"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 cloudedover 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.
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 wrappeditself 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 Ileave. 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 anddisappeared 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 havesome 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 normaland 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, Zebedeefor 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."
What was Dee driving at? Zebedee cross! Had she caught the young man's malady and gone a little off her hooks? Dum and I looked at each other wonderingly—then a light dawned on us: she wanted to get the young man entirely away from this terrible room, and felt if she made him think that he was to go along to protect us from an irate father, he would do it from a senseof chivalry. Having more experience with an irate father than any other kind, Louis was easily persuaded.
"Certainly, if I can be of any assistance!"
"Well, you can! Now let's hurry!"
TUCKER TACT
It was quite a walk back to the hotel but we did it in an inconceivably short time. It was only 1.10 as we stepped into the lobby. We walked four abreast wherever the sidewalk permitted it and when we had to break ranks we kept close together and chatted as gaily as usual. Louis was very quiet but very courteous. The fresh air brought some color back to his pale cheeks and the redness left his eyes. He was indeed a very handsome youth. He seemed to be in a kind of daze and kept as close to Dee as he could, as though he feared if she left him, he might again find himself in the terrible dream from which she had awakened him.
What was Dee to say to her father? How account for this young man? I was constantlyfinding out things about the Tuckers that astonished me. The thing that was constantly impressing me was their casualness. On this occasion it was very marked. What father would simply accept a situation as Zebedee did this one? We three girls had gone out in the morning to his certain knowledge knowing not one single person in the whole city, and here we were coming back late to lunch and bringing with us a handsome, excited looking young man and introducing him as though we had known him all our lives.
Mr. Tucker greeted him hospitably and took him to his room while we went to ours to doll up a bit for lunch. He had no opportunity to ask us where we got him or what we meant by picking up forlorn-looking aristocrats and bringing them home to lunch. He just trusted us. To be trusted is one of the greatest incentives in the world to be trustworthy.
Anyone with half an eye could see that Louis Gaillard needed a friend, and could also see that all of us had been under some excitement. Zebedeenot only had more than half an eye, but was Argus-eyed. Louis must have been very much astonished at the irate old parent he had been led to expect. Mr. Tucker never looked younger or more genial. He had had a profitable morning himself, digging up political information that he considered most valuable, and now he was through for the day and had planned a delightful afternoon to be spent with us seeing the sights of Charleston.
"Was anyone in all the world ever so wonderful as our Zebedee?" asked Dum as she smoothed her bronze black hair and straightened her collar, getting ready for luncheon.
"I'm so proud of him, but I knew he would do just this way! Not one questioning glance! I know he is on tenter hooks all the time, too. The cat that died of curiosity has got nothing on Zebedee. I tell you, Page, Dum and I will walk into the dining room ahead with Louis and you make out you are expecting a letter and stop at the desk and try to put him wise. He is sure to wait for you."
"All right! But must I tell him everything? It will take time."
"Oh, don't go into detail, but just summarize. Give a synopsis of the morning in a thumb-nail sketch. You can do it."
"I can try."
We found Mr. Tucker and the youth waiting for us in the lobby. The appearance of the guest was much improved by soap and water and a hair brush. Whose appearance is not? We started into the dining room, and as per arrangement I had to go back to the desk. Zebedee of course went with me, and the twins kept on with Louis.
"I know you are not expecting a letter but want to tell me what's up," he whispered.
"Exactly! We were peeping into a garden and overheard the old fat man we saw in the bus this morning telling the pretty daughter that he intended that his son Louis should be a preacher at the Huguenot church here, where they often have a congregation of only six, boasting a membership of forty, many of them out-of-townmembers. Louis wants to be a landscape gardener, anyhow, to plant gardens, for which he has a great taste, but old Tum Tum thinks that is beneath the dignity of a Gaillard. Claire, the daughter, was very uneasy about Louis, as he seemed despondent. We were ashamed of having listened. Eavesdropping is not our line, but we did it before we knew we were doing it." Zebedee smiled, and I went on talking a mile a minute. "We walked around the Battery and then went into an old deserted hotel, where all the doors were open and all the windows gone. We wandered around and then went upstairs.
"Dee left us and went down a long corridor, where the bedrooms were, and when she got to Number Thirteen she went in and found Louis getting ready to hang himself. The rope was on the chandelier, and he had a pile of bricks to stand on. He was putting the noose on his neck when she opened the door, and then she screamed bloody murder, and we heard her and ran like rabbits until we got to Thirteen, and I knew it was the right door just because it was Thirteen.We found poor Louis crouching down on the floor, and Dee had her arms around him and was treating him just like a poor little sick kitten. He was sobbing to beat the band, and as soon as he could speak, he said: 'Claire must never know!' and then we knew that he was the boy who wanted to plant gardens. Dee called him Louis and talked to him in such a rational way that he pulled himself together. He seemed like some one out of his head, but we chatted away like we always do, and he kind of found himself. Dee asked him to come home to lunch to protect us from your rage at our being late. She knew you wouldn't mind, and she felt that if she put it up to him that way he would think he ought to come. She said you would not give way to anger before strangers. We are mighty proud of you for being so—so—Zebedeeish about the whole thing."
"Two minutes, by the clock!" cried Zebedee, when I stopped for breath. "How I wish I had a reporter who could tell so much in such a short time! I am mighty glad you approve of me, forI certainly approve of my girls. Now we will go in and eat luncheon and Louis shall not know I know a word. I will see what I can do to help him. Gee whiz! That would make a great newspaper story, but I am a father first and then a newspaper man."
We actually got in and were seated at the table before Tweedles and Louis had settled on what to order. Zebedee pretended to be very hungry and to be angry, and only his sense of propriety with a guest present seemed to hold back his rage at being kept waiting. He acted the irate, hungry parent so well that we almost exploded.
Louis ate like a starving man. As is often the case after a great excitement, a desire for food had come to him. His appetite, however, was not so much larger than ours. All of us were hungry, and I am afraid the hotel management did not make much on running their place on the American plan. Wherever there was a choice of viands, we ordered all of them.
"You must know Charleston pretty well, Mr.Gaillard, do you not?" asked our host, when the first pangs of hunger were allayed.
"Know it? I know every stone in it, and love it. But I do wish you would not call me Mr. Gaillard."
"All right, then, Louis! I wonder if you would not show us your wonderful old city this afternoon—that is, all of it we could see in an afternoon. You must not let us take up your time if you are occupied, however."
"I haven't a thing to do. I finished at the high school in February, and have nothing to occupy me until the graduating exercises in June. I'd think it a great honor and privilege to show you and the young ladies all I can about Charleston," and Louis looked his delight at the prospect. "I must let my sister know first, though. She may be wondering where I am."
"'Phone her!" tweedled the twins.
"We haven't a telephone," simply.
No telephone!
We might have known to begin with that such a modern vulgarity as a telephone wouldnot be tolerated in the house belonging to his Eminence of the Tum Tum.
"You have plenty of time to walk down and tell her, and I think it would be very nice if she would consent to come with you. We should be overjoyed to have her join our party," said the ever hospitable Zebedee.
"I should like that above all things if she can come." Of course we knew that the obstacle to her coming would be the old father who would no doubt demand our pedigrees before permitting a member of his family to be seen on the street with us. "Mr. Tucker, I should like to have a few minutes' talk with you when we finish luncheon."
"I am through now, even if these insatiate monsters of mine have ordered pie on top of apple dumpling, so you come on with me, Louis, while they finish. No doubt they will be glad to get rid of us so they can order another help all around."
"What do you reckon he wants to say to Zebedee?" said Dee, biting a comfortable wedge outof her pie, which, in the absence of Zebedee, she picked up in her fingers to eat as pie should be eaten.
"Why, he is going to tell him all about this morning. Don't you see, he feels that maybe your father will not think he is a reliable person or something; anyhow, he is such a gentleman that he knows the proper thing to do is to make a clean breast of his acquaintance with us."
"Well, now, how do you know that?" asked Dum.
"I don't know it. I just imagine it."
"Do you know, Page, I believe you will be an author. You've got so much imagination."
"It is just nothing but thinking what you would do in a person's place provided you had the nature of that person. Now you are high-minded, too; fancy yourself in Louis' place—what would you do?"
"Go tell Zebedee all about it, of course."
"Exactly! So would anyone if he expected to continue the acquaintance begun in such a strange way."
"I want to see Louis before he goes for his sister. You see, we never did tell him how we happened to know his name and all about his affairs. I must tell him that and also let him know that we came up in the bus with his father and sister this morning. He can let her know something about us without divulging the terrible thing that came so near happening at the old hotel." Dee devoured the last morsel of pie and we went to the parlor, where we found Zebedee clasping hands with Louis, who was flushed and shiny-eyed but looked very happy.
"Poor boy!" exclaimed Zebedee to me, as Dee turned to Louis and drew him to a seat by the window. "He has told me the whole thing like the gentleman he is. He says he must have been demented. He has been very nervous lately, and all the time his sister was away his father has nagged him to death, and this morning, evidently after you monkeys listened to the talk in the garden, the old gentleman got him in a corner and pronounced the ultimatum: either law or the ministry. Of course, the ministry is out ofthe question, and the law means years of waiting, even if he had the money to go to college. He could begin and earn a livelihood tomorrow laying out these gardens and planting them, but the obdurate parent says if he does not obey he will withdraw the light of his countenance."
"I'd say withdraw it; the sooner the better."
"So would I; but I could not give that advice to Louis until I know more about him and his people. I hope the sister can come."
She did come, although I believe she did not inform her father of what she was going to do. She was more than a year younger than her brother, and he was evidently the pride of her heart. I prayed that she might never know the terrible calamity that had come so near to her life. I believe she could never have breathed a happy breath again as long as she lived if that knowledge had been hers.
Louis had just told her some Virginians whom he had met on the Battery—Mr. Tucker, his two daughters and their friend—had made friends with him, and had asked him to accompany themin their sightseeing expedition and had suggested his bringing her. He let drop that we had arrived that morning in the bus, and she immediately concluded that we were her companions in misery on that wet, bumpy drive.
CHURCHYARDS
Graveyards seemed a strange place to want to spend the afternoon after our experience of the morning, but the cheerful Zebedee always made for them, just as a sunbeam seems to be hunting up the dark and gloomy corners.
"Saint Michael's first, as that is the nearest," suggested Louis.
We entered the churchyard through massive old iron gates, and, turning to the right, followed Louis to perhaps the most unique grave stone in the world: the headboard of an old cedar bed. It is a relic of 1770. The story goes that the woman buried there insisted that her husband should go to no trouble or expense to mark her grave. She said that she had been very comfortable in that same bed and would rest veryeasy under it and that it would soon rot away and leave her undisturbed. She little dreamed that more than a century later that old cedar bed would be preserved, seemingly in some miraculous way, and be intact while stones, reverently placed at the same time, were crumbling away.
"It seems like JohnKeats'epitaph: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.' Keats thought he was dead to the world, and see how he lives; and this poor woman's grave is the first one that tourists are taken to see," I mused aloud.
"I have often thought about this woman," said Claire, in her light, musical voice. "I have an idea that she must have been very hard-worked and perhaps longed for a few more minutes in bed every morning, and maybe the husband routed her out, and when she died perhaps he felt sorry he had not given her more rest."
"You hear that, Page?" asked Dum. "You had better have some mercy on me now. I may 'shuffle off this mortal coil' at any minute, and you will be so sorry you didn't let me sleep just a little while longer." (It had been my job eversince I started to room with the Tucker twins to be the waker-up. It was a thankless job, too, and no sinecure.) "See that my little brass bed is kept shiny, Zebedee dear."
"I wonder why it is that no one ever seems to feel very sad or quiet in old, old graveyards?" I asked, all of us laughing at Dum's brass bed.
"I think it is because all the persons who suffered at the death of the persons buried there are dead, too. No one feels very sorry for the dead; it is the living that are left to mourn. Old cemeteries are to me the most peaceful and cheerful spots one can visit," said Zebedee, leaning over to decipher some quaint epitaph.
"I think so, too!" exclaimed Claire, who had fitted herself into our crowd with delightful ease. "New graves are the ones that break my heart."
Louis turned away to hide his emotion. He had been too near to the Great Divide that very morning for talk of new-made graves and the sorrow of loved ones not to move him.
There was much of interest in that old burying ground, and Louis proved an excellent cicerone.He told us that the church was started in 1752; that the bells and organ and clock were imported from England, and that the present organ had parts of the old organ incorporated in it. The bells were seized during the Revolution and shipped and sold in England, where they were purchased by a former Charleston merchant and shipped back again. During the Civil War they were sent to Columbia for safekeeping, but were so badly injured when Columbia was burned that they had to be again sent to England and recast in the original mold. They chimed out the hour while Louis was telling us about them as though to prove to us their being well worth all the trouble to which they had put the worthy citizens of Charleston.
"Saint Philip's next, while we are in the churchly spirit," said Louis; "and then the Huguenot church."
St. Philip's was a little older than St. Michael's. The chimes for that church were used for making cannon for the Confederacy, and for lack of funds up to the present time they havenot been replaced. On top of the high steeple is a beacon light by which the ships find their way into the harbor.
We had noticed at the hotel, both at our very early breakfast and at luncheon, a very charming couple who had attracted us greatly and who, in turn, seemed interested in us. The man was a scholarly person with kind, brown eyes, a very intelligent, comely countenance, and a tendency to baldness right on top that rather added to his intellectual appearance. His wife was quite pretty, young, and with a look of race and breeding that was most striking. Her hair was red gold, and she had perhaps the sweetest blue eyes I had ever beheld. Her eyes just matched her blue linen shirtwaist. What had attracted me to the couple was not only their interesting appearance, but the fact that they seemed to have such a good time together. They talked not in the perfunctory way that married persons often do, but with real spirit and interest.
As we entered the cemetery of St. Philip's, across the street from the church, we met thiscouple standing by the sarcophagus of the great John C. Calhoun. The lady bowed to us sweetly, acknowledging, as it were, having seen us in the hotel. We of course eagerly responded, delighted at the encounter. We had discussed them at length, and almost decided they were bride and groom; at least Tweedles had, but I thought not. They were too much at their ease to be on their first trip together, I declared, and of course got called a would-be author for my assertion.
"I hear there is a wonderful portrait of Calhoun by Healy in the City Hall," said the gentleman to Zebedee, as he courteously moved for us to read the inscription on the sarcophagus.
"Yes, so I am told, but this young man who belongs to this interesting city can tell us more about it," and in a little while all of us were drawn into conversation with our chance acquaintances.
Louis led us through the cemetery, telling us anything of note, and then we followed him to the Huguenot church, accompanied by our new friends.
A Huguenot church has stood on the site of the present one since 1667. Many things have happened to the different buildings, but the present one, an edifice of unusual beauty and dignity, has remained intact since 1845. The preacher, a dear old man of over eighty, who is totally blind, has been pastor of this scanty flock for almost fifty years. He now conducts the service from memory, and preaches wonderful, simple sermons straight from his kind old heart.
"Oh, Edwin, see what wonderful old names are on these tablets," enthused the young wife—"Mazyck, Ravenel, Porcher, de Sasure, Huger, Cazanove, L'Hommedieu, Marquand, Gaillard——"
"Yes, dear, they sound like an echo from the Old World."
"This Gaillard is our great, great grandfather, isn't he, Louis?" asked Claire. "My brother knows so much more about such things than I do."
"Oh, is your name Gaillard?"
And then the introductions followed, Zebedeedoing the honors, naming all of us in turn; and then the gentleman told us that his name was Edwin Green and introduced his wife.
I fancy Claire and Louis had not been in the habit of picking up acquaintances in this haphazard style, and the sensation was a new and delightful one to them. The Tuckers and I always did it. We talked to the people we met on trains and in parks, and many an item for my notebook did I get in this way. Zebedee says he thinks it is all right just so you don't pick out some flashy flatterer. Of course we never did that, but confined our chance acquaintances to women and children or nice old men, whose interest was purely fatherly. Making friends as we had with Louis was different, as there was nothing to do but help him; and his sex and age were not to be considered at such a time.
"Are you to be in Charleston long?" asked Zebedee of Mr. Green.
"I can't tell. We are fascinated by it, but long to get out of the hotel and into some home."
"If I knew of some nice quiet place, I wouldput my girls there for a few days while I run over to Columbia on business. I can't leave them alone in the hotel."
"I should love to look after them, if you would trust me," said Mrs. Green, flushing for fear Zebedee might think her pushing.
"Trust you! Why, you are too kind to make such an offer!" exclaimed Zebedee.
"We have some friends who have just opened their house for—for—guests," faltered Claire. "They live only a block from us, and are very lovely ladies. We heard only this morning that they are contemplating taking someone into their home." Tweedles and I exchanged glances; mine was a triumphant one. The would-be author had hit the nail on the head again. "Their name is Laurens." I knew it would be before Claire spoke.
"Oh, Miss Gaillard, if you could introduce us to those ladies we would be so grateful to you!" said Zebedee. "You would like to stay there, wouldn't you, girls?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"And Mrs. Green perhaps will decide to go there, too, and she will look after you, will you not, Mrs. Green?"
"I should be so happy to if the girls would like to have me for a chaperone."
"Oh, we'd love it! We've never had a chaperone in our lives but once, and she got married," tweedled the twins.
And so our compact was made, and Claire promised to see the Misses Laurens in regard to our becoming her "paying guests."
Mr. Green, who, as we found out afterward, was a professor of English at the College of Wellington and had all kinds of degrees that entitled him to be called Doctor, seemed rather amused at his wife's being a chaperone.
"She seems to me still to be nothing but a girl herself," he confided to Zebedee, "although we have got a fine big girl of our own over a year old, whom we have left in the care of my mother-in-law while we have this much talked-of trip together."
"Oh, have you got a baby? Do you know,Dum and I just stood Page down that you were bride and groom!"
"Molly, do you hear that? These young ladies thought we were newlyweds."
"I didn't!"
"And why didn't you?" smiled the young wife.
"I noticed you gave separate orders at the table and did not have to pretend to like the same things. I believe a bride and groom are afraid to differ on even such a thing as food."
"Oh, Edwin, do you hear that? Do you remember the unmerciful teasing Kent gave you at Fontainbleu because you pretended to like the mustard we got on our roast beef in the little English restaurant, just because I like English mustard?"
"Yes, I remember it very well, and I also remember lots of other things at Fontainbleu besides the mustard."
Mrs. Green blushed such a lovely pink at her husband's words that we longed to hear what he did remember.
"Kent is my brother—Kent Brown."
"Oh! Oh!" tweedled the twins. "Are you Molly Brown of Kentucky?"
"Yes, I was Molly Brown of Kentucky."
"And did you go to Wellington?" I asked.
"Yes, and I still go there, as my husband has the chair of English at Wellington."
"Girls! Girls! To think of our meeting Molly Brown of Kentucky! We have been hearing of you all winter from our teacher of English at Gresham, Miss Ball."
"Mattie Ball! I have known her since my freshman year at college. Edwin, you remember Mattie Ball, do you not?"
"Of course I do. An excellent student! She had as keen an appreciation of good literature as anyone I know of."
"She used to tell us that she owed everything she knew to her professor of English at Wellington," said Dee, who knew how to say the right thing at the right time, and Professor Green's pleased countenance was proof of her tact.
Then Mrs. Green had to hear all about Miss Ball and the fire at Gresham, which Tweedlesrelated with great spirit, laying rather too much stress on my bravery in arousing the school.
"I deserve no more credit than did the geese whose hissing aroused the Romans in ancient times," I declared. "Why don't you tell them how you got Miss Plympton out of the window in her pink pajamas?"
The Greens laughed so heartily at our adventures that we were spurred on to recounting other happenings, telling of the many scrapes we had got ourselves in. Claire listened in open-eyed astonishment.
"It must be lovely to go to boarding-school," she said wistfully.
"It sounds lovelier than it is. We tell about the scrapes and the fun, but there are lots of times when it is nothing but one stupid thing after another. It's lots lovelier just to be at home with your father."
Claire shook her head doubtfully, and, remembering her father, we did not wonder at her differing with Dum.
"I have always held that home was the placefor girls until they were old enough for college," said Mrs. Green. "That is, if they mean to go to college."
"But we don't!"
Zebedee and Professor Green had walked on ahead. Louis was sticking close to Dee, so close that Dum whispered to me that he must think she had him on a leash. Claire and Dum and I were having the pleasure of flocking around Mrs. Green.
"You see, we haven't got a piece of mother among us, and we had to go somewhere, as Zebedee—that's our father, you know—had his hands so full of us he couldn't ply his trade of getting out newspapers. Dee and I are some improved since we first were sent off to school, and now that Gresham is burned, we don't want to break into a new school. I tell you, it is some job to break into a school. Page Allison lives in the country, and she had to go to boarding-school or not at all."
"Well, why don't you go to college now? Wellington would just suit you, I am sure."
"Somehow I have never been crazy to go to college. I want to do something else. You see, I want to model. I feel as though I just had to get my hands in clay and form things out of it."
"And you?" said the sweet young woman, turning to me.
This Molly Brown of Kentucky certainly had the charm of sympathy. You found yourself telling her all kinds of things that you just couldn't help telling her. She seemed so interested, and her eyes were so blue and so true.
"Oh, I mean to be a writer!" I blurted out. "That's the reason I don't want to go to college. If I am going to write, I had better just write, I think, and not wear myself to a frazzle over higher mathematics."
"That's the way I used to feel. The only good I could ever get out of that hated study was just knowing I had done my best. My best seemed so feeble by the side of the real mathematicians that it was a constant mortification to me. I used to call mathematics my hair shirt. No matter how well I got along in other things, I was alwaysconscious of a kind of irritation that I was going to fail in that. I just did squeeze through in the end, and that was by dint of wet towels around my head and coaching and encouragement from my friends. I think it is quite natural to dislike a subject that always makes you appear at your worst. Certainly we are not fond of people who put us in that position!"
I might have known our new friend would hate mathematics. I have never yet been attracted very much by any woman who did get along very well in it, except, of course, Miss Cox. I don't mean to say that female mathematicians cannot be just as lovely and charming as any other females, but I mean that I have never hit it off with them, somehow.
"What are you going to write?" asked Claire.
"Write short stories and long novels, when I find myself. I'm still flopping around in a sea of words. Don't you write, Mrs. Green? It seems to me Miss Ball said you did."
"Yes, I write a little—that is, I write a lot, but I have published only a little. I send and send tomagazine after magazine. Every mail is an event to me—either it brings back a manuscript or it doesn't bring one, and sometimes it brings an acceptance slip, and then I carry on like one demented. Edwin says he is jealous of the postman and wishes Uncle Sam would have women deliver the mail."
"It must be wonderful to get into a magazine. My only taste of it is seeing myself in print in our school paper. Don't you write poetry, Mrs. Green?"
"Well, I have melted into verse, but I think prose is more in my line. The first money I ever made was a prize for a real estate advertisement in poetry, and of course after that I thought that I must 'lisp in numbers' on all occasions; but it was always lisping. And you—do you write poetry, too?"
"Yes, she does," broke in Dum; "and Zebedee thinks it is bully poetry. He said he was astonished that she could do it. And he is a newspaper writer and knows."
"I am sure he does. Some day we will have atournament of poetry, and you will show me yours and I will show you mine. And you, Miss Gaillard? Are you counting upon going to college?"
Mrs. Green turned to Claire, who had been very quiet as we strolled along Church Street, on our way to Washington Park, which is a small enclosure by the City Hall.
"Oh, no, I—I will not pursue my studies any more. I keep house for my father, who does not approve of higher education for women," and the girl sighed in spite of herself. "I could not go, anyhow," she continued, "as Louis and papa need me at home."
Not one word of lack of money, which we knew was an insurmountable obstacle with the Gaillards, but I believe a Charlestonian would as soon speak of lack of ancestry as lack of money. Money is simply something they don't mention except in the bosom of the family. They don't mention ancestry much, either; not nearly as much as Virginians do. They seem to take for granted that anyone they are on speaking termswith must be well born or how did they get to be on speaking terms?
The Gaillards left us at Washington Park as Claire thought she must hurry back to her papa, who no doubt by that time was in a fret and a fume over her long, unexplained absence. Mr. Gaillard was the type of man who thought a woman's place was in her home from morning until night, and any little excursion she might make from her home must be in pursuit of his, the male's, happiness. Claire promised to see the Misses Laurens and find out from them if we could get board in their very exclusive home. Louis asked to be allowed to take us to other points of interest on the morrow, and with feelings of mutual esteem we parted.