Speed Nell
Tripping with the Tucker Twins
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 saith
With 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'."
She almost got her head knocked off with the dumb-waiter the other day. She thought it was down, and it was up, and she put her head in the shaft to watch for it, all the time giving the most vigorous pulling to the rope. The dumb-waiter descended with great force and hit her squarely on the top of the head. I heard a great bump and flew to the kitchen. "Caroline! Caroline! What is the matter?" I cried. "'Tain't nothin' much, Miss Judy, but it mought 'a' been. That there deaf-and-dumb dining-room servant done biffed me a lick that pretty near knocked a hole in his flo'." "Did it hurt very badly?" "No'm, it didn't ter say hurt none. It jes' dizzified me a leetle. You see, Miss Judy, it jes' hit me on the haid."
Just on the head!
I think Caroline is almost as much afraid of Aunt Mary's disapproval now that the old woman is dead as she was in her lifetime. Whenever she passes the picture I did of Aunt Mary on the back porch of Chatsworth shelling peas, she suddenly gets in a great hurry. She is not as a rule very energetic, but at the sight of Aunt Mary she gets a great move on her. She came in the other day from some jaunt she had been on, it being her afternoon off, and said: "Looks lak wherever I goes folks seem to 'vine I'm from de Souf. I ast a colored gemman how he guessed it an' he said it was my sof' accident what gimme away. I's goin' ter try ter speak mo' Yankeefied an' see if'n I can't pass fer Noo York."
Caroline's first attempt at being Yankeefied was almost fatal. She made friends with some of the white maids in the apartment house, some Scandinavians, and in her endeavor to become New Yorky she swapped recipes with them, and the next morning served for breakfast the result: corn bread with sugar in it! You can picture Kent.
Kent and I are seeing some very pleasant people, but both of us are working very hard. I work every morning at the Art Students' League from 9 to 12. That means I leave the house with Kent. I go to market on the way to the League and get back to luncheon. Sometimes he comes in to luncheon, too, but he is usually too busy. In the afternoon I sew or read or go shopping or to the matinee, always something to do in New York, and then we have dinner at 6:30 and long, delightful evenings together, usually at home; but sometimes we take in a show and sometimes we dine at a restaurant. We have callers in the evening often and also return calls, but Kent is not much of a caller, as you know.
We have company to dinner, too, quite often now that Caroline has found herself. Kent delights in bringing home unexpected company. He has a notion he is still living in Kentucky and that this little two-by-four flat is Chatsworth itself. Caroline is fortunately accustomed to it, but I am afraid she will soon become corrupted by these Scandinavians, who would not put up with it one moment. Of course I don't mind how many companies he brings home, and if we are short on rations I can do like the immortal Mrs. Wiggs and just put a little more water in the soup. This idiosyncrasy of my young husband, however, has taught me to keep a supply of canned soups, asparagus tips, etc., in the store-room. My friends among the young married set tell me they market day by day and never have anything like that on the shelves as it makes the servants wasteful. Maybe it does, but I feel quite safe with Caroline and the canned goods, as she has never yet learned how to use a can-opener.
Please give the learned professor my best love. Kent sends his love to you both. This is such a long letter I am sure it will take two stamps to send it.
Your ever devoted,Judy Kean Brown.
Page Allison from Dr. James Allison of Milton, Va.:
Bracken, April … 19…
My dear Daughter:
Mammy Susan and I were very glad to hear from you. You are a nice girl to write such a fine, long letter to a mere afterthought. If you write that splendid a letter to a mere afterthought, what would you do for a beforethought?
Your new friends sound delightful. I wish I might know them. The only kick I have about being nothing but a country doctor is that I meet so few new people. Of course it is interesting work, and I am not out of love with it, but sometimes I do get a weeny, teeny bored with poor Sally Winn's aches and pains, and wish either she had some new aches or she could tell about them in a more scintillating manner. Some new people are moving into our neighborhood, the Carters. Of course, as the name indicates, they are not new people except to our neighborhood. They have taken the old overseer's cottage on the Grantly estate, leased it from the two Miss Grants for a year, and are coming bag and baggage in a few days. I don't know how many of them there are, but I believe it is quite a family of girls and one or more boys and a mother and father, one of them an invalid. More pink pump water to be concocted by yours truly, I fancy. I hope they will be agreeable, since no doubt we will have to see something of them. The cottage is in miserable repair, and I only hope it will not tumble down on them. If they are coming to our county for fresh air, they will get it there winter and summer, as there are cracks in the walls as big as those in a corn crib. Pretty lawn, though, about the prettiest I know of anywhere, and trees that make me think of Tennyson's "immemorial elms." I shall not call on these new neighbors until you come home – that is, unless I am sent for to come and bring some pink pump water.
I have had a letter from General Price, Harvie's grandfather, asking for the pleasure of your company in the month of July on a house-party he is giving his grandson. It is such a dignified, ponderous epistle that I am afraid I shall have to send to Richmond for the proper stationery with which to reply. Nothing less than crested vellum could possibly carry my acceptance. The King of England could not observe more form were you being invited to put in two weeks at Windsor. It is very kind of him, however, to ask my little girl, and I hope by the aid of the dictionary to express myself with ease and verbosity in acknowledging the honor. Of course you want to go?
I shall be pleased to have the volume of Henry Timrod's poems. I'd like to see the Coogler poems, too. I enjoyed the extracts immensely. I have often heard of him and remember reading some reviews of his stuff when it came out years ago, before you were born, but I have never seen any of it. His efforts were so impossible that the reviewers treated him, one and all, with mock seriousness, and I believe I have heard he took them all seriously and thought he was being praised when they were only poking fun at him. It is rather pathetic, I think, although of course he was an awful blockhead.
Mammy Susan was pleased at your account of the flowers in Charleston, and hopes you can send her a few clippin's. Her things are doing very well, and her lemon verbena has grown so that I tell her we shall have to build a lean-to to keep it in. She misses you very much and is beginning to count the days to the middle of May, when I assure her you will be back with us.
I hope your ankle is behaving itself. You do not mention it, so I fancy it is. Please remember me most kindly to all the Tuckers – father and daughters. I hope you are not bothering Jeffry Tucker by being with them too much. I think there is such a thing as the best friend wearing out her welcome by staying too long. I am sending you a check for your expenses. You have not divulged how much your board will be, but if I do not make the check large enough, please inform me directly. A sickly winter means a little more money in the bank in the spring for a country doctor. Thank goodness, however, the spring seems to be a healthy one. I'd like to be a Chinese doctor and be paid only when my patients stay well. Sometimes it saddens me to feel that my living depends on disease.
Good-by, my dear little daughter.
Father.
