Speed Nell
Tripping with the Tucker Twins

"Dee, you make me tired – you argue like a Sunday School superintendent who is thinking about turning into a preacher. The idea of the Almighty's changing His mind to start out with! Don't you know that from the very beginning of everything the Almighty has planned our proportions, such as they are, and He would no more put a little on here and pull a little off there than He would start to make a mouse and turn it into a cat?"

"All right, if you think a beauty doctor can do more than the Almighty, then I think your theology needs looking after."

"I know one thing," I said: "I know it is after seven and you will keep your father waiting for his dinner when we already kept him waiting for his luncheon. The Greens are to have dinner with us, and it is mighty rude to keep them waiting."

Tweedles hurriedly got into their dinner dresses and were only ten minutes late, after all.

"What made you girls so late?" demanded Zebedee, when we were seated around the table, encouraging our appetites with soup, which is what the domestic science lecturers say is all that soup does.

"We were having a discussion, Dum and I. Page was the Dove of Peace, or we would be going it yet."

"Tell us what the discussion was about and we will forgive you," said Professor Green.

"It was about Mrs. Green's bones," blurted out Dum.

"My bones! I thought I had them so well covered that casual observers would not be conscious of them," laughed the beautiful skeleton, who was radiant in a gray-blue crêpe de chine dress that either gave the selfsame color to her eyes or borrowed it from them, one could never make out which.

"Oh, we did not mean you were skinny," and Dum explained what the trend of the argument had been, much to the amusement of the owner of the bones in question and also of her husband and Zebedee.

"Miss Dum's argument reminds me of something that Du Maurier says in that rather remarkable little book, 'Trilby,'" said Professor Green. "He says that Trilby's bones were beautiful, and even when she was in the last stages of a wasting disease, the wonderful proportion of her bones kept her beautiful."

"There now, Dee, consider yourself beaten!" and Dee acknowledged her defeat by helping Dum to the heart of the celery.

We had a merry dinner and found our new friends as interesting as they seemed to find us. We discussed everything from Shakespeare to the movies. Professor Green was not a bit pedagogic, which was a great comfort. Persons who teach so often work out of hours – teach all the time. If preachers and teachers would join a union and make a compact for an eight-hour workday, what a comfort it would be to the community at large!

"Edwin, Miss Allison – "

"Please call me Page!"

"Well, then, Page – it certainly does come more trippingly on my tongue – Page is meaning to write, and she, too, is putting things down in a notebook."

"I advised that," said Mr. Tucker. "It seems to me that if from the beginning I had only started a notebook, I would have a valuable possession by now. As I get older my memory is not so good."

When Zebedee talked about getting older it always made people laugh. He sounded somehow as little boys do when they say what they are going to do when they put on long pants. I fancy he and Professor Green were about the same age, but he certainly looked younger. He must have been born looking younger than ever a baby looked before, and eternal youth was his.

"I know a man in New York, newspaper man, who began systematically keeping a scrap-book when he was a youth. He indexed it and compiled it with much care, and now that he is quite an old man he actually gets his living – and a very good living at that – out of that scrap-book," declared Zebedee. "He has information at hand for almost any subject, and the kind of intimate information one would not find in an encyclopedia. He will get up an article on any subject the editors demand, and that kind of handy man commands good pay."

"It is certainly a good habit to form if you want to do certain kinds of writing, but it takes a very strong will for a writer of fiction who runs a notebook not to be coerced by that notebook. I mean in this way: make the characters do certain things or say certain things just to lead up to some anecdote that the author happens to have heard and jotted down in his notebook. Anecdotes in books should happen just as naturally as they do in life: come in because there is some reason for them. The author who deliberately makes a setting for some good story that has no bearing on the subject-matter is a bore just as the chronic joke-teller is. If you can see the writer leading up to a joke, can see the notebook method too plainly, it is bad art. I'd rather have puns – they are at least spontaneous."

"Please lend me your pencil, Zebedee," I entreated.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Write down what Professor Green has just said in my notebook. I think some day it may come in handy."

"You mean as a warning to all young authors?" questioned the professor.

"Oh, no, I think I may have my characters all sitting around a table at a hotel in Charleston and gradually work up to the point and have some one get it off."

And Mrs. Green, also an advocate of the notebook system as a memory jogger, applauded me for my sauciness to her wise husband.

CHAPTER XI
THE GUITAR

"Page," whispered Dee to me, "do you know, I can't sleep tonight unless I know that the awful rope hanging to that chandelier has been taken away. I have a terrible feeling that Louis might get despondent again and go back there and try to do the same thing. I can't call the thing by name – it seems so horrible."

I knew that Dee was still laboring under quite a strain. During dinner she had been very quiet, and now that we had adjourned to the pleasant courtyard on which the dining room opened, where the gentlemen were indulging in coffee and cigars and the rest of us were contenting ourselves with just coffee, she seemed to be nervous and fidgety. Zebedee noticed it, too, and every now and then I caught him watching her with some anxiety.

To catch a young man in the nick of time and keep him from making away with himself is cause for congratulation but not conducive to calmness, when one happens to be only seventeen and not overly calm at that.

"Why don't you tell your father?" I whispered back.

"He'll think I am silly, and then, too, I don't want him to think that I think Louis is likely to repeat his performance. It might give him an idea that Louis is weak and make him lose interest in him. I don't consider him weak, but he is so down in the mouth there is no telling how the thing will work out. Can't you make up some plan? Couldn't we sneak off and go down there? Would you be afraid?"

"Afraid! Me? You know I am not afraid on the street, but I must say that old custard-colored house is some gruesome."

While I was wavering as to whether I could or couldn't go into the deserted hotel at night with no one but Dee, Professor Green proposed that all of us should take a walk down on the Battery.

"There is a wonderful moon rising this minute over there in the ocean and not one soul to welcome it."

So we quickly got into some wraps, as we remembered what a breeze could blow on the Battery, and Dee concealed under her coat her electric flashlight and I put my scissors in my pocket.

"We can shake the crowd and get our business attended to without anyone's being the wiser," I whispered.

A place that is ugly by day can be beautiful by moonlight, and a place that is beautiful by day can be so wonderful by moonlight that it positively hurts like certain strains of the violin in the "Humoresque" or tones of a great contralto's voice. Charleston on that night was like a dream city. We passed old St. Michael's churchyard, where the old cedar bed loomed like a soft, dark shadow among the white tombstones.

"How it shows up even at night!" said Zebedee. "It reminds me of what a friend of mine once said: that the way to make yourself heard in a noisy crowd and to attract the attention of everyone is to whisper. The noisy crowd will be quiet in a moment and everybody will try to hear what you are saying. The low-toned whisper of that old bedstead is heard above all the clamor of the snow-white, high-toned tombstones."

"Humph! Isn't our pa poetical tonight!" teased Dum.

"I should say I am! I bet you are, too, but you are too old to confess it. I glory in it."

We turned down Tradd Street to Legare, which is, I fancy, the most picturesque street in the United States. We had learned that afternoon to pronounce Legare properly. We had naturally endeavored to give it the finest French accent, but were quietly put on the right track by Claire Gaillard. "Lagree" is the way, and now we aired our knowledge to the Greens, who were pronouncing it wrong just as we had.

"Tradd Street was named for the first male child born in the Colony, so the guide-book tells me," said Mrs. Green. "If there were any females born, they did not see fit to commemorate the fact."

"Perhaps the early settlers did not consider the female of the race anything to be walked on – maybe they were not the downtrodden sex that they are in the present day. A street is no good except to walk on or ride over, and surely a female's name would not be appropriate for such an object. My wife is very jealous for the rights of women, whether they be alive or dead," said Professor Green.

"They might at least name something after us besides things to eat. Sally Lunn and Lady Baltimore cake are not much of a showing, to my mind," laughed Mrs. Green.

"There's Elizabethan ruff, and de Medici collar, and Queen Anne cottage, and Alice blue," I suggested.

"Yes, and Catherine wheels, and Minnie balls, and Molly-coddles – "

"I give up! I give up! I was thinking of Charleston and the first male baby."

And so we chatted on as we turned the corner into Legare. We soon came to the beautiful Smyth gateway and then to the Simonton entrance. They vie with each other in beauty of design. The shutters of all the houses on the street were tightly closed, although it was a very mild evening, but we could hear light laughter and gay talk from some of the walled gardens; and occasionally through the grilles we caught glimpses of girls in light dresses seated on garden benches among the palmettos and magnolias, their attendant swains behaving very much as attendant swains might behave in more prosaic surroundings.

"I can't think of the girls who live in these walled gardens as ever being dressed in anything but diaphanous gauze, playing perhaps with grace hoops or tossing rose leaves in the air," said the professor. "It seems like a picture world, somehow."

"Yes, but behind the picture no doubt there is a dingy canvas and even cobwebs, and maybe it is hung over an ugly old scar on the paper and has to stay there to hide the eye-sore – there might even be a stovepipe hole behind it," I said, sadly thinking of the Gaillards and how picturesque they were and what sad things there were in their lives.

"Mercy, how forlorn we are!" exclaimed Zebedee. "Let's cheer up and merrily sing tra-la! Right around the corner here on King Street is the old Pringle House. They say there has been more jollity and revel in that mansion than almost anywhere in the South."

The Pringle House looked very dignified and beautiful in the mellow light that the moon cast over it. It is of very solid and simple design, with broad, hospitable door and not quite so formidable a wall as some of its neighbors; at least one can see the entrance without getting in a flying machine.

"Ike Marvel was married in that front parlor there – the room to the right, I believe it was," said Professor Green. "I wonder if he wrote his 'Reveries of a Bachelor' before or after the ceremony?"

"I'd like to get in there and poke around," I sighed.

"And so should I," chimed in Mrs. Green. "I am sure it is full of possible plots and counterplots for you and me, my dear."

"Do you young ladies know where the Misses Laurens live?" questioned the professor. "We might take a view of our possible abode as 'paying guests' and see how it looks by moonlight."

And so we left the Pringle House and wended our way back to Meeting Street, where we had only that morning seen the pale, sad ladies buying ten cents' worth of shrimps and regretting that they were not as big as lobsters. We hoped when they got the paying guests they would not be quite so economical in their purchases.

The house was still and dark except for a gleam of light from an upper chamber.

"A wax candle, I'll be bound, in an old silver candlestick!" I thought.

The unpainted board gates were uncompromisingly ugly by moonlight as well as by day; but the old house with its long galleries and chaste front door was even more beautiful.

"Oh, Edwin, do you think we will really get into that house? It is to me even lovelier than the much-vaunted Pringle place. But how sad about these gates! They look so new and ugly."

"Page has a lovely story she has made up about the gates," said Dum. Dee was still quiet, with little to say on that moonlight walk. "She is sure the pale old ladies sold them for a fabulous sum to some rich Yankee. She also says she knows the younger and less pale of the old ladies used to kiss her beau through the grille of the old wrought-iron gate – "

"Beau! Why, Dum Tucker, I never used such a word in connection with an inmate of this old aristocratic mansion! I said lover. Beau, indeed! I should as soon think of saying she was chewing gum or doing something else equally plebeian."

"Hush! Listen! I hear a guitar," from Zebedee.

From the stillness of the garden behind the high brick wall where the ugly board gate flaunted its newness we could hear the faint twanging of a guitar. It sounded faint and cracked, but very sweet and true, and then a plaintive old soprano voice began to sing. We were afraid to breathe or move. It had the quality of a lunar rainbow it was once my joy and privilege to behold: a reflection of a reflection, the raindrops reflecting the moon, the moon reflecting the sun. I can give no idea of that experience without repeating the song she sang. I could not remember it, and had never seen it in print, but Professor Green, who seemed to be a person who knew many things worth while knowing, told us it was a poem of Dinah Maria Mulock Craik's, called "In Our Boat." He sent me a copy of it after we got back to Richmond:

 
"'Stars trembling o'er us and sunset before us,
Mountains in shadow and forests asleep;
Down the dim river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not – there's peace on the deep.
 
 
"'Come not, pale sorrow, flee till tomorrow;
Rest softly falling o'er eyelids that weep;
While down the river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not – there's peace on the deep.
 
 
"'As the waves cover the depths we glide over,
So let the past in forgetfulness sleep,
While down the river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not – there's peace on the deep.
 
 
"'Heaven shine above us, bless all that love us;
All whom we love in thy tenderness keep!
While down the river we float on forever,
Speak not, ah, breathe not – there's peace on the deep.'"
 

Nobody said a word. We softly crept down the street.

"Now you understand how we happened to listen when Claire and her father were talking," I whispered to Zebedee. "It seemed no more real than this old lady's song did."

Zebedee wiped his eyes. Of course the song and its setting had made all the Tuckers weep. Molly Brown was not dry-eyed, and one might have spied a lunar rainbow in my eyes, too.

CHAPTER XII
MORAL COURAGE

The Battery was wonderful, wonderful, and out of all whooping. The moon was high up over the water, having made her début sooner than Professor Green had calculated. The tide was coming in, or rather rolling in, and every wave seemed to rise up to catch a little kiss from the moon. The palmettos were, as is their way, rustling and waving their leaves like ladies of olden times in swishing silks using their fans as practiced flirts. The live-oaks did very well as cavaliers bending gallantly to catch the tender nothings of the coquettes. The Spanish moss on one particularly twisted oak hung like a great beard from the chin of some ancient, and as the slender palmetto swayed in the breeze and waved her tresses provokingly near, the gray beard mingled with them for a moment.

"The old rip!" exclaimed Zebedee to me.

"Why, I was just thinking that! It does look just like an old man."

Mr. Tucker and I, as no doubt I have remarked before, often came out with exactly the same thought almost as though we were able to read each other's minds.

"Of course she should not have led him on if she did not want to be kissed. She certainly came very near chucking him under the chin. A girl can't expect a man to withstand temptation forever. Just because a man is looked upon as a gray-bearded loon is no sign he feels like one."

The others had gone on ahead and were standing under the monument of Sergeant Jasper, who was still patiently pointing to Fort Moultrie.

"Do you think it is a girl's fault always if a man kisses her?"

"Well, no, not exactly. I certainly don't think it is a girl's fault for being kissable – but it seems to me her instinct might tell her when she is getting too kissable and she might – wear a veil – or do something to protect the poor man a little."

"Why should he not put on smoked glasses or look the other way? I can't see that it is up to the poor palmetto."

"Perhaps you are right," he said, more soberly, it seemed to me, than the conversation warranted. "I am going to Columbia tomorrow," rather sullenly.

"Are you, really? Tweedles and I are going to miss you terribly. We do wish you didn't have to go."

"'We'! Can't you ever say I? Do you have to lump yourself with Dum and Dee about everything?"

What a funny, cross Zebedee this was! I looked at him in amazement. He was quite wild-eyed, with a look on his face that was new to me. If I had not known that he was a teetotaler, or almost one, I might have thought he had been drinking. I must have presented a startled appearance, for in a moment he pulled himself together.

"Excuse me, Page! I think the moon must have gone to my head. The full moon makes me act queer sometimes, anyhow. You have heard of persons like that, haven't you? That's where lunatic got its name – Luna, the moon, you know," he rattled on at a most astonishing pace. "How old do you reckon Mrs. Green is? She looks very young. Do you think Professor Green is as old as I am?"

"Older, I should think; but then he is so – so – high-foreheaded it makes him look older."

"He was her teacher at college, so they tell me. She must have been quite young when he first knew her."

"Yes, she was only sixteen when she entered Wellington, I believe."

"They seem very happy," with a deep sigh that made me feel so sorry for him.

"He must be thinking of his little Virginia," I thought. She had lived only a year after her marriage and had been only nineteen when she died – he only a year or so older. "I suspect the moonlight reminds him of her. I know he did not mean to pick me up so sharply, and I am just not going to notice it."

Dee, who was biding her time hoping to get the crowd settled somewhere so we could slip off to the custard-colored hotel, now called to us to see the bust of William Gilmore Simms, and to tell her father about the nice, aristocratic old policeman who had so enthralled us by reciting the "Grape-Vine Swing" that morning.

Finally, with much maneuvering on her part, everyone was seated on some benches looking out over the water, with a clump of palmettos protecting them from the wind and at the same time hiding the road to the old house on the corner. Professor Green and Zebedee had entered into an amicable discussion of the political situation, and Mrs. Green was in the midst of an anecdote about her friend and sister-in-law, Judy Kean, now Mrs. Kent Brown, an anecdote told especially for Dum's benefit, since it was of art and artists.

"Now's the time! Hurry!" whispered Dee.

In a moment we had slipped away and were sprinting along the walk to the custard-colored house. It was not much of a run, about two city blocks, I fancy, and we did it in an incredibly short time.

The old house looked very peaceful and still from without, but as we entered the door we found that, as was its habit, a wind was imprisoned in its walls and was whistling dolorously. The moonlight flooded the hall and stairs, making it quite light. Dee clutched my hand, and we went up those steps very quietly and quickly, through the bridal chamber and on into the corridor beyond, on which the numbered doors opened.

No. 13 was open! We paused for a moment as we approached it. Hark! Certainly there was someone in the room. It seemed to me as though I weighed a million pounds and had only the strength of a kitten. Fascinated, we crept closer, although I do not see how the kitten in me lifted the great weight I felt myself to have. There was a dim light in the room from a small kerosene lantern. Louis Gaillard was there, standing tiptoe upon the pile of bricks. Was he trying to fit that awful noose around his neck again? I felt like screaming as Dee had in the morning, but no sound would come from my dry throat.

Louis' face, that could be seen in the light of the lantern, did not look like the face of one who meant to make away with himself. There was purpose in it, but it was the purpose of high resolve. Grasping the rope as high up as he could with one hand, with the other he gave it a sharp cut with a knife. Dee and I leaned against each other for support. The rope was down, and now the thing for us to do was get out of that building as fast as we could. Louis must never know we had been there. We blessed the wind, which made such a noise rattling the shutters and streamers of hanging wall paper that the boy remained absolutely unconscious of our presence. He had begun to destroy the pile of bricks as we crept away, taking them carefully back to the hearth where he had found them.

We sailed down the steps of that old hotel as hungry boarders might have done in days gone by "when they heard the dinner bell." We were out on the sea-wall and racing back to our friends before Louis had finished with the bricks, I am sure.

"Page," panted Dee, "don't you think Louis had lots of moral courage to go back there where he had so nearly come to grief and take down that rope and unpile those bricks?"

"Courage! I should say he had! I was nearly scared to death when I saw him there, weren't you?"

"I have never gone through such a moment in my life. It was worse than this morning, because this morning I did not know what to expect, while tonight I almost knew what was coming – the worst. When I saw the lantern and realized Louis was there, I could almost see him with the noose around his neck!"

Dee shivered and drew her coat more closely around her. Her face looked pale and pinched in the moonlight, while I was all in a glow from our race along the sea-wall.

"Dee, I believe you are all in."

"Oh, I'm all right – just a bit cold."

"All right, much! You are having a chill this very minute – you are, Dee – a nervous chill, and no wonder!"

We had been gone such a short time that no one seemed to have missed us. Professor Green was still on the subject of initiative and referendum, and Mrs. Green had just finished a thrilling tale of art students' life in Paris when we sank on the bench beside them. Dee was shaking like an aspen, although she still insisted there was nothing the matter.

"Zebedee, Dee must go home immediately. She is sick, I believe."

"Dee sick?" and he sprang to his feet. "What's the matter with you, honey? Where do you feel sick? What hurts you?"

"Nothing! Oh, nothing!" and poor Dee's overwrought nerves snapped and she went off into as nice a fit of hysterics as one could find outside of a big boarding-school for girls.

"Dee, Dee, please tell me what is the matter!" begged her frantic father.

"She can't talk, but I can! She must go home and be put to bed. She has had too much excitement for one day."

"Where have you and she just been?" rather sternly, while Dee sobbed on with occasional giggles, Mrs. Brown and Dum taking turns patting her.

"We have been back to the custard-colored house," I faltered.

"Oh, you little geese! What did you want there, please?"

"Dee could not sleep until she knew the rope was cut from the chandelier. We went back to cut it down."

"Oh, I see. Did you cut it down?"

"No; Louis was there cutting it down when we got there. We didn't let him see us. But at first when we saw him we thought – we thought – maybe – he – he – " I could go no further. I could not voice our apprehensions before the Greens, who knew nothing of our experience of the morning.

"You poor babies! Why didn't you ask me to attend to it?"

"I wanted to, but Dee said you might think it was silly of us; and then she did not want you to think that maybe Louis was not trustworthy. She felt he needed all the friends he had – not to lose any."

"Loyal old Dee! Now, honey baby, you put your arm around me and I'll put my arm around you, and we will get over to the King Street car and be back to the hotel in a jiffy. The rest of you can walk, if you want to."

None of us wanted to, as we felt some uneasiness about Dee, although she had calmed down to an occasional sob that might pass for a hiccough. We piled on the trolley and were back at the hotel in short order.

The good breeding of the Greens was very marked during this little mix-up. Never once by word or look did they show the slightest curiosity as to what we were talking about. They were kind and courteous and anxious to help Dee have her chill and get over the hysterics, but that was all.

"Hadn't I better get a doctor for Dee?" poor Zebedee inquired, almost distracted, as he always was when one of his girls had anything the matter.

"I really do not think so," said Mrs. Green. "If you will let me take Dee in charge, I am sure I can pull her through. Doctor McLean, at Wellington, complains that I have lessened his practice by taking charge of so many cases where a doctor is not really needed."

"You had better trust her, Tucker; she has healing in her wings." (Professor Green and Zebedee had sealed their rapidly growing friendship by calling each other Green and Tucker.) Tweedles always said that no one ever called their father Mr. Tucker longer than twenty-four hours unless he got to acting Mr. Tuckerish.

So Mrs. Green came to our room and had Dee in bed after a good hot bath and a dose of aromatic spirits of ammonia. She brought her own hot-water bag and put it to her feet, and then, tucking her in, gave her a motherly kiss. As she was certainly not very much older than we were, I might have said big-sisterly, but there is a difference, and that kiss was motherly. I know it was because I got one, too, and it seemed to me to be the female gender of the kind father gives to me, only on rare occasions, however, as we are not a very kissy family.

"Now, dear, you must go to sleep and not dream even pleasant dreams. Don't dream at all."

And our kind friend prepared to leave us.

"Well, I feel fine now – but – but – I can't go to sleep until I tell you all about Louis and what happened today."

"But, my dear, you need not tell me. I think you must be quiet now. You see, I told your father I would be the doctor, and I must not let you do things to excite you. Talking about a trying experience would be the worst thing in the world for you."

"But I have been thinking it all over and I feel that you and Professor Green would be the ones of all others to take an interest in Louis and advise what to do about him."

"All right – in the morning!"

"No! Tonight. I want you to talk it over with your husband tonight."

"If you feel that way about it, just shut your eyes and go to sleep; Dum and I will do the telling without your assistance," I said; and Dee, who was in the last stages of exhaustion, gave in and was asleep almost before we got the light off.

Dum and I followed Mrs. Green to her room, where we told her the whole frightful business. She was all interest and solicitude.

"The poor boy! I just know Edwin will think of something to do for him. Although Edwin has taught girls always, he does understand boys thoroughly. If we can get board with the Laurens ladies we will be quite near Louis and his sister, and as we get to know them we can find out how to help the boy without hurting his pride. I think all of you girls have shown the 'mettle of the pasture' in the way you have grappled with this very trying occasion."

"'Twas Dee! She thought of asking Louis to lunch and everything. Dee has so much heart, I wonder she is not lop-sided," said Dum, who was as upset as Zebedee over Dee's going to pieces. "You see, Dee and I have lots of fusses, but it is almost always my fault, because I am so mean. Dee is the most wonderfullest person in the world."

Mrs. Green smiled and hugged the enthusiastic Dum.

"Yes, I know what a sister can be. My sister, Mildred, is not my twin in reality, but the Siamese twins cannot be closer than we are in spirit. I hardly ever see her now, either, as she lives in the northwest and I am at Wellington all winter and in Kentucky in the summer. Fortunately, love can work by wireless at any distance, so absence does not affect our affection for each other."

We told our lovely lady good night, and then it was she gave us the selfsame kind of kiss she had given Dee.

"Doesn't it seem ridiculous that we have known her only since this afternoon? I feel as though I had known her all my life. If I go to New York to study at the League, she is going to have me meet her sister-in-law, Mrs. Kent Brown. She is the one Miss Ball told us about who got in such funny scrapes at college – you remember, Judy Kean, who dyed her hair black?"

Dum and I were in the elevator, on our way downstairs to hunt up Zebedee to tell him how Dee was faring. We found him in the lobby, still talking to Professor Green. He was greatly relieved that Dee was herself again, and I assured him that by morning she would be better than herself.