CHAPTER XIV

THE CLERK OF THE COUNCIL

We had a wonderful time at the City Hall that afternoon with Louis. It was quite near our hotel, so Dee's agony over Louis' feelings about carfare was a.s.suaged.

My idea of a City Hall had always been that it was a very ugly and stiff place where City Fathers wrangled about sewerage and garbage collections, and whether they should or should not open up such and such a street or close such and such an alley,--a place where taxes were paid or evaded, and where one kicked about the size of the gas bill.

The Charleston City Hall was quite different. There may have been places where discontented persons contended about gas and taxes, but we did not see them. We were told that Charleston had but recently gone through what was a real riot on the subject of the election of the Mayor, but there was a dignity and peace breathing from the very stones of that old edifice that made us doubt the possibility of dissension having been within its walls.

City Fathers could not have mentioned such a thing as sewerage and garbage in the presence of those wonderful and august portraits and busts. As for opening streets that never had been opened before! Why do it? And alleys that had always been closed! Let well enough alone.

Louis Gaillard was quite a friend of the Clerk of the Council, a very scholarly and interesting young man with a French name, who was kindness itself in showing us the treasures of the City Hall. He knew and loved every one of them, and Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, could not have been more eloquent in praise of her jewels. He might well be proud of them, as I doubt there being a more complete collection of things of civic and historical interest in any City Hall in all the world, certainly not in America.

In the Mayor's office there hung a peculiarly interesting fragment of a painting by Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller. It was Queen Anne's hand resting on a crown. The rest of the picture had been cut away by some vandal after the wonderful painting had gone through various vicissitudes during the Revolutionary War. Queen Anne was always a dead, dull person to my mind, and the only thing that ever interested me about her was the fact that she did have a crown, and perhaps if the picture was to be destroyed the crown was about the most interesting part to preserve.

I don't want to sound like a guide-book, and I am afraid I might if I tell of all the treasures in that Council Chamber. I must mention Trumbull's portrait of Washington, however. It is very wonderful. The great general stands in Continental uniform by his white charger, every inch a soldier.

"It does not look exactly like the Gilbert Stuart portraits," said Dum.

"No," explained the young man ingenuously, "Stuart painted Washington after he had false teeth, and that changed his appearance a great deal.

This picture is valued at $100,000, but of course no money could induce the City of Charleston to part with it."

Then there was Healy's portrait of John C. Calhoun, a wonderful painting. Dum and Mrs. Green thought that from an artistic standpoint it was of more value than the Trumbull portrait of Washington. I am frankly ignorant of what is best in pictures, but I am trying to learn. I certainly liked the Healy portrait very much, though. The hands were wonderful, and Dum said that was a true test of painting; that if an artist was not a top-notcher he could not draw hands, and usually made the model sit on them or put them in his pocket, or if it happened to be a woman, covered them up with drapery. The Clerk of the Council seemed very much amused by Dum's remarks and delighted with her interest, and we noticed he addressed most of his explanations to her while we trailed along in their wake.

There was a portrait of Francis Marion which rather amused us, as he is dressed in uniform with a brigadier general's hat. Now we all knew that Marion never wore anything more tony than a c.o.o.n skin cap, and he looked as funny as Daniel Boone would painted in a Tuxedo with an opera hat.

Portraits of President Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, General Moultrie, Beauregard, Wade Hampton, and five mayors who held the civic reins of Charleston in troublous times adorn the walls. There were many other Charlestonians of note whom their city had delighted to honor, but I am afraid of getting too guide-booky if I dwell on them.

The cablegram Queen Victoria sent at the time of the earthquake, expressing her sympathy for the sufferers has been carefully preserved.

It is the original autograph copy, which, together with the letters from Mayor Courtney, Secretary of State Bayard, and E. J. Phelps, United States Minister to the Court of St. James, which were written in regard to obtaining the original message, are embodied in a book and handsomely bound. The message reads:

"To the President of the United States: I desire to express profound sympathy with the sufferers by the late earthquake, and await with anxiety further intelligence which, I hope, may show the effects to have been less disastrous than expected.

(Signed) "VICTORIA, REGINA."

We took leave of the very agreeable Clerk of the Council regretfully. He had been so pleasant, and was so interesting that we hoped we might see him again.

"It seems a sin," sighed Dum, "to meet such a nice man as that and never to see him again."

"I always feel that I am going to meet persons like again," said Mrs.

Green; "if not here, in the hereafter. Kindred souls must manage to get together or 'What's a heaven for?'"

"That's the way I like to think of heaven, a place where you find the persons you naturally like, not a place where you just naturally like all the persons you meet. I don't see why just because you are good enough to go to heaven you should lose all your discrimination. I could go to heaven a million years and not like Mabel Binks. Cat!" and Dum scowled.

"Who is Mabel Binks?" laughed Mrs. Green.

"Oh, she's a person Dee and I can't abide. Page hates her, too, only she won't say so. She was at Gresham with us the first year we were there, and she started in making a dead set at Zebedee and has kept it up ever since."

"Is she pretty?"

"Oh, she's handsome enough in a kind of oochy-koochy style, but she is too florid to suit me. There's a letter from her to Zebedee now. She's always writing to him and trying to get him into something or other."

"How do you know it's from her?" I asked.

I was not very joyful myself when our one-time schoolmate made too free with Mr. Tucker. I didn't really and truly think he cared a snap for her, but I well knew how persistent effort on the part of a designing female could eventually work wonders on the male heart.

"How do I know? I'd like to know who but Mabel Binks writes on burnt orange paper, with brown ink, with an envelope big enough to hold all the doc.u.ments in the City Hall, and that smelling like a demonstration counter of cheap perfumes. I'd hate to think Zebedee could put up with two female admirers as gaudy as she is."

Dum always stormed like that when Mabel Binks was in question, or any woman under fifty who happened to like her father. Dee was walking with Louis or she, too, would have joined in the tirade against their _bete noir_.

"I shouldn't think you would feel the slightest uneasiness about your father. I am sure you can trust his good taste if he should ever marry,"

and Mrs. Green drew Dum to her.

I didn't know about that. I thought it was quite possible for the wrong person to hoodwink Zebedee into not knowing his taste from hers. I had been brought up by Mammy Susan, who was somewhat of a cynic in her way, and she used to say:

"Th' ain't no countin' on what kin' er wife a widderman is goin' ter pick out. One thing you may be sho' of, a man nebber picks out two alike. If the fus' one was tall an' thin the nex' one is sho' ter be sho't an' fat. I tell yer, men is pow'ful weak an' women is mighty 'suadin'."

That phrase that Mammy Susan was so fond of, "Men is weak an' women is 'suadin'," made me tremble sometimes for what the father of the twins might do. He had talked to me about marrying again, and had given me to understand many times that Mabel Binks was not his style, but sometimes I used to think that maybe "he doth protest too much."

We were missing Zebedee greatly, and were very glad when we got back to the hotel to learn from a long distance message that he would be with us the next morning.

CHAPTER XV

WHO WON THE BET?

We arrived at the Misses Laurens, bag and baggage, at the appointed hour. Those ladies greeted us with studied courtesy, but it was evident from their manner that they looked upon us as Yankee invaders. The fact that Tweedles and I were from Virginia and Mrs. Green from Kentucky, all of us with as good Confederate records as one could wish, had no weight with them. We were all clumped as Northerners in their minds. But we were guests under their ancestral roof and must be treated with punctilious politeness.

Tweedles and I were shown into two large adjoining rooms, the Greens across the hall from us, with a room beyond theirs for Mr. Tucker. The beds were great four-posters that looked as though there should be little stepladders furnished to climb into them, like those the porter brings you to scramble into an upper berth.

"Just 'spose you should fall out of bed! 'Twould be sure death,"

declared Dee.

"Look at this mahogany candle-stand! Did you ever in all your life see anything quite so lovely? And look, only look at this silver candlestick! It looks like it had been looted from some old Spanish church," and Dum reverently picked up the heavy old silver to examine the quaint design beaten around its base.

"But this wardrobe! I'm sure there's a skeleton in it hiding behind rustling old silks. It is big enough to go to housekeeping in. I wonder if Miss Arabella and Miss Judith ever played in it when they were children."

"Old Page, always romancing."

"Well, if anyone is ever going to romance she would do it here. It smells like romance even. I know there are jars of dried rose leaves in every room. I am sure there is lavender in the sheets and I am positive there is a ghost around somewhere."

"Can you smell it, too? How does a ghost smell? Not like a rat, I hope,"

teased Dee.