Tripping with the Tucker Twins

"Speaking of lemons! Who's here?" from Dum.

It was his Eminence of the Tum Tum, in all the glory of a starched piqué vest, followed by Claire and Louis, both of them rather ill at ease in their father's presence. Miss Judith introduced the paying and non-paying guests with all the ceremony of a presentation at the Court of St. James.

"Now I am afraid Mr. Tucker's mayonnaise is going back on him," whispered Mrs. Green to me; "I don't believe he and Jimmy Lufton together could beat in that old man and make him into a smooth, palatable mixture."

But I was betting on Zebedee.

Miss Judith and Miss Arabella were looking around for their pokers so they could swallow them again, but Zebedee had hidden them, and with his inimitable good nature and tact he drew old Mr. Gaillard into his charmed circle. By some strange legerdemain he soon had the stiff old man telling tales of Charleston before the earthquake. He drew from him his opinion of the political situation of South Carolina and agreed with him that it was a pity that politics was no longer a gentleman's game. I happened to know that he felt it was the duty of every man to make it his game, but he evidently deemed it not the part of wisdom to voice his conviction to the old man.

We had agreed that we would do all in our power to make Mr. Gaillard like us, as in that way we hoped to be of some use to Louis. Zebedee and Professor Green had been discussing the boy quite seriously that very afternoon, and had thought of several ways to benefit him. They had decided, however, to make friends with the father first and not spring their plans too suddenly.

Mr. Gaillard was evidently enjoying himself hugely. The Greens were most flattering in their attention as he pompously recounted his tales. Mrs. Green was looking her loveliest, and one could see with half an eye that he soon began to direct his conversation to her. He pulled down his starched vest that had an annoying way of riding up over his rotundity, and smoothed his freshly shaven double chin with the air of being quite a ladies' man. Tweedles and I drew Claire and Louis over to the summer house away from their father's disconcerting presence. Their easy manners returned then and we spent a merry, happy hour.

Professor Green joined us after a while. He seemed anxious to make friends with Louis and to fathom the boy. I felt sure he had some plan for helping him and was sounding him, in a way. Louis was natural and simple in his attitude toward Professor Green, and I could see was making a very good impression.

"You would like to go to college, would you not?"

"Beyond everything. I am prepared to enter college now, but I am nineteen and feel if I do not go soon it will be too late. I am rather late graduating at the high school but had to miss a year because of an illness."

"I think nineteen is a very proper age to enter college," said the professor kindly. "I wonder if you would like my old college, Exmoor? It is a small college, but of excellent standing."

"I am sure I should like any college," and Louis sighed.

"I am commissioned by the faculty of Exmoor to find a young Southern gentleman to take pity on a scholarship that has been endowed for their college. It seems that this scholarship can only be used by a Southerner, and he must be a gentleman born and bred. It was presented four years ago by a man whose only son was rescued from drowning by a daring young Southern boy. The father had more money than he could use, and he wanted to send the brave youth to college to show in some measure his appreciation of what he had done. To make the gift one that the boy could not hesitate to accept, he established a permanent scholarship at Exmoor. Of course no one is too proud or high-born to accept a scholarship. That boy graduates this year with high honors after four very creditable years at college, and now the faculty must find another Southerner to fill his place. The president asked me to be on the lookout for one while I am on this trip, and if you would like to take it, I should be proud and gratified to be the means of presenting it to you."

Through this long speech Louis stood wide-eyed and flushed. Claire caught him by one hand and impulsive Dee by the other.

"Oh, sir!" was all he could falter.

"You must, you must!" exclaimed Dee.

"Louis, Louis, if you only can!" and Claire raised his hand to her cheek.

"But what will my father say?"

"We are going to leave him to Mr. Tucker, at least he is going to prepare the way. I have had a long talk with Tucker this afternoon, and we have mapped out a plan of campaign."

"But your father surely could have no objection," said Dum. "A scholarship is something that everybody accepts."

"But father is very – very – well – proud, I might say," and poor Claire looked exceedingly uncomfortable.

"Well, this can make him prouder than ever," I put in. "He can be proud that his son is chosen to have this scholarship because of his being the nice Southern gentleman he is."

By this time Louis could command his voice, and he said:

"I can hardly tell you, sir, how much I appreciate the interest you have shown in me and your kindness in making this offer, and I hope to be able to accept it. I wish it might have been because of something I am in myself, and not just because I am the descendant of gentlemen."

"But you are what you are partly because of that descent," I insisted. "Persons of low extraction accomplish something in spite of it sometimes; but I must say it is pleasant to have scholarships thrust upon one because of being a Southern gentleman. I think in this day and generation our ancestors do precious little for us – just sit back in their gilt frames and make us uncomfortable – I am glad for some of them to be getting to work."

Louis laughed and said he didn't know but that I was right. We all of us wanted to hear more of Exmoor, and Professor Green told us it was a small college, quite old and of excellent standing among educators, and that it was in walking distance of Wellington, where he occupied the chair of English. It turned out, however, that the professor was a great walker, and that Exmoor and Wellington were more than ten miles apart.

"Exmoor has a very fine course in agriculture and one of the greatest landscape gardeners in the United States is a graduate of that college, and boasts that he got his start there."

"Oh, Louis, that will be splendid, and you can specialize in that and come back to Charleston and do all the things you dream of doing!" exclaimed Dee, who still had Louis by the hand but was totally oblivious of the fact.

She was so excited over the offer Professor Green had made her friend that she might even have hugged him without knowing she was doing it. Louis was not quite so unconscious as Dee, but was making the best of his opportunity. Dee's attitude toward Louis was very much one that she had toward Oliver, the kitten she saved from drowning our first year at boarding-school, a purely maternal feeling, looking upon herself as his protector and elderly friend (being about two years his junior). Louis, however, was tumbling head over heels in love with her, as Dum and I could plainly see. There had not been many meetings, but when there were he stuck much closer than a brother to her side.

Claire could see it as plainly as we could, and no doubt went through all the heartaches an only sister would. She evidently liked Dee very much, however, and was willing to efface herself completely if it would make Louis happy. But Dee would have been quite as astonished if the kitten, Oliver, had stood up on his hind legs and sworn undying love for her; or Pharaoh's daughter, if the infant Moses had burst forth in amorous rhapsodies from his wicker basket after she had saved him from the waters of the Nile. She dropped his hand to pick up Grimalkin, and I am sure at the time she had no more sensations about the one than the other.

"If I might advise you young people," said Professor Green, "I think it will be just as well to say nothing to your father yet about the scholarship, but wait and Mr. Tucker and I will formally suggest it to him and ask his permission."

Of course the young Gaillards agreed heartily with Professor Green, and glad they were, no doubt, to have the office of approaching their pompous relative delegated to someone else. In the meantime, the pompous relative was making himself vastly agreeable, and the two arch conspirators, Molly and Zebedee, were doing all in their power to flatter and soft-soap him with a view to gaining his confidence and putting in an entering wedge toward helping his son.

"Claire," said his Eminence of the Tum Tum, "have you extended an invitation to tea in the garden of our home to the Misses Laurens and their guests?"

We had joined the rest of the party, attracted by the gay laughter and evident enjoyment of the older members.

"No, father," said Claire timidly. I haven't a doubt that he had told her not to ask us until he found out whether we were worthy or not. "We shall be most pleased to have all of you to afternoon tea tomorrow."

Of course we were most pleased to accept, as no doubt that would be the occasion on which Louis' fate would be decided. Zebedee and the professor could put it up to him then.

"Mrs. Green, I came mighty near hugging your husband tonight," declared Dee, after the guests had departed and the dear old ladies had taken their bedroom candles and gone to their Colonial couches, with strict admonitions to Zebedee to lock up. Already they were trusting him with that sacred rite of locking up.

"Why did you only come near doing it?" laughed the young wife.

"Well, I just grabbed Louis' hand instead. It was so dear of him to think of giving the scholarship to Louis. He was so lovely and gentle in his way of doing it, too. Now nothing lies between Louis and certain success. I just know if he can get the chance he will do something with himself. It will develop him to get away from his old father, too. How could anybody grow with that – that ponderous weight on him?"

"Mr. Gaillard is really not nearly so bad as I feared. He is very agreeable and very gallant."

"Oh, Molly darling, I did not think you would be taken in by flattery," teased the husband.

"But I did like him, not just because he flattered me, but because he was very nice to Miss Judith and Miss Arabella, too, and because – Oh, just because!"

The truth of the matter was that Mrs. Green had a tendency to like everybody. It amounted to almost a fault with her, but since there were degrees of liking and she did not like everybody in exactly the same way, we could not quite put it down as a fault. I must say, though, that I do like to see a little wholesome hatred possible in a character. I like people, too, lots and loads of people, but there are some kinds of people I just naturally don't like. I don't like horse-faced people with their eyes set up too high in their heads; I don't like men who wear club-toed button shoes, and I never could stand girls who toss their curls. Now Mr. Gaillard did not come under any of those heads of hatred, but somehow I did not like him one little bit: a case of Dr. Fell, I fancy.

"I do not like thee, Dr. Fell!The reason why I cannot tell.But one thing 'tis, I know full well —I do not like thee, Dr. Fell."

Father had certain types he could not stand. I have heard him say: "I can stand a fool; I can stand a fat fool; but a fat fool with a little mouth I can't abide." I think Mr. Gaillard came under his ban. He was fat and had a little mouth, and certainly while he was not a fool on all subjects, he was a big enough fool on the subjects he was a fool on to spread over all the things he was not a fool on.

I dreaded going to tea with the Gaillards. I had a terrible feeling that I might "sass" his Eminence of the Tum Tum. There was something about the way he pulled down his vest and wiped off his chin that deprived me of reason. I could well understand the temporary aberration that is the plea of criminals who say that some instinct over which they have no control compels them to commit murder. I could have punched Mr. Gaillard one with all the joy on earth.

"I feel the same way," declared Zebedee, when I voiced the above sentiments to him.

"Me, too! Me, too!" tweedled the twins.

"Do you know, Green, I think if Mrs. Green likes Mr. Gaillard, she had better broach the subject of the scholarship for Louis."

"Oh, Mr. Tucker! You can do it so much better than I can."

"Now I don't want to be a shirker and will do it with joy, as I don't regard the old cove one way or the other. I'd just as soon ask him to come be printer's devil on my newspaper as not. But this is the thing: We want him to consent and let Louis have this chance, and I believe your husband will bear me out that it is good psychology for a person who really likes another to ask a favor rather than one who only pretends to. Now you say you like Mr. Gaillard – "

"So I do – that is, I don't dislike him, and I think he has some fine points."

"It would take an X-ray to discover them through all that plumpness," put in Dee flippantly.

"You, as the wife of the man who was commissioned by the President of Exmoor to bestow this honor on a Southern boy, would be the appropriate person, anyhow – that is, unless Green himself will do it."

"Not I! I feel toward him just as Miss Page does, and speaking of psychology – my astral body is at war with his astral body to such an extent that a pricking in my thumb tells me he will grant no request of mine and Molly must bell the cat."

"All right! I am willing to do anything my lord and master puts on me, if you really think I can succeed."

"Succeed! Of course you can!" we chorused.

"Tomorrow afternoon, then, when we have tea with them in their garden, will be 'the time, the place, and the girl.' He will have to be nice under his own vine and fig tree," suggested Zebedee.

"There is one thing I ask of you," begged Dum.

"And what is that? I feel myself to be very important," and Mrs. Green wasted another beautiful blush.

"Wear blue! Your own blue! I know he is the kind of old man who can't resist a beautiful woman in blue."

CHAPTER XIX

A RED, RED ROSE

I don't know whether it was the blue of her eyes or her dress or perhaps the fact that they matched so beautifully, but at any rate Mrs. Green put the proposition up to Mr. Gaillard with such adroitness that he consented to the scholarship, and so quickly that she could hardly believe the battle was won.

"I had not half used up my arguments," she said afterward, "and felt that I must go on persuading when he was already persuaded."

She had started out with the premises that of course he must feel sorry for the benighted North, so sadly in need of the softening influence of the South. She descanted on how a little leaven of good manners would leaven a whole lump of bad manners, and how popular Southern students were in Northern schools and colleges because of the good manners and breeding they brought with them. (This was particularly hard on Mrs. Green, as she firmly held the opinion that people were the same all over the world, that good manners were the same everywhere. She felt, however, that she would use any argument to make Mr. Gaillard see the light.)

She then told the story of the grateful man who had established the scholarship at Exmoor for the four years of the academic course and expatiated on his opinion of Southern youths. She lauded the college as having turned out such good men. Gradually she got to the subject of Louis and how close Wellington was to Exmoor, and before the old man knew what he was doing he had consented to Louis' accepting the scholarship. He did it with an air of having loaded the Yankees with benefits in allowing one of his exalted position and azure blood to stoop and mingle with them; but it made no difference to us what he felt on the subject, just so he would let Louis accept.

We were having tea in their lovely garden and Louis was showing us his flowers while Mrs. Green was wheedling "papa." She looked so lovely I verily believe the old gentleman would have accepted the scholarship himself just to be only ten miles from her for four years.

I believe Claire was even happier than Louis when "papa's" ultimatum was pronounced. She was going to miss him more than even she could divine, but her love for him was so deep that she was willing to give up anything for him. Louis was glad and grateful, but the truth of the matter was he was so taken up with Dee that mere college and scholarships meant little to him.

"His eyes look just like Brindle's when he looks at her that way," sniffed Dum, who did not relish too much lovering toward her twin. "I shouldn't be in the least astonished if he began to whine to be taken up next."

"Why, Dum, I thought you liked Louis!"

"So I do. I like Brindle, too, and Oliver, the kitten; but I like them in their places, and that is not everlastingly glued to Dee's side. I must say I think he had better get out and hustle some before he comes lollapalusing around Dee." I was awfully afraid someone would hear Dum, and stirred my tea very loudly to drown her tirade.

"But, Dum, Dee grabbed his hand herself last night; she said she did," I whispered, trying to set the conversation in a lower tone.

"Yes, I know that! But don't you reckon I saw him holding on to it for dear life? He was mighty limp on Claire's side and mighty strenuous on Dee's. When he had to put back a lock of hair, I saw him let go of his sister's hand and swing to Dee's. And Dee with about as much feeling for him as a wooden Indian!"

The Tuckers were, father and daughters, very strict about one another's admirers. I remembered how Dee had sniffed over Reginald Kent's admiration for Dum, and Zebedee, too; and how Dum and Dee carried on over any attention their father paid any female or any female paid him. Zebedee had not yet scented out Louis as a possible lover, but when he did I was sure to hear from him. They one and all brought their grievances to me. I used to think if any of them ever should unite themselves to anyone in the holy bonds of matrimony, they would have to have a triple wedding to keep the persons the Tuckers were marrying from getting their eyes scratched out. If they were all in the same boat, they would have to behave and sit steady.

In the meantime, Dee's influence over Louis was certainly a wholesome one. Whether his love for her was of the undying brand or just the calf kind, it was very sincere and ardent, so ardent that Dee must soon wake up and realize that she had done a right serious thing when she put out her girlish hand and drew back that poor boy's soul just as it was getting ready for the journey to the Great Beyond. She was in a measure responsible for him now, and the time would come when she would have to be a woman and no longer a wooden Indian, have to treat Louis with a different manner from the one she had for Brindle and Oliver; that is, of course, provided Louis' love turned out to be the undying brand and not the calf kind. When it was said that Dee Tucker treated anyone like a dog, it meant the highest praise for that person. She treated all dogs with a great deal more consideration than she did most people.

Every flower Dee admired, Louis immediately wanted to give her, but she persuaded him to let them go on blooming where they belonged. He had a greenhouse in the back of the garden, where some wonderful roses bloomed all the year round. A great Jaqueminot filled one side of the house, its crimson blooms beautiful to behold. Louis cut one and brought it out to Dee. I was glad I was the only one who heard him as he gave it to her, as I am sure Dum would have "acted up," as Mammy Susan calls it. Dum had gone to the tea table to put down her cup, and Mrs. Green had detained her a moment, while I wandered on in the maze of gravel walks. An oleander hid me from Louis and Dee as he handed her the marvelous open rose, and with a voice that even a wooden Indian would have remarked, he said:

"When I send thee a red, red rose,The sweetest flower on earth that grows,Think, dear heart, how I love thee.Listen to what the red rose saithWith its crimson leaf and fragrant breath:'Love, I am thine in life and death!Oh, my love, doth thou love me?'"

"Humph! Going some!" I thought, and backed down the walk, thereby running into Dum, who smeared a lettuce sandwich on my back in the encounter; but she did not know what I had heard.

CHAPTER XX

MORE LETTERS

Mrs. Edwin Green, from Mrs. Kent Brown.

New York, April … 19…

Molly Darling:

Your letter was good to get. Kent and I had begun to feel like – in-laws, it had been so long since you had written. Mother Brown, the usually faithful chronicler of all the doings and sayings of the family, had cut us off with a postal. Now that we know she is "keepin' keer" of little Mildred, we can understand her silence better. When Mother Brown does anything, she does it all over, and I am sure when she is doing such a thing as attend to anything so precious as her beloved grandchild she has no time for mere letter writing.

Kent and I were greatly interested in what you had to tell us of the charming Virginians you have met in Charleston. It was almost uncanny, in a way, to hear from you of these people, as we had just been hearing of them from a very nice young man with whom Kent has struck up an acquaintance at the Y. M. C. A. gym, where Kent goes regularly to keep from getting flabby. The young man's name is Reginald Kent. It was the name Kent that they had in common (one in front and one behind) that first brought them together. They were always getting mixed up on account of it, my Kent answering when the other Kent was called, and vice versa.

This young Mr. Kent is an illustrator and advertising artist. He really is very clever and very wide-awake. He was dining with us at the very time that your letter was brought to me, on the last mail. I had to open it and read part of it aloud. He had just been telling us of some cousins named Winn he visits in the country in Virginia, and of some Richmond girls whom he has met staying with Page Allison, and these girls are no other than your Tucker twins. He says the first time he met them he went on a deer hunt and that Miss Dum Tucker actually shot a deer. I was slightly incredulous, he thought, and to prove his story he took out of his pocketbook two kodak pictures, one of a very handsome, spirited-looking girl with her hair coming down and a rifle raised to her shoulder, and the other a fallen buck with a young girl kneeling beside him, her arms around his neck and her face buried on his shoulder. That one, he said, was Miss Dee, who wept buckets over the death of the buck, but managed afterward to partake of some of the venison.

I have an idea Mr. Reginald Kent thinks that Miss Dum Tucker is about the most attractive person he ever met. He is certainly very attractive himself, singularly wholesome and clean in appearance and mind. He seemed very happy at the prospect of this paragon of a girl's coming to New York to study. I will be very glad to be of any use to your friends I can, and if they do decide to come I will find board for them and mother them, too, if they need it. I know you are grinning at the idea of my mothering anything – I, the harum-scarum, the flibberty-jibberty – but I am really very much settled down. I am so steady and good that Kent is afraid I am sick.

Caroline is doing the work very well for us. I am the envy of all the people we know because I can boast a really, truly Kentucky Bluegrass cook. She is awfully funny about New York, but I think is beginning to like it very well. Gas scared her nearly to death for a few days. She seemed to think there was some kind of magic in it, and I had to light the stove for her a million times a day. I found she was just keeping it burning all the time to save matches, and when I told her to turn it out if she wasn't using it, she almost cried, because, it seems, she was afraid of the pop it gave when she lit it. Then she began calling on me every time she wanted to light it, but after a week or so of such humoring she has learned to do it herself, and now everything is going along swimmingly. I find she is saving the burnt matches, though, to make some kind of bracket with – something she saw back in "Kaintucky."

I think the greatest shock she ever had was when she found out that in New York you had to pay for onions. "I nebber hearn tell of no sich a place. If'n you ain't made out ter grow none yo'se'f, looks ter me lak some er yo' neighbors mought be ginerous enough to gib yer a han'ful fer seasonin', not fer fryin' or b'ilin'. I wouldn' spec a whole mess er onions as a gif' – but it do seem a shame ter hab ter buy a dash er seasonin'."