Tripping with the Tucker Twins

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardAre sweeter; therefore ye pipes play on."

No doubt it was very rude of us to stand there peering in, but we were so enthralled by the beauty of the garden and so filled with the desire to get in that we forgot Mr. Manners entirely. Just as Dee said that the palmetto trees made her feel like somebody was coming, somebody did come. We heard a voice, a very irate voice indeed, behind the wall declaiming in masculine tones:

"There is no use in discussing the matter further, Claire! I tell you I shall never give my consent to Louis' going into such a profession. Planting gardens, forsooth! That is work for negroes, negroes directed by women."

"But, papa, it is a very honorable profession, and Louis has such a love for flowers and such marvelous taste in arranging them. Just see what he has done for our garden! He could do the same for others, and already he is being sought by some of the wealthy persons of Charleston to direct the planting of their gardens."

The second voice evidently belonged to a young girl. There was a sweet girlishness about it and the soft, light accent of the Charlestonian was very marked. I don't know how to give an idea of how she said Charleston, but there was no R in it and in its place I might almost put an I. "Chailston" is as near as I can come and that seems 'way off.

"Bah! Pish! Nouveau riches! Parvenues! What business have they to ask a Gaillard to dig in their dirt? It is not many generations since they have handled picks themselves and now they want to degrade one of the first Charleston families."

"But, papa, what is he to do? Louis is nineteen and you know there is no money for college. He cannot be idle any longer. He must have a profession."

It was a strange thing that three girls who prided themselves on being very honorable should have deliberately stopped there and listened to a conversation not intended for their ears, but in talking over the matter later we all agreed that we did not realize what we were doing. It seemed like a bit out of a play, somehow: the setting of the garden, the strange ante-bellum sentiments of the old gentleman and all.

"What is he to do? There have never been but three ways for a gentleman to earn a living: the Church, Law, the Army. Now, of course, the last avenue is closed to a Southern gentleman as he could hardly ally himself with the enemies of his land. The Church and the Law are all that are left for one of our blood. Since, as you are so quick to inform me, there is no money for Louis to go to college and a degree is quite necessary for one expecting to advance himself by practice of law, I see nothing for him to do but go into the ministry."

"Louis be a preacher, papa! Why, he has not the least calling."

"He has more calling to occupy a pulpit than to be down on his hands and knees planting gardens for these vulgar Yankees."

"But, papa, what pulpit? Are we not Huguenots? Has not Louis been brought up in that faith and how could he preach any other? The Huguenot church here is the only one in the United States, and it has only forty members, and you know yourself now that so many of those members live in other cities that we often have a congregation of only six, counting our own family. There certainly is no room for him in that pulpit."

And then the old man did what men often do when they are worsted in an argument, he became very masculine and informed the girl that she had much better attend to her household duties and leave man's business to man.

"But, papa, I must say one more thing, – I think Louis is very despondent and needs encouragement. He hates to be idle and he is forced to be. I was shocked by his appearance this morning. I am very sorry I went on the visit to Aunt Maria. I am afraid he has needed me."

Papa gave a snort and then we had a shock. He had evidently walked away from Claire in disgust, and suddenly there loomed in sight a familiar low-cut waistcoat enveloping the portly embonpoint of our early morning companion in the bus.

We did not wait to see his double chin. The glimpse we had of the low-cut vest made us beat a hasty retreat. We walked down the street with what dignity we could assume.

"I'm pretty ashamed of myself," said Dum.

"Me, too! Me, too!" from Dee and me.

"I don't know what made us stay and listen, it was so thrilling somehow. Aren't you sorry for Claire? And poor Louis! To think of having only one profession open to you and that to be preaching to six persons including your own family."

"Yes, and no doubt there is already an incumbent," I suggested. "I'd love to know Claire. Didn't she sound spunky and at the same time respectful. I hope she can bring the old fat gentleman around."

"She might bring him around, but she can't get around him, he's too fat," laughed Dee. "I tell you I'd like to know Louis. I fancy he must be interesting. Isn't their name romantic? Gaillard sounds like it ought to go with poignard: Louis Gaillard drew his poignard and defended himself from the cannaille."

"Isn't it funny that we should have peeped into the very garden belonging to the pretty rumpled girl in the bus? Now I s'pose we will run against the pale old dames in the crêpe veils."

I had hardly spoken before we did run against the very old ladies. They had darted out of a large shabby old house about a block from the Gaillard's home and were in the act of purchasing "Rah, rah, rah, Shrimpy! Shrimpy! Rah, rah, rah!"

Their veils were off now but they still had an air of being shrouded in crêpe, although their dresses were made of black calico. It seemed to take two of them to buy a dime's worth of shrimps, and the shrimp vender stood patiently by while they picked over his wares.

"They are quite small, Sam," complained the taller of the two.

"Yes, Miss Laurens, but yer see dese hyar is shrimpys, dey ain't crabs, nor yit laubsters."

"Poor things! I just know they have a hard time getting along," sighed Dee. "They look so frail and underfed. Just look back at their house! It is simply huge. And look at their porches! Big enough for skating rinks! Do you suppose those two little old ladies live there all by themselves?"

"I fancy they must have a lot of servants," ventured Dum.

"Of course they haven't any or they wouldn't be buying shrimps themselves. They live all alone in that great house and eat a dime's worth of shrimps a day. They have just been off burying their last relative who did not leave them a small legacy that they have, in a perfectly decent and ladylike way, been looking forward to. I have worked out their whole plot and mean to write 'em up some day."

"Oh, Page, you are so clever! Do you really think that is the truth about them? What are they going to do now?" asked Dum.

"Do? Why, of course they are going to take boarders, 'paying guests.' Don't you know that there are only two ways for a Charleston lady to make a living? The men have three according to his Eminence of the Tum Tum. Women as usual get the hot end of it and there are only two for them: taking boarders and teaching school."

"Well, I only wish we could go board there. I am dying to get into one of these old houses. I bet they are lovely. Did you notice they had an ugly, new, unpainted, board gate? I wonder where their wrought-iron one is. They must have had one sometime. Their house looks as though a beautiful gate must have gone with it." Dum had an eye open for artistic things and the iron gate had taken her fancy more than anything we had yet seen in Charleston.

"When I write them up I am going to use that, too, in my story. Of course they sold the gate to some of the parvenu Yankees, that the old gentleman scorned so. I can write a thrilling account of their going out at night to bid the beautiful gates good-by forever, those gates that had played such an important part in their lives. Through their portals many a coach (claret-colored, I think, I will have the coaches be) has rolled, bearing to their revels the belles of the sixties. (Everyone in the sixties was a belle.) I have an idea that the smaller Miss Laurens was once indiscreet enough to kiss her lover through the bars of that gate but the taller one never got further than letting her young man lightly touch her lily hand with his lips."

"Oh, Page, you are so ridiculous to make up all of that about two snuffy old ladies. Now I want you to write a real story about Claire and her brother Louis. I am sure they are interesting without making up. I still wish I could see Louis. I'd tell him to spunk up and go dig for the nice people all he wants to. I know they are nice if they are only twice removed from a pick and shovel, according to old Mr. Gaillard," said Dee, ever democratic.

We had reached the Battery, a beautiful spot with fine live-oaks and palmettos. Spanish moss hung in festoons from some of the trees. It was the first any of us had seen.

"They say it finally kills the trees if too much of it grows on them, but it is certainly beautiful," said Dum.

"It is like these old traditions, worn out and senseless; a few of them are all right and give a charm to the South, but when they envelop one as they do his Eminence of the Tum Tum they simply prove deadly," philosophized Dee.

"Good for you, Dee! Please remember what you have just said and when I get home I'm going to put it in my note book. It would come in dandy in the story I am going to write about the old ladies and their gate." I had started a note book at the instigation of Mr. Tucker, who said it might prove invaluable to me in after years if I meant to write.

I believe Charleston is the only city in the United States that has a direct view of the ocean. You can look straight out from the Battery between Fort Sumter and Sullivan's Island to the open sea. Fort Moultrie is on Sullivan's Island and on the Battery is a fine statue of Sergeant Jasper who stands with hand extended, pointing to the fort where he so gallantly rescued and replaced the flag, with the words: "We cannot fight without a flag!"

Fort Sumter is a spot made famous by the war between the States. It was bombarded in 1861 and I believe is noted as having stood more bombarding than any port in history up to the time of Port Arthur.

"Now don't you wish we had a guide book and map? I want to know what those places are out in the harbor. Next time I am going to do my way!" exclaimed Dee, but a kindly park policeman, the only living creature on the Battery, told us all we could have got out of a guide book and more perhaps. He pointed out where the steps had been that Princess Louise descended to embark with her brilliant cortège after her memorable visit to Charleston in '83. He showed us Sullivan's Island, nothing more than a misty spot on the horizon, where Poe laid the scene of "The Gold Bug." He led us up to the old gun from the Keokuk, patting it lovingly and reverently. He was a charming old man and seemed to take a personal interest in everything on the Battery. His accent was fine and had the real Charleston softness. I wondered if he, too, did not belong to a fine old family and unlike Mr. Gaillard had discovered that there were more ways than three for a gentleman to earn a living.

Next he showed us the bust of William Gilmore Simms, South Carolina's great author, novelist, historian, poet. And then he put my mind entirely at rest about his being somewhat out of his element in serving as a park policeman by quoting Simms at length in his beautiful poem:

"The Grape Vine Swing

"Lithe and long as the serpent train,Springing and clinging from tree to tree,Now darting upward, now down again,With a twist and a twirl that are strange to see;Never took serpent a deadlier hold,Never the cougar a wilder spring,Strangling the oak with the boa's fold,Spanning the beach with the condor's wing."Yet no foe that we fear to seek,The boy leaps wild to thy rude embrace;Thy bulging arms bear as soft a cheekAs ever on lover's breast found place;On thy waving train is a playful holdThou shalt never to lighter grasp persuade;While a maiden sits in thy drooping fold,And swings and sings in the noonday shade!"O giant strange of our Southern woods!I dream of thee still in the well-known spot,Though our vessel strains o'er the ocean floods,And the Northern forest beholds thee not;I think of thee still with a sweet regret,As the cordage yields to my playful grasp,Dost thou spring and cling in our woodlands yet?Does the maiden still swing in thy giant clasp?"

What a dear old man he was! We could hardly tear ourselves away, but it was twelve o'clock and we had promised to meet Zebedee for a one o'clock luncheon. We told him good-by, and promised to come to see him some more and then made our way along the eastern walk of the Battery.

The breezes always seem to be high down on the Charleston Battery, as it is exposed to the four winds of heaven. The sky had clouded over again and quite a sharp little east wind was blowing, whistling rather dismally through the palmetto trees that grow all along the beautiful street that runs beside the waterfront.

Very handsome houses are on this street, with beautiful gardens. The walls are not so high there, and we wondered if the owners were as aristocratic as those enclosed by high walls.

"Maybe every generation puts another layer of brick on the wall," suggested Dee, and I made a mental reservation that that, too, would go in my notebook about Charleston.

CHAPTER VII

THE ABANDONED HOTEL

As we followed this street, East Bay Street it is called, we came upon a great old custard-colored house built right on the water's edge so that the waves almost lapped its long pleasant galleries.

"Isn't this a jolly place?" we cried, but when we got closer to it we decided jolly was certainly not the name for it.

The window panes of its many windows were missing or broken. The doors were open and swinging in the strong breeze that seemed to develop almost into a hurricane as it hit the exposed corner of the old custard-colored house. A tattered awning was flapping continuously from one end of the porch, an awning that had been gaily striped once, but now was faded to a dull gray except one spot where it had wrapped itself around one of the columns and in so doing, had protected a portion of itself from the weather to bear witness to its former glory.

"What a dismal place! What could it have been?"

"It is open! Let's go in and see what we can see."

"It is positively weird. I am afraid of ghosts in such a place even in broad daylight," I declared half in earnest, but Tweedles wanted to go in and I was never one to hang back when a possible adventure was on foot.

The creaking door swung in as if propelled by unseen hands and we found ourselves in a hall of rather fine proportions with a broad stairway leading up. Doors opening into this hall were also swinging in the wind, so we entered the room to the right, the parlor, of course, we thought. The paper was hanging in shreds from the wall, adding to the dismal swishing sound that pervaded the whole building. From this room we entered another hall that had a peculiar looking counter built on one side.

"What do you fancy this thing is for?" demanded Dum.

"I've got it! I've got it!" exclaimed Dee. "This is an old inn or hotel or something and that is the clerk's desk. Look, here is a row of hooks for keys and here is a rusty key still hanging on the hook."

"It must have been a delightful place to stay with such a view of the harbor and those beautiful porches where one could sit and watch the ships come in. This room next must have been the dining room, and see where there is a little stage! That was for the musicians to sit on," enthused Dum.

"When they finished supper they put the tables against the wall and danced like this," and Dee pirouetted around the dusty, rotting floor.

"Isn't it awful to let a place like this go to pieces so? I don't believe there is a whole pane of glass in the house, and I am sure no door will stay shut. It's too gloomy for me; let's get out in the street again," I begged.

"You can go, but I am going upstairs before I leave. I should think a would-be author would want to see all the things she could, and if there are any ghosts meet them," and Dee started valiantly up the creaking stairs. Of course Dum and I followed.

A silence settled on us as we mounted. The wind that had been noisy enough below was simply deafening the higher we got. The paper that was hanging from the ceilings rattled ceaselessly and the wind was tugging at what was still sticking tenaciously to some of the side walls making a strange whistling sound.

"Gee whiz! I feel like Jane Eyre!" whispered Dum.

"No; 'The Fall of the House of Usher'!" I gasped. "Just think of such a place as this being right here in sight of all those grand houses!"

"I know it's haunted! I feel a presence!" and Dee stopped suddenly on the landing.

"Who's a 'fraid cat now?" I taunted. "Let the would-be author go in front. 'Infirm of purpose, give me the dagger!'"

At that Dee ran lightly on ahead of us and disappeared in a room to the right. We followed in time to see her skirts vanishing through a door beyond.

"This must have been the bridal chamber, it is so grand. Just look at the view of the harbor through this window," said Dum, still whispering, as there was something about the place, a kind of gruesomeness, that made one feel rather solemn. I thought of Poe's "Haunted Palace" and whispered some of the stanzas to Dum, for the moment both of us forgetting Dee, who had rushed off so precipitately.

"'In the greenest of our valleysBy good angels tenanted,Once a fair and stately palace —Radiant palace – reared its head.In the monarch Thought's dominion,It stood there;Never seraph spread a pinionOver fabric half so fair."'But evil things in robes of sorrow,Assailed the monarch's high estate;(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrowShall dawn upon him desolate!)And round about his home, the gloryThat blushed and bloomedIs but a dim-remembered storyOf the old time entombed."'And travelers now, within that valley,Through the red-litten windows seeVast forms that move fantasticallyTo a discordant melody;While like a ghastly, rapid river,Through the pale doorA hideous throng rush out forever,And laugh – but smile no more.'"

I had hardly finished the last stanza of what is to me the most ghastly poem in the English language, when a strange blood-curdling shriek was heard echoing through the rattle-trap old house.

"Dee!" we shouted together and started on a run through the door where we had last seen her new brown suit vanishing. It opened into a long corridor with doors all down the side, evidently bedrooms. Numbers were over the doors. All the doors were shut. Where was Dee? The wind had stopped as quickly as it had started and the old house was as quiet as the grave.

"Dee! Dee!" we called. "Where are you, Dee?"

Our voices sounded as though we had yelled down a well. No answer! My eye fastened on the door with No. 13 over it. All of us have some superstitions, and anyone brought up by a colored mammy is certain to have many.

"No. 13 is sure to be right," I thought, and pushed open the door.

A strange sight met my gaze: Dee, with her arms thrown around a youth who crouched on the floor, his face buried in his hands while his whole frame was shaken with sobs! From the chandelier hung a rope with a noose tied in the dangling end, and under it a pile of bricks carefully placed as though some child had been building a house of blocks. The bricks had evidently been taken from among others that were scattered over the hearth near a chimney that had fallen in.

Our relief at finding Dee and finding her unharmed was so great that nothing mattered to us. Dee put her finger on her lips and we stopped stock-still. The slender figure of the young man was still convulsed with sobs, and Dee held him and soothed him as though he had been a baby and she some grandmother. Finally he spoke, with his face still covered:

"Claire must never know!" Claire? Then this was Louis Gaillard! Dee had said several times she would like to know him, but she had had no idea of her idle wish being granted so quickly and in such a manner. When the boy said "Claire must never know," Dee arose to the occasion as only Dee could and said in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone: "No, Louis, I promise you that Claire shall never know from me." This calling him by name at the time did not seem strange to him. He was under such stress of emotion that the use of his Christian name by an unknown young girl seemed perfectly natural to the stricken youth.

It seems that when Dee went on ahead of us while I was so grandiloquently spouting poetry, she had flitted from room to room. The doors had been open all along the corridor except in No. 13. She had had a fancy to close them after each exploration until she had come to 13. On opening that door she had met a sight to freeze her young blood, but instead of freezing her young blood she had simply let out a most normal and healthy yell. Louis Gaillard was standing on the pile of bricks that he had placed with great precision under the chandelier, and as Dee entered he was in the act of fitting the noose around his poor young neck. His plan of course had been to slip the noose and then kick the pile of bricks from under him and there to hang until he should die.

The realization of what had occurred came to Dum and me without an explanation, which Dee gave us later when we could be alone with her. Dee, in the meantime, continued to pat the boy's shoulder and hold him tight in her courageous arms until the sobs ceased and he finally looked up. Then he slowly rose to his feet. He was a tall, slender youth, every inch of him the aristocrat. His countenance was not weak, just despondent. I could well fancy him to be very handsome, but now his sombre eyes were red with weeping and his mouth trembling with emotion.

"I don't know what made me be so wicked," he finally stammered.

"I know. You are very despondent over your life. You are tired of idleness and see no way to be occupied because your father opposes the kind of thing you feel yourself fitted to do," and Dee, ordinarily the kind of girl who hated lollapalusing, as she called it, took the boy's nerveless hand in both of hers. She said afterwards she knew by instinct that he needed flesh and blood to hang to, something tangible to keep his reason from leaving him. He looked at her wonderingly and she continued: "Claire has been away on a trip and while she was gone your father has nagged you. He thinks working in flowers is not the work for a Gaillard and wants you to be a lawyer or preacher. You have no money to go to college, and he seems to think you can be a preacher without the education necessary to be a lawyer – which is news to me. You have offers to plant gardens right here in Charleston, but your father will not permit you to do it. You have become despondent and have lost appetite and are now suffering from a nervousness that makes you not quite yourself."

"But you – how do you know all this?"

"I am ashamed to tell you how I know it. I am afraid you will never be able to trust me if you know."

"I not trust you! You seem like an angel from heaven to me."

"Well, first let me introduce my sister and friend to you."

Dee had a wonderful power of putting persons at their ease and now in these circumstances, to say the least unconventional, she turned and introduced us to Mr. Louis Gaillard with as much simplicity as she would have shown at a tennis game or in a ball-room. He, with the polished manners of his race, bowed low over our proffered hands. All of us ignored the pile of bricks and the sinister rope hanging from the chandelier.

"We are twins and this is our best friend, Page Allison. We have got some real long names, but Dum and Dee are the names we go by as a rule, Dum and Dee Tucker. We are down here in Charleston with our father Jeffry Tucker, Zebedee for short. And now I want you to do us a big favor – "

"Me? A favor for you?" Dee had proceeded rather rapidly and the dazed young man had some difficulty in following her.

"Yes, a favor! I want you, all of us want you, to come up to the hotel and have lunch with us and meet Zebedee. It is lunch time now almost, and we promised to be back in time, – you see, if you come with us, Zebedee can't row with us about being late. He will be awfully cut up over our being late – nothing makes him so cross. I know if you are with us he will be unable to rag us. Just as soon as he gets something to eat he will be all right."