"But, papa, I must say one more thing,--I think Louis is very despondent and needs encouragement. He hates to be idle and he is forced to be. I was shocked by his appearance this morning. I am very sorry I went on the visit to Aunt Maria. I am afraid he has needed me."
Papa gave a snort and then we had a shock. He had evidently walked away from Claire in disgust, and suddenly there loomed in sight a familiar low-cut waistcoat enveloping the portly embonpoint of our early morning companion in the bus.
We did not wait to see his double chin. The glimpse we had of the low-cut vest made us beat a hasty retreat. We walked down the street with what dignity we could a.s.sume.
"I"m pretty ashamed of myself," said Dum.
"Me, too! Me, too!" from Dee and me.
"I don"t know what made us stay and listen, it was so thrilling somehow.
Aren"t you sorry for Claire? And poor Louis! To think of having only one profession open to you and that to be preaching to six persons including your own family."
"Yes, and no doubt there is already an inc.u.mbent," I suggested. "I"d love to know Claire. Didn"t she sound s.p.u.n.ky and at the same time respectful. I hope she can bring the old fat gentleman around."
"She might bring him around, but she can"t get around him, he"s too fat," laughed Dee. "I tell you I"d like to know Louis. I fancy he must be interesting. Isn"t their name romantic? Gaillard sounds like it ought to go with poignard: Louis Gaillard drew his poignard and defended himself from the cannaille."
"Isn"t it funny that we should have peeped into the very garden belonging to the pretty rumpled girl in the bus? Now I s"pose we will run against the pale old dames in the crepe veils."
I had hardly spoken before we did run against the very old ladies. They had darted out of a large shabby old house about a block from the Gaillard"s home and were in the act of purchasing "Rah, rah, rah, Shrimpy! Shrimpy! Rah, rah, rah!"
Their veils were off now but they still had an air of being shrouded in crepe, although their dresses were made of black calico. It seemed to take two of them to buy a dime"s worth of shrimps, and the shrimp vender stood patiently by while they picked over his wares.
"They are quite small, Sam," complained the taller of the two.
"Yes, Miss Laurens, but yer see dese hyar is shrimpys, dey ain"t crabs, nor yit laubsters."
"Poor things! I just know they have a hard time getting along," sighed Dee. "They look so frail and underfed. Just look back at their house! It is simply huge. And look at their porches! Big enough for skating rinks!
Do you suppose those two little old ladies live there all by themselves?"
"I fancy they must have a lot of servants," ventured Dum.
"Of course they haven"t any or they wouldn"t be buying shrimps themselves. They live all alone in that great house and eat a dime"s worth of shrimps a day. They have just been off burying their last relative who did not leave them a small legacy that they have, in a perfectly decent and ladylike way, been looking forward to. I have worked out their whole plot and mean to write "em up some day."
"Oh, Page, you are so clever! Do you really think that is the truth about them? What are they going to do now?" asked Dum.
"Do? Why, of course they are going to take boarders, "paying guests."
Don"t you know that there are only two ways for a Charleston lady to make a living? The men have three according to his Eminence of the Tum Tum. Women as usual get the hot end of it and there are only two for them: taking boarders and teaching school."
"Well, I only wish we could go board there. I am dying to get into one of these old houses. I bet they are lovely. Did you notice they had an ugly, new, unpainted, board gate? I wonder where their wrought-iron one is. They must have had one sometime. Their house looks as though a beautiful gate must have gone with it." Dum had an eye open for artistic things and the iron gate had taken her fancy more than anything we had yet seen in Charleston.
"When I write them up I am going to use that, too, in my story. Of course they sold the gate to some of the _parvenu_ Yankees, that the old gentleman scorned so. I can write a thrilling account of their going out at night to bid the beautiful gates good-by forever, those gates that had played such an important part in their lives. Through their portals many a coach (claret-colored, I think, I will have the coaches be) has rolled, bearing to their revels the belles of the sixties. (Everyone in the sixties was a belle.) I have an idea that the smaller Miss Laurens was once indiscreet enough to kiss her lover through the bars of that gate but the taller one never got further than letting her young man lightly touch her lily hand with his lips."
"Oh, Page, you are so ridiculous to make up all of that about two snuffy old ladies. Now I want you to write a real story about Claire and her brother Louis. I am sure they are interesting without making up. I still wish I could see Louis. I"d tell him to s.p.u.n.k up and go dig for the nice people all he wants to. I know they are nice if they are only twice removed from a pick and shovel, according to old Mr. Gaillard," said Dee, ever democratic.
We had reached the Battery, a beautiful spot with fine live-oaks and palmettos. Spanish moss hung in festoons from some of the trees. It was the first any of us had seen.
"They say it finally kills the trees if too much of it grows on them, but it is certainly beautiful," said Dum.
"It is like these old traditions, worn out and senseless; a few of them are all right and give a charm to the South, but when they envelop one as they do his Eminence of the Tum Tum they simply prove deadly,"
philosophized Dee.
"Good for you, Dee! Please remember what you have just said and when I get home I"m going to put it in my note book. It would come in dandy in the story I am going to write about the old ladies and their gate." I had started a note book at the instigation of Mr. Tucker, who said it might prove invaluable to me in after years if I meant to write.
I believe Charleston is the only city in the United States that has a direct view of the ocean. You can look straight out from the Battery between Fort Sumter and Sullivan"s Island to the open sea. Fort Moultrie is on Sullivan"s Island and on the Battery is a fine statue of Sergeant Jasper who stands with hand extended, pointing to the fort where he so gallantly rescued and replaced the flag, with the words: "We cannot fight without a flag!"
Fort Sumter is a spot made famous by the war between the States. It was bombarded in 1861 and I believe is noted as having stood more bombarding than any port in history up to the time of Port Arthur.
"Now don"t you wish we had a guide book and map? I want to know what those places are out in the harbor. Next time I am going to do my way!"
exclaimed Dee, but a kindly park policeman, the only living creature on the Battery, told us all we could have got out of a guide book and more perhaps. He pointed out where the steps had been that Princess Louise descended to embark with her brilliant cortege after her memorable visit to Charleston in "83. He showed us Sullivan"s Island, nothing more than a misty spot on the horizon, where Poe laid the scene of "The Gold Bug." He led us up to the old gun from the _Keokuk_, patting it lovingly and reverently. He was a charming old man and seemed to take a personal interest in everything on the Battery. His accent was fine and had the real Charleston softness. I wondered if he, too, did not belong to a fine old family and unlike Mr. Gaillard had discovered that there were more ways than three for a gentleman to earn a living.
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?"