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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 appet.i.te, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, b.u.mpy drive.
CHAPTER IX
CHURCHYARDS
Graveyards seemed a strange place to want to spend the afternoon after our experience of the morning, but the cheerful Zebedee always made for them, just as a sunbeam seems to be hunting up the dark and gloomy corners.
"Saint Michael"s first, as that is the nearest," suggested Louis.
We entered the churchyard through ma.s.sive old iron gates, and, turning to the right, followed Louis to perhaps the most unique grave stone in the world: the headboard of an old cedar bed. It is a relic of 1770. The story goes that the woman buried there insisted that her husband should go to no trouble or expense to mark her grave. She said that she had been very comfortable in that same bed and would rest very easy under it and that it would soon rot away and leave her undisturbed. She little dreamed that more than a century later that old cedar bed would be preserved, seemingly in some miraculous way, and be intact while stones, reverently placed at the same time, were crumbling away.
"It seems like John Keats" epitaph: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Keats thought he was dead to the world, and see how he lives; and this poor woman"s grave is the first one that tourists are taken to see," I mused aloud.