Speed Nell
Tripping with the Tucker Twins

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 cheek
As ever on lover's breast found place;
On thy waving train is a playful hold
Thou 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 valleys
By 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 pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
 
 
"'But evil things in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
 
 
"'And travelers now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While like a ghastly, rapid river,
Through the pale door
A 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."

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 sense of 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!"

CHAPTER VIII
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 constantly finding 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. Zebedee not 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-town members. 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, for I 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 would not 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 out of 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 of the 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 them in 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.