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 massive 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! Pish! _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.
"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 assume.
"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 incumbent," I suggested. "I'd
love to know Claire. Didn't she sound spunky 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 spunk 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.