Tripping with the Tucker Twins Part 6

"I want to get a map of the city first," said Dee, "so we can get our bearings," but Dum and I cried down this project.

"Let's find out things for ourselves and then get a map and guide book to verify us. It's lots more fun to go at it that way."

"Well, all I know is that this hotel is on Meeting Street, and on our right is Church Street and on our left King. The street under your window is Queen, and if you walk south down Meeting you come to the Battery. You can't get lost and can't get in any trouble unless you try to climb the spiked fences or get over the walls covered with broken bottles. I'll meet you at luncheon at one," and Zebedee took himself off to find out things from some of the political lights of the city.

We were left to our own devices. The sun had come out and if we had not been in the rain we would not have believed it could have come down in such torrents only a short while ago. Our dresses did not spot.

"Let's not go in any place this morning but just walk around and see from the outside. It would be low of us to do the graveyards and things without Zebedee. He loves those things and will want to see them," said Dee.

It was a strange taste for one so cheerful, but it was the truth that Mr. Tucker was especially fond of poking around musty old churches and reading epitaphs on tombstones.

We walked to St. Michael's, looking longingly through the iron gates at the quaint old tombstones, but refrained from going in for Zebedee's sake. We pa.s.sed many beautiful old houses, some of them in perfect repair, brave in fresh paint, with trimmed hedges and gravel walks in their lovely old gardens that we could see by peering through the wrought-iron gates. Some of the houses, though, looked as though they had not been painted since the Revolution, and their gardens were grown up with weeds, with ragged, untrimmed hedges and neglected paths.

Almost every house, big or little, boasts a southern gallery or porch.

The houses are built right on the street, but the large door opens from the street to the porch and not to the house. The gardens are to the side and back, and, as a rule, are surrounded by great brick walls with either iron spikes across the top or ferocious broken bottles cemented to the bricks. The windows, opening on the street, are kept shuttered closely, and iron bars give you to understand that there is no breaking into Charleston society by night or day. The corners of the houses, where the porches are, also are protected from possible interlopers by great iron spikes, a foot long and sharp enough to pierce the hide of a rhinoceros. The porches are also shuttered, partly to protect the inmates from the rude gaze of the pa.s.ser-by and partly to protect them from the ruder gaze of the southern sun.

There was almost no one on the street. The Charleston men had gone to their places of business, leisurely to pursue a desultory living, and Charleston ladies do not go on the street in the morning, so we were afterwards told. We met several darkies crying their wares and saw an occasional housewife making a furtive purchase from some of these hucksters. These ladies, we judged, only came out because their establishments did not boast servants. As a rule, however, the old cooks seemed to do the buying.

The Charleston darky has a very peculiar lingo, so peculiar, in fact, that Tweedles and I found it difficult to understand. It is very different from the speech of our Virginia negroes. They seem to clip the words off very short, and their voices are lighter and higher than our colored people's.

A shrimp seller was very interesting to us. We did not know what he had or what he was calling, and followed him down the street trying to find out. He held up high on his open hand a great flat basket and he sounded as though he were trying to give a college yell:

"Rah, rah, rah, Shrimpy! Rah, rah, Shrimpy! Rah!"

"What on earth are you selling?" asked Dum.

"Rah shrimp! Rah shrimp! Buysome, Missy! Buysome, Missy!"

Then we saw his squirming wares and understood.

"But we couldn't do anything with raw shrimps," we declared regretfully.

"Well den, Missy lak nig sing fer heh?"

"Why, yes, that would be fine," and the boy held high his basket of squirming raw shrimps and sang in a strange falsetto the following song:

"Shrimpy, Shrimpy; rah, rah, Shrimpy!

Who wants Shrimp ter-day?

When you hear de Shrimp man holler, Better come dis way.

"Shrimpy, Shrimpy; rah, rah, Shrimpy!

Sho' I'll heap de plate.

Ain't I see my gal dere waitin'

Stannin' by de gate?

"Shrimpy, Shrimpy; rah, rah, Shrimpy!

All de cooks in town, When I holler 'I got Shrimpy'

Mus' be tunnin' roun'."

We applauded him vigorously and each one gave him a dime, thereby doing a very foolish thing, as ever after during our stay in Charleston we were pursued by the little darkies who wanted to sing to us.

CHAPTER VI

THROUGH THE GRILLE

None of us had ever been so far south before and the palmetto trees were a great astonishment to us.

"They don't look natural to me, somehow," declared Dum, "but kind of manufactured. The trunks with that strange criss-cross effect might have been made by kindergarten children and as for the leaves--I don't believe they are real."

"It does seem ridiculous for people to have these great things twenty feet high, growing in their back yards when we nurse them with such care at home and are so proud if we can get one to grow three feet. Mammy Susan has a palm, 'pa'm' she calls it, that she has tenderly cared for for four years and it is only about up to my waist now. I wish she could see these trees."

"I feel like the lady from Minnesota who came on a visit to Richmond and was so overcome by the magnolia trees. She remarked: 'I have never seen such large rubber plants.' But don't these palmetto trees have a strange swishy sound? They make me feel like 'somebody's a-comin',' kind of creepy."

Dee was peering into a garden belonging to one of the old houses that had not known paint since the Revolution. The garden, however, was not neglected but evidently cared for with loving hands. There were borders of snowdrops and violets; purple and white hyacinths primly marked the narrow gravel walk, and clumps of rhododendron and oleander were so well placed that one felt that a landscape gardener must have had the planting of them. Two large palmetto trees stood like sentinels on each side of the wrought-iron gate, which was hung from great square brick pillars. A ma.s.sive brick wall surrounded the garden with an uninviting coping of ferocious spikes.

We had our faces close to the grille trying to see a little more of the garden while the above conversation was going on. All of us longed to get in like Alice in Wonderland. How to do it was the problem!

If that we could see was so enchanting, what we couldn't see must be even more so.

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore ye pipes play on."

No doubt it was very rude of us to stand there peering in, but we were so enthralled by the beauty of the garden and so filled with the desire to get in that we forgot Mr. Manners entirely. Just as Dee said that the palmetto trees made her feel like somebody was coming, somebody did come. We heard a voice, a very irate voice indeed, behind the wall declaiming in masculine tones:

"There is no use in discussing the matter further, Claire! I tell you I shall never give my consent to Louis' going into such a profession.

Planting gardens, forsooth! That is work for negroes, negroes directed by women."

"But, papa, it is a very honorable profession, and Louis has such a love for flowers and such marvelous taste in arranging them. Just see what he has done for our garden! He could do the same for others, and already he is being sought by some of the wealthy persons of Charleston to direct the planting of their gardens."

The second voice evidently belonged to a young girl. There was a sweet girlishness about it and the soft, light accent of the Charlestonian was very marked. I don't know how to give an idea of how she said Charleston, but there was no R in it and in its place I might almost put an I. "Chailston" is as near as I can come and that seems 'way off.

"Bah! Pis.h.!.+ _Nouveau riches! Parvenues!_ What business have they to ask a Gaillard to dig in their dirt? It is not many generations since they have handled picks themselves and now they want to degrade one of the first Charleston families."

"But, papa, what is he to do? Louis is nineteen and you know there is no money for college. He cannot be idle any longer. He must have a profession."

It was a strange thing that three girls who prided themselves on being very honorable should have deliberately stopped there and listened to a conversation not intended for their ears, but in talking over the matter later we all agreed that we did not realize what we were doing. It seemed like a bit out of a play, somehow: the setting of the garden, the strange ante-bellum sentiments of the old gentleman and all.

"What is he to do? There have never been but three ways for a gentleman to earn a living: the Church, Law, the Army. Now, of course, the last avenue is closed to a Southern gentleman as he could hardly ally himself with the enemies of his land. The Church and the Law are all that are left for one of our blood. Since, as you are so quick to inform me, there is no money for Louis to go to college and a degree is quite necessary for one expecting to advance himself by practice of law, I see nothing for him to do but go into the ministry."

"Louis be a preacher, papa! Why, he has not the least calling."

"He has more calling to occupy a pulpit than to be down on his hands and knees planting gardens for these vulgar Yankees."

"But, papa, what pulpit? Are we not Huguenots? Has not Louis been brought up in that faith and how could he preach any other? The Huguenot church here is the only one in the United States, and it has only forty members, and you know yourself now that so many of those members live in other cities that we often have a congregation of only six, counting our own family. There certainly is no room for him in that pulpit."

And then the old man did what men often do when they are worsted in an argument, he became very masculine and informed the girl that she had much better attend to her household duties and leave man's business to man.