The oldest of four; or, Natalie's way out

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Chapter I The Greatest Day Of Her Life

“Mummy-kins! Mummy-kins! My best shoe’s all busted out in the back. How can I go to Nat’s commencement with a burst shoe? Will you tell me that now? ”

Laura Raymond’s voice rang like a trumpet call through the little cottage on Vesey Street.

“ I noticed that there were two buttons off the same shoe, too, dear,” was the reply, in Mrs. Raymond’s quiet tones. “ Had you sewed the buttons on you would surely have seen the ‘ busted back,’ as you call it, in time to have taken the shoe to the cobbler.”

“ I know, I know, Mummy-kins. Mea culpa!

“ Less Latin and more buttons on your shoes, young lady,” exclaimed Natalie, coming from her own room, dressed, hatted, and with her new parasol in her hand, looking “ so sweet,” Laura declared, that the fly-away sister had to jump up from the top of the flight (she dressed all over the house in a most scandalous way and was buttoning her shoes on the stairs) and hug and kiss the heroine of the hour.

Can you imagine any girl named Natalie who was not a brunette? And Natalie Raymond had the oval face, the blue-black hair, the deep, shaded, languid black eyes, the thin, finely-chiseled nose, and the darkling roses in the cheek, of the most satisfactory type of brunette.

Natalie Raymond was not merely pretty; she radiated intelligence. When she was animated her eyes sparkled, and the color came and went in her cheeks with every breath. When she was indignant Laura called her an Italian brigand — a very “ lady-like ” one, of course! And when she was pensive, her father called her “ Madonna.’’

Natalie was a reminisceiKe of a former generation of Raymonds. A hundred years back, a certain Raymond who was wealthy, traveling in Italy, had fallen in love with and married an Italian girl of a good but poverty-stricken family.

Natalie’s beauty was of the type of that ancestress, although the Raymonds themselves were fair, and inclined . to be stout — both men and women — when they were fully grown, with tawny hair and plenty of color. Laura was of the Raymond type.

“ And I hate it,” the lively twelve-year-old often declared. “We Raymonds might be manufac-

GREATEST DAY OF HER LIFE 3

tured by the mile and cut off by the yard. But Natalie — well, nobody ever was quite like Natl ”

And this was Natalie’s great day — as she said herself, it was the greatest day of her life.

She was graduating at the head of her class from the Burlingboro High School, and was to deliver the valedictory. She was sixteen that very week and It did seem as though there was only one tiny cloud on her horizon.

Her father, Frank Raymond, could not be home in time to see Natalie graduate. He had hoped to be back from a long southern business trip in good season for the great occasion.

But three days before, instead of his appearance, as they had expected, in bodily form, had come a letter stating 4:hat he would have to remain in Havana until the sailing of the next steamer.

He was on the way now, of course ; but he would land in New York too late for the run to Burlingboro by train in season to hear the oldest of his four daughters read the farewell of her class.

“ If father could only be here,” sighed Natalie, when Laura kissed her at the top of the stairflight, “ I should be perfectly, perfectly happy.”

But mother was well enough to attend the exercises, and Natalie was grateful for that blessing. For mother was not always strong enough to go out. Many days she lay on the couch in her own room, and the girls had to do the housework and “ scramble together the eats,” as Laura said, as best they might.

Of course. Rose was big enough to help now, for she was eight; but Lucille was but four, and — it must be confessed — a great deal more bother than she was help, to say the least.

Now Mrs. Hackett would come through the hole in the fence from the rear alley and look out for the two youngsters while mother accompanied Laura to see the oldest of the four receive her diploma.

Natalie went first. She tripped along the sidewalk in her immaculate white shoes, dodging the puddles left from last night’s rain. It had been a hard rain with a wind that howled around the house most miserably, and Natalie heard her mother moving restlessly in her bed.

A wild night, and father on the sea ! She had known that the thought worried her mother.

But the day had broken so beautifully, with the whole world washed so clean', that nobody had mentioned the tempest that had raged up the coast during the night.

“’Lo, Natalie!”

Natalie raised the edge of her parasol to see. A negro was wheeling the invalid chair out of the Hurleys’ grounds, and Jim was smiling broadly

GREATEST DAY OF HER LIFE 5

at her, with his ebony crutches held over his shoulder like a gun.

The Hurleys had beautiful grounds, their house sitting on a terraced embankment, with velvety lawns and lovely shrubbery. The place occupied a whole square at the most fashionable end of Vesey Street.

“ How nice you look in your black suit, Jim,” said Natalie, walking beside the chair.

“ Huh ! Just like a waiter,” grunted the crippled youth. “ If it wasn’t for my hydroplanes,” and he tapped the ebony crutches, “ they’d think I came to wait on table at the class supper to-night. That’ll be jolly, Nat! ”

“ I reckon so,” said Natalie, happily.

He was smiling up at her rather wistfully.

“ How pretty you look, Nat. But, then, you always are pretty. Only you look sort of — of — transfigured to-day. I guess that’s the word I want,” and Jim laughed again.

Natalie laughed, too.

“ You really are getting on, Jim. Paying compliments to the girls, and all that. Why, you’ll be quite a lady’s man yet.”

“ No,” said the boy, his usually cheerful face suddenly falling into graver lines. “ Never that. Girls won’t care much to look at a fellow like me.

She laid a suddenly tender hand on his shoulder. “ Jimmy-boy, I never yet saw you when you were not good to look upon. You have the cheerfulest face of any boy who goes to High — everybody says so. And it takes pluck — I know! I admire you, Jim.”

“Do you, Natalie?” he cried, suddenly grabbing at her hand, squeezing it hard, and then dropping it and blushing. “Well, you know we all admire you. Mutual admiration society — eh? Look out for that curb ahead, Mose.”

“Yes, sah! Yo’ trus’ de pilot, sah. I done seen dat curb a mile away.”

The black man rolled his eyes and grinned. There was not a soul around the Hurley premises who would not have done anything in the range of possibility for Jim.

Others of the high school pupils joined them — some of the graduating class. Jim Hurley could not longer afford to be either pensive or sentimental. It was his business to be the life of any crowd he was in — and, as Natalie said, it took pluck to do it !

They rustled into the big hall, the members of the graduating class taking their seats on the platform. The other pupils filled the gallery. The adult audience crowded the floor.

It was a brilliant assemblage — and a happy one.

• GREATEST DAY OF HER LIFE 7

The white dresses of the girls, the knots of varicolored ribbons denoting the colors of the various classes, the pretty decorations, and above all the profusion of flowers, made the hall look like fairy-land.

And who among them — among the graduating class — would ever forget that waning June afternoon, when everything — earth, and air, and sky, and all — seemed to have formed a conspiracy to make this a perfect, perfect day?

Natalie found her eyes moistening as she looked about at the girls and boys with whom she had studied and romped for so long. This was the end. This was really the Great Day — there never could be another like it in her life, or in theirs.

For to the Buriingboro youth, school life ended with graduation from the high school. It was not a college town, nor did many of the Buriingboro parents send their children to higher institutions of education.

Like the Raymonds, most of the Buriingboro people owned a little home, with a little mortgage on it, a very little sum in bank, and the principal wage-earner of the family usually had very little prospect of ever earning more than he was right then.

There were few “ superior ” people in Buriingboro. Even the Hurleys, who had more money than most, had come from such small beginnings that it would have been impossible, had they so wished, to “ put on airs ” with their old neighbors.

Estelle Maybury was the class poet, and her verses were applauded. Bob Granger was historian. Sally Fitch’s prophecy was very, very funny — especially so in the opinion of the members of the graduating class.

And then it came Natalie’s turn. Natalie was literary — there could be no doubt of that. From the “ very earliest times ” it was no trouble at all for Natalie Raymond to write compositions. She always had the very highest marks for anything of that kind.

Nor had she only produced amateur work. Now, for more than a year, she had been writing little juvenile stories, sketches, domestic items, and the like, for the Burlingboro Banner,

Not that Mr. Franklin, the editor, could pay for such contributions; but he was willing to pay for having them set up, instead of using syndicate plates in their stead.

Natalie, therefore, was “a. welcome contributor ” to the local paper; but that was a secret that was not divulged outside of the family — only Mr. Franklin knew it, and advised her kindly along certain lines of work.

THE CAPTAIN

Rose burst into wild sobbing again. She was just big enough to know what both disasters meant.

Natalie still hushed the little girl, and rocked. She bravely quenched a desire to weep just as madly as Rose did.

“ Now, Laura,” she said, ‘‘ you are altogether too big a girl to ask a question like that in the hearing of Rose.”

“ Well ! Everybody can’t be repressed like you, Nat ”

“And Rose!” added Natalie, to the smaller girl. “ Suppose mother hears you upstairs? Do you suppose that is going to help make her well? ”

“ No-o,” admitted the culprit.

A soft tapping at the window startled them for an instant. Natalie put the now sleeping Lucille upon the couch, and opened the inner blinds.

It was dark outside — pitch-black. But suddenly the whites of a pair of rolling eyes, and a glimmer of ivory, indicated a face as black as the night itself.

“ Oh, Mosel ” exclaimed Natalie, opening the French window.

“ ’Deed it’s me, Missee,” said the black man. “ Ah didn’t like to pull no bell.”

“What is it, Mose?”

“ Mis’ Hurley done instruc’ me to arsk aftah Mis’ Raymon’.”

“She is quiet now; the doctor has just left,” replied Natalie. “ Tell Mrs. Hurley we are much obliged.”

“ An’ Mis’ Nat’lie,” whispered the black man, with a manner of great mystery. “ Mastah Jim, he say do yo’ cheer up. He been workin’ de wires to New Yo’k all de ebenin’. De minute de wi’less, or telegraft, gits any news, dey is goin’ to let Mastah Jim know, an’ he’ll send me ober, Missee. Dis chile ain’ gwine to baid ternight at all.”

“ Bless you, Mose ! ” exclaimed the girl, with a sob. “ And tell Jim he is a dear.”

“ Yassum. Anyt’ing else, Missee? ”

“Anything else? No, I guess not, Mose.”

“ No odder message to Mastah Jim? ” queried the old man, rolling his eyes. “ Des lak’ yo’ regards, Missee — or de lak’ o’ dat? ’

“ Why, of course, Mose I ” exclaimed the girl in surprise. “ I thank him far more than I can tell.”

“ Dat’s right, Missee,” said the negro, bobbing his head convulsively. A yo’ regards? ”

“ Yes, yes, Mose. If you wish to put it that way,” said the surprised Natalie, and watched the darkey off the porch with puzzled gaze.

But there was something else to think about

THE CAPTAIN besides the vagaries of the Hurleys’ old servitor.

She got the younger ones to bed soon after they had eaten the meal Mrs. Hackett had so kindly prepared.

“ It do bes the height of folly, Mis’ Natalie,” declared this good woman, “ fur youse to give up hope regyardin’ Mister Raymond. Look at me ! Whin me Pat — me oldes’ bye — wint to the Fullerprunes ”

‘‘ The what? ” gasped Laura, almost choking over her tea.

“ The Fullerprunes. ’Tis a place where there was fightin’. ’Twas whin Pat wint to the wars, sure.”

“ The Philippines,” explained Natalie, gravely.

“ Yis. Well, he was me oldes’ — me darlin’. Though a maner little tyke niver run wild in Burlingboro strates,” added his mother, in an aside.

“ But whin he wint to the wars, ’twas believin’ he was shot iv’ry day, I was! Sure, I had him murdered, an’ sint home wid legs an’ ar-rms missin’ iv’ry day ”

“ Pat must be a centipede,” whispered Laura, who could not overlook a joke if the heavens fell.

“ But,” pursued Mrs. Hackett, “ he wint t’roo the campaign like a greased rat down a drainpipe 1 It niver touched him 1 ”

“ And he had to face great danger in every skirmish and battle, I suppose, Mrs. Hackett,” admitted Natalie.

“ Sure an’ he did. An’ he was in ev’ry scrimmage there was^ — whin he warn’t in the calaboose. An’ he warn’t scratched. Sure, yer father may have as good luck — why not? I’d not give up hope, me gyurl.”

But it was afterward, when she was alone, that Natalie gave her whole mind to the problem that confronted her. Being the oldest of the four girls she had been somewhat in the confidence of her parents.

Mr. Raymond had an interest in the firm for which he traveled. But his share in the profits was governed entirely by the business his own efforts brought in. His salary, therefore, was small and out of it he had to pay his traveling expenses.

This arrangement, for some years, had been a very good one for Mr. Raymond. Out of his income he had bought their home, paying for it in installments. There was now but a thousand dollars’ mortgage on the property, the interest being thirty dollars semi-annually.

But during the past few years — since Lucille’s birth, in fact — Mrs. Raymond had been an invalid. The doctor’s bills had been heavy.

THE CAPTAIN

The family often had to have help in the house.

Meanwhile Mr. Raymond’s income had been growing smaller. Changes in business was the cause of this to a degree. In his line all traveling men were not doing so well.

For this reason he had decided to extend his territory as far as Jamaica and Cuba. He had to take with him most of their ready money when he had left home two months before.

Bills had collected in his absence. Natalie knew that the salary due her father from Favor & Murch would barely pay these bills.

How well he had done upon this southern trip they did not know. His orders had not been transmitted to the firm. His profits could not be adjusted until the firm filled the orders and the customers paid their bills.

Therefore, if the father and husband had been lost at sea, the oldest daughter very well knew that her mother would be left almost penniless.

“Oh, dear! if Laura and I were only boys,” sighed Natalie. “ It costs so much more to keep girls. And in an emergency like this, girls seem so helpless.

“ Why, if I was a boy, I could start right out to-morrow and get a job — I know I could. And Laura would be old enough and strong enough to work through the summer as office boy, or the like.

“But who wants a couple of girls?” groaned she. “ And they wouldn’t pay us much, if we did get work. Girls seldom get more than half the pay of boys, no matter what they do.”

But she took herself up short when she had got this far. Was this being “ the captain ” of the Raymond crew? She was the oldest. The other girls must look to her for comfort, for advice, for leadership.

Should she fail in the very first emergency that had come into her life? She, who had only that day put her foot into the real world and left childhood behind?

“ ‘ Next things ’ should be our motto. The despised way may be our way out.”

“Why, that’s just sound! gasped Natalie Raymond. “ What ‘ next thing ’ can I possibly do? And will you please tell me what despised way is my way out?

“ What — ^what a silly little fool I was when I wrote that valedictory! ”

Chapter III The Girl Who Grew Old Over Night

Mrs. Hackett went home and Natalie locked the lower part of the house. The neighbor who had remained with her mother went back to her own home, too. But she lived near, and if she was needed Natalie could rouse Laura out to call her. The oldest daughter took her place in her mother’s room for the night.

Mother was quiet now. The physician had given her an opiate, because that seemed necessary. Quiet was essential if Mrs. Raymond was ‘to recover from the shock she had received.

Natalie lay on the couch; but she could not sleep. Her eyes were wide open. She listened for the first sound outside, or inside, the little cottage.

Oh, dear! If she could only wake up to find it all a bad dream ! She would be willing to forget all the pride of graduation day if she could forget with it the terrible trouble that had come upon them.

If father would only come in the morning, and straighten the trouble all out!

Natalie, it was true, shrank from the burden of responsibility that she saw settling upon her. And why should she not?

Up to this time the girl had been as happy and as careless of the future as the majority of wellbred and well-cared-for girls of her age.

The fact that her parents worried over financial matters had merely scratched the surface of Natalie Raymond’s mind.

But now, in a flash — in a moment of time, as it appeared — the situation was changed. From being a dependent she had become the staff on which not alone the other three girls must lean,, but her invalid mother, as well.

Was she to fail them? Was she to be proven a weakling in this, her first bout with the great world?

“ To-morrow there is a whole new world for us to face. And with each to-morrow there is another.”

“ Oh, dear! ” murmured Natalie, tossing on the couch, her hair disarranged, her face burning. “ I wish Fd never written that silly thing! ”

Of what good were trite phrases now? It was a real condition she faced, not a theory.

The family was fatherless. They were worse than motherless! If everybody gave up to the catastrophe that had overtaken them what then would become of the Raymonds, large and small?

No, no! Somebody had to go ahead, and be the leader, and overcome difficulties and plan their the leader, and overcome difficulties, and plan their them all in food, in clothing, and a shelter over their heads.

It must be Natalie. There was no other way. And, despite the natural shrinking of the gently nurtured girl from the buffetings of the future, she was not really a coward.

There was in her nature a certain determination that friction was to bring to the surface. Soft and demure as she had always seemed, the warp and woof of Natalie Raymond’s character was of a kind to resist wear.

She lay awake long hours of this night, it was true. But with the coming of dawn she was established in her future course. She knew what she had to do. Trample on Self. Shoulder the burden Fate had put upon her. Above all, do the unpleasant duty cheerfully!

Her mother slept. Natalie crept down to the kitchen at daybreak. The fire was out, a great heap of dishes stood on the dresser, for Mrs. Hackett had not cleared up when she went home. It seemed to Natalie as though their kitchen had never looked so slovenly and shiftless.

She cleaned out the stove, made a brisk fire, heated water, and washed and dried the dishes. Meanwhile she brewed tea and made toast.

Her mother was arousing from her sleep. The tea and toast on a tray were ready for her.

“ My daughter! My only comfort! ” moaned the poor woman. “ What would we do without you? ”

“ I’m sure I don’t know, dear,” returned Natalie, composedly. “ But having got me, don’t worry — that’s a good mother. Remember that everything is going on all right, because the oldest of your four is at the helm.”

Then she woke Laura and commanded her to keep in call of their mother until breakfast was ready and she could relieve her.

There were eggs in the house, and other provisions — enough for a hearty breakfast, and as the children had eaten but little the night before, Natalie knew they would be hungry.

Soon pattering feet overhead in the “ nursery ” — the big room where Rose and Lucille slept in a double bed and Laura was mistress of another — forced the oldest sister to mount the stairs again.

“ Remember mother must have perfect quiet,” she warned the younger ones, gravely. “ Don’t you dare go in there to her — and don’t make any noise to disturb her.”

Then to Laura, whom she found in the bathroom, she said, severely:

“ If I get up and make the fire and cook the breakfast, the least you can do, Laura, is to look after those young ones. Dr. Protest says mother has got to have quiet, and you’ve got to help.”

Laura was languid and heavy-eyed. It was plain that she had cried a good deal.

“ I don’t see how you can go ahead so, Nat,” she protested. “ I’ve been awake most all night, thinking about poor father.”

“ And I have not had my clothes off,” replied Natalie. “ Thinking of dear father isn’t going to help mother, or run the house, or get food for us.”

“ Natalie ! ” exclaimed Laura, under her breath, “you are heartless!”

Her elder sister gave her a patient smile.

“ Somebody must go ahead. It is my duty, Laura. I must take up the nearest thing at hand ”

“ Next things ’ should be our motto.”

How the phrases of her now despised valedictory kept recurring to her mind 1 She went downstairs and found Black Mose, the Hurleys’ serving man, standing at the back door.

“ Mornin’, Missee,” he said. “ Is Mis’ Raymond better? ”

“ I hope so. She is quiet, Mose.”

“ Dat good! dat good! ” chuckled the darkey. “ Dey all — all — sends deir regyards to yo\ Mis’ Nat’lie. An’ Mastah Jim, he done kep’ de blue spark hoppin’ all night.”

Natalie knew what that meant. Jim Hurley had rigged a wireless instrument in the cupola of the Hurley house, and he was registered as an operator according to Government demand.

Everybody thought it was pretty smart for a cripple to take up wireless telegraphy — and to build his own instrument, and all. And it was. Jim was just as smart as he could be.

“ Oh, Mose ! has he got any more news than what was in the paper? ” cried the girl.

“ Yas’m. He done sent you disher paper wot yo’ kin read — an’ his regyards. Mis’.”

Natalie smiled a little over the black man’s repetition of that word “ regards.”

“ It is good of him,” she said, taking the paper Mose offered. “ I hope he had a nice time at the class supper last evening. Tell him ”

“ He didn’t go ter no supper. Mis’ Nat’lie,” declared the negro, shaking his head vigorously.

“What! ”

“ No, Ma’am ! He suttenly did not. I done tol’ yo’ dat we done gwine ter sit up all night. If — if de news cornin’ ober de wires, or froo de air, had been sartain sure news, Mis’, yo’d been ’woke by Mose — ya-as indeedy! ”

“ Oh, dear ! ” cried Natalie. “ Did that foolish boy stay up all night? And keep you awake, too, Mose?”

Dat don’ matter whatsomever,” declared the negro. “ Not ’bout me. An’ Mastah Jim done takin’ a snooze now. . . . An* he done send his regyards. Mis’.”

Natalie could scarcely repress a nervous giggle. This expression of the black man’s was becoming almost as insistent as “ Barkis is willin’.”

“ You go home and take some sleep, too, Mose,” she urged him. “ And — and give Jim my regards.”

This seemed to please old Mose immensely, and he went off with shining face, leaving Natalie to open Jim’s message slowly and read the following items jotted down by that young wireless operator:

Sakonnet first seen in trouble about noon yesterday by revenue cutter Malay, The Malay could not run near enough to more than pass signals. Sakonnet had cracked her tail-shaft and was out of control. She seemed to have no emergency canvas, or could not spread the sails. She was drifting nor’-nor’-west. Reported by wireless to Fortress Monroe.

“ Sighted and reported at two o’clock by Naida, of Ford Line, which stood by until dark and took off by her own boats 113 passengers and members of crew. Will arrive in New York at nine to-day. Sakonnefs wireless appeared to be useless.

“ Maculley Line freight-boat Pancoast, bound out from Norfolk for New Orleans, ran down close to Sakonnet, and received passengers from two boats and a life-raft. Number not known, as Pancoast is not fitted with wireless.

“ An outward bound tramp steamship, name and destination unknown, observed by officers of Naida approaching wreck of Sakonnet when the former steamer was obliged to sheer off and steam north. There were still passengers and officers aboard Sakonnet, and they were burning costons.

“ Reported at 1 1 155 to Ship News Service, New York, via wireless from Vandam Shoal lightship, relayed from outward bound Philadelphia Liner Mohawk, that she had picked up first officer of Sakonnet, boat’s crew and fifteen passengers. Passengers not named. Mohawk will touch first at Bermudas.

“ Only list of passengers received is from Ford Liner, Naida. Mr. Raymond not listed. Altogether the Sakonnef s owners report 273 passengers, first, second, and steerage, as sailing from Havana.

“ It may be that not a soul aboard the Sakonnet is lost. At last reports she was still afloat. Mr. Raymond may be on the Pancoast, and you will hear from him at New Orleans; or on the Mohawk, and you’ll learn that when she arrives at the Bermudas; or on the unknown tramp steamship observed by the officers of the Naida running down to the help of the wrecked steamer.

“ Keep up your plucL — Jim.”

And Natalie, reading the clearly expressed items, was encouraged. She was bound to be.

Of course her father’s name would not have appeared on the list of passengers rescued by the Ford Line boat. They were the first taken from the wreck, and would be mostly women and children.

Father would never push himself before women in a time of peril — no indeed ! There was plenty of chance for him to have been rescued by one of the other steamers mentioned — or even by some other not yet reported.

Natalie knew just how helpful and self-sacrificing her father would be in all the confusion and fright. He had always been a hero in her eyes, and he was sure to be one at such a time as this.

But she determined to wait till she saw Dr.

Protest before showing Jim’s report to her mother. She read it to the children, however, as soon as they came to breakfast, and then left them digesting the report, becoming momentarily more hopeful, while she went up to sit with her mother.

“ Mother’s staff and comfort ! ” murmured Mrs. Raymond, seizing her oldest daughter’s hand convulsively. “ But, how hard! how hard! What shall we do, Natalie? I see no way out ”

“ Don’t worry so. Mother. Let us hope for the best,” Natalie interrupted. “ Father may be home any day.”

“ Have you heard anything? ” gasped the invalid.

“ Nothing definite,” said Natalie, seeing that she must be very circumspect in talking of her father.