young Perkins. "Jest you keep
everybody 'n' everything from teching it! Does this lot o' stuff have to
be shifted 'tween here and Greentown?"
"No; not unless we git kind o' dull and turn it upside down jest for
fun."
"I guess you're dull consid'able often, by the way things look when you
git through carryin' 'em, on this line," said Perkins, who had no
opinion of the freight department of the A.&B. The answer, though not
proper to record in this place, was worthy of Perkins's opponent, who
had a standing grudge against the entire race of expressmen and carters
who brought him boxes and barrels to handle. It always seemed to him
that if they were all out of the country or dead he would have no
work to do.