Speed Nell
Tripping with the Tucker Twins

"I have been telling Green all about that poor Louis Gaillard," he confessed. "I did not feel it to be a breach of confidence, after the way Dee had flopped, letting the cat out of the bag half-way, anyhow; besides, I want him to talk the matter over with his wife. I feel that perhaps they will know how to help the boy."

"Molly will, I feel sure. She always sees some way to help."

Dum and I burst out laughing at Professor Green's words.

"That is just what she said about you," I laughed. "Dee wanted us to tell her all about Louis so she could talk it over with you, thinking there might be something you could suggest about helping him, and she said: 'Edwin will think of something to do for him. He understands boys thoroughly, if he does teach girls.'"

And so ended our first day in Charleston. What a day it had been! Rain and sunshine, wind and moonlight, poetry and prose, fiction and fact! A young life saved, and friendship born! Dee going off in hysterics, and Dum and I so tired at last that we could hardly crawl back into the elevator to be borne to our room!

We found Dee sleeping like a baby, and in five minutes we were sleeping like two more babies. I wonder if Louis Gaillard slept.

CHAPTER XIII
ENGAGING BOARD

Whether Louis slept or not on that night after his near-extinction, he was with us early the next morning to bring the glad news that the Misses Laurens would consent to receive us in their home. The Greens were as delighted as we were. Zebedee was to take the first available train to Columbia, and as Professor Green had some important mail to get off, arrangements were left to the females. We were to call on the Misses Laurens at eleven o'clock, accompanied by Claire Gaillard.

"Just to think that we are actually going to live in that old house!" exclaimed Mrs. Green, who was quite as enthusiastic over anything that pleased her as any of us girls. "Do you think we can ever know the one who sang, well enough to ask her to sing to us?"

"I doubt it!" from Dum. "If they are as top-loftical in their home as they were in the bus the other morning, I doubt their even speaking to us. But I want to see their furniture and portraits whether they speak to us or not. I bet that house is just running over with beautiful things."

Claire, whom we picked up at her home on the way to the Misses Laurens', endeavored to prepare us for the stilted dignity of our prospective hostesses. We had seen them in the bus and knew how they could conduct themselves; but we had also seen them haggling for shrimps, so we knew they had their weaknesses; and we had heard one of them sing, and knew that she at least had a heart.

In answer to the bell, which, by the way, was the old-fashioned pulling kind that made a faint jangle 'way off in the most remote end of the house, a gawky, extremely black girl opened the door that led from the street to a great long porch or gallery. Steps from this porch led to a tangled old garden with palmettos and magnolias shading the walks, sadly neglected and grass-grown, that wound around flower beds long since given over to their own sweet will. A fat stone Cupid, heavily draped in cumbersome stone folds, was in the act of shooting an iron arrow at a snub-nosed Psyche some ten feet from him. There was a sun-dial in the center of the garden, and every now and then one spied an old stone bench, crumbling and moss-grown, through the tangle of vines and shrubs.

"Oh!" came from all of us with one accord. It was very lovely and very pathetic, this old garden, so beautiful and so neglected and gone to seed!

"Louis is wild to restore it," whispered Claire. "You know, he can do the most wonderful things with a garden."

We did know, having peeped into their garden so rudely the day before, but we kept very quiet about that.

The gawky black girl plunged ahead of us and ushered us into the house door. This door was smaller than the one on the street, but followed the same chaste style of architecture. The hall was astonishingly narrow, but the room we were told to "Jes' go in an' res' yo'se'fs in yander!" we found to be of fine proportions, a lofty, spacious room.

The fiddle-backed chairs and the spindle-legged tables and claw-footed sofas in that room would have driven a collector green with envy. Curtains hung at the windows that were fit for bridal veils, so fine they were and so undoubtedly real. The portraits that lined the walls were so numerous and so at home that somehow I felt it an impertinence that I, a mere would-be boarder, should look at them. They belonged and I didn't, and if by good luck I could obtain an introduction to them, then I might make so bold as to raise my eyes to them, but not before.

There was a dim, religious light in the room, and the portraits, many of them needing varnishing and cleaning, had almost retired into their backgrounds. They peered out at us in some indignation, those great soldiers and statesmen, those belles and beauties. I don't know why it is that ancestors always attained eminence and were great whatever they tried to do, while descendants have to struggle along in mediocrity, no matter how hard they try.

The Misses Laurens glided into the room, and Claire introduced us. I don't know how the girl had accounted for her acquaintance with us. Perhaps she had not been compelled to account at all. We were received with courtesy but with a strange aloofness that made me feel as though I had just had the pleasure of being presented to one of the portraits, not real flesh and blood. Arabella and Judith were their names. To our astonishment the elder, Miss Arabella, turned out to be the sentimental one with the voice, while Miss Judith, the younger, was the sterner of the two and evidently the prime mover in this business of taking "paying guests." Usually it is the younger sister who goes off to romance and the elder who is more practical; at least, it is that way in fiction.

"We have come to you, hoping you will take us to" – Mrs. Green, who was spokesman for us, faltered; could she say "board" to those two? Never! – "will let us come to stay with you." That was better.

"We shall be very pleased to offer you the hospitality of our home during your stay in Charleston," from Miss Judith.

"Yes, we Charlestonians are always sorry when guests to our city have to accept entertainment at a hostelry," fluttered Miss Arabella. "For a long time the better element of our community was greatly opposed to the establishment of such places. We argued that when visitors came to Charleston, if they were distinguished and worthy they should be entertained in private homes; and if they were not distinguished and not worthy, we did not care for them to sojourn here under any circumstances."

"We are a party of six," continued Mrs. Green, doing her best to be businesslike in the interview. "My husband and I, these three young ladies, and Mr. Tucker, the father of these two," indicating Tweedles, who were breathing heavily, a sure sign of laughter that must come sooner or later. "Mr. Tucker is now in Columbia," she went on to explain, "but will shortly return."

"We shall be pleased to see him whenever his affairs permit him to leave the capital of our State."

"You will have room, then, for all of us?"

"Certainly; we have entertained as many as twenty guests quite often. Not recently; but we still can accommodate that number without inconvenience or crowding."

Miss Judith was spokesman now, while Miss Arabella glided from the room. In a moment the ungainly girl who had opened the door came in, evidently in response to a signal from the mistress, bearing a silver tray with a Bohemian glass decanter and beautiful glasses with slender stems and a plate of wafers that were so thin and delicate one could easily have eaten a barrel of them without feeling stuffed.

"That will do, Dilsey," said Miss Judith, evidently knowing better than to trust the handmaiden, who certainly had the appearance of what Mammy Susan called "a corn fiel' nigger," with the rare old Bohemian glass. Miss Judith served us herself to apricot cordial, the most delicious thing I ever tasted. "We brewed it ourselves from a recipe that has been in our family for centuries," she said, with the simplicity that one might use in saying "like the pies mother used to make."

Still there was no talk of terms or question of our viewing our rooms. Such things are not discussed with guests. The guests are simply given the best the house affords, and of course are too well-bred to do anything but be pleased.

"When may we come?" ventured Dum.

"At any time that suits your convenience."

"After luncheon today, then, will be a good time," suggested Mrs. Green, and I thought the two ladies breathed a small sigh of relief. Maybe they thought the Philistines were already upon them and come to stay.

"We three girls can sleep in one room!" I exclaimed, not having opened my mouth before except to take in the cordial and wafers. My voice sounded strange and harsh to me, somehow.

"We are under no necessity for crowding," quietly from Miss Judith, who looked at me, I thought, in disapproval. What business was it of guests to dictate to the hostess what their sleeping arrangements should be? I subsided.

"You will have your boxes sent when it suits you. I am sorry we have no one to send for them." A boarding-house keeper to send for your luggage! What next?

There seemed no reason to linger longer since the ladies made no move to show us the rooms we were to occupy, and we all of us felt that to mention money would be too brutal. Mrs. Green rose to take leave, and all of us followed suit.

"We will return at about four, if that is convenient."

"We shall be pleased to see you at any time."

We bowed, the ladies bowed, and the portraits seemed to incline their painted heads a bit.

Dilsey was standing in readiness to show us out of the street door, and the sight of her grinning human countenance did me good. She at least was alive.

Once on the street, we looked at one another knowingly, but the presence of Claire barred us from saying anything. We walked the block to her house, talking of the pleasure it would be to be so near her, and expressing to her our appreciation of the trouble she had taken to place us with her friends.

"Oh, we are too delighted to have you near," she declared. "Louis and I can talk of nothing else. Of course we are hoping to see a great deal of you."

We wondered if the pompous old father seconded this, and how the young Gaillards would get by with us. We were not, according to his ideas, desirable acquaintances. At least we fancied we would not be. Surely, however, Mrs. Green could pass muster anywhere.

"Louis wants to take you to see the old oak in Magnolia Cemetery just as soon as you feel like going."

"Oh, we couldn't go to a cemetery without Zebedee," declared Dee. "He loves them so!"

"Well, how about the Magnolia Gardens this afternoon? He is eager to be your guide there as well."

"Is that where the azaleas are so beautiful?" asked Dum.

"Yes, and they are just right to see now. I hear they were never more beautiful than now."

"See them without Zebedee? Never!" Dee still objected. "He adores flowers as much as he does old tombstones."

"Well, then, Sullivan's Island, where Poe's 'Gold Bug' was written?" laughed Claire.

"Go somewhere that is interesting on account of Edgar Allan Poe without Zebedee! We could never be so heartless. Why, he knows Poe by heart."

"Well, Dee, I don't see any place we could go without Zebedee, according to you, unless it is back at school or to a dry goods shop."

"Well, Virginia Tucker, we could go see some pictures or something close by that he can run in on any time."

"Certainly you could! There's the wonderful collection of paintings at the City Hall," suggested Claire courteously, wondering a little, no doubt, at Dee's persistency in waiting for her father for all sight-seeing, and at her evident impatience with Dum. When the twins called each other Virginia and Caroline, it was, as a rule, something quite serious. So we settled on the City Hall as entertainment for the afternoon before our installment in our new quarters.

"Dum, I didn't mean to be grouchy," said the repentant Dee, as soon as we got out of sight of Claire. "I was trying to head off a trip where carfare would be necessary. You know Louis never has any money of his own, and he would be wanting to pay for all of us, and I know would be cut to the quick if we didn't let him. You see, Zebedee is so bumptious he just naturally steps up and pays the fare before anybody else has time even to dig down in their jeans."

"My husband might have held his own with Louis," suggested Mrs. Green.

"Yes, I know; I thought of that, but then I did not know whether he would go or not. I think your husband is just lovely. I didn't mean he'd be the kind to hang back." Dee spoke so ingenuously and sincerely that the young wife had to forgive any fancied slight to her Edwin.

It turned out, however, that Professor Green was still writing letters, and had decided to spend the afternoon finishing them up, so he would not have been able to hold his own digging in his jeans. It was like Dee to think of that matter of carfare. She had so much sympathy for the poor and miserable of creation that she seemed to be able to put herself in their places as it were. I fancy there is no more miserable person on earth than a youth who aspires to be squire of dames and has no money to pay the fare.

Professor Green was writing in the palmetto-shaded court of the hotel, and had seen us from there as we came up the street. He begged us to join him and tell him what success we had met with the Misses Laurens.

"Oh, Edwin, it was lovely! You never saw such a beautiful old house and furniture. The garden is a dream, has a sun-dial and stone benches and statues!"

"The portraits are splendid, and there was a Wedgewood pitcher on the mantelpiece that I wouldn't trust Zebedee alone with if I were those ladies," exclaimed Dum.

"They had a lovely cat, too; so clean and soft, and he came to me in the friendliest way," from Dee.

"They gave us apricot cordial in Bohemian glass tumblers, and wafers you could see through," I put in.

"Well, all this sounds fine. How about the bedrooms? Were they attractive, too?"

"Bedrooms! We didn't see them."

"Oh, then you expect to sleep on the stone benches, perhaps."

"I wanted to ask to see them, but the ladies were so funny and stiff and seemed to want us to pretend to be guests, so that naturally we just pretended."

"I see. You came to terms with them, however, of course."

"Terms! You mean money terms? Why, Edwin, we could no more mention money in their presence than we could rope in a house where the father has been hanged."

Professor Green went off into a fit of laughter that made me think that after all maybe he was younger than Zebedee. He kissed his wife twice right before us and in plain view of the passersby on Meeting Street, but he couldn't help it. She was so adorably girlish in her reasons for engaging board from Charleston aristocrats without even seeing the bedrooms, and with absolutely no idea of what remuneration those unbending dames would expect.

"I did say that Tweedles and I could sleep three in a room, and I wish you could have seen the way they jumped at me. It was Miss Judith. 'We are under no necessity for crowding,'" I mimicked her. "I did not like to insist, but of course I meant it might make our board a little cheaper. If you had been there, you would have knuckled under just like the rest of us."

"Do you think it would be wise to go without knowing? I don't want to seem mercenary with all of you high-minded ladies, but I do think there would be a certain satisfaction in knowing just what one was paying for sun-dials and wafers that can be seen through."

"Well, then, you can do the asking! I can't. Was there ever a moment when we could broach the subject, girls?"

"Never!" we chorused loyally.

"We will just go 'buying a pig in a poke,' as it were, and maybe after a night on the garden bench I can muster up courage to ask them what I owe them for the privilege," teased the professor.

"I don't like betting on a certainty, but I don't believe you will be able to do it, and am willing to wager almost anything that you can't get yourself to the point any more than we could. You might ask Miss Arabella, but if you tackle Miss Judith and she looks at you as she did at me when I suggested three in a room, I bet you father's copy of Timrod's poetry that you change the subject."

"Done! I bet you the volume of J. Gordon Coogler's 'Purely Original Verse' that I am living at the Maison Laurens on a purely business basis within the next seven hours. I am going to settle it before tonight."

"Will it be Miss Judith?" I asked, fearing Miss Arabella might be the cause of my losing the Timrod poetry, which I was anxious to write father I had found for him at the second-hand book store.

"Miss Judith and no other! I should feel very sneaky if I got my information through the easier channel of Miss Arabella. Miss Judith, and by seven o'clock."

"I hope we will know before Zebedee comes back," said Dee. "We shall never hear the last of it if he finds us boarding for untold sums."

"I shall feel myself a failure as a chaperone surely," remarked Mrs. Green.

"We think you a tremendous success," tweedled the twins.

CHAPTER XIV
THE CLERK OF THE COUNCIL

We had a wonderful time at the City Hall that afternoon with Louis. It was quite near our hotel, so Dee's agony over Louis' feelings about carfare was assuaged.

My idea of a City Hall had always been that it was a very ugly and stiff place where City Fathers wrangled about sewerage and garbage collections, and whether they should or should not open up such and such a street or close such and such an alley, – a place where taxes were paid or evaded, and where one kicked about the size of the gas bill.

The Charleston City Hall was quite different. There may have been places where discontented persons contended about gas and taxes, but we did not see them. We were told that Charleston had but recently gone through what was a real riot on the subject of the election of the Mayor, but there was a dignity and peace breathing from the very stones of that old edifice that made us doubt the possibility of dissension having been within its walls.

City Fathers could not have mentioned such a thing as sewerage and garbage in the presence of those wonderful and august portraits and busts. As for opening streets that never had been opened before! Why do it? And alleys that had always been closed! Let well enough alone.

Louis Gaillard was quite a friend of the Clerk of the Council, a very scholarly and interesting young man with a French name, who was kindness itself in showing us the treasures of the City Hall. He knew and loved every one of them, and Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, could not have been more eloquent in praise of her jewels. He might well be proud of them, as I doubt there being a more complete collection of things of civic and historical interest in any City Hall in all the world, certainly not in America.

In the Mayor's office there hung a peculiarly interesting fragment of a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller. It was Queen Anne's hand resting on a crown. The rest of the picture had been cut away by some vandal after the wonderful painting had gone through various vicissitudes during the Revolutionary War. Queen Anne was always a dead, dull person to my mind, and the only thing that ever interested me about her was the fact that she did have a crown, and perhaps if the picture was to be destroyed the crown was about the most interesting part to preserve.

I don't want to sound like a guide-book, and I am afraid I might if I tell of all the treasures in that Council Chamber. I must mention Trumbull's portrait of Washington, however. It is very wonderful. The great general stands in Continental uniform by his white charger, every inch a soldier.

"It does not look exactly like the Gilbert Stuart portraits," said Dum.

"No," explained the young man ingenuously, "Stuart painted Washington after he had false teeth, and that changed his appearance a great deal. This picture is valued at $100,000, but of course no money could induce the City of Charleston to part with it."

Then there was Healy's portrait of John C. Calhoun, a wonderful painting. Dum and Mrs. Green thought that from an artistic standpoint it was of more value than the Trumbull portrait of Washington. I am frankly ignorant of what is best in pictures, but I am trying to learn. I certainly liked the Healy portrait very much, though. The hands were wonderful, and Dum said that was a true test of painting; that if an artist was not a top-notcher he could not draw hands, and usually made the model sit on them or put them in his pocket, or if it happened to be a woman, covered them up with drapery. The Clerk of the Council seemed very much amused by Dum's remarks and delighted with her interest, and we noticed he addressed most of his explanations to her while we trailed along in their wake.

There was a portrait of Francis Marion which rather amused us, as he is dressed in uniform with a brigadier general's hat. Now we all knew that Marion never wore anything more tony than a coon skin cap, and he looked as funny as Daniel Boone would painted in a Tuxedo with an opera hat.

Portraits of President Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, General Moultrie, Beauregard, Wade Hampton, and five mayors who held the civic reins of Charleston in troublous times adorn the walls. There were many other Charlestonians of note whom their city had delighted to honor, but I am afraid of getting too guide-booky if I dwell on them.

The cablegram Queen Victoria sent at the time of the earthquake, expressing her sympathy for the sufferers has been carefully preserved. It is the original autograph copy, which, together with the letters from Mayor Courtney, Secretary of State Bayard, and E. J. Phelps, United States Minister to the Court of St. James, which were written in regard to obtaining the original message, are embodied in a book and handsomely bound. The message reads:

"To the President of the United States: I desire to express profound sympathy with the sufferers by the late earthquake, and await with anxiety further intelligence which, I hope, may show the effects to have been less disastrous than expected.

(Signed) "Victoria, Regina."

We took leave of the very agreeable Clerk of the Council regretfully. He had been so pleasant, and was so interesting that we hoped we might see him again.

"It seems a sin," sighed Dum, "to meet such a nice man as that and never to see him again."

"I always feel that I am going to meet persons like again," said Mrs. Green; "if not here, in the hereafter. Kindred souls must manage to get together or 'What's a heaven for?'"

"That's the way I like to think of heaven, a place where you find the persons you naturally like, not a place where you just naturally like all the persons you meet. I don't see why just because you are good enough to go to heaven you should lose all your discrimination. I could go to heaven a million years and not like Mabel Binks. Cat!" and Dum scowled.

"Who is Mabel Binks?" laughed Mrs. Green.

"Oh, she's a person Dee and I can't abide. Page hates her, too, only she won't say so. She was at Gresham with us the first year we were there, and she started in making a dead set at Zebedee and has kept it up ever since."

"Is she pretty?"

"Oh, she's handsome enough in a kind of oochy-koochy style, but she is too florid to suit me. There's a letter from her to Zebedee now. She's always writing to him and trying to get him into something or other."

"How do you know it's from her?" I asked.

I was not very joyful myself when our one-time schoolmate made too free with Mr. Tucker. I didn't really and truly think he cared a snap for her, but I well knew how persistent effort on the part of a designing female could eventually work wonders on the male heart.

"How do I know? I'd like to know who but Mabel Binks writes on burnt orange paper, with brown ink, with an envelope big enough to hold all the documents in the City Hall, and that smelling like a demonstration counter of cheap perfumes. I'd hate to think Zebedee could put up with two female admirers as gaudy as she is."

Dum always stormed like that when Mabel Binks was in question, or any woman under fifty who happened to like her father. Dee was walking with Louis or she, too, would have joined in the tirade against their bête noir.

"I shouldn't think you would feel the slightest uneasiness about your father. I am sure you can trust his good taste if he should ever marry," and Mrs. Green drew Dum to her.

I didn't know about that. I thought it was quite possible for the wrong person to hoodwink Zebedee into not knowing his taste from hers. I had been brought up by Mammy Susan, who was somewhat of a cynic in her way, and she used to say:

"Th' ain't no countin' on what kin' er wife a widderman is goin' ter pick out. One thing you may be sho' of, a man nebber picks out two alike. If the fus' one was tall an' thin the nex' one is sho' ter be sho't an' fat. I tell yer, men is pow'ful weak an' women is mighty 'suadin'."

That phrase that Mammy Susan was so fond of, "Men is weak an' women is 'suadin'," made me tremble sometimes for what the father of the twins might do. He had talked to me about marrying again, and had given me to understand many times that Mabel Binks was not his style, but sometimes I used to think that maybe "he doth protest too much."

We were missing Zebedee greatly, and were very glad when we got back to the hotel to learn from a long distance message that he would be with us the next morning.