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 massive 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.
"I have often thought about this woman," said Claire, in her light, musical voice. "I have an idea that she must have been very hard-worked and perhaps longed for a few more minutes in bed every morning, and maybe the husband routed her out, and when she died perhaps he felt sorry he had not given her more rest."
"You hear that, Page?" asked Dum. "You had better have some mercy on me now. I may 'shuffle off this mortal coil' at any minute, and you will be so sorry you didn't let me sleep just a little while longer." (It had been my job ever since I started to room with the Tucker twins to be the waker-up. It was a thankless job, too, and no sinecure.) "See that my little brass bed is kept shiny, Zebedee dear."
"I wonder why it is that no one ever seems to feel very sad or quiet in old, old graveyards?" I asked, all of us laughing at Dum's brass bed.
"I think it is because all the persons who suffered at the death of the persons buried there are dead, too. No one feels very sorry for the dead; it is the living that are left to mourn. Old cemeteries are to me the most peaceful and cheerful spots one can visit," said Zebedee, leaning over to decipher some quaint epitaph.
"I think so, too!" exclaimed Claire, who had fitted herself into our crowd with delightful ease. "New graves are the ones that break my heart."
Louis turned away to hide his emotion. He had been too near to the Great Divide that very morning for talk of new-made graves and the sorrow of loved ones not to move him.
There was much of interest in that old burying ground, and Louis proved an excellent cicerone. He told us that the church was started in 1752; that the bells and organ and clock were imported from England, and that the present organ had parts of the old organ incorporated in it. The bells were seized during the Revolution and shipped and sold in England, where they were purchased by a former Charleston merchant and shipped back again. During the Civil War they were sent to Columbia for safekeeping, but were so badly injured when Columbia was burned that they had to be again sent to England and recast in the original mold. They chimed out the hour while Louis was telling us about them as though to prove to us their being well worth all the trouble to which they had put the worthy citizens of Charleston.
"Saint Philip's next, while we are in the churchly spirit," said Louis; "and then the Huguenot church."
St. Philip's was a little older than St. Michael's. The chimes for that church were used for making cannon for the Confederacy, and for lack of funds up to the present time they have not been replaced. On top of the high steeple is a beacon light by which the ships find their way into the harbor.
We had noticed at the hotel, both at our very early breakfast and at luncheon, a very charming couple who had attracted us greatly and who, in turn, seemed interested in us. The man was a scholarly person with kind, brown eyes, a very intelligent, comely countenance, and a tendency to baldness right on top that rather added to his intellectual appearance. His wife was quite pretty, young, and with a look of race and breeding that was most striking. Her hair was red gold, and she had perhaps the sweetest blue eyes I had ever beheld. Her eyes just matched her blue linen shirtwaist. What had attracted me to the couple was not only their interesting appearance, but the fact that they seemed to have such a good time together. They talked not in the perfunctory way that married persons often do, but with real spirit and interest.
As we entered the cemetery of St. Philip's, across the street from the church, we met this couple standing by the sarcophagus of the great John C. Calhoun. The lady bowed to us sweetly, acknowledging, as it were, having seen us in the hotel. We of course eagerly responded, delighted at the encounter. We had discussed them at length, and almost decided they were bride and groom; at least Tweedles had, but I thought not. They were too much at their ease to be on their first trip together, I declared, and of course got called a would-be author for my assertion.
"I hear there is a wonderful portrait of Calhoun by Healy in the City Hall," said the gentleman to Zebedee, as he courteously moved for us to read the inscription on the sarcophagus.
"Yes, so I am told, but this young man who belongs to this interesting city can tell us more about it," and in a little while all of us were drawn into conversation with our chance acquaintances.
Louis led us through the cemetery, telling us anything of note, and then we followed him to the Huguenot church, accompanied by our new friends.
A Huguenot church has stood on the site of the present one since 1667. Many things have happened to the different buildings, but the present one, an edifice of unusual beauty and dignity, has remained intact since 1845. The preacher, a dear old man of over eighty, who is totally blind, has been pastor of this scanty flock for almost fifty years. He now conducts the service from memory, and preaches wonderful, simple sermons straight from his kind old heart.
"Oh, Edwin, see what wonderful old names are on these tablets," enthused the young wife—"Mazyck, Ravenel, Porcher, de Sasure, Huger, Cazanove, L'Hommedieu, Marquand, Gaillard——"
"Yes, dear, they sound like an echo from the Old World."
"This Gaillard is our great, great grandfather, isn't he, Louis?" asked Claire. "My brother knows so much more about such things than I do."
"Oh, is your name Gaillard?"
And then the introductions followed, Zebedee doing the honors, naming all of us in turn; and then the gentleman told us that his name was Edwin Green and introduced his wife.
I fancy Claire and Louis had not been in the habit of picking up acquaintances in this haphazard style, and the sensation was a new and delightful one to them. The Tuckers and I always did it. We talked to the people we met on trains and in parks, and many an item for my notebook did I get in this way. Zebedee says he thinks it is all right just so you don't pick out some flashy flatterer. Of course we never did that, but confined our chance acquaintances to women and children or nice old men, whose interest was purely fatherly. Making friends as we had with Louis was different, as there was nothing to do but help him; and his sex and age were not to be considered at such a time.
"Are you to be in Charleston long?" asked Zebedee of Mr. Green.
"I can't tell. We are fascinated by it, but long to get out of the hotel and into some home."
"If I knew of some nice quiet place, I would put my girls there for a few days while I run over to Columbia on business. I can't leave them alone in the hotel."
"I should love to look after them, if you would trust me," said Mrs. Green, flushing for fear Zebedee might think her pushing.
"Trust you! Why, you are too kind to make such an offer!" exclaimed Zebedee.
"We have some friends who have just opened their house for—for—guests," faltered Claire. "They live only a block from us, and are very lovely ladies. We heard only this morning that they are contemplating taking someone into their home." Tweedles and I exchanged glances; mine was a triumphant one. The would-be author had hit the nail on the head again. "Their name is Laurens." I knew it would be before Claire spoke.
"Oh, Miss Gaillard, if you could introduce us to those ladies we would be so grateful to you!" said Zebedee. "You would like to stay there, wouldn't you, girls?"
"And Mrs. Green perhaps will decide to go there, too, and she will look after you, will you not, Mrs. Green?"
"I should be so happy to if the girls would like to have me for a chaperone."
"Oh, we'd love it! We've never had a chaperone in our lives but once, and she got married," tweedled the twins.
And so our compact was made, and Claire promised to see the Misses Laurens in regard to our becoming her "paying guests."
Mr. Green, who, as we found out afterward, was a professor of English at the College of Wellington and had all kinds of degrees that entitled him to be called Doctor, seemed rather amused at his wife's being a chaperone.
"She seems to me still to be nothing but a girl herself," he confided to Zebedee, "although we have got a fine big girl of our own over a year old, whom we have left in the care of my mother-in-law while we have this much talked-of trip together."
"Oh, have you got a baby? Do you know, Dum and I just stood Page down that you were bride and groom!"
"Molly, do you hear that? These young ladies thought we were newlyweds."
"I didn't!"
"And why didn't you?" smiled the young wife.
"I noticed you gave separate orders at the table and did not have to pretend to like the same things. I believe a bride and groom are afraid to differ on even such a thing as food."
"Oh, Edwin, do you hear that? Do you remember the unmerciful teasing Kent gave you at Fontainbleu because you pretended to like the mustard we got on our roast beef in the little English restaurant, just because I like English mustard?"
"Yes, I remember it very well, and I also remember lots of other things at Fontainbleu besides the mustard."
Mrs. Green blushed such a lovely pink at her husband's words that we longed to hear what he did remember.
"Kent is my brother—Kent Brown."
"Oh! Oh!" tweedled the twins. "Are you Molly Brown of Kentucky?"
"Yes, I was Molly Brown of Kentucky."
"And did you go to Wellington?" I asked.
"Yes, and I still go there, as my husband has the chair of English at Wellington."
"Girls! Girls! To think of our meeting Molly Brown of Kentucky! We have been hearing of you all winter from our teacher of English at Gresham, Miss Ball."
"Mattie Ball! I have known her since my freshman year at college. Edwin, you remember Mattie Ball, do you not?"
"Of course I do. An excellent student! She had as keen an appreciation of good literature as anyone I know of."
"She used to tell us that she owed everything she knew to her professor of English at Wellington," said Dee, who knew how to say the right thing at the right time, and Professor Green's pleased countenance was proof of her tact.
Then Mrs. Green had to hear all about Miss Ball and the fire at Gresham, which Tweedles related with great spirit, laying rather too much stress on my bravery in arousing the school.
"I deserve no more credit than did the geese whose hissing aroused the Romans in ancient times," I declared. "Why don't you tell them how you got Miss Plympton out of the window in her pink pajamas?"
The Greens laughed so heartily at our adventures that we were spurred on to recounting other happenings, telling of the many scrapes we had got ourselves in. Claire listened in open-eyed astonishment.
"It must be lovely to go to boarding-school," she said wistfully.
"It sounds lovelier than it is. We tell about the scrapes and the fun, but there are lots of times when it is nothing but one stupid thing after another. It's lots lovelier just to be at home with your father."
Claire shook her head doubtfully, and, remembering her father, we did not wonder at her differing with Dum.
"I have always held that home was the place for girls until they were old enough for college," said Mrs. Green. "That is, if they mean to go to college."
"But we don't!"
Zebedee and Professor Green had walked on ahead. Louis was sticking close to Dee, so close that Dum whispered to me that he must think she had him on a leash. Claire and Dum and I were having the pleasure of flocking around Mrs. Green.
"You see, we haven't got a piece of mother among us, and we had to go somewhere, as Zebedee—that's our father, you know—had his hands so full of us he couldn't ply his trade of getting out newspapers. Dee and I are some improved since we first were sent off to school, and now that Gresham is burned, we don't want to break into a new school. I tell you, it is some job to break into a school. Page Allison lives in the country, and she had to go to boarding-school or not at all."
"Well, why don't you go to college now? Wellington would just suit you, I am sure."
"Somehow I have never been crazy to go to college. I want to do something else. You see, I want to model. I feel as though I just had to get my hands in clay and form things out of it."
"And you?" said the sweet young woman, turning to me.
This Molly Brown of Kentucky certainly had the charm of sympathy. You found yourself telling her all kinds of things that you just couldn't help telling her. She seemed so interested, and her eyes were so blue and so true.
"Oh, I mean to be a writer!" I blurted out. "That's the reason I don't want to go to college. If I am going to write, I had better just write, I think, and not wear myself to a frazzle over higher mathematics."
"That's the way I used to feel. The only good I could ever get out of that hated study was just knowing I had done my best. My best seemed so feeble by the side of the real mathematicians that it was a constant mortification to me. I used to call mathematics my hair shirt. No matter how well I got along in other things, I was always conscious of a kind of irritation that I was going to fail in that. I just did squeeze through in the end, and that was by dint of wet towels around my head and coaching and encouragement from my friends. I think it is quite natural to dislike a subject that always makes you appear at your worst. Certainly we are not fond of people who put us in that position!"
I might have known our new friend would hate mathematics. I have never yet been attracted very much by any woman who did get along very well in it, except, of course, Miss Cox. I don't mean to say that female mathematicians cannot be just as lovely and charming as any other females, but I mean that I have never hit it off with them, somehow.
"What are you going to write?" asked Claire.
"Write short stories and long novels, when I find myself. I'm still flopping around in a sea of words. Don't you write, Mrs. Green? It seems to me Miss Ball said you did."
"Yes, I write a little—that is, I write a lot, but I have published only a little. I send and send to magazine after magazine. Every mail is an event to me—either it brings back a manuscript or it doesn't bring one, and sometimes it brings an acceptance slip, and then I carry on like one demented. Edwin says he is jealous of the postman and wishes Uncle Sam would have women deliver the mail."
"It must be wonderful to get into a magazine. My only taste of it is seeing myself in print in our school paper. Don't you write poetry, Mrs. Green?"
"Well, I have melted into verse, but I think prose is more in my line. The first money I ever made was a prize for a real estate advertisement in poetry, and of course after that I thought that I must 'lisp in numbers' on all occasions; but it was always lisping. And you—do you write poetry, too?"
"Yes, she does," broke in Dum; "and Zebedee thinks it is bully poetry. He said he was astonished that she could do it. And he is a newspaper writer and knows."
"I am sure he does. Some day we will have a tournament of poetry, and you will show me yours and I will show you mine. And you, Miss Gaillard? Are you counting upon going to college?"
Mrs. Green turned to Claire, who had been very quiet as we strolled along Church Street, on our way to Washington Park, which is a small enclosure by the City Hall.
"Oh, no, I—I will not pursue my studies any more. I keep house for my father, who does not approve of higher education for women," and the girl sighed in spite of herself. "I could not go, anyhow," she continued, "as Louis and papa need me at home."
Not one word of lack of money, which we knew was an insurmountable obstacle with the Gaillards, but I believe a Charlestonian would as soon speak of lack of ancestry as lack of money. Money is simply something they don't mention except in the bosom of the family. They don't mention ancestry much, either; not nearly as much as Virginians do. They seem to take for granted that anyone they are on speaking terms with must be well born or how did they get to be on speaking terms?
The Gaillards left us at Washington Park as Claire thought she must hurry back to her papa, who no doubt by that time was in a fret and a fume over her long, unexplained absence. Mr. Gaillard was the type of man who thought a woman's place was in her home from morning until night, and any little excursion she might make from her home must be in pursuit of his, the male's, happiness. Claire promised to see the Misses Laurens and find out from them if we could get board in their very exclusive home. Louis asked to be allowed to take us to other points of interest on the morrow, and with feelings of mutual esteem we parted.