Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE GHOST GIRL
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Sea Plunder $1.30 net
The Gold Trail $1.30 net
The Pearl Fishers $1.30 net
The Presentation $1.30 net
The New Optimism $1.00 net
Poppyland $2.00 net
The Poems of Francois Villon
Translated by
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
Boards $3.00 net
Half Morocco $7.50 net
THE GHOST GIRL
BY
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
AUTHOR OF
"THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF," "SEA PLUNDER,"
"THE PEARL FISHERS," "THE GOLD TRAIL," ETC.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: S. B GUNDY--MCMXVIII
Copyright, 1918
By JOHN LANE COMPANY
PRESS OF
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON, N. Y.
U. S. A.
THE GHOST GIRL
PART I
CHAPTER I
It was a warm, grey, moist evening, typical Irish weather, and Miss
Berknowles was curled up in a window-seat of the library reading a book.
Kilgobbin Park lay outside with the rooks cawing in the trees, miles of
park land across which the dusk was coming, blotting out all things from
Arranakilty to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.
The turf fire burning on the great hearth threw out a rich steady glow
that touched the black oak panelling of the room, the book backs, and the
long-nosed face of Sir Nicholas Berknowles "attributed to Lely" and
looking down at his last descendant from a dusty canvas on the opposite
wall.
The girl made a prettier picture. Red hair when it is of the right colour
is lovely, and Phylice Berknowles' hair was of the right red, worn in a
tail--she was only fifteen--so long that she could bite the end with ease
and comfort when she was in a meditative mood, a habit of perdition that
no schoolmistress could break her of.
She was biting her tail now as she read, up to her eyes in the marvellous
story of the Gold Bug, and now, unable to read any more by the light from
the window, she came to the fire, curled herself on the hearthrug and
continued the adventures of the treasure-seekers by the light of the
burning turf.
What a pretty face it was, seen by the full warm glow of the turf, and
what a perfectly shaped head! It was not the face and head of a Berknowles
as you could easily have perceived had you compared it with the portraits
in the picture gallery, but of a Mascarene.
Phyl's mother had been a Mascarene, a member of the old, adventurous
family that settled in Virginia when Virginia was a wilderness and spread
its branches through the Carolinas when the Planter was king of the South.
Red hair had run among the Mascarenes, red hair and a wild spirit that
brooked no contradiction and knew no fear. Phyl had inherited something of
this restless and daring spirit. She had run away from the Rottingdean
Academy for the Daughters of the Nobility and Gentry where she had been
sent at the age of twelve; making her way back to Ireland like a homing
pigeon, she had turned up one morning at breakfast time, quite unshaken by
her experiences of travel and with the announcement that she did not like
school.
Had her mother been alive the traveller would have been promptly returned,
but Phyl's father, good, easy man, was too much taken up with agrarian
disputes, hunting, and the affairs of country life to bother much about
the small affair of his daughter's future and education. He accepted her
rejection of his plans, wrote a letter of apology to the Rottingdean
Academy, and hired a governess for her. She wore out three in eighteen
months, declared herself dissatisfied with governesses and competent to
finish the process of educating and polishing herself.
This she did with the aid of all the books in the library, old Dunn, the
rat-catcher of Arranakilty, a man profoundly versed in the habits of
rodents and birds, Larry the groom, and sundry others of low estate but
high intelligence in matters of sport and woodcraft.
Now it might be imagined from the foregoing that hardihood,
self-assertion, and other unpleasant characteristics would be indicated in
the manner and personality of this lover of freedom and rebel against
restraint. Not at all. She was a most lovable and clinging person, when
she could get hold of anything worth clinging to, with a mellifluous Irish
voice at once soothing and distracting, a voice with pockets in it but not
a trace of a brogue or only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she
spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used the word "sure" in a
manner strange to the English.
She had reached the point in the "Gold Bug" where Jupp is threatening to
beat Legrand, when, laying the book down beside her on the hearthrug, she
sat with her hands clasping her knees and her eyes fixed on the fire.
The tale had suddenly lost interest. She was thinking of her dead father,
the big, hearty man who had gone to America only eight weeks ago and who
would never return. He had gone on a visit to some of his wife's people,
fallen ill, and died.
Phyl could not understand it at all. She had cried her heart out amongst
the ruins of her little world, but she could not understand why it had
been ruined, or what her father had done to be killed like that, or what
she had done to deserve such misery. The Reverend Peter Graham of
Arranakilty could explain nothing about the matter to her understanding.
She nearly died and then miraculously recovered. Acute grief often ends
like that, suddenly. The mourner may be maimed for life but the sharpness
of the pain of that dreadful, dreadful disease is gone.
Phyl found herself one morning discussing rats with old Dunn, asking him
how many he had caught in the barn and taking a vague sort of interest in
what the old fellow was saying; books began to appeal to her again and the
old life to run anew in a crippled sort of way. Then other things
happened. Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a crony of her
father's and who had known her from infancy, came down to Kilgobbin to
arrange matters.
It seemed that Mr. Berknowles before dying had made a will and that the
will was being brought over from the States by Mr. Pinckney, his wife's
cousin in whose house he had died.
"I'm sure I don't know what the chap wants coming over with it for," said
Mr. Hennessey. "He said it was by your father's request he was coming, but
it's a long journey for a man to take at this season of the year--and I
hope the will is all right."
There was an implied distrust in his tone and an antagonism to Mr.
Pinckney that was not without its effect on Phyl.
She disliked Mr. Pinckney. She had never seen him but she disliked him all
the same, and she feared him. She felt instinctively that this man was
coming to make some alteration in her way of life. She did not want any
change, she wanted to go on living just as she was with Mrs. Driscoll the
housekeeper to look after her and all the old servants to befriend her and
Mr. Hennessey to pay the bills.
Mr. Hennessey was in the house now. He had come down that morning from
Dublin to receive Mr. Pinckney, who was due to arrive that night.
Phyl, sitting on the hearthrug, was in the act of picking up her book when
the door opened and in came Mr. Hennessey.
He had been out in the grounds overlooking things and he came to the fire
to warm his hands, telling Phyl to sit easy and not disturb herself. Then,
as he held a big foot to the warmth he talked down at the girl, telling
her of what he had been about and the ruination Rafferty was letting the
greenhouses go to.
"Half-a-dozen panes of glass out--and 'I've no putty,' says he. 'Putty,'
said I to him, 'and what's that head of yours made of?' The stoves are all
out of order and there's a hole in one of the flues I could get my thumb
in."
"Rafferty's awfully good to the dogs," said Phyl in her mellow voice, so
well adapted for intercession. "He may be a bit careless, but he never
does forget to feed the animals. He's got the chickens to look after, too,
and then there's the beagles, he knows every dog in the pack and every dog
knows him--oh, dear, what's the good of it all!"
The thought of the beagles had brought up the vision of their master who
would never hunt with them again. Her voice became tinged with melancholy
and Hennessey changed the subject, taking his seat in one of the armchairs
that stood on either side of the fireplace.
He was a big, loosely-made man, an easy going man with a kind heart who
would have come to financial disaster long ago only for his partner,
Niven.
"He's almost due to be here by now," said he, taking out his watch and
looking at it, "unless the express from Dublin is late."
"What'll he be like, do you think?" said Phyl.
"There's no saying," replied Mr. Hennessey. "He's an American and I've
never had much dealings with Americans except by letter. By all accounts
they are sharp business men, but I daresay he is all right. The thing that
gets me is his coming over. Americans don't go thousands of miles for
nothing, but if it's after any hanky-panky business about the property,
maybe he'll find Jack Hennessey as sharp as any American."
"He's some sort of a relation of ours," said Phyl. "Father said he was a
sort of cousin."
"On your mother's side," said Hennessey.
"Yes," said Phyl. Then, after a moment's pause, "D'you know I've often
thought of all those people over there and wondered what they were like
and how they lived--my mother's people. Father used to talk of them
sometimes. He said they kept slaves."
"That was in the old days," said Hennessey. "The slaves are all gone long
ago. They used to have sugar plantations and suchlike, but the war stopped
all that."
"It's funny," said Phyl, "to think that my people kept slaves--my mother's
people--Oh, if one could only see back, see all the people that have gone
before one so long ago-- Don't you ever feel like that?"
Mr. Hennessey never had; his forebears had been liquor dealers in Athlone
and he was content to let them lie without a too close inquisition into
the romances of their lives.
"Mr. Hennessey," said Phyl, after a moment's silence, "suppose Father has
left Mr. Pinckney all his money--what will become of me?"
"The Lord only knows," said Hennessey; "but what's been putting such
fancies in your head?"
"I don't know," replied the girl. "I was just thinking. Of course he
wouldn't do such a thing--It's your talking of the will the last time you
were here set me on, I suppose, but I dreamed last night Mr. Pinckney came
and he was an American with a beard like Uncle Sam in _Punch_ last week,
and he said Father had made a will and left him everything--he'd left him
me as well as everything else, and the dogs and all the servants and
Kilgobbin--then I woke up."
"Well, you were dreaming nonsense," said the practical Hennessey. "A man
can't leave his daughter away from him, though I'm half thinking there's
many a man would be willing enough if he could."
Phyl raised her head. Her quick ear had caught a sound from the avenue.
Then the crash of wheels on gravel came from outside and her companion,
rising hurriedly from his chair, went to the window.
"That's him," said the easy-speaking Hennessey.
CHAPTER II
He left the room and Phyl, rising from the hearthrug, stood with her hand
on the mantelpiece listening.
Hennessey had left the door open and she could hear a confused noise from
the hall, the sound of luggage being brought in, the bustle of servants
and a murmur of voices.
Then a voice that made her start.
"Thanks, I can carry it myself."
It was the newcomer's voice, he was being conducted to his room by
Hennessey. It was a cheerful, youthful voice, not in the least suggestive
of Uncle Sam with the goatee beard as depicted by the unimaginative artist
of _Punch_. And it was a voice she had heard before, so she fancied, but
where, she could not possibly tell--nor did she bother to think,
dismissing the idea as a fancy.
She stood listening, but heard nothing more, only the wind that had risen
and was shaking the ivy outside the windows.
Byrne, the old manservant, came in and lit the lamps and then after a few
minutes Hennessey entered. He looked cheerful.
"He seems all right and he'll be down in a minute," said the lawyer; "not
a bit of harm in him, though I haven't had time to tackle him over money
affairs."
"How old is he?" asked the girl.
"Old! Why, he's only a boy, but he's got all a man's ways with him--he's
American, they're like that. I've heard say the American children order
their own mothers and fathers about and drive their own motor-cars and
gamble on the Stock Exchange." He pulled out his watch and looked at it;
it pointed to ten minutes past seven; then he lit a cigar and sat smoking
and smoking without a word whilst Phyl sat thinking and staring at the
fire. They were seated like this when the door opened and Byrne shewed in
Mr. Pinckney.
Hennessey had called him a boy. He was not that. He was twenty-two years
of age, yet he looked only twenty and you would not have been particularly
surprised if you had been told that he was only nineteen. Good-looking,
well-groomed and well-dressed, he made a pleasant picture, and as he came
across the room to greet Phyl he explained without speaking what Mr.
Hennessey meant about "all the manners of a man."
Pinckney's manner was the manner of a man of the world of thirty,
easy-going, assured, and decided.
He shook hands with Phyl as Hennessey introduced them, and then stood with
his back to the fireplace talking, as she took her seat in the armchair on
the right, whilst the lawyer remained standing, hands in pockets and foot
on the left corner of the fender.
The newcomer did most of the talking. By a downward glance every now and
then he included Phyl in the conversation, but he addressed most of his
remarks to Mr. Hennessey.
"And you came over by the Holyhead route?" said the lawyer.
"I did," replied Pinckney.
"And what did you think of Kingstown?"
"Well, upon my word, I saw less of it than of a gentleman with long hair
and a bundle of newspapers under his arm who received me like a mother
just as I landed, hypnotised me into buying half-a-dozen newspapers and
started me off for Dublin with his blessing."
"That was Davy Stevens," said Phyl, speaking for the first time.
Pinckney's entrance had produced upon her the same effect as his voice.
You know the feeling that some places produce on the mind when first
seen--
"I have been here before
But when or how I cannot tell
I know the lights along the shore--"
It seemed to her that she had known Pinckney and had met him in some
place, but when or how she could not possibly remember. The feeling had
almost worn off now. It had thrilled her, but the thrill had vanished and
the concrete personality of the man was dominating her mind--and not very
pleasantly.
There was nothing in his manner or his words to give offence; he was quite
pleasant and nice but--but--well, it was almost as though she had met some
one whom she had known and liked and who had changed.
The little jump of the heart that his voice caused in her had been
followed by a chill. His manner displeased her vaguely. He seemed so
assured, so every day, so cold.
It seemed to her that not only did he hold his entertainers at a critical
distance, but that he was somehow wanting in respectfulness to
herself--Lunatic ideas, for the young man could not possibly have been
more cordial towards two utter strangers and as for respectfulness, one
does not treat a girl in a pigtail exactly as one treats a full-grown
woman.
"Oh, Davy Stevens, was it?" said Pinckney, glancing down at Phyl. "Well, I
never knew the meaning of peaceful persuasion till he had sold out his
stock on me. Now in the States that man would likely have been President
by this--Things grow quicker over there."
"And what did you think of Dublin?" asked Hennessey.
"Well," said the young man, "the two things that struck me most about
Dublin were the dirt and the want of taxicabs."
A dead silence followed this remark.
Never tell an Irishman that Dublin is dirty.
Hennessey was dumb, and as for Phyl, she knew now that she hated this
man.
"Of course," went on the other, "it's a fine old city and I'm not sure
that I would alter it or even brush it up. I should think it's pretty much
the same to-day as when Lever wrote of it. It's a survival of the past,
like Nuremberg. All the same, one doesn't want to live in a survival of
the past--does one?"
"I've lived there a good many years," said Hennessey; "and I've managed to
survive it. It's not Chicago, of course; it's just Dublin, and it doesn't
pretend to be anything else."
"Just so," said Pinckney. He felt that he had put his foot in it;
recalling his own lightly spoken words he felt shocked at his want of
tact, and he was casting about for something to say about the sacred city
of a friendly nature but not too fulsome, when Byrne opened the door and
announced that dinner was served.
CHAPTER III
Phyl led the way and they crossed the hall to the dining-room, a room
oak-panelled like the library and warm with the light of fire and
candles.
Once upon a time there had been high doings in this sombre room, hunt
breakfasts and dinners, rousing songs, laughter, and the toasting of
pretty women--now dust and ashes.
Here highly coloured gentlemen had slept the sleep of the just, under the
table, whilst the ladies waited in vain for them in the drawing-room, here
Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning
over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor
Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the
Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put
standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held
forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did
to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne
had put the big silver candlesticks on the table in honour of the guest,
and he now appeared bearing in front of him a huge dish with a cover a
size too small for it.
He placed the dish before Mr. Hennessey and removed the cover, disclosing
a cod's "head and shoulders" whilst a female servant appeared with a dish
of potatoes boiled in their jackets and a tureen of oyster sauce.
Now a cod's head and shoulders served up like this in the good old Irish
way is, honestly, a ghastly sight. The thing has a countenance and an
expression most forbidding and all its own.
The appearance of the old dish cover, clapped on by the cook in a hurry in
default of the proper one, had given Phyl a turn and now she was wondering
what Mr. Pinckney was thinking of the fish and the manner of its serving.
All at once and as if stimulated into life by the presence of the new
guest, all sorts of qualms awoke in her mind. The dining arrangements of
the better class Irish are, and always have been, rather primitive,
haphazard, and lacking in small refinements. Phyl was conscious of the
fact that Byrne had placed several terrible old knives on the table,
knives that properly belonged to the kitchen, and when the second course,
consisting of a boiled chicken, faced by a piece of bacon reposing on a
mat of boiled cabbage, appeared, the fact that one of the dishes was
cracked confronted her with the equally obvious fact that the cook in her
large-hearted way had sent up the chicken with the black legs unremoved.
It seemed to Phyl's vision--now thoroughly distorted--that the eyes of the
stranger were everywhere, cool, critical, and amused; so obsessed was her
mind with this idea that it could take no hold upon the conversation.
Pinckney was talking of the States; he might just as well have been
talking about Timbuctoo for all the impression he made on her with her
unfortunate head filled with cracked dishes, chickens' black legs, Byrne's
awkwardness and the suddenly remembered crumb-brush.
It was twenty years old and it had lost half of its bristles in the
service of the Berknowles who had clung to it with a warm-hearted tenacity
purely Irish.
"Sure, that old brush is a disgrace to the table," was the comment Phyl's
father had made on it once, just as though he were casually referring to
some form of the Inevitable such as the state of the weather.
The disgrace had not been removed and it was coming to the table, now, in
the hand of Byrne. Phyl watched the crumbs being swept up, she watched the
cloth being taken off and the wine and dessert placed in the good old
fashion, on the polished mahogany, then leaving the gentlemen to their
wine, she retired upstairs and to her bedroom.
She felt angry with Byrne, with the cook, with Mr. Hennessey and with
herself. Plenty of people had been to dinner at Kilgobbin, yet she had
never felt ashamed of the _menage_ till now. This stranger from over the
water, notwithstanding her dislike for him, had the power to disturb her
mind as few other people had disturbed it in the course of her short life.
Other people had put her into worse tempers, other people had made her
dislike them, but no one else had ever roused her into this feeling of
unrest, this criticism of her belongings, this irritation against
everything including herself.
Her bedroom was a big room with two windows looking upon the park; it was
almost in black darkness, but the windows shewed in dim, grey oblongs and
she made her way to one of them, took her place in the window-seat and
pressed her forehead against the glass. The rain had ceased and the clouds
had risen, but the moon was not yet high enough to pierce them. Phyl could
just make out the black masses of the distant woods and the movement of
the near fir-trees shaking their tops like hearse plumes to the wind.
The park always fascinated her when it was like that, almost blotted out
by night. These shapes in the dark were akin to shapes in the fire in
their power over the fancy of the gazer. Phyl as she watched them was
thinking: not one word had this stranger said about her dead father.
Mr. Berknowles had died in his house and this man had buried him in
Charleston; he had come over here to Ireland on the business of the will
and he had come into the dead man's house as unconcernedly as though it
were an hotel, and he had laughed and talked about all sorts of things
with never a word of Him.
If Phyl had thought over the matter, she might have seen that, perhaps,
this silence of Pinckney's was the silence of delicacy, not of
indifference, but she was not in the humour to hold things up to the light
of reason. She had decided to dislike this man and when the Mascarenes
came to a decision of this sort they were hard to be shaken from it.
She had decided to dislike him long before she saw him.
What Phyl really wanted now was perhaps a commonsense female relative to
stiffen her mind against fancies and give her a clear-sighted view of the
world, but she had none. Philip Berknowles was the last of his race, the
few distant connections he had in Ireland lived away in the south and were
separated from him by the grand barrier that divides Ireland into two
opposing camps--Religion. Berknowles was a Protestant, the others
Papists.
Phyl, as she sat watching saw, now, the line of the woods strengthen
against the sky; the moon was breaking through the clouds and its light
increasing minute by minute shewed the parkland clearly defined, the
leafless oaks standing here and there, oaks that of a summer afternoon
stood in ponds of shadow, the clumps of hazel, and away to the west the
great dip, a little valley haunted by a fern-hidden river, a glen
mysterious and secretive, holding in its heart the Druids' altar.
The Druids' altar was the pride of Kilgobbin Park; it consisted of a vast
slab of stone supported on four other stones, no man knew its origin, but
popular imagination had hung it about with all sorts of gruesome fancies.
Victims had been slaughtered there in the old days, a vein of ironstone in
the great slab had become the bloodstain of men sacrificed by the Druids;
the glen was avoided by day and there were very few of the country people
round about who would have entered it by night. Phyl, who had no fear of
anything, loved the place; she had known it from childhood and had been
accustomed to take her worries and bothers there and bury them.
It was a friend, places can become friends and, sometimes, most terrific
enemies.
The girl listening, now, heard voices below stairs. Hennessey and his
companion were evidently leaving the dining-room and crossing the hall to
the library. Going out on the landing she caught a glimpse of them as they
stood for a moment looking at the trophies in the hall, then they went
into the library, the door was closed, and Phyl came downstairs.
In the hall she slipped on a pair of goloshes over her thin shoes, put on
a cloak and hat and came out of the front door, closing it carefully
behind her.
To put it in her own words, she couldn't stand the house any longer. Not
till this very evening did she feel the great change that her father's
death had brought in her life, not till now did she fully know that her
past was dead as well as her father, and not till she had left the house
did the feeling come to her that Pinckney was to prove its undertaker.
There was something alike cold and fateful in the impression that this man
had made upon her, an extraordinary impression, for it would be impossible
to imagine anything further removed from the ideas of Coldness and Fate
than the idea of the cheerful and practical Pinckney. However, there it
was, her heart was chilled with the thought of him and the instinctive
knowledge that he was going to make a great alteration in her life.
She crossed the gravelled drive to the grass sward beyond. The night had
altered marvellously; nearly every vestige of cloud had vanished, blown
away by the wind. The wind and the moon had the night between them and the
air was balmy as the air of summer.
Phyl turned and looked back at the house with all its windows glittering
in the moonlight, then she struck across the grass now almost dried by the
wind.
Phyl had something of the night bird in her composition. She had often
been out long before dawn to pick up night lines in the river and she knew
the woods by dark as well as by day. She was out now for nothing but a
breath of fresh air, she did not intend to stay more than ten minutes, and
she was on the point of returning to the house when a cry from the woods
made her pause.
One might have fancied that some human being was crying out in agony, but
Phyl knew that it was a fox, a fox caught in a trap. She was confirmed in
her knowledge by the barking of its mates; they would be gathered round
the trapped one lending all the help they could--with their voices.
The girl did not pause to think; forgetting that she had no weapon with
which to put the poor beast out of its misery, and no means of freeing it
without being bitten, she started off at a run in the direction of the
sound, entering the woods by a path that led through a grove of hazel;
leaving this path she struck westward swift as an Indian along the road of
the call.
Her mother's people had been used to the wilds, and Phyl had more than a
few drops of tracker blood in her veins; better than that, she had a trace
of the wood instinct that leads a man about the forest and makes him able
to strike a true line to the west or east or north or south without a
compass.
The trees were set rather sparsely here and the moonlight shewed vistas of
withered fern. The wind had fallen, and in the vast silence of the night
this place seemed unreal as a dream. The fox had evidently succeeded in
liberating itself from the trap, for its cries had ceased, cut off all of
a sudden as though by a closing door.
Phyl paused to listen and look around her. Through all the night from
here, from there, came thin traces of sound, threads fretting the silence.
The trotting of a horse a mile away on the Arranakilty road, the bark of a
dog from near the Round House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at
Ross' farm came distinct yet diminished almost to vanishing point. It was
like listening to the country sounds of Lilliput. With these came the
vaguest whisper of flowing water, broken now and again by a little shudder
of wind in the leafless branches of the trees.
"He's out," said Phyl to herself. She was thinking of the fox. She knew
that the trap must be somewhere about and she guessed who had set it.
Rafferty, without a doubt, for only the other day he had been complaining
of the foxes having raided the chickens, but there was no use in hunting
for the thing by this light and without any indication of its exact
whereabouts, so she struck on, determined to return to the house by the
more open ground leading through the Druids' glen.
She had been here before in the very early morning before sunrise on her
way to the river, Rafferty following her with the fish creel, but she had
never seen the place like this with the moonlight on it and she paused for
a moment to rest and think, taking her seat on a piece of rock by the
cromlech.
Phyl, despite her American strain, was very Irish in one particular:
though cheerful and healthy and without a trace of morbidness in her
composition, she, still, was given to fits of melancholy--not depression,
melancholy. It is in the air of Ireland, the moist warm air that feeds the
shamrock and fills the glens with soft-throated echoes and it is in the
soul of the people.
Phyl, seated in this favourite spot of hers, where she had played as a
child on many a warm summer's afternoon, gave herself over to the
moonlight and the spirit of Recollection.
She had forgotten Pinckney, and the strange disturbance that he had
occasioned in her mind had sunk to rest; she was thinking of her father,
of all the pleasant days that were no more--she remembered her dolls, the
wax ones with staring eyes, dummies and effigies compared with that
mysterious, soulful, sinful, frightful, old rag doll with the inked face,
true friend in affliction and companion in joy, and even more, a Ju-ju to
be propitiated. That thing had stirred in her a sort of religious
sentiment, had caused in her a thrill of worship real, though faint, far
more real than the worship of God that had been cultivated in her mind by
her teachers. The old Druid stone had affected her child's mind in
somewhat the same way, but with a difference. The Ju-ju was a familiar,
she had even beaten and punched it when in a temper; the stone had always
filled her with respect.
There are some people the doors of whose minds are absolutely closed on
the past; we call them material and practical people; there are others in
which the doors of division are a wee crack open, or even ajar, so that
their lives are more or less haunted by whisperings from that strange land
we call yesterday.
In some of the Burmese and Japanese children the doors stand wide open so
that they can see themselves as they were before they passed through the
change called death, but the Westerners are denied this. In Phyl's mind as
a child one might suppose that through the doors ajar some recollections
of forgotten gods once worshipped had stolen, and that the power of the
Ju-ju and the Druids' stone lay in their power of focussing those vague
and wandering threads of remembrance.
To-night this power seemed regained, for she passed from the contemplation
of concrete images into a vague and pleasant state, an absolute idleness
of the intellect akin to that which people call daydreaming.
With her cloak wrapped round her she sat, elbows on knees and her chin in
the palms of her hands giving herself up to Nothing before starting to
resume her way to the house.
Sitting like this she suddenly started and turned. Some one had called
her:
"Phylice!"
For a moment she fancied that it was a real voice, and then she knew that
it was only a voice in her head, one of those sounds we hear when we are
half asleep, one of those hails from dreamland that come now as the
ringing of a bell that never has rung, or the call of a person who has
never spoken.
She rose up and resumed her way, striking along the glen to the open park,
yet still the memory of that call pursued her.
"Phylice!"
It seemed Mr. Pinckney's voice, it _was_ his voice, she was sure of that
now, and she amused herself by wondering why his voice had suddenly popped
up in her head. She had been thinking about him more than about any one
else that evening and that easily accounted for the matter. Fancy had
mimicked him--yet why did Fancy use her name and clothe it in Pinckney's
voice?--and it was distinctly a call, the call of a person who wishes to
draw another person's attention.
Pinckney had never called her by her name and she felt almost irritated at
the impertinence of the phantom voice in doing so.
This same irritation made her laugh when she realised it. Then the idea
that Byrne might lock the hall door before she could get back drove every
other thought away and she began to run, her shadow running before her
over the moonlit grass.
Half way across the sward, which was divided from the grass land proper by
a Ha-ha, she heard the stable clock striking eleven.
CHAPTER IV
When Phyl withdrew from the dining-room, Hennessey filled his glass with
port, Pinckney, who took no wine, lit a cigarette and the two men drew
miles closer to one another in conversation.
They were both relieved by the withdrawal of the girl, Hennessey because
he wanted to talk business, Pinckney because her presence had affected him
like a wet blanket.
His first impression of Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little,
her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him.
It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward
schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught
in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or
hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He
did not at all know with what a burning interest his arrival had been
awaited, or the effect that his voice had produced and his first
appearance. He did not know how the dull schoolgirl had weighed him in a
mysterious balance which she herself did not quite comprehend and had
found him slightly wanting. Neither could he tell the extent of the
paralyses produced in that same mind of hers by the cracked china, the old
dish cover, Byrne's awkwardness, and the deboshed crumb-brush.
He should have kept to his first impression of her, for first impressions
are nearly always right; he should have sought for the reason of so much
charm proving charmless, so much positive attraction proving so negative
in effect. But he did not. He just took her as he found her and was glad
she was gone.
"And I believe," said Hennessey, "the South is different now. It used to
be all cotton before the war."
"Oh, no," said Pinckney. "Before the war there was a lot of cotton grown
but we used to grow other things as well, we used to feed ourselves, the
plantation was economically independent. The war broke us. We had to get
money, so we grew cotton as cotton was never grown before; the South
became a great sheet of cotton. You see, cotton is the only crop you can
mortgage, so we grew cotton and mortgaged it. Of course the old-time
planter is gone, everything is done now by companies, and that's the devil
of it--"
Pinckney was silent for a moment and sat staring before him as though he
were looking at the Past.
"Companies, you see, don't grow sunflowers to look at, don't grow trees to
shade them, don't make love in a wild and extravagant manner and shoot
other companies for crossing them in their affections--don't play the
guitar, in short.
"Companies don't breed trotting horses and wear panama hats and put
flowers in their buttonholes. The old Planter used to do these things and
a lot of others. He was a bit of a patriarch in his way, too--well, he's
gone and more's the pity. He's like an old house pulled down. No one can
ever build it again as it was. The South's a big industrial region now.
Not only cotton--ore and coal and machinery. We supply the North and East
with pig-iron, machinery, God knows what. Berknowles was very keen on
Southern industries, regularly bitten. He was talking of selling off here
and coming to settle in Charleston when the illness took him-- and that
reminds me."
He took a document from his pocket. "This is the will. I've kept it on my
person since I started for here. It's not the thing to trust to a handbag.
It's in correct form, I believe. Temperley, our solicitor, made it out for
him and it leaves everything to the girl when she's twenty--but just read
it and see what you think."
He lit another cigarette whilst Hennessey, putting on his glasses and
pushing his dessert plate away, spread the will on the table.
Pinckney watched him as he read it. Hennessey was a new order of being to
him. This easy-going, slipshod, garrulous gentleman, fond of his glass of
wine, contrasted strangely with the typical lawyer of the States. Flushed
and not in his business mood, the man of law cast his eyes over the
document before him, reading bits of it here and there and seeming not
inclined to bother himself by a concentration of his full energies on the
matter.
Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed on a paragraph which he re-read as
though puzzled by the meaning of it. Then he looked up at the other over
his glasses.
"Why, what's this?" said he. "He has made _you_ Phyl's guardian. _You!_"
Pinckney laughed.
"Yes, that was the chief thing that brought me over. He has made me her
guardian, till she's twenty, and he made me promise to look after her
interests and see to all business arrangements. He said he had no near
relations in Ireland, and he said that he'd sooner trust the devil than
the few relatives he had, that they were Papists--that is to say Roman
Catholics--he seemed to fear them like the deuce and their influence on
the girl. I couldn't understand him. I've never seen any harm in Roman
Catholics; there are loads in the States and they seem to be just as good
citizens as the others, better, for they seem to stick tighter by their
religion. Anyhow, there you are. Berknowles had them on the brain and
nothing would do him but I must come over to look after the business
myself."
Hennessey, with his finger on the will, had been staring at Pinckney
during this. He looked down now at the document and then up again.
"But you--her guardian--why, it's absurd," said he. "You aren't old enough
to be a guardian, why, Lord bless my soul, what'll people be doing next? A
young chap like you to be the guardian of a girl like Phyl--why, it's not
proper."
"Not only am I to be her guardian," said Pinckney with a twinkle in his
eyes, "but she's to come and live under my roof at Charleston. I promised
Berknowles that--He was dying, you see, and one can refuse nothing to a
dying man."
Hennessey rose up in an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard,
poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat down again.
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" said Pinckney, tapping the ash off his
cigarette. "All the same, you need not be worried at the impropriety of
the business; there's none, nothing improper could live in the same house
with my aunt, Maria Pinckney. Vernons belongs to her though I live
there."
"Vernons," put in the other. "What's that?"
"It's the name of our house in Charleston. It's mine, really, but my
father left it to Maria to live in; it comes to me at her death. I don't
want that house at all. I want her to keep it forever, but it's such a
pleasant old place, I like to live there instead of buying a house of my
own. Vernons isn't exactly a house, it's more like a family
tree--hollow--with all the ancestors inside instead of hanging on the
branches."
"But why on earth didn't Berknowles make your aunt guardian to the girl?"
asked Hennessey. "There'd have been some sense in that--a middle-aged
woman--"
"I beg your pardon," said Pinckney, "my aunt is not a middle-aged woman,
she's not fifteen."
"Not what?" said Hennessey.
"Not fifteen--in years of discretion, though she's over seventy as time
goes. She has no knowledge at all of what money is or what money
means--she flings it away, doesn't spend it--just flings it away on
anything and everything but herself. I don't believe there's a charity in
the States that hasn't squeezed her, or a beggar-man in the South that
hasn't banked on her. She was sent into the world to grow flowers and look
after stray dogs and be robbed by hoboes; she has been nearly seventy
years at it and she doesn't know she has ever been robbed. She's not a
fool by any manner of means, and she rules the servants at Vernons in the
good old patriarchal way, but she's lost where money is concerned. That's
why Berknowles wanted me to look after the girl's interests. As for
anything else, I guess Maria Pinckney will be the real guardian."
"Well, I don't know," said Hennessey. He was confused by all these new
ideas shot into his mind suddenly like this after dinner, he could see
that Pinckney was genuine enough, all the same it irritated him to think
that Philip Berknowles should have chosen a youth like this to be second
father to Phyl. What was the matter with himself, Hennessey? Hadn't he a
fine house in Merrion Square and a wife who would have treated the girl
like a daughter?
"Well, I don't know," said he. "It's not for me to dispute the wishes of a
client, but I've known Phyl since she was born and I've known her father
since we were together at Trinity College and I'd have taken it more
handsome if he'd left the looking after of her to me."
"I wonder he didn't," said Pinckney. "He spoke of you a good deal to me,
spoke of you as his best friend; all the same he seemed set on the idea of
us taking care of the girl. He fell in love with Charleston and he
cottoned to us; then, of course, there were the family reasons. Phyl's
mother was a Mascarene; my mother was her mother's first cousin. Vernons
belonged to the Mascarenes, my mother brought it to my father as part of
her wedding portion. The Pinckneys' old house was lost to us in the smash
up after the war. So, you see, Phyl ought to be as much at home at Vernons
as I am. Funny, isn't it, how things get mixed up and old family houses
change hands?"
"And when do you want to take her away?" asked Hennessey.
"Upon my word, I've never thought of that," replied the other. "I want to
see things settled up here and to go over the accounts with you.
Berknowles said the house had better be let--I should think it would be
easy to find a good tenant--then I want to go to London on business and
get back as quick as possible. She need not come back with me, it would
scarcely give her time to get things ready. There's a Mrs. Van Dusen, a
friend of ours who lives in New York, she's coming over in a month or so
and Phyl might come with her as far as New York. It's all plain sailing
after that."
"Well," said Hennessey, folding up the will and putting it in his pocket.
"I suppose it's all for the best, but it's hard lines for a man to lose
his best friend and see a good old estate like Kilgobbin taken off to the
States--Oh, you needn't tell me, if Phyl goes out there she's done for as
far as Ireland is concerned. Sure, they never come back, the people that
go there, and if she does come back it'll be with an American husband and
he master of Kilgobbin. I know what America is, it never lets go of the
man or woman it catches hold of."
"You're not far wrong there," said Pinckney. "You see, life is set to a
faster pace in America than over here and once you learn to step that pace
you feel coming back here as if you were living in a country where people
are hobbled. At least that's my experience. Then the air is different.
There's somehow a feeling of morning in America that goes through the
whole day--almost--here, afternoon begins somewhere about eleven."
Hennessey yawned, and the two men, rising from the table, left the room
and crossed the hall to the library.
Here, after a while, Hennessey bade the other good night and departed for
bed, whilst Pinckney, leaning back in his armchair, fell into a lazy and
contemplative mood, his eyes wandering from point to point.
All this business was very new to him. Pinckney had inherited his father's
brains as well as his money. He had discovered that a large fortune
requires just as much care and attention as a large garden and that a man
can extract just as much interest and amusement and the physical health
that comes from both, out of money-tending as out of flower and vegetable
growing. Knowing all about cotton and nearly everything about wheat, he
managed occasionally to do a bit of speculative dealing without the least
danger of burning his fingers. Self-reliant and self-assured, knowing his
road and all its turnings, he had moved through life up to this with the
ease of a well-oiled and almost frictionless mechanism.
But here was a new thing of which he had never dreamed. Here was another
destiny suddenly thrust into his charge and another person's property to
be conserved and dealt with. Never, never, did he dream when acceding to
Berknowles' request, of the troubles, little difficulties and causes of
indecision that were preparing to meet him.
Up till now, one side of his character had been almost unknown to him. He
had been quite unaware that he possessed a conscience most painfully
sensitive with regard to the interests of others, a conscience that would
prick him and poison his peace were he to leave even little things undone
in the fulfilment of the trust he had undertaken so lightheartedly.
Possessing a keen eye for men he began to recognise now why Berknowles had
not chosen the easy-going Hennessey to look after Phyl and her affairs,
and he guessed, just by the little bit he had seen of Kilgobbin and the
servants, the slipshoddedness and waste going on behind the scenes in the
absence of a master and mistress.
Pinckney loathed waste as he loathed inefficiency and as he loathed dirt.
They were all three brothers with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back
in the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he could not but
perceive little things that would have brought exclamations from the soul
of a careful housekeeper. The furniture had been upholstered, or rather
re-upholstered in leather some five years ago. There is nothing that cries
out so much against neglect as leather, and the chairs and couch in the
library of Kilgobbin, without exactly crying out, still told their tale.
Some of the buttons were gone, and some of them hung actually by the
thread in the last stage of departure. There was a tiny triangular rent in
the leather of the armchair wherein Phyl had been sitting and another
armchair wanted a castor. The huge Persian rug that covered the centre of
the floor shewed marks left by cigar and cigarette ash, and under a
Jacobean book-case in the corner were stuffed all sorts of odds and ends,
old paper-backed novels, a pair of old shoes, a tennis racquet and a
boxing glove--besides other things.
Pinckney rose up, went to the book-case and placed his fingers on top of
it, then he looked at his fingers and the bar of dust upon them, brushed
his hand clean and came back to his chair by the fire. He heard the stable
clock striking eleven. The sound of the wind that had been raging outside
all during dinner time had died away and the sounds of the house made
themselves manifest, the hundred stealthy accountable and unaccountable
little sounds that night evolves from an old house set in the stillness of
the country. Just as the night jasmine gives up its perfume to the night,
so does an old house its past in the form of murmurs and crackings and
memories and suggestions. Notwithstanding Dunn's attentions there were
rats alive in the cellars and under the boarding--and mice; the passages
leading to the kitchen premises made a whispering gallery where murderers
seemed consulting together if the scullery window were forgotten and left
open--as it usually was, and boards in the uneven flooring that had been
preparing for the act for weeks and months would suddenly "go off with a
bang," a noise startling in the dead of night as the crack of a pistol,
and produced, heaven knows how, but never by daylight.
Even Pinckney, who did not believe in ghosts, became aware as he sat now
by the fire that the old house was feeling for him to make him creep,
feeling for him with its old disjointed fingers and all the artfulness of
inanimate things.
He was aware that Sir Nicholas Berknowles was looking down at him with the
terrible patient gaze of a portrait, and he returned the gaze, trying to
imagine what manner of man this might have been and how he had lived and
what he had done in those old days that were once real sunlit days filled
with people with real voices, hearts, and minds.
A gentle creak as though a light step had pressed upon the flooring of the
hall brought his mind back to reality and he was rising from his chair to
retire for the night when a sound from outside the window made him sit
down again. It was the sound of a step on the gravel path, a step stealthy
and light, a real sound and no contraption of the imagination.
The idea of burglars sprang up in his mind, but was dismissed; that was no
burglar's footstep--and yet! He listened. The sound had ceased and now
came a faint rubbing as of a hand feeling for the window followed by the
sharp rapping of a knuckle on the glass.
"Hullo," cried Pinckney, jumping to his feet and approaching the shuttered
window. "Who's there?"
"It's me," said a voice. "I'm locked out. Byrne's bolted the front door.
Go to the hall door, will you, please, and let me in?"
"Phyl," said Pinckney to himself. "Good heavens!" Then to the other, "I'm
coming."
Byrne had left a lamp lighted in the hall and the guest's candlestick
waiting for him on the table. The lamp was sufficient to show him the
executive side of the big front door that had been nearly battered in in
the time of the Fenians and still possessed the ponderous locks and bars
of a past day when the tenants of Kilgobbin had fought the pikemen of
Arranakilty and Rupert Berknowles had hung seventeen rebels, no less, on
the branches of the big oak "be the gates."
Pinckney undid bolt and bar, turned the key in the great lock and flung
the door open, disclosing Phyl standing in the moonlight. The contrast
between the forbidding and ponderous door and the charming little figure
against which it had stood as a barrier might have struck him had his mind
been less astonished. As it was he could think of nothing but the
strangeness of the business in hand.
"Where on earth have you been?" said he.
"Out in the woods," said Phyl, entering quite unconcerned and removing her
cloak. "A fox got trapped in the woods and I went to let it out and
couldn't find it, then that old fool Byrne locked the door; lucky you were
up. I saw the light in the library shining through a crack in the shutters
and knocked."
Pinckney was putting up the bar and sliding the bolts. He said nothing.
Had Phyl been another girl, he might have laughed and joked over the
matter, but care of Phyl's well-being was now part of his business in life
and that consideration just checked his speech. There was nothing at all
wrong in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream of making the
slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom of a young girl wandering
about in the woods at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which
disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness.
Phyl, who was as sensitive to impressions as a radiometer to light, noted
the silence of the other and resented it as she hung up her old hat and
cloak. She knew nothing of the true facts of the case, she looked on
Pinckney as a being almost of her own age, and that he should dare to
express disapproval of an act of hers not concerning him, even by silence,
was an intolerable insult. She knew that she loathed him now.--Prig!
This was the first real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of
Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco of it.
Phyl, having hung up the hat and coat, turned without a word, marched into
the library and finding the book she had been reading that day, put it
under her arm.
"Good night," said she as she passed him in the hall.
"Good night," he replied.
He watched her disappearing up the stairs, stood for a moment irresolute,
and then went into the library. He knew he had offended her and he knew
exactly how he had offended her. There are silences that can be more
hurting than speech--yet what could he have said? He rummaged in his mind
to find something he might have said and could find nothing more
appropriate than a remark about the weather and the fineness of the night.
Yet a bald and decrepit remark like that would have been as bad almost as
silence, for it would have ignored the main point at issue--the
night-wandering of his ward.
He sat down again for a moment in the armchair by the fireplace and began
to wrestle with the position in which he found himself. This was a small
business, but if Phyl in the future was to do things that he did not
approve of it would be his plain duty to remonstrate with her. An odious
position for youth to be placed in. How she would loathe and hate him!
Pinckney, though a man of the world in many ways and a good business man,
was still at heart a boy just as young as Phyl; even in years he was very
little older than she, and the boy side of his mind was in full revolt at
the job set before him by fate.
Then he came to a resolution.
"She can do jolly well what she pleases," said he to himself, "without my
interference. Aunt Maria can attend to that. My business will be to look
after her property and keep sharks off it. _I'm_ not going to set up in
business to tell a girl what she ought or oughtn't to do--that's a woman's
job."
Satisfied with this seeming solution of the difficulty he went to bed.
Meanwhile, Phyl, having marched off with the book under her arm found,
when she reached her room, that she had forgotten a matchbox, and, too
proud to return to the hall for one, went to bed in the dark.
She lay awake for an hour, her mind obsessed by thoughts of this man who
had suddenly stepped into her life, and who possessed such a strange power
to disturb her being and fill it with feelings of unrest, irritation and,
strangely enough, a vague attraction.
The attraction one might fancy the iron to feel for the distant magnet, or
the floating stick for the far-off whirlpool.
Then she fell asleep and dreamed that they were at dinner and Mr.
Hennessey was waiting at table. Her father was there and, before the dream
converted itself into something equally fatuous she heard Pinckney's
voice, also in the dream; he seemed looking for her in the hall and he was
calling to her, "Phyl--Phyl!"
CHAPTER V
Next morning came with a burst of sunshine and a windy, cloudless sky.
Pinckney, dressing with his window open, could see the park with the rooks
wheeling and cawing over the trees, whilst the warm wind brought into the
room all sorts of winter scents on the very breath of summer.
This rainy land where the snow rarely comes has all sorts of surprises of
climate and character. Nothing is truly logical in Ireland, not even
winter. That is what makes the place so delightful to some minds and so
perplexing to others.
Hennessey was staying for a day or two to go over accounts and explain the
working of the estate to Pinckney.
He was in the hall when the latter came down, and gave him good morning.
"Where's your mistress?" said Hennessey to old Byrne, as they took their
seats at the breakfast table.
"Faith, she's been out since six," said Byrne. "She came down threatenin'
to skin Rafferty alive for layin' fox thraps in the woods, then she had a
bite of bread and butter and a cup of tea Norah made for her, and off she
went with Rafferty to hunt out the thraps and take them up. It's little
she cares for breakfast."
"I was the same way myself when I was her age," said Hennessey to
Pinckney. "Up at four in the morning and out fishing in Dublin Bay--it's
well to be young."
"Look here," said the young man, as Byrne left the room, "she was out till
eleven last night in the woods; she knocked me up as I was sitting in the
library and I let her in. _I_ don't see anything wrong in the business,
but all the same, it's not a particularly safe proceeding and I suppose a
mother or father would have jawed her--I couldn't. I suppose I showed by
my manner that I didn't approve of her being out so late, for she seemed
in a huff as she went up to bed. My position is a bit difficult, but I'm
hanged if I'm going to do the heavy father or careful mother business. If
she was only a boy, I could talk to her like a Dutch uncle, but I don't
know anything about girls. I wish--"
Pinckney's wish remained forever unexpressed, for at the moment the door
opened and in came Phyl.
Her face was glowing with the morning air and she seemed to have forgotten
the business of the night before as she greeted Pinckney and the lawyer
and took her place at the table.
"Phyl," said the lawyer, half jocularly, "here's Mr. Pinckney been
complaining that you were wandering about all night in the woods, knocking
him up to let you in at two o'clock in the morning."
Phyl, who was helping herself to bacon, looked up at Pinckney.
"Oh, you cad," said her eyes. Then she spoke:
"I came in at eleven. If I had known, I would have called up Byrne or one
of the servants to let me in."
Pinckney could have slain Hennessey.
"Good gracious," he said. "_I_ wasn't complaining. I only just mentioned
the fact."
"The fact that I was out till two," said Phyl, with another upward glance
of scorn.
"I never said any such thing. I said eleven."
"It was my loose way of speaking; but, sure, what's the good of getting
out of temper?" put in Hennessey. "Mr. Pinckney wasn't meaning anything,
but you see, Phyl, it's just this way, your father has made him your
guardian."
"My _what!_" cried the girl.
"_Oh_, Lord!" said Pinckney, in despair at the blundering way of the
other. Then finding himself again and the saving vein of humour, without
which man is just a leaden figure:
"Yes, that's it. I'm your guardian. You must on no account go out without
my permission, or cough or sneeze without a written permit--Oh, Phyl,
don't be thinking nonsense of that sort. I _am_ your guardian, it seems,
and by your father's special request, but you are absolutely free to do as
you like."
"A nice sort of guardian," put in Hennessey with a grin.
"I am only, really, guardian of your money and your interests," went on
the other, "and your welfare. When you came in last night late, I was a
bit taken aback and I thought--as a matter of fact, I thought it might be
dangerous being out alone in this wild part of the country so late at
night, but I did not want to interfere; you can understand, can't you?
What I want you to get out of your mind is, that I am that odious thing, a
meddling person. I'm not."
Phyl was very white. She had risen from the table and was at the window.
Here was her dream come true of the bearded American who had suddenly
appeared to claim her and Kilgobbin and the servants and everything.
Pinckney had not a beard, but he was an American and he had come to claim
everything. The word guardian carried such a force and weight and was so
filled with fantastic possibilities to the mind of Phyl, that she scarcely
heard his soft words and excuses.
Phyl had the Irish trick of running away with ideas and embroidering the
most palpable truths with fancies. It was an inheritance from her father,
and she stood by the window now unable to speak, with the word "Guardian"
ringing in her ears and the idea pressing on her mind like an incubus.
Hennessey had risen up. He was the first to break silence.
"There's no use in meeting troubles half way," said he vaguely. "You and
Phyl will get along all right when you know each other better. Come out,
the two of you, and we'll go round the grounds and you will be able to see
for yourself the state of the house and what repairs are wanting."
"One moment," said Pinckney. "I want to tell Phyl something--I'm going to
call you Phyl because I'm your guardian--d'you mind?"
"No," said Phyl, "you can call me anything you like, I suppose."
"I'm not going to call you anything I like--just Phyl-- Well, then, I want
to tell you what we have to do. It's not my wishes I have to carry out but
your father's. He wanted to let this house."
"Let Kilgobbin!"
"Yes, that is what he said. He wanted to let it to a good tenant who would
look after it till you are of age. I think he was right. You see, you
could not live here all alone, and if the place was shut up it would
deteriorate."
"It would go to wrack and ruin," said Hennessey.
"And the servants?" said Phyl.
"We will look after them," said Pinckney, "the new tenant might take them
on; if not, we'll give them time to get new places."
"Byrne's been here before I was born," said the girl, with dry lips, "so
has Mrs. Driscoll. They are part of the place; it would ruin their lives
to send them away."
"Well," said Pinckney, "I don't want to be the ogre to ruin their lives;
you can do anything you like about them. If the new tenant didn't take
them, you might pension them. I want you to be perfectly happy in your
mind and I want you to feel that though I am, so to speak, the guardian of
your money, still, that money is yours."
She was beginning to understand now that not only was he striving to
soothe her feelings and propitiate her, but that he was very much in
earnest in this business, and crowding through her mind came a great wave
of revulsion against herself.
Phyl's nature was such that whilst always ready to fly into wrath and
easily moved to bitter resentment, one touch of kindness, one soft word,
had the power to disarm her.
One soft word from an antagonist had the power to wound her far more than
a dozen words of bitterness.
Filled now with absolutely superfluous self-reproach, she stood for a
moment unable to speak. Then she said, raising her eyes to his:
"I am sure you mean to do what is for the best.--It was stupid of me--"
"Not a bit," said the other, cheerfully. "I want to do the things that
will make you happy--that's all. I'm a business man and I know the value
of money. Money is just worth the amount of happiness it brings."
"Faith, that's true," said Hennessey, who had taken his seat again and was
in the act of lighting a cigar.
"When I was a boy," went on the other. "I was always kept hard up by my
father. It was like pulling gum teeth to get the price of a fishing rod
out of him. When I think of all the fun I might have bought with a few
dollars, it makes me wild. You can't buy fun when you get old; you may buy
an opera house or a yacht, but you can't buy the real stuff that makes
life worth living."
Phyl glanced out of the window at the park, then as though she had found
some inspiration there, she turned to Pinckney.
"If you don't mind about the money, then why don't you let me live here
instead of letting the place? I can live here by myself and I would be
happy here. I won't be happy if I leave it."
"Well," said Pinckney, "there's your father's wish, first of all."
"I'm sure if he knew how I felt, he wouldn't mind," said Phyl mournfully,
turning her gaze again to the park.
"On top of that," went on Pinckney, "there's--your age. Phyl, it wouldn't
ever do; it's not I that am saying it, it's custom, the world, society."
Phyl, like the hooked salmon that has taken the gaudy fly, felt a check
and recognised that a Power had her in hand, recognised in the light-going
and fair-speaking Pinckney something of adamant, a will not to be broken
or bent.
She felt for a moment a revolt against herself for having fallen to the
lure and allowed herself to come to friendly terms with him. Then this
feeling faded a bit. The very young are very weak in the face of
constituted authority--besides, there was always at the back of Pinckney
her father's wish.
"And then again, on top of that," he went on, "there's the question of
your coming to live with us; your father wished it."
"In America!" cried Phyl. "Do you mean I am to live in America?"
"Well, we live there; why not? It's not a bad place to live in--and what
else are you to do?"
She could not answer him. This time she saw that the bogey man had got her
and no mistake. America to her seemed as far as the moon and far less
familiar. If Pinckney had declared that it was necessary for her to die,
she would have been a great deal more frightened, but the prospect would
not have seemed much more desolate and forbidding and final.
He saw at once the trouble in her mind and guessed the cause. He had a
rare intuition for reading minds, and it seemed to him he could read
Phyl's as easily as though the outside of her head were clear glass--he
had cause to modify this cocksure opinion later on.
"Don't worry," he said. "If you don't like America when you see it, you
can come back to Ireland. I daresay we can arrange something; anyhow,
don't let us meet troubles half way."
"When am I to go?" said Phyl.
"Sure, Phyl, you can stay as long as you like with us," said Mr.
Hennessey. "The doors of 10, Merrion Square, are always open to you, and
never will they be shut on you except behind your back."
Pinckney laughed; and a servant coming in to clear the breakfast things,
Hennessey led the way from the room to show Pinckney the premises.
CHAPTER VI
They crossed the hall, and passing through a green-baize covered door went
down a passage that led to the kitchen.
"This is the housekeeper's room," said Hennessey, pointing to a half open
door, "and the servants' hall is that door beyond. This is the kitchen."
They paused for a moment in the great old-fashioned kitchen, with an open
range capable of roasting a small ox, one might have fancied. Norah, the
cook, was busy in the scullery with her sleeves tucked up, and under the
table was seated Susie Gallagher, a small and grubby hanger-on engaged in
the task of washing potatoes. The potatoes were beside her on the floor
and she was washing them in a tin basin of water with the help of an old
nail-brush.
There was a horse-shoe hung up, for luck, on the wall over the range, and
a pile of dinner plates, from last night's dinner and still unwashed,
stood on the dresser, where also stood a half-bottle of Guinness' stout
and a tumbler; an old setter bitch lay before the fire and a jackdaw in a
wicker cage set up a yell at the sight of the visitors, that brought Norah
out of the scullery to receive them, a broad smile on her face and her
arms tucked up in her apron.
"He always yells like that at the sight of tramps or stray people about,"
apologised the cook. "He's better than a watch-dog. Hold your tongue, you
baste; don't you know your misthress when you see her?"
"Rafferty caught him in the park," said Phyl, "and cut his tongue with a
sixpence so as to make him able to speak."
They left the kitchen and came into the yard. A big tin can of refuse was
standing by the kitchen door, and on top of all sorts of rubbish, potato
peelings, cabbage stalks and so forth, lay the carcass of a boiled fowl.
It was the fowl they had dined off the night before and it lay there just
as it had gone from the table, that is to say, minus both wings and the
greater part of the breast, but with the legs intact.
Pinckney stared at this sinful sight. Then he pointed to it.
"What's that doing there?" he asked.
"Waitin' to be took away be the stable boy, sor," replied the cook, who
had followed them to the door. "All the rubbish is took away in that ould
can every mornin'."
"Good God!" said Pinckney under his breath. The expression was shaken out
of him, so to speak, and out of a pocket of his character which had never
been fully explored, of whose existence, indeed, he was not particularly
aware. This Irish expedition was to show him a good many things in life
and in himself of which up to this he had been in ignorance. He had never
been brought face to face with waste, bald waste without a hat on or
covering of any sort, before.
"Haven't you any poor people about here?" he asked.
"Hapes, sor."
Pinckney was on the point of saying something more, but he checked
himself, remembering that in the eyes of the servants he was here in the
position of a guest.
He followed Hennessey across to the stable yard, where Larry, the groom,
was washing the carriage that had fetched him from the station the night
before.
"The servants won't eat chicken," said Phyl, in an apologetic way. She had
noted everything and she guessed his thoughts. "They won't eat game
either--and they throw things away if they don't like them--of course,
it's wasteful, but they _do_ give things to the poor. Lots of poor people
come here, every day nearly, but they don't care for scraps--you see, it
_is_ insulting to give a poor person scraps, just as though they were
animals. I remember the cook we had before Norah did it when she came
first, and all the poor people stopped coming to the house. Said she ought
to know better than to offer them the leavings."
"Cheek!"
"Well, I don't know," said Phyl. "We've done it for hundreds of years."
She closed her mouth in a way she had when she did not wish to pursue a
subject further. Despite the fact that she had made friends with Pinckney,
she was galled by his attitude of criticism. Guardian or no guardian, he
was a stranger; relation or no relation, he was a stranger, and what right
had a stranger to dare to come and turn up his nose at the poor people or
make remarks--he hadn't said a word--about the wastefulness of the
servants?
The redoubtable Rafferty was standing in the yard chewing a straw and
watching Larry at work.
Rafferty was a man of genius, who had started as a helper and odd job
person, and had risen to the position of factotum. He had ousted the
Scotch gardener and insinuated a relation of his own in his place. There
was scarcely a servant about the estate that was not a relation of
Rafferty's. Philip Berknowles had put up with a lot from Rafferty simply
because Rafferty was an invaluable person in his way when not crossed.
Everything went smoothly when the factotum was not interfered with. Cross
him and there were immediate results ranging from ill-groomed horses to
general unrest. He was a dark individual, half groom, half game-keeper in
dress, a "wicked-looking divil," according to the description of his
enemies, and an exceedingly foxy-looking individual in the eyes of
Pinckney.
"Rafferty," said Mr. Hennessey, "I want to show this gentleman round.
Let's see the stables."
Rafferty touched his cap and led the way, showing first the stalls and
boxes where four or five horses were stabled, and then leading the way
through the coach-house to the path from which opened the kitchen
gardens.
They were immense and walled in with red brick, capable, one might fancy,
of supplying the wants of three or four houses the size of Kilgobbin.
Pinckney noted this fact, also that the home farm to which the kitchen
gardens led was apparently a prosperous and going little concern, with its
fowls and chickens penned or loose, styes filled with grunting pigs, and
turkeys gobbling and spreading their tails in the sun.
"Who looks after all this?" asked Pinckney.
"I do, sor," replied Rafferty.
"What are the takings?"
"I beg your pardon, sor?"
"The profits, I mean. You sell these things, don't you?"
"Kilgobbin isn't a farm, sor, it's a gintleman's estate."
Pinckney, not at all set back by this snub, turned and looked the factotum
in the face.
"Just so," said he, "but I've never heard of gentlemen growing pigs to
look at; peacocks, maybe, but not pigs. However, we'll have another look
at the business later."
He turned and they went on, Rafferty disturbed in his mind and much put
about by the manner of the other in whom he began to divine something more
than a casual guest, Phyl almost as much put out as Rafferty.
The idea that the factotum might have been robbing her father right and
left never occurred to her; even if it had, it would not have softened the
fact that a strange hand was at work in her old home turning over things,
inspecting them, holding them up for comment.
She managed to drop behind as they left the farm yard for the paddocks,
then turning down the yew lane that led back to the house, she ran as
though hounds were after her, reached the house, locked herself in her
bedroom, and flung herself on the bed in a tempest of weeping, dragging a
pillow over her head as if to shield herself from the blows that the world
was aiming at her.
Phyl, without mother, brothers or sisters, had centred all her affection
on her father and Kilgobbin; the servants, the place itself and all the
things and people about it were part and parcel with her life, and the
death of her father had intensified her love of the place and the people.
If Pinckney had only known, he might have put the business of the
inspection of the property and the dealing with the servants into other
hands, but Pinckney was young and full of energy and business ability; he
was full of conscientiousness and the determination to protect his ward's
interests; he had scented a rogue in Rafferty, and at this very minute
returning to the house with Hennessey, he was declaring his intention to
make an overhaul of the working of the estate.
Rafferty was to appear before him and produce his accounts and make
explanations. Mrs. Driscoll was to be examined as to the expenditure,
etc.
He little knew the hornet's nest into which he was about to poke his
finger.
CHAPTER VII
The grand inquisition began that evening after dinner--Phyl did not appear
at dinner, alleging a headache--and Rafferty, summoned to the library, had
to stand whilst Pinckney, seated at the table with a pen in his hand and a
sheet of paper before him, went into the business of accounts.
Mark how the unexpected occurs in life. Rafferty, who had been pilfering
for years, selling garden produce and keeping the profits, robbing corn
from the corn bin in the stable, poaching and selling birds and ground
game to a dealer in Arranakilty, receiving illicit commissions and so
forth, had on the death of his master shaken off all restraint and
prepared for a campaign of open plunder. The very last thing he could have
imagined was the sudden appearance of an American business man on the
scene, armed with absolute power and possessing the eye of a hawk.
"Your master asked me just before he died to look after this estate,"
began Pinckney; "in fact, he has appointed me to act as guardian to Miss
Berknowles, so I just want to see how things stand. Now, to begin with the
horses. I want to know everything about the stables during the last--shall
we say--six months. Who supplies the corn and the hay and the straw?"
"I've been gettin' some from Faulkner of Arranakilty, sor, and some from
Doyle of Bally-brack."
"Don't you grow any horse food on the estate?"
"We don't grow no corn, sor."
"Well, hay and straw?"
"You can't get straw, sor, widout you grow corn."
"I know that--but how about hay--surely you grow lots of grass?"
"We graze the grass, sor."
"Do you let the grazing?"
"Well, sor, it's this way; the masther was never very shtrict about the
grazin'; we puts some of the horses out to grass, ourselves, and we lets
poor folk have a bit of grazin' now and then for their cattle, though
master was never after makin' money from the estate--"
"Just so. Have you the receipted bills for the fodder during the last six
months?"
"Yes, sor. The master always sent me wid the money to pay the bills."
"You have got the receipts?"
"The which, sor?"
"The bills receipted."
"Bills, sure, what's the good of keepin' bills, sor, when the money's
paid. I b'lave they're somewhere in an ould crock in the stable, at laste
that's where I saw thim last."
"Well," said Pinckney, "you can fetch them for me to-morrow morning, and
now let's talk about the garden."
Rafferty, not knowing what Pinckney might discover and so being unable to
lie with confidence, had a very bad quarter of an hour over the garden.
Pinckney was not a man to press another unduly, nor was he a man to haggle
about halfpence or worry servants over small peccadillos. He knew quite
well that grooms are grooms, and will be so as long as men are men. He
would never have bothered about little details had Rafferty been an
ordinary servant. He recognised in Rafferty, not a servant to be dismissed
or corrected, but an antagonist to be fought. It was the case of the dog
and badger. Rafferty was Graft and all it implies, Pinckney was Straight
Dealing. And Straight Dealing knew quite well that the only way to get
Graft by the throat is to ferret out details, no matter how small.
So Rafferty was taken over details. He had to admit that he had "given
away" some of the stuff from the garden and sold "a bit," sending it up to
Dublin for that purpose; but he was not to be caught.
"And the profits," said Pinckney. "I suppose you handed them over to Mr.
Berknowles?"
"No, sor; the master always tould me to keep any bit of money I might draa
from anything I planted extra for me perkisites, that was the
understandin' I had with him."
"And over the farmyard, I suppose anything you could make by selling any
extra animals you planted was your perquisite?"
"Yes, sor."
"Very well, Rafferty, that will do for to-night; get me those receipted
bills to-morrow morning. Come here at ten o'clock and we will have another
talk."
Rafferty went off, feeling more comfortable in his mind.
The word Perquisites might be made to cover a multitude of sins, but he
would not have been so easy if he had known that Mrs. Driscoll had been
called up immediately after his departure. Mrs. Driscoll was one of those
terrible people who say nothing yet see everything; for the last year and
a half she had been watching Rafferty; knowing it to be quite useless to
report what she knew to her easy-going master, she had, none the less,
kept on watching. As a result, she was now able to bring up a hard fact, a
small hard fact more valuable than worlds of ductile evidence. Rafferty
had "nicked"--it was the lady's expression--a brand-new lawn mower.
"I declare to God, sir, I don't know what he _has_ took, for me eyes can't
be everywhere, but I do know he's took the mower."
"Why did you not tell Miss Phyl?"
"I did, sir, and she only said, 'Oh, there must be a mistake--what would
he be doin' with it,' says she. 'Sellin' it,' says I. 'Nonsense,' says
she. You see, sir, Rafferty and she has always been hand in glove, what
with the fishin' and shootin', and the horses and such like, and she won't
hear a word against him."
Mrs. Driscoll had called Rafferty a sly devil--he was.
At eleven o'clock next morning, Phyl, crossing the stable yard with some
sugar for the horses, met Rafferty. He was crying.
"Why, what on earth's the matter, Rafferty?" asked the girl.
"I've got the shove, miss," replied Rafferty, "after all me years of
service, I'm put out to end me days in a ditch."
"You mean you're discharged!" she cried. "Was it Mr. Pinckney?"
"That's him," replied Rafferty. "Says he's the masther of us all. 'Out you
get,' says he, 'or it's I that'll be callin' a p'leeceman to put you,'
says he. Flung it in me face that I'd stolen a laan mower. Me that's ben
on the estate man and boy for forty year. A laan mower! Sure, Miss Phyl,
what would I be doin' with a laan mower?"
Phyl turned from him and ran to the house. Pinckney and Hennessey were
seated in the library when the door burst open and in came Phyl. Her eyes
were bright and her lips were pale.
"You told me you would keep all the servants," said she. "Rafferty tells
me you have dismissed him."
"I should think I had," said Pinckney lightly, and not gauging the mad
disturbance of the other, "and it's lucky for him I haven't put him in
prison."
The word prison was all that was wanted to fire the mine. Pinckney stood
for a moment aghast at the change in the girl.
"I _hate_ you," she cried, coming a step closer to him. "I loathe
you--master of us all, are you? Dare to touch any one here and I'll burn
the house down with my own hands--you--you--"
She paused for want of breath, her chest heaving and her hands clenched.
Then Pinckney exploded.
The good old fiery Pinckney blood was up. Oh, without any manner of doubt
our ancestors are still able to speak, and it was old Roderick
Pinckney--"Pepper Pinckney" was his nickname--that blazed out now. It was
also the fire of youth answering the fire of youth.
"Damn it!" he cried. "I've come here to do my best--I don't care--keep who
you want--be robbed if you like it--I'm off--" He caught up all the sheets
of paper he had been covering with figures and tore them across.
"Beast!" cried Phyl.
She rushed from the room and upstairs like a mad creature. The bang of her
bedroom door closed the incident.
"Now don't be taking on so," said Hennessey. "You've both of you lost your
temper."
"Lost my temper--maybe. I'm going all the same. Right back to the States.
I'm off to Dublin by the next train and you'd better come and finish the
business there. You'd better have her to stay with you in Dublin. I don't
want to see her again. Anyhow, we'll settle all that later."
"Maybe that's the best," said Hennessey. "My wife will look after her till
she's ready to go to the States--if she wants to."
"Please God she doesn't," replied the other.
Phyl did not see Pinckney again. He went off to Dublin by the two-ten
train with Hennessey, the latter promising to be back on the morrow to
arrange things.
CHAPTER VIII
Dublin can never have been a cheerful city. Even in the days when the
butchers joined in street fights and hung their antagonists when caught on
steel hooks--like legs of mutton--the gaiety of Dublin one may fancy to
have been more a matter of spirits than of spirit.
Echoes from the days when the Parliament sat in Stephen's Green come down
to us through the works of Charles Lever, but the riotous gaiety of the
old days when Barrington was a judge of the Admiralty Court, the Hell Fire
Club an institution, and Count Considine a figure in society, must be
taken with a grain of salt.
Mangan shows you the old Dublin as it was in those glorious times, and in
the new Dublin of to-day the shade of Mangan seems still to walk arm in
arm with the shade of Mathurin. Gloomy ghosts addicted to melancholy,
noting with satisfaction that the streets are as dirty as ever, the old
Public Houses still standing, that, despite the tramways--those
extraordinary new modern inventions--the tide of life runs pretty much the
same as of old. The ghosts of Mangan and Mathurin have never seen a taxi
cab.
Dublin at the present day is a splendid city for old ghosts to wander in
without having their corns trodden on or their susceptibilities injured.
Phyl had come to Dublin to live with the Hennesseys in Merrion Square.
"Never shall my door be shut on you except behind your back," Hennessey
had said, and he meant it.
The girl was worth several thousand a year; had she been penniless it
would have been just the same.
You may meet many geniuses in your journey through life, many brilliant
people, many beautiful people, many fascinating people, but you will not
meet many friends. Hennessey belonged to the society of Friends, his wife
was a member of the same community, and he would have been ruined only for
his partner Niven, who was an ordinary lowdown human creature who believed
in no one and kept the business together.
On the day of her arrival at Merrion Square and during her first interview
with Mrs. Hennessey in the large, cheerless drawing-room where
decalcomanied flower pots lingered like relics of the Palaeolithic age of
Art, Phyl kept herself above tears, just as a swimmer keeps his head above
water in a choppy sea.
It was all so gloomy, yet so friendly, that the mind could not openly
revolt at the gloom; it was all so different from the wind and trees and
freedom of Kilgobbin, and Mrs. Hennessey, whom she had only seen once
before, was so different, on closer acquaintance, from any of the people
she had hitherto met in her little world.
Mrs. Hennessey, with a soul above dust and housekeeping, a faded woman,
not very tidy, with an exalted air, pouring out tea from a Britannia metal
ware teapot and talking all the time about Willy Yeates, the Irish Players
and Lady Gregory's last play, fascinated the girl, who did not know who
Willy Yeates was and who had never seen the Irish Players.
Nor could she learn from Mrs. Hennessey. It was impossible to get a word
in edgeways with that lady. Sometimes, indeed, during a lull in her mind
disturbance, she would remain quiet whilst you answered some question,
only to find that she had totally forgotten the question and was not
listening to your reply.
Phyl got so used to Mrs. Hennessey after a few days that she did not
listen to her questions, and so the two being matched, they got on well
together. Young people soon accommodate themselves to their surroundings,
and in a month the girl had grown to the colour of her new life, at least,
on the outside of her mind. It seemed to her that she had lived years in
Merrion Square. Kilgobbin--Hennessey had managed to let the place--seemed
a dream of her childhood. She saw no future, and rebellion was impossible;
there was nothing to rebel against--except the dulness and greyness of
life. No people could have been kinder than the Hennesseys; unfortunately
they had numerous friends, and the friends of the Hennesseys did not
appeal to Phyl.
A boy in her position would have adapted himself quickly enough, and been
hail fellow well met with Mr. Mattram, the dentist of Westland Row, or the
young Farrels, whose father owned one of the biggest wine merchants'
businesses in the city; but the feminine instinct told Phyl that these
were not the sort of people from whose class she had sprung, that their
circle was not her circle and that she had stepped down in life in some
mysterious way. This fact was brought sharply home to her by a young
Farrel, a male of the Farrel brood, a hobbledehoy, good-looking enough but
with a Dublin accent and a cheeky manner.
This immature wine merchant at a party given by Mrs. Hennessey had made
love to Phyl and had tried to kiss her behind the dining-room door.
The recollection of the smack in the face she had given him soothed her
that night as she lay tossing in her bed, and it was on this night and for
the first time since she left Kilgobbin that the recollection of Pinckney
came before her otherwise than as a shadow. He stood with the Hennessey
circle as his background, a bright, good-looking figure and a gentleman to
his finger-tips.
Why had she cast aside her own people--even though they were distant
relations? What stupidity had caused her to insult Pinckney by telling him
she hated him? She found herself asking that question without being able
to answer it.
After all that fuss at Kilgobbin and Pinckney's departure, Mr. Hennessey
had proved to her that Rafferty was a rogue who deserved no quarter; the
man had been dismissed, the whole business was done with and over, and
now, looking back in cool blood, she was utterly unable to reconstruct and
put together the reasons for the outburst of anger that had severed her
from the one kinsman who had put out his hand to help her.
She could no longer conjure up the feeling that Pinckney was an interloper
come to break up Kilgobbin and spoil the home she had known from
childhood.
Fate had done that. Kilgobbin was gone--let to strangers; Hennessey had
taken over her guardianship _pro tem_, and it was entirely owing to
herself that she was in her present position. She had no right to
criticise the friends of the Hennesseys; she had deliberately walked into
that circle from which she felt she never could escape now.
Just as Pinckney had discovered that guardianship was showing him traits
in his character hitherto unknown to him, Phyl was discovering her woman's
instinct as regards social matters.
She recognised that once having taken her place amongst the Hennessey set,
her position for life was fixed, as far as Ireland was concerned. She was
branded.
The Berknowles were an old family, but she was the last of them. The
relatives living in the south could be no help to her; they were poor,
rabid Catholics and had fallen to little account, owing to unwise
marriages and that irresponsible fatuous apathy in affairs which is the
dry rot of Ireland and the Irish people. They were proud as Lucifer, but
no one was proud of them.
If only Philip Berknowles had been a man to make fast friends amongst his
own class, some of those friends might have come to his daughter's rescue
now. But Berknowles had lived his own life since the death of his wife, an
easy-going country gentleman in a county mostly inhabited by squireens and
cottage folk, caring little for the _convenances_ and with no taste for
women's society.
Thoughts born of all these facts, some of which were only half understood,
filled the mind of the girl as she lay awake with the noise of that
raucous party ringing in her ears; and when she fell asleep, it was only
to awake with a sense of despondency weighing upon her and the odious
Farrel incident waiting to follow her through the day.
About a week later, coming down to breakfast one morning, she found a
letter on her plate. A letter with American stamps on it and the address,
Miss Phylice Berknowles, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland, written in a
firm, bold hand.
Mrs. Hennessey was not down and Mr. Hennessey had departed for the office,
so Phyl had the breakfast table to herself--and the letter.
She knew at once whom it was from, even before she read the postmark,
"Charleston."
Pinckney, the man who had been in her thoughts during the past six or
seven days, the man who had left Ireland righteously disgusted with her,
the man to whom she had said, "I hate you!"
The scene flashed before her as she tore the envelope open, his sudden
blaze of anger, the way he had torn the papers up, his departure. What was
he going to say to her now? She flushed at the thought that this thing in
her hand might prove to be his opinion of her in cold blood, a reproof, a
remonstrance--she opened the folded sheet--ah!
"Dear Phyl,
"Aunt Maria was greatly disappointed when I returned here without
you, she had quite made up her mind that you were coming back with
me. We both lost our temper that day, but I was the worse, for I said
a word I shouldn't have said, and for which I apologise. Aunt Maria
says it was the Pinckney temper. However that may be, we shall be
delighted to see you. Mrs. Van Dusen leaves on the 6th of next month.
I am sending all particulars to Mr. Hennessey. You could meet Mrs.
Van Dusen at Liverpool and go with her as far as New York. Let me
have a cable to know if you are coming. Pinckney, Vernons,
Charleston, U. S. A., is the cable address.
"Your affectionate guardian--also cousin--
"R. Pinckney."
Then underneath, in an angular, old-fashioned hand, one of those
handwritings we associate with crossed letters, rosewood desks, valentines
and wafers:
"Be sure to come. I am very anxious to see you, and I only hope you
will like me as much as I am sure to like you.
"Maria Pinckney."
Phyl caught her breath back when she read this and her eyes filled with
tears. It was the woman's voice that touched her, coming after Pinckney's
business-like and jerky sentences.
Then she sat with the letter before her, looking at the new prospect it
had opened for her.
Was Pinckney still angry, despite his talk about the Pinckney temper; had
he written not of his own free will but at the desire of Maria Pinckney?
She read the thing over again without finding any solution to this
question.
But one fact was clear. Maria Pinckney was genuine in her invitation.
"I'll go," said Phyl.
She rose up from the table as though determined then and there to start
off for America, left the room, went upstairs and knocked at Mrs.
Hennessey's door.
That lady was sitting up in bed with a stocking tied round her throat--she
was suffering from a slight attack of tonsilitis--and the Irish _Times_
spread on her knees.
"Mrs. Hennessey," said Phyl, "I have just had a letter from my cousins in
America, and they want me to go out to them."
"Want you to go to America!" said Mrs. Hennessey. "On a visit, I
suppose?"
"No, to stay there."
"To stay in America; but what on earth do they want you to do that for?
Who on earth would dream of leaving Dublin to live in America! It's
extraordinary the ideas some people get hold of. Then, of course, they
don't know, that's all that's to be said for them. It's like hearing
people talking and talking of all the fine views abroad, and you'd think
they'd never seen the Dargle or the Glen of the Downs; they don't know the
beauty of their own country or haven't eyes to see it, and they must go
raving of the Bay of Naples with Kiliney Bay a stone's throw away from
them, and talking of Paris with Dublin outside their doors, and praising
up foreign actors with never a word of the Irish Players. Dublin giving
her best to them, and they with deaf ears to her music and blind eyes to
her sons."
"But, you see, Mrs. Hennessey, the Pinckneys are my relations."
"Irish?" cried the good woman, absolutely unconscious of everything but
the vision before her. "Those that can't see their own land aren't Irish.
Mongrels is the name for them, without pride of heart or light of
understanding."
She was off.
With a far, fixed gaze and her mind in a state of internal combustion, she
seemed a thousand miles away from Phyl and her affairs, fighting the
battles of Ireland.
Phyl gathered the impression that, if she went to America Mrs. Hennessey
would grieve less over the fact that she (Phyl) was leaving Merrion
Square, than over the fact that she was leaving Dublin. She escaped,
carrying this impression with her, went upstairs, dressed, and then
started off for Mr. Hennessey's office.
It was a cold, bright day and Dublin looked almost cheerful in the
sunlight.
The lawyer looked surprised when she was shown into his private room;
then, when she had told him her business, he fumbled amongst the papers on
his desk and produced a letter.
"This is from Pinckney," said he. "It came by the same post as yours, only
it was directed to the office. It's the same story, too. He wants you to
go over."
"I've been thinking over the whole business," said Phyl, "and I feel I
ought to go."
"Aren't you happy in Dublin?" asked he.
"M'yes," answered the other. "But, you see--at least, I'm as happy as I
suppose I'll be anywhere, only they are my people and I feel I ought to go
to them. It's very lonely to have no people of one's own. You and Mrs.
Hennessey have been very kind to me, and I shall always be grateful,
but--"
"But we aren't your own flesh and blood. You're right. Well, there it is.
We'll be sorry to lose you, but, maybe, though you haven't much experience
of the world, you've hit the nail on the head. We aren't your flesh and
blood, and though the Pinckneys aren't much more to you, still, one drop
of blood makes all the difference in the world. Then again, you're a cut
above us; we're quite simple people, but the Berknowles were always in the
Castle set and a long chalk above the Hennesseys. I was saying that to
Norah only last night when I was reading the account of the big party at
the Viceregal Lodge and the names of all the people that were there, and I
said to her, 'Phyl ought to be going to parties like that by and by when
she grows older, and we can't do much for her in that way,' and off she
goes in a temper. 'Who's the Aberdeens?' says she. 'A lot of English
without an Irish feather in their tails, and he opening the doors to
visitors in his dressing gown--Castle,' she says, 'it's little Castle
there'll be when we have a Parliament sitting in Dublin.'"
"I don't want to go to parties at the Viceregal Lodge," said Phyl,
flushing to think of what a snob she had been when only a few days back
she had criticised the Hennesseys and their set in her own mind. These
honest, straightforward good people were not snobs, whatever else they
might be, and if her desire for America had been prompted solely by the
desire to escape from the social conditions that environed her friends,
she would now have smothered it and stamped on it. But the call from
Charleston that had come across the water to her was an influence far more
potent than that. That call from the country where her mother had been
born and where her mother's people had always lived had more in it than
the voices that carried the message.
"Well," said Hennessey, "you mayn't want to go to parties now, but you
will when you are a bit older. However, you can please yourself--Do you
want to go to America?"
"I do," said Phyl. "It's not that I want to leave you, but there is
something that tells me I have got to go. When I read the letter first
this morning, I was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not still
angry with me, and I liked the idea of the change, for Dublin is a bit
dreary after Kilgobbin and--and well, I _will_ say it--I don't care for
some of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then a new feeling has
come over me. I think it came as I was walking down here to the office.
It's a feeling as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet still
pulling me from over there. My father said that there was more of mother
in me than him. I remember he said that once--well, perhaps it's that. She
came from over there."
"Maybe it is," said Hennessey.
CHAPTER IX
The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting the
idea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because the
idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter of
fact, she was fond enough of the girl.
"It's what's left Ireland what it is," went on the good lady. "Cripples
and lunatics, that's all that's left of us with your emigration; all the
good blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely,
coming back."
"I'll come back," said Phyl, "you need not fear about that--some day."
"Ay, some day," said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then the
spirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and people
vanished.
Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of the
family, only his genius "stuck in him somehow and wouldn't come out." She
passed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and only
stopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper was
ready.
Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, as
though it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her full
consent and approval.
During the weeks following, Phyl's impending journey kept Mrs. Hennessey
busy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations and
lists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guinea
or some region equally destitute of shops.
Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have her way--it kept her quiet,
and Phyl, nothing loath, spent most of her time now in shops, Tod and
Burns, and Cannock and White's, examining patterns and being fitted,
varying these amusements by farewell visits. She was invited out by all
the Hennesseys' friends, the Farrels and the Rourkes, and the Longs and
the Newlands, and the Pryces and the Oldhams, all prepared tea-parties in
her honour, made her welcome, and made much of her, just as we make much
of people who have not long to live.
She was the girl that was going to America. She did not appreciate the
real kindness underlying this terrible round of festivities till she was
standing on the deck of the _Hybernia_ at Kingstown saying good-bye to
Hennessey.
Then, as the boat drew away from the Carlisle pier, as it passed the
guardship anchorage and the batteries at the ends of the east and west
piers, all those people from whom she had longed to escape seemed to her
the most desirable people on earth.
Bound for a world unknown, peopled with utter strangers, Ireland, beloved
Ireland, called after her as a mother calls to her child.
Oh, the loneliness! the desolation!
As she stood watching the Wicklow mountains fading in the grey distance,
she knew for the first time the meaning of those words, "Gone West"; and
she knew what the thousands suffered who, driven from their cabins on the
hillside or the moor, went West in the old days when the emigrant ship
showed her tall masts in Queenstown Harbour and her bellying canvas to the
sunset of the Atlantic.
At Liverpool, she found Mrs. Van Dusen, a tall, rather good-looking,
rather hard-looking but exceedingly fashionable individual, at the hotel
where it was arranged they should meet.
Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel and dumb from dejection,
had little in common with this lady, nor did a rough passage across the
Atlantic extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van Dusen
scarcely appeared from her state-room till the evening when, the great
ship coming to her moorings, New York sketched itself and its blazing
skyscrapers against the gloom before the astonished eyes of Phyl.
PART II
CHAPTER I
Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of these stopping places had impressed
upon Phyl the distance she was putting between herself and her home,
making her feel that if this business was not death it was, at least, a
very good imitation of dying.
But the south-bound express from New York was to show her just what people
may be expected to feel _after_ they are dead.
America had been for Phyl little more than a geographical expression.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Settlers in Canada"
and "Round the World in Eighty Days," had given her pictures, and from
these she had built up a vague land of snow and forests, log huts, plains,
Red Indians, runaway negroes and men with bowie knives.
New York had given this fantastic idea a rough joggle, the south-bound
express tumbled it all to pieces.
Forests and mountains and plains would have been familiar to her
imagination, but the south-bound express was producing for her inspection
quite different things from these.
New Jersey with its populous towns, for instance, towns she never could
have imagined or dreamed of, filled with people whose existence she could
not picture.
What gave her a cold grue was the suddenly grasped fact that all this
great mechanism of life, cities, towns, roaring railways, agricultural
lands, manufacturing districts filled with English speaking people--that
all this was alien, knew nothing of Ireland or England, except as it might
know of Japan or a dream of the past.
The people in the train were talking English--were English to all intents
and purposes, and yet, as far as England and Ireland were concerned, she
knew them to be dead.
It had been freezing in New York, a great rainstorm was blowing across the
world as they crossed the Delaware; it passed, sweeping away east under
the arch of a vast rainbow, even the rainbow seemed alien and different to
Irish rainbows--it was too big.
Then came Philadelphia, where some of the dead folk left the train and
others got in. One had an Irish voice and accent. He was a big man with a
hard, pushful face and a great under jaw. Phyl knew him at once for what
he was, and that he had died to Ireland long years ago.
Then came Wilmington and Baltimore, and then, long after sunset in the
dark, a warmer air that entered the train like a viewless passenger, nerve
soothing and mind lulling--the first breath of the South.
Next morning, looking from the windows of the car, she saw the South. Vast
spaces of low-lying land broken by river and bayou, flooded by the light
of the new risen sun and touched by a vague mist from the sea, soft as a
haze of summer, warm with light and everywhere hinting at the blue deep
sky beyond.
Youth, morning, and the spirit of the sea all lay in that luminous haze,
that warm light filled with the laziness of June; and, for one delightful
moment, it seemed to Phyl that summer days long forgotten, rapturous
mornings half remembered were here again.
The rumble of trestle and boom of bridge filled the train, and now the
masts of ships showed thready against the hazy blue of the sky; frame
houses sprang up by the track and fences with black children roosting on
them; then the mean streets of the coloured quarter and now, as the cars
slackened speed, came the bustle that marks the end of a journey. People
were getting their light luggage together, and as Phyl was strapping the
bundle that held her travelling rug and books, a waft of tepid,
salt-scented air came through the compartment and on it the voice of the
negro attendant rousing some drowsy passenger.
"Charleston, sah."
She got out, dazed and numbed by the journey, and stood with the rug
bundle in her hand looking about her, half undecided what to do, half
absorbed by the bustle and movement of the platform.
Then, pushing towards her through the crowd, she saw Pinckney.
He had come to meet her, and as they shook hands, Phyl laughed.
He seemed so bright and cheerful, and the relief at finding a friend after
that long, friendless journey was so great that she laughed right out with
pleasure, like a little child--laughed right into his eyes.
It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen the real Phyl before.
He took the bundle from her and gave it to a negro servant, and then,
giving the luggage checks to the servant and leaving him to bring on the
luggage, he led the girl through the crowd.
"We'll walk to the house," said he, "if you are not too tired; it's only a
few steps away--well--how do you like America?"
"America?" she replied. "I don't know--it's different from what I thought
it would be, ever so much different--and this place--why, it is like
summer here."
"It's the South," said Pinckney. "Look, this is Meeting Street."
They had turned from the street leading from the station into a broad,
beautiful highway, placid, sun flooded, and leading away to the Battery,
that chief pride and glory of Charleston.
On either side of the street, half hidden by their garden walls, large
stately houses of the Georgian era showed themselves. Mansions that had
slumbered in the sun for a hundred years, great, solid houses whose
yellow-wash seemed the incrustation left by golden and peaceful
afternoons, houses of old English solidity yet with the Southern touch of
deep verandas and the hint of palm trees in their jealously walled
gardens.
"Oh, how beautiful!" said Phyl. She stopped, looked about her, and then
gazed away down the street. It was as though the old stately street--and
surely the Street of Other Days might be its name--had been waiting for
her all her life, waiting for her to turn that corner leading from the
commonplace station, waiting to greet her like the ghost of some friend of
childhood. Surely she knew it! Like the recollection of a dream once
dreamed, it lay before her with its walled gardens, its vaguely familiar
houses, its sunlight and placidity.
Pinckney, proud of his native town and pleased at this appreciation of it,
stood by without speaking, watching the girl who seemed to have forgotten
his existence for a moment. Her head was raised as if she were inhaling
the sea wind lazily blowing from the Battery, and bearing with it stray
scents from the gardens by the way.
Then she came back to herself, and they walked on.
"It's just as if I knew the place," said she, "and yet I never remember
seeing anything like it before."
"I've felt that way sometimes about places," said Pinckney. "It seemed to
me that I knew Paris quite well when I went there, though I'd never been
there before. Charleston is pretty English, anyway, and maybe it's that
that makes it seem familiar. But I'm glad you like it. You like it, don't
you?"
"Like it!" said she. "I should think I did--It's more than liking--I love
it."
He laughed.
"Better than Dublin?"
It was her turn to laugh.
"I never loved Dublin." She turned her head to glance at a peep of garden
showing through a wrought iron gate. "Oh, Dublin!--don't talk to me about
it here. I want to keep on feeling I'm here really and that there's
nowhere else."
"There isn't," said he, disclosing for the first time in his life, and
quite unconsciously, his passion for the place where he had been born.
"There's nowhere else but Charleston worth anything--I don't know what it
is about, but it's so."
They were passing a wall across whose top peeped an elbow of ivy geranium.
It was as though the unseen garden beyond, tired of constraint and
drowsily stretching, had disclosed this hint of a geranium coloured arm.
Pinckney paused at a wrought iron gate and opened it.
"This is Vernons," said he.
CHAPTER II
A grosbeak was singing in the magnolia tree by the gate and the warmth of
the morning sun was filling the garden with a heart-snatching perfume of
jessamine.
Jessamine and the faint bitterness of sun warmed foliage.
It was a garden sure to be haunted by birds; not large and, though well
kept, not trim, and sing the birds as loud as they might, they never could
break the charm of silence cast by Time on this magic spot.
In the centre of the lawn stood a dial, inscribed with the old dial
motto:
The Hours Pass and are Numbered.
Phyl paused for a moment just as she had paused in the street, and
Pinckney looking at her noticed again that uptilt of the head, and that
far away look as of a person who is trying to remember or straining to
hear.
Then a voice from the house came across the broad veranda leading from the
garden to the lower rooms.
A female voice that seemed laughing and scolding at the same time.
"Dinah! Dinah! bless the girl, will she never learn sense-- Dinah! Ah,
there you are. How often have I told you to put General Grant in the sun
first thing in the morning?-- You've been dusting! I'll dust you. Here,
get away."
Out on the veranda, parrot cage in hand, came a most surprising lady.
Antique yet youthful, dressed as ladies were wont to dress of a morning in
long forgotten years, bright eyed, and wrathfully agitated.
"Aunt," cried Pinckney. "Here we are."
The sun was in Miss Pinckney's eyes; she put the cage down, shaded her
eyes and stared full at Phyl.
"God bless me!" said Miss Pinckney.
"This is Phyl," said he, as they came up to the verandah steps.
Miss Pinckney, seeming not to hear him in the least, took the girl by both
hands, and holding her so as if for inspection stared at her.
Then she turned on Pinckney with a snap.
"Why didn't you tell me--she's--why, she's a Mascarene. Well, of all the
astonishing things in the world-- Child--child, where did you get that
face?"
Before Phyl could answer this recondite question, she found herself
enveloped in frills and a vague perfume of stephanotis. Maria Pinckney had
taken her literally to her heart, and was kissing her as people kiss small
children, kissing her and half crying at the same time, whilst Pinckney
stood by wondering.
He thought that he knew everything about Maria Pinckney, just as he had
fancied he knew himself till Phyl had shewn him, over there in Ireland,
that there were a lot of things in his mind and character still to be
known by himself. This, as regards him, seemed the special mission of Phyl
in the world.
"It's the likeness," said Miss Pinckney. "I thought it was Juliet
Mascarene there before me in the sun, Juliet dead those years and years."
Then commanding herself, and with one of those reverses, sudden changes of
manner and subject peculiar to herself:
"Where's your luggage?"
"Abraham is bringing it along."
"Abraham! Do you mean you didn't drive, _walked_ here from the station?"
"Yes," said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin against
the _covenances_ he had committed now.
"And she after that journey from N'York. Richard Pinckney, you are
a--man--I was going to have called you a fool--but it's the same thing.
Here, come on both of you--the child must be starving. This is the
breakfast room, Phyl--Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter,
I'm getting an old woman, and mustn't grumble--mustn't grumble--umph!"
She took Pinckney's walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, picked
up a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the
floor.
She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered the
coloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.
Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she was
without removing her hat.
The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faint
with hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her
conclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.
It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-legged
table that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was
brought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by a
red hot iron contained in a cylinder.
Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, but
Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this lady
was almost rude--or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mind
often outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when it
ought to have been in the present.
Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed
her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that
old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it
measured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that the
thin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses of
Time, were moving as though debating some question unheard.
He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced a great effect on Maria
Pinckney. No one knew her better than he, for no one loved her so well.
It was she who ordered him about, still, just as though he were a small
boy, and sometimes as he sat watching her, so fragile, so indomitable,
like the breath of winter would come the thought that a day would come--a
day might come soon when he would be no longer ordered about, told to put
his hat in the hall--which is the proper place for hats--told not to dare
to bring cigars into the drawing-room.
To Phyl, Maria Pinckney formed part of the spell that was surrounding her;
Meeting Street had begun the weaving of this spell, Vernons was completing
it with the aid of Maria Pinckney.
The song of the Cardinal Grosbeak in the garden, the stirring of the
window curtains in the warm morning air, the feel of morning and sunlight,
the scent of the tea that was filling the room, the room itself
old-fashioned yet cheerful, chintzy and sunny, all the things had the
faint familiarity of the street. It was as though the blood of her
mother's people coursing in her veins had retained and brought to her some
thrill and warmth from all these things; these things they knew and loved
so well.
"There's the carriage," said Miss Pinckney, whose ears had picked out the
sound of it drawing up at the front door. "They know where to take the
luggage. Richard, go and see that they don't knock the bannisters about.
Abraham is all thumbs and has no more sense in moving things than Dinah
has'n dusting them. Only last week when Mrs. Beamis was going away, he let
that trunk of hers slip and I declare to goodness I thought it was a
church falling down the stairs and tearing the place to pieces."
There was little of the stately languor of the South in Miss Pinckney's
speech. She was Northern on the mother's side. But in her prejudices she
was purely Southern, or, at least, Charlestonian.
Pinckney laughed.
"I don't think Phyl's luggage will hurt much even if it falls," said he.
"English luggage is generally soft."
"It's only a trunk and a portmanteau," said Phyl, as he left the room, but
Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear; pouring herself out another cup of tea
(she was the best and the worst hostess in the whole world) and seeming
not to notice that Phyl's cup was empty, she was off on one of her mind
wandering expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried her into the
past, sometimes into the future, that led her anywhere and to the wrapt,
inward contemplation of all sorts of things and subjects from the doings
of the Heavenly Host to the misdoings of Dinah.
She talked on these expeditions.
"Well, I'm sure and I'm sure I don't know what folk want with the luggage
they carry about with them nowadays-- The old folk didn't. Not Saratoga
trunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880,
when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene--he
belonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia-- He came to the
wedding, and all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses on it
still. He wore a beaver hat. They'd been out of fashion for years and
years. So was he. Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clothes
were the same. Looked like a picture out of Dickens. Your grandmother was
there, too, came from Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her own
carriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia Mascarenes and they
looked it. Seems to me some people never can be new nor get away from
their ancestors. If you'd dressed Simon in kilts it wouldn't have made any
difference, much, he'd still have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, just
as stiff and fine and proud and old-fashioned."
"It seems funny that my people should have been the Virginia Mascarenes,"
said Phyl, "because--because--well, I feel as if my people had always
lived here--this feels like home--I don't know what it is, but just as I
came into the street outside there I seemed to know it, and this house--"
"Why, God bless my soul," said Miss Pinckney, whose eyes had just fallen
on the girl's empty cup, "here have I been talking and talking, and you
waiting for some more tea. Why didn't you ask, child?--What were you
saying? The Virginia Mascarenes-- Oh, they often came here, and your
mother knew this house as well as Planters. That was the name of their
house in Richmond. But what I can't get over is your likeness to Juliet.
She might have been your sister to look at you both--and she dead all
these years."
"Who was Juliet?"
"She was the girl who died," said Miss Pinckney. "You know, although
Richard calls me Aunt, I am not really his aunt; it's just an easy name
for an old woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It was this way
I came in. Long before the Civil War, the Pinckneys lived at a house
called Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.
Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonely
and they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and he
had two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been their sister the way
we all lived together and loved each other--and quarrelled. Dear me, dear
me, what is Time at all that it leaves everything the same? The same sun,
and flowers and houses, and all the people gone or changed-- Well, I am
trying to tell you-- Rupert fell in love with Juliet Mascarene, who lived
here. He was killed suddenly in '61-- I don't want to talk of it--and she
died of grief the year after. She died of grief--simply died of grief.
Charles lived and married in 1880 when he was forty years old. He married
Juliet's brother's daughter and Vernons came to him on the marriage. He
hadn't a son till ten years later. That son was Richard. Charles left
Richard all his property and Vernons on the condition that I always lived
here--till I died, and that's how it is. I'm not Richard's aunt, it's only
a name he gives me--I'm only just an old piece of furniture left with the
house to him. I'm so fond of the place, it would kill me to leave it;
places grow like that round one, though I'm sure I don't know why."
"I don't wonder at you loving Vernons," said Phyl. "I was just the same
about our place in Ireland, Kilgobbin--I thought it would kill me to leave
it."
"Tell me about it," said Miss Pinckney. Phyl told, or tried to tell.
Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland the sunlight of
Charleston, the garden with the magnolia trees where the red bird was
singing and the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked very far
away and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin without its master and with the
mist of winter among the trees.
All that was part of the Past gone forever, and so great was the magic of
this new place that she found herself recognising with a little chill that
this Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling towards it was
faintly tinged by something not unlike indifference.
"Well," said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished, "it must be a beautiful
old place, though I can't seem to see it-- You see, I've never been in
Ireland and I can't picture it any more than the new Jerusalem. Now Dinah
knows all about the new Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up she
sees it--I can't. Haven't got the gift of seeing things, and it seems
strange that the A'mighty should shower it on a coloured girl and leave a
white woman wanting; but it appears to be the A'mighty knows his own
business, so I don't grumble. Now I'm going to show you the house and your
room. I've given you a room looking right on the garden, this side. You've
noticed how all our houses here are built with their sides facing the
street and their fronts facing the garden, or maybe you haven't noticed it
yet, but you will. 'Pears to me our ancestors had some sense in their
heads, even though they didn't invent telegraphs to send bad news in a
hurry and railway cars to smash people to bits, and telephones to let
strangers talk right into one's house just by ringing a bell. Not that I'd
let one into Vernons. You may hunt high or low, garret or basement, you
won't find one of those boxes of impudence in Vernons--not while I have
servants to go my messages."
Miss Pinckney was right. For years she had fought the telephone and kept
it out, making Richard Pinckney's life a tissue of small inconveniences,
and suffering this epitaph on her sanity to be written by all sorts of
inferior people, "Plumb crazy."
She led the way from the breakfast-room and passed into the hall.
The spirit of Vernons inhabited the hall. One might have fancied it as a
stout and prosperous gentleman attired in a blue coat with brass buttons,
shorts, and wearing a bunch of seals at his fob. Oak, brought from
England, formed the panelling, and a great old grandfather's clock, with
the maker's name and address, "Whewel. Coggershall," blazoned on its brass
face, told the time, just as it had told the time when the Regent was
ruling at St. James's in those days which seem so spacious, yet so trivial
in their pomp and vanity.
Sitting alone here of an afternoon with the sun pointing fingers through
the high leaded windows, Whewel of Coggershall took you under his spell,
the spell of old ghosts of long forgotten afternoons, spacious afternoons
filled with the cawing of rooks and the drone of bees. English afternoons
of the good old time when the dust of the post chaise was the only mark of
hurry across miles of meadow land and cowslip weather. And then as you sat
held by the sound of the slow-slipping seconds, maybe, from some door
leading to the servants' quarters suddenly left open a voice would come,
the voice of some darky singing whilst at work.
A snatch of the South mixing with your dream of England and the past, and
making of the whole a charm beyond words.
That is Charleston.
Set against the panelling and almost covering it in parts were prints,
wood-cuts, engravings, portraits in black and white.
Here was a silhouette of Colonel Vernon, the founder of the house, and
another of his wife. Here was an early portrait of Jeff Davis,
hollow-cheeked and goatee-bearded, and here was Mayflower, the property of
Colonel Seth Mascarene, the fastest trotting horse in Virginia, worshipped
by her owner whose portrait hung alongside.
Phyl glanced at these pictures as she followed Miss Pinckney, who opened
doors shewing the dining-room, a room rather heavily furnished, hung with
portraits of long-faced gentlemen and ladies of old time, and then the
drawing-room. A real drawing-room of the Sixties, a thing preserved in its
entirety, in all its original stiffness, interesting as a valentine,
perfumed like an old rosewood cabinet.
Keepsakes and Books of Beauty lay on the centre table, a gilt clock
beneath a glass shade marked the moment when it had ceased to keep time
over twenty-five years ago, the antimacassars on the armchairs were not a
line out of position; not a speck of dust lay anywhere, and the Dresden
shepherds and shepherdesses simpered and made love in the same old
fashion, preserving unaltered the sentiment of spring, the suggestion of
Love, lambs, and the song of birds.
"It's just as it used to be," said Miss Pinckney. "Nothing at all has been
changed, and I dust it myself. I would just as soon let a servant loose
here with a duster as I'd let one of the buzzards from the market-place
loose in the larder. Those water-colours were done by Mary Mascarene,
Juliet's sister, who died when she was fifteen; they mayn't be
masterpieces but they're Mary's, and worth more'n if they were covered
with gold. Mrs. Beamis sniffed when she came in here--she's the woman
whose trunk got loose on the stairs I told you about--sniffed as if the
place smelt musty. She's got a husband who's made a million dollars out of
dry goods in Chicago, and she thought the room wanted re-furnishing.
Didn't say it, but I knew. A player-piano is what she wanted. Didn't say
it, but _I_ knew. Umph!"
Miss Pinckney, having shown Phyl out, looked round the room as if to make
sure that all the familiar ghosts were in their places, then she shut the
door with a snap, and turning, led the way upstairs murmuring to herself,
and with the exalted and far away look which she wore when put out.
Phyl's room lay on the first landing, a bright and cheerful room papered
with a rather cheap flower and sprig patterned paper, spring-like for all
its cheapness, and just the background for children's heads when they wake
up on a bright morning.
A bowl of flowers stood on the dressing-table, and the open window shewed
across the verandah a bit of the garden, where the cherokee roses were
blooming.
"This is your room," said Miss Pinckney. "It's one of the brightest in the
house, and I hope you'll like it-- Listen!"
Through the open window came the chime of church-bells.
"It's the chimes of St. Michael's. You'll never want a clock here, the
bells ring every quarter, just as they've rung for the last hundred years;
they're the first thing I remember, and maybe they'll be the last. Well,
come on and I'll show you some more of the house, if you're not tired and
don't want to rest."
She led the way from the room and along the corridor, opening doors and
shewing rooms, and then up a back stairs to the top floor beneath the
attics.
The house seemed to grow in age as they ascended. Not a door in Vernons
was exactly true in line; the old house settling itself down quietly
through the years and assisted perhaps by the great earthquake, though
that had left it practically unharmed, shewed that deviation from the
right line in cornice and wainscoting and door space, which is the hall
mark left on architecture by genius or age. The builders of the Parthenon
knew this, the builders of Vernons did not-- Age supplied their defects.
Up here the flooring of the passages and rooms frankly sagged in places,
and the beams bellied downwards ever so little and the ceilings bowed.
"I've seen all these bed-rooms filled in the old days," said Miss
Pinckney. "We had wounded soldiers here in the war. What Vernons hasn't
seen of American history isn't worth telling--much. Here's the nursery."
She opened a door with bottle-glass panels, real old bottle-glass worth
its weight in minted silver, and shewed Phyl into a room.
"This is the nursery," said she.
It was a large room with two windows, and the windows were barred to keep
small people from tumbling into the garden. The place had the air of
silence and secrecy that haunts rooms long closed and deserted. An
old-fashioned paper shewing birds of Paradise covered the walls. A paper
so old that Miss Pinckney remembered it when, as a child, she had come
here to tea with the Mascarene children, so good that the dye of the
gorgeous Paradise birds had scarcely faded.
A beam of morning sun struck across the room, a great solid, golden bar of
light. Phyl, as she stood for a moment on the threshold, saw motes dancing
in the bar of light; the air was close and almost stuffy owing to the
windows being shut. A rocking-horse, much, much the worse for wear stood
in one corner, he was piebald and the beam of light just failed to touch
his brush-like tail. A Noah's Ark of the good old pattern stood on the lid
of a great chest under one of the windows, and in the centre of the room a
heavy table of plain oak nicked by knives and stained with ink told its
tale.
There were books in a little hanging book-case, books of the 'forties' and
'fifties': "Peter Parley," "The Child's Pilgrim's Progress," "The
Dairy-Maid's Daughter," an odd volume of _Harper's_ _Magazine_ containing
an instalment of "Little Dorrit," Caroline Chesebro's "Children of Light,"
and Samuel Irenaeus Prime's "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit of
Female Piety, and other Sketches." Miss Pinckney opened one of the windows
to let in air; Phyl, who had said nothing, stood looking about her at the
forsaken toys, the chairs, and the little three-legged stool most
evidently once the property of some child.
All nurseries have a generic likeness. It seemed to her that she knew this
room, from the beam of light with the motes dancing in it to the
bird-patterned paper. Kilgobbin nursery was papered with a paper giving an
endless repetition of one subject--a man driving a pig to market--with
that exception, the two rooms were not unlike. Yet those birds were the
haunting charm of this place, the things that most appealed to her, things
that seemed the ghosts of old friends.
She came to the window and looked out through the bars. Across the garden
of Vernons one caught a glimpse of other gardens, palmetto-tree tops, and
away, beyond the battery, a hint of the blue harbour. Just the picture to
fill an imaginative child's mind with all sorts of pleasant fancies about
the world, and Phyl, forgetting for a moment Miss Pinckney, herself, and
the room in which she was, stood looking out, caught in a momentary day
dream, just like a child in one of those reveries that are part of the
fairy tale of childhood.
That touch of blue sea beyond the red roofs and green palmetto fronds gave
her mind wings for a moment and a world to fly through. Not the world we
live in, but the world worth living in. Old sailor-stories, old scraps of
thought and dreams from nowhere pursued her, haunted her during that
delightful and tantalising moment, and then she was herself again and Miss
Pinckney was saying:
"It's a pretty view and hasn't changed since I was a child. Now, in N'York
they'd have put up skyscrapers; Lord bless you, they'd have put them up at
a _loss_ so's to seem energetic and spoil the view. That's a N'Yorker in
two words, happy so long as he's energetic and spoiling views--" Then
gazing dreamily towards the touch of blue sea. "Well, I guess the Lord
made N'Yorkers same as he made you and me. His ways are _in_scrutable and
past finding out; so'r the ways of some of his creatures."
She turned from the window, and her eye fell on the great chest by the
other window.
Going to it, she opened the lid.
It was full of old toys, mostly broken. She seemed to have forgotten the
presence of Phyl. Holding the chest's lid open, she gazed at the coloured
and futile contents.
Then she closed the lid of the chest with a sigh.
CHAPTER III
The South dines at four o'clock--at least Charleston does.
It was the old English custom and the old Irish custom, too.
In the reign of William the Conqueror people dined at eleven A.M. or was
it ten? Then, as civilisation advanced, the dinner hour stole forward. In
the time of the Georges it reached four o'clock. In Ireland, the most
conservative country on earth, some people even still sit down to table at
four--in Charleston every one does.
One would not change the custom for worlds, just as one would not change
the old box pews of St. Michael's or replace the cannon on the Battery
with modern ordinance.
Richard Pinckney did not dine at home that day. He was dining with the
Rhetts in Calhoun Street, so Miss Pinckney said as they sat down to table.
She sniffed as she said it, for the Rhetts, though one of the best
families in the town, were people not of her way of thinking. The two
Rhett girls had each a motor-car of her own and drove it--abomination!
The automobile ranked in her mind with the telephone as an invention of
the devil.
Phyl had not seen Richard Pinckney since the morning and now he was dining
out. Her heart had warmed to him at the station on the way to Vernons, and
at breakfast he had appeared to her as a quite different person to the
Richard Pinckney who had come to Kilgobbin, more boyish and frank, less of
a man of the world. She had not seen him since he left the room at
breakfast-time to look after her luggage. Miss Pinckney said he had gone
off "somewhere or another" and grumbled at him for going off leaving his
breakfast not quite finished, she said that he was always "scatter
braining about" either at the yacht club or somewhere else.
Phyl, as she sat now at the dining-table with the dead and gone Mascarene
men and women looking at her from the canvases on the wall, felt ever so
slightly hurt.
Youth calls to youth irrespective of sex. She felt as a young person feels
when another young person shows indifference. Then came the thought: was
he avoiding her? Was he angry still about the affair at Kilgobbin, or was
it just that he did not want to be bothered talking to her, looked on her
as a nuisance in the house, a guest of no interest to him and yet to whom
he had to be polite?
She could not tell. Neither could she tell why the problem exercised her
mind in the way it did. Even at Kilgobbin, despite the fact of her
antagonism towards him, Pinckney had possessed the power of disturbing her
mind and making her think about him in a way that no one else had ever
succeeded in doing. No one else had made her feel the short-comings in the
household _menage_ at Kilgobbin, no one else had made her so fiercely
critical of herself and her belongings.
She did not recognise the fact, but the fact was there, that it was a
necessity of her being to stand well in this man's eyes.
When a woman falls in love with a man or a man with a woman, the first
necessity of his or her being is to stand well in the eyes of the loved
one, anything that may bring ridicule or adverse criticism or disdain is
death.
Phyl was not in love with Richard Pinckney, nor had she been in love with
him at Kilgobbin, all the same the sensitiveness to appearances felt by a
lover was there. Her anger that night when he had let her in at eleven
o'clock was due, perhaps, less to his implied reproof then the fact that
she had felt cheap in his eyes, and now, sitting at dinner with Miss
Pinckney the idea that he was still angry with her was obscured by the far
more distasteful idea that she was of absolutely no account in his eyes, a
creature to whom he had to be civil, an interloper.
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened at the thought, but Miss
Pinckney did not notice it. She had turned from the subject of the Rhetts
and their automobiles to Charleston society in general.
"Now that you've come," said she, "you will find there's not a moment you
won't enjoy yourself if you're fond of gadding about. All the society here
is in the hands of young people, balls and parties! The St. Cecilias give
three balls a year. I go always, not to dance but to look on. Richard is a
St. Cecilia--St. Cecilias? Why, it's just a club a hundred-and-forty years
old. There are two hundred of them, all men, and they know how to
entertain. I have been at every ball for the last half century. Not one
have I missed. Then there's the yacht club and picnics to Summerville and
the Isle of Palms, and bathing parties and boating by moonlight. If you
are a gad-about you will enjoy all that."
"But I'm not," said Phyl. "I've never been used to society, much. I like
books better than people, unless they're--"
"Unless they're what?"
"Well--people I really like."
"Well," said Miss Pinckney, "one wouldn't expect you to like people you
_didn't_ like--there's no 'really' in liking, it's one thing or the
other--you don't care for girls, maybe?"
"I haven't seen much of them," replied Phyl, "except at school, and that
was only for a short time. I--I ran away."
"Ran away! And why did you run away?"
"I was miserable; they were kind enough to me, but I wanted to get
home--Father was alive then--I felt I had to get home or die--I can't
explain it--It felt like a sort of madness. I had to get back home."
Miss Pinckney was watching the girl, she scarcely seemed listening to
her--Then she spoke:
"Impulsive. If I wasn't sitting here in broad daylight, I'd fancy it was
Juliet Mascarene. What makes you so like her? It's not the face so much,
though the family likeness runs strong, still, the face is different,
though like--It's just you yourself--well, I'm sure I don't know, seems to
me there's a lot of things hid from us. Look at the Pringles, Anthony's
family, the ones that live in Tradd Street. If you put their noses
together, they'd reach to Legare Street. It runs in the family. Julian
Pringle, he died in '70, he was just the same. Now why should a long nose
run through a family like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair? I
don't know. The world's a puzzle and the older one grows, the more it
puzzles one."
After dinner, Miss Pinckney ordered Phyl to put on her hat and they
started out for a drive.
Every day at five o'clock, weather permitting, Miss Pinckney took an
airing. She was one of the sights of Charleston, she, and the dark
chestnut horses driven by Abraham the coloured coachman, and the barouche
in which she drove; a carriage of other times, one of those deathless
conveyances turned out in Long Acre in the days when varnish was varnish
and hand labour had not been ousted by machinery. It was painted in a
basket-work pattern, the pattern peculiar to the English Royal carriages,
and the whole turn-out had an excellence and a style of its own--a thing
unpurchasable as yesterday.
They drove in the direction of the Battery and here they drew up to look
at the view. On one side of them stood the great curving row of mansions
facing the sea, old Georgian houses and houses more modern, yet without
offence, set in gardens where the palmetto leaves shivered in the sea wind
and the pink mimosa mixed its perfume with the salt-scented air. On the
other side lay the sea. Afternoon, late afternoon, is the time of all
times to visit this spacious and sunlit place. It is then that the old
ghosts return, if ever they return, to discuss the news brought by the
last packet from England, the doings of Mr. Pitt, the Paris fashions.
Looking seaward they would see no change in the changeless sea and little
change in the city if they turned their eyes that way.
Miss Pinckney got out and they walked a bit, inspecting the guns, each
with its brass plate and its story.
Far away in the haze stood Fort Sumter,--a fragment of history, a sea
warrior of the past, voiceless and guarding forever the viewless. It may
have been some recollection of the Brighton front and of the great harbour
of Kingstown with the sun upon it, and all this seemed vaguely familiar to
Phyl, pleasantly familiar and homely. She breathed the sea air deeply and
then, as she turned, glancing towards the land, a recollection came to her
of the story she had been reading that evening in the library at
Kilgobbin--"The Gold Bug." It was near here that Legrand had found the
treasure. He had come to Charleston to buy the mattocks and picks--no, it
was Jupp the negro who had come to buy them.
She turned to Miss Pinckney.
"Did you ever read a story called 'The Gold Bug' by Edgar Allan Poe?" she
asked. "It is about a place near here--Sullivan's Island--that's it--I
remember now."
"Why, I knew him," said Miss Pinckney.
"Knew Edgar Allan Poe!" said Phyl.
"I knew him when I was a child and I have sat on his knee and I can see
his face--what a face it was! and the coat he wore--it had a velvet
collar--his teeth were beautiful, and his hair--beautiful glossy hair it
was, but he was not handsome as people use that expression, he was
extraordinary, such eyes--and the most wonderful voice in the world. I'm
seventy-five years of age and he died in October '49, and I met him three
years before he died, so you see I was a pretty small child. It was at
Fordham. He'd just taken a cottage there for his wife, who was ailing with
consumption, and my aunt, Mary Pinckney, who was a friend of the Osgoods,
took me there. It must have been summer for I remember a bird hanging in a
cage in the sunshine, a bob-o'-link it was, he had caught it in the
woods.
"Dear Lord! I wonder where that summer day's gone to, and the
bob-o'-link--'pears to me we aren't even memories, for memories live and
we don't."
They were walking along, Abraham slowly following with the carriage, and
Miss Pinckney was walking in an exultant manner as though she saw nothing
about her, as though she were treading air. Phyl had unconsciously set
free a train of thought in the mind of Miss Pinckney, a train that always
led to an explosion, and this is exactly how it happened and what she
said.
"But his memory will live. Look right round you, do you see his statue?"
"No," said Phyl, sweeping the view. "Where is it?"
"Just so, where is it? It's not here, it's not in N'York, it's not in
Baltimore, it's not in Philadelphia, it's not in Boston. The one real
splendid writing man that America has produced she's ashamed to put up a
statue to. Why? Because he drank! Why, God bless my soul, Grant drank. No,
it wasn't drink, it was Griswold. The man who hated him, the man who
crucified his reputation and sold the remains for thirty pieces of silver
to a publisher, Griswold, Rufus Griswold--Judas Griswold that was his real
name, and he hid it--"
Miss Pinckney had lowered her parasol in her anger, she shut it with a
snap and then shot it up again; as she did so an automobile driven by a
girl and which was approaching them, passed, and a young man seated by the
girl raised his hat.
It was Richard Pinckney.
The girl was a very pretty brunette. This thing was too much for Miss
Pinckney in her present temper; all her anger against Griswold seemed
suddenly diverted to the automobile. She snorted.
"There goes Richard with Venetia Frances Rhett," said she. "Ought to be
ashamed of herself driving along the Battery in that outrageous thing;
goodness knows, they're bad enough driven by men, scaring people to death
and killing dogs and chickens, without girls taking to them--"
She stared after the car, then signalling to Abraham, she got into the
barouche, Phyl followed her and they continued their drive.
That evening after supper Miss Pinckney's mind warmed to thoughts of the
good old days when motor-cars were undreamed of, and stirred up by the
recollection of Edgar Allan Poe, discharged itself of reminiscences worth
much gold could they have been taken down by a stenographer.
She was sitting with Phyl in the piazza, for the night was warm, and
whilst a big southern moon lit the garden, she let her mind stray over the
men and women who had made American literature in the '50's and '60's,
many of whom she had known when young.
Estelle Anna Lewis of Baltimore, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen
Bryant, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Cornelius Mathews, Frances Sargent Osgood,
N. P. Willis, Laughton Osborn. She had known Lowell and Longfellow, yet
her mind seemed to cling mostly to the lesser people, writers in the
_Southern Literary Messenger_, the _Home Journal_, the _Mirror_ and the
_Broadway Journal_.
People well-known in their day and now scarcely remembered, yet whose very
names are capable of evoking the colour and romance of that fascinating
epoch beyond and around the Civil War.
"They're all dead and gone," said she, "and folk nowadays don't seem to
trouble about the best of them, or remember their lines, yet there's
nothing they write now that's as good--I remember poor Thomas Ward.
'Flaccus' was the name he wrote under, a thin skeleton of a man always
with his head in the air and his mind somewhere else, used to write in the
_Knickerbocker Journal_; I heard him recite one of his things.
"'And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,
That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart.'
"That stuck in my head, mostly, I expect, because Thomas Ward didn't look
as if he'd ever kissed a girl, but they are good lines and a lot better
than they write nowadays."
The wind had risen a bit and was stirring in the leaves of the magnolias,
white carnations growing near the sun dial shook their ruffles in the
moonlight, and from near and far away came the sounds of Charleston,
voices, the sound of traffic and then, a thread of tune tying moonbeams,
magnolias, carnations and cherokee roses in a great southern bunch, came
the notes of a banjo, plunk, plunk, and a voice from somewhere away in the
back premises, the voice of a negro singing one of the old Plantation
songs.
Just a snatch before some closing door cut the singer off, but enough to
make Phyl raise her head and listen, listen as though a whole world
vaguely guessed, a world forgotten yet still warm and loving, youthful and
sunlit, were striving to reach her and speak to her--As though Charleston
the mysterious city that had greeted her first in Meeting Street were
trying to tell her of things delightful, once loved, once known and
forever vanished.
As she lay awake that night with the moonlight showing through the blinds,
the whole of that strange day came before her in pictures: the face of
Frances Rhett troubled her, yet she did not know in the least why; it
seemed part of the horribleness of automobiles and the anger of Miss
Pinckney and the tribulations of Edgar Allan Poe.
Then the fantastic band of forgotten _literati_ trooped before her, led by
"Flaccus," the man who didn't look as if he had ever kissed a girl, yet
who wrote:
"And, straining, fastened on her lips a kiss,
That seemed to suck the life blood from her heart."
CHAPTER IV
Phyl awoke to the early morning sunlight and the sounds of Charleston.
The chimes of St. Michael's were striking six and through the summery
sunlit air carried by the sea wind stirring the curtains came the cries of
the streets and the rumbling of early morning carts.
Oh, those negro cries! the cry of the crab-seller, the orange vendor, the
man who sells "monkey meat" dolorous, long drawn out, lazy, you do not
know the South till you have heard them.
The sound of a mat being shaken and beaten on the piazza, adjoining that
on which her window opened came now, and two voices in dispute.
"Mistress Pinckney she told me to tell you--she mos' sholey did."
"Go wash yo' face, yo' coloured trash, cummin' here wid yo' orders--skip
out o' my piazza--'clar' to goodness I dunno what's cummin' to niggers
dese days."
Then Miss Pinckney's voice as from an upper window:
"Dinah! Seth! what's that I hear? Get on with your work the pair of you
and stop your chattering. You hear me?"
When Phyl came down Richard Pinckney was in the garden smoking a cigarette
and gathering some carnations.
"They're for aunt," said he, "to propitiate her for my being late last
night. I wasn't in till one. I'm worse even than you, you see, and the
next time you are out till eleven and I let you in and grumble at you, you
can hit back. Have a flower."
He gave her the finest in his bunch and Phyl put it in her belt. If she
had any doubt as to the sincerity of his welcome his manner this morning
ought to have set her mind at rest.
She stood looking at him as he tied the stalks of the flowers together and
he was worth looking at, a fresh, bright figure, the very incarnation of
youth and health and one might almost say innocence. Clear eyed,
well-groomed, good to look upon.
"I generally pick a flower and put it on her plate," said he, "but this
morning she shall have a whole bunch--hope you slept all right?"
"Rather," said Phyl, "I never sleep much the first night in a new
place--but somehow--oh, I don't know how to express it--but nothing here
seems new."
"Nothing is," said he laughing, "it's all as old as the hills--you like
it, don't you?"
"It's not a question of liking--of course I like it, who could help liking
it--it's more than that. It's a feeling I have that I will either love it
or hate it, and I don't know which yet, all sorts of things come back to
me here, you see, my mother knew the place--do people remember what their
mothers and fathers knew, I wonder? But, if you understood me, it's not so
much remembering as feeling. All yesterday it seemed to me that I had only
to turn some corner and come upon something waiting for me, something I
knew quite well, and the smells and sounds and things are always reminding
me of something--you know how it is when you have forgotten a name and
when it's lying just at the back of your mind--that's how I feel here,
about nearly everything--strange, isn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the practical Pinckney. "This place is awfully
English for one thing, sure to remind you of a lot of things in Ireland
and England, and then there's of course the fact that you are partly
American, but I don't see why you should ever hate it."
"_Indeed_, I didn't mean that," said she flushing up at the thought that
in trying to express herself she had made such a blunder. "I meant--I
meant, that this something about the place that is always reminding me of
itself might make me hate _it_."
"Or love it?"
"Yes, but I can't explain--the place itself no one could hate, you must
have thought me rude."
"Not a bit--not the least little bit in the world. Well, I believe you'll
come to love it, not hate it."
"It," said Phyl. "I don't know that, because I don't know what it is--this
something that is always peeping round corners at me yet hiding itself."
"_Richard_!" came Miss Pinckney's voice from the piazza where she had just
appeared, "smoking cigarettes before breakfast, how often have I told you
I won't have you smoking before breakfast--why, God bless my soul, what
are you doing with all those carnations?"
He flung the cigarette-end away, but she refused to kiss him on account of
the tobacco fumes, though she took the flowers.
Cigarettes, like telephones, automobiles, and the memory of Edgar Allan
Poe, formed a subject upon which once started Miss Pinckney was hard to
check, and whilst she poured out the tea, she pursued it.
"Dr. Cotton it was who told me, the one who used to live in Tradd Street,
he was a relative of Dr. Garden the man that gave his name to that flower
they call the gardenia--had it sent him from somewhere in the South, but
I'm sure I don't know where--New Orleans, I think, but it doesn't matter.
I was saying about Dr. Cotton, _old_ Dr. Cotton of Tradd Street, he told
me that the truth about young William Pringle's death was that he was
black when he died, from cigarette smoking, black as a crow. Used to smoke
before breakfast, used to smoke all day, used to smoke in his sleep, I
b'lieve. Couldn't get rid of the pesky habit and died clinging to it,
black as a crow. I can't abide the things. Your father used to smoke Bull
Durham in a corn cob, or a cigar, he'd a' soon have smoked one of those
cigarettes of yours as soon as he'd have been caught doing tatting. Don't
tell me, there's no manhood in them, it's just vice in thimble-fulls. I'd
much sooner see a man lying healthily under the table once in a way than
always half fuddled, and I'd sooner be poisoned out by a green cigar now
and then, than always having that nasty sickly cigarette smell round the
place."
"But good gracious, Aunt, I'm not a cigarette smoker, only once and away
and at odd times."
"I wasn't talking about you so much as the young men of to-day, and the
young women, they're the worst, for they encourage the others to make
fools of themselves, and if they're not smoking themselves they're sucking
candy. Candy sucking and cigarette smoking is the ruin of the States.
Those Rhett girls _live_ on candy, and they look it--pasty faces."
"Why!" said he, "what grudge have you got against the Rhetts now,
Aunt--it's as bad to take a girl's complexion away as a man's
character--what have the Rhetts been doing to you?"
Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question for a moment, then she
said, speaking as if to some invisible person:
"That Frances Rhett may be reckoned the belle of Charleston, that's what I
heard old Mr. Outhwaite call her, but she's a belle I wouldn't care to
have tied round my neck. Belle! She's no more a belle than I am, there are
hundreds of prettier girls between here and the Battery, but she's one of
those sort that have the knack of setting young men against each other and
making them fight for her; she's labelled herself as a prize, which she
isn't. I declare to goodness the world frightens me at times, the way I
see fools going about labelled as clever men, and women your grandfathers
wouldn't have cast an eye at going about labelled as beauties. I do
believe if I was to give myself out as a beauty to-morrow I'd have half
the young idiots in Charleston after me, believing me."
"They're after you already," said Pinckney, "only yesterday I heard young
Reggy Calhoun saying--"
"I know," said Miss Pinckney, "and I want no more of your impudence. Now
take yourself off if you've finished your breakfast, for Phyl and I have
work to do."
He got up and went off laughing by way of the piazza and they could hear
his cheery voice in the garden talking to the old negro gardener.
Miss Pinckney's eyes softened. She was fiddling with a spoon and when she
spoke she seemed speaking to it, turning it about as if to examine its
pattern all the time.
"I don't know what mothers with boys feel like, but I do want to see that
boy safe and married before I go. He's just the sort to be landed in
unhappiness; he is, most surely; well, I don't know, there's no use in
warning young folk, you may spank 'em for stealing the jam but you can't
spank 'em from fooling with the wrong sort of girl."
Miss Pinckney had talked the night before of Phyl's father and had
proposed taking her this morning to the Magnolia cemetery to see the
grave. She broke off the conversation suddenly as this fact strayed into
her mind, and, rising up, invited Phyl to follow her to the kitchen
premises where she had orders to give before starting.
"I always look after my own house," said she, "and always will. Fine
ladies nowadays sit in their drawing-rooms and ring their bells for the
servants to rob them and they aren't any more respected. That's what makes
the Charleston negro the impudentest lump of blackness under the sun, that
and knowing they're emancipated. They've got to look on themselves as part
of the Heavenly Host. Well, I'll have no emancipated rubbish in my house,
and the consequence is I never lose a servant and I never get impudence.
They'll all get a pension when they're too old to work, and good food and
good pay whilst they're working, and I've said to them 'you're no more
emancipated than I am, we're all slaves to our duty and the only
difference between now and the old days is I can't sell you--and if you
were idle enough to make me want to sell you there's no one would buy such
rubbish nowadays.' Half the trouble is that people these times don't know
how to talk to coloured folk, and the other half is that they don't want
to talk to them."
She led the way down passages to the great kitchen, stonebuilt, clean and
full of sunlight. The door was open on to the yard and through an open
side door one could get a glimpse of the scullery, the great washing up
sink, generations old, and worn with use, and above it the drying
dresser.
There were no new-fangled cooking inventions at Vernons, everything was
done at an open range of the good old fashion still to be found in many an
English country house.
Miss Pinckney objected to "baked meat" and the joints at Vernons were
roast, swinging from a clockwork Jack and basted all the time with a long
metal ladle.
By the range this morning was seated an old coloured woman engaged in
cutting up onions. This was Prue the oldest living thing in Vernons and
perhaps in Charleston; she had been kitchen maid before Miss Pinckney was
born, then cook, and now, long past work, she was just kept on.
Twenty-five years ago she had been offered a pension and a cottage for
herself but she refused both. She wanted to die where she was, so she
said. So they let her stay, doing odd jobs and bossing the others just as
though she were still mistress of the kitchen--as in fact she was. She had
become a legend and no one knew her exact age, she was creepin' close to a
hundred, and her memory which carried her back to the slave days was
marvellous in its retentiveness.
She had cooked a dinner for Jeff Davis when he was a guest at Vernons, she
could still hear the guns of the Civil War, so she said, and the Mascarene
family history was her Bible.
She looked down on the Pinckneys as trash beside the Mascarenes, and
interlopers, and this attitude and point of view though well known to Miss
Pinckney was not in the least resented by her.
But during the last few years this old lady's intellect had been steadily
coming under eclipse; still insisting on doing little jobs in a futile
sort of way, silence had been creeping upon her so that she rarely spoke
now, and when she did, by chance, her words revealed the fact that her
mind was dwelling in the past.
Rachel, the cook, a sturdy coloured woman with her head bound up in an
isabelle-coloured handkerchief was standing by the kitchen table on which
she was resting the fore-finger of her left hand, whilst with the right
she was turning over some fish that had just been sent in from the
fishmonger's. She seemed in a critical mood, but what she said to Miss
Pinckney was lost to Phyl whose attention was attracted by a chuckling
sound from near the range.
It was Prue.
The old woman at sight of Phyl had dropped the knife and the onion on
which she had been engaged. She was now seated, hands on knees, chuckling
and nodding to the girl, then, scarcely raising her right hand from her
knee, she made a twiddling movement with the fore-finger as if to say,
"come here--come here--I have something to tell you."
Phyl glanced at Miss Pinckney who was so taken up with what Rachel was
saying about the fish that she noticed nothing. Then she looked again at
Prue and, unable to resist the invitation, came towards her. The old woman
caught her by the arm so that she had to bend her head.
"Miss Julie," whispered Prue, "Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de
gate t'night same time 'slas' night. Done you let on 's I told yo'," she
gave the arm a pinch and relapsed into herself chuckling whilst Phyl stood
with a little shiver, half of relief at her escape from that bony clutch,
half of dread--a vague dread as though she had come in contact with
something uncanny.
She came to the table again and stood without looking at Prue, whilst Miss
Pinckney completed her orders, then, that lady, having finished her
business and casting an eye about the place on the chance of finding any
dirt or litter, saw Prue and asked how she was doing.
"Well, miss, she's doin' fa'r," replied Rachel, "but I'm t'inking she's
not long fore de new Jerusalem. Sits didderin' dere 'n' smokin' her pipe,
'n' lays about her wid her stick times, fancyin' there'er dogs comin' into
de kitchen."
"A dog bit her once way back in the '60's," said Miss Pinckney; "they used
to keep dogs here then. She don't want for anything?"
"Law no, miss, _she_ done want for nothin'; look at her now laffin' to
herself. Haven't seen her do that way dis long time. Hi, Prue, what yo'
laffin' at?"
Prue, instead of answering leant further forward hiding her face without
checking her merriment.
"Crazy," said Miss Pinckney, "but it's better to be laughing crazy than
crying crazy like some folk--here's a quarter and get her some candy."
She put the coin on the table and marched off followed by Phyl.
"She wanted to tell me something," said Phyl as they were driving to the
cemetery; "she beckoned me to her and took hold of my arm and whispered
something."
"What did she say?"
Phyl, somehow, could not bring herself to betray that crazy confidence.
"I don't know, exactly, but she called me Miss Julie."
"Oh--she called you Miss Julie," said the other. Then she relapsed into
thought and nothing more was said till they reached their destination.
CHAPTER V
Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery like everything else about Charleston shows
the touch of the War. Here the soldiers lie who fought so bravely under
Wade Hampton and here lies the general himself.
Go south, go north, and you will not find a place touched by the War where
you will not find noble memories, echoes of heroic deeds, legends of brave
men.
Miss Pinckney was by no means a peace party and this thought was doubtless
in her head as she stood surveying the confederate graves. There were
relations here and men whom she had known as a child.
"That's the War," said she, "and people abuse war as if it was the worst
thing in the world, insulting the dead. 'Clare to goodness it makes me
savage to hear the pasty-faces talking of war and making plans to abolish
it. It's like hearing a lot of children making plans to abolish thunder
storms. Where would America be now without the War, and where'd her
history be? You tell me that. It'd just be the history of a big canning
factory. These men aren't dead, they're still alive and fighting--fighting
Chicago; fighting pork, and wheat, and cotton and railway-stock and
everything else that's abolishing the soul of the nation.
"There's Matt Carey's grave. He had everything he wanted, and he wasn't
young. Now-a-days he'd have been driving in his automobile killing old
women and chickens, or tarpoon fishing down 'n Florida letting the world
go rip, or full of neur--what do they call it--that thing that gets on
their nerves and makes crazy old men of them at forty--I've forgotten.
_He_ didn't. He took up a gun and died like a lion, and he was a
middle-aged business man. No one remembers him, I do believe, except,
maybe me, clean forgotten--and yet he helped to put a brick into the only
monument worth ten cents that America has got--The War.
"And some northern people would say 'nice sort of brick, seeing he was
fighting on the wrong side.' Wrong side or right side he was fighting for
something else than his own hand. _That's_ the point."
She closed up her lips and they went on. Phyl found her father's grave in
a quiet spot where the live-oaks stood, the long grey moss hanging from
their branches.
Miss Pinckney, having pointed out the grave, strayed off, leaving the girl
to herself.
The gloomy, strange-looking trees daunted Phyl, and the grave, too young
yet to have a headstone, drew her towards it, yet repelled her.
It was like meeting in a dream some one she had loved and who had turned
into a stranger in a strange place.
Just as Charleston had dimmed Ireland in her mind as a bright light dims a
lesser light, so had some influence come between her and the memory of her
father. That memory was just as distinct as ever, but grief had died from
it, as though Time had been at work on it for years and years.
The Phyl who had stepped out of the south-bound express and the girl of
this morning were the same in mind and body, but in soul and outlook they
had changed and were changing as though the air of the south had some
magic in it, some food that had always been denied her and which was
necessary for her full being.
Miss Pinckney returned from her wanderings amongst the graves and they
turned to the gate.
"It used to seem strange to me coming here when I was a girl," said she.
"It always seemed as if I was come to visit people who could never come to
see me. I used to pity them, but one gets older and one gets wiser, and I
fancy it's they that pity us, if they can see us at all, which isn't often
likely."
"D'you think they come back?" said Phyl.
"My dear child, if I told you what I thought, you'd say I was plum crazy.
But I'll say this. What do you think the Almighty made folk for? to live a
few years and then lie in a grave with folk heaping flowers on them?
There's no such laziness in nature. I don't say there aren't folk who live
their lives like as if they were dead, covered with flowers and never
moving a hand to help themselves like some of those N'York women--but they
don't count. They're against nature and I guess when they die they die,
for they haven't ever lived." Then, vehemently: "Of course, they come
back, not as ghosts peekin' about and making nuisances of themselves, but
they come back as people--which is the sensible way and there's nothing
unsensible in nature. Mind you, I don't say there aren't ghosts, there
are, for I've seen 'em; I saw Simon Pinckney, the one that died of drink,
as plain as my hand same day he died, but he was a no account. He hadn't
the making of a man, so he couldn't come back as a man, and he wasn't a
woman, so he couldn't come back as a woman; so he came back as a ghost. He
was always an uneasy creature, else I don't suppose he'd have come back as
anything. When a man wears out a suit of clothes he doesn't die, he gets a
new one, and when he wears out a body--which isn't a bit more than a suit
of clothes--he gets a new one. If he hasn't piled up grit enough in life
to pay for a new body, he goes about without one and he's a ghost. That's
my way of thinking and I know--I know--n'matter."
She put up her sunshade and they returned, driving through the warm spring
weather. Phyl was silent, the day had taken possession of her. The scent
of pink mimosa filled the air, the blue sky shewed here and there a few
feather traces of white cloud and the wind from the sea seemed the very
breath of the southern spring.
It seemed to Phyl as they drove that never before had she met or felt the
loveliness of life, never till this moment when turning a corner the song
of a bird from a garden met them with the perfume of jessamine.
Charleston is full of surprises like that, things that snatch you away
from the present or catch you for a moment into the embrace of some old
garden lurking behind a wrought iron gate, or tell you a love story no
matter how much you don't want to hear it--or tease you, if you are a
practical business man, with some other futility which has nothing at all
to do with "real" life.
It seemed to Phyl as though, somehow, the whole of the morning had been
working up to that moment, as though the perfume of the jessamine and the
song of the birds were the culmination of the meaning of all sorts of
things seen and unseen, heard and unheard.
The message of the crazy old negress came back to her. Who was Miss Julie?
and who was the Mr. Pinckney that was to meet her, and where was the gate
at which they were to meet in such a secretive manner? Was it just
craziness, or was it possible that this was some real message delivered
years and years ago. A real lover's message which the old woman had once
been charged to deliver and which she had repeated automatically and like
a parrot.
Miss Julie--could it be possible that she meant Miss Juliet--The Juliet
Mascarene to whom she, Phyl, bore such a strong family likeness, could it
be possible that the likeness had started the old woman's mind working and
had recalled the message of a half-a-century ago to her lips.
It was a fascinating thought. Juliet had been in love with one of the
Pinckneys and this message was from a Pinckney and one day, perhaps, most
likely a fine spring day like to-day, Pinckney had given the negro girl a
message to give to Juliet, and the lovers and the message and the bright
spring day had vanished utterly and forever leaving only Prue.
The gate would no doubt be the garden gate. Phyl in all her life had never
given a thought to Love, she had known nothing of sentiment, that much
abused thing which is yet the salt of life, and Romance for her had meant
Adventure; all the same she was now weaving all sorts of threads into
dreams and fancies. What appealed to her most was her own likeness to
Juliet, the girl who had died so many, many years ago. A likeness
incomplete enough, according to Miss Pinckney, yet strong enough to awaken
memories in the mind of Prue.
CHAPTER VI
"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl, as they sat at luncheon that day, "you
remember you said yesterday that I was like Juliet Mascarene?"
"So you are," replied the other, "though the likeness is more noticeable
at first sight as far as the face goes--I've got a picture of her I will
show you, it's upstairs in her room, the one next yours on the same
piazza--why do you ask me?"
"I was thinking," replied Phyl, "that the old woman in the
kitchen--Prue--may have meant Juliet when she called me Julie, and that it
was the likeness that set her mind going."
"It's not impossible. Prue's like that crazy old clock Selina Pinckney
left me in her will. It'd tell you the day and the hour _and_ the minute
and the year and the month and the weather. A little man came out if it
was going to rain and a little woman if it was going to shine. But if you
wanted to know the time, it couldn't tell you nearer than the hour before
last of the day before yesterday, and if you sneezed near it, it'd up and
strike a hundred and twenty. I gave it to Rachel. She said it was 'some'
clock, said it was a dandy for striking and the time didn't matter as the
old kitchen clock saw to that. It's the same with Prue, the time doesn't
matter, and they look up to her in the kitchen mostly, I expect, because
she's an oddity, same as Selina Pinckney's clock. Seems to me anything
crazy and useless is reckoned valuable these days, and not only among
coloured folk but whites--Dinah, hasn't Mr. Richard come in yet?"
"No, Mistress Pinckney," replied the coloured girl, who had just entered
the room, "I haven't seen no sign of him."
"Running about without his luncheon," grumbled the lady, "said he had a
deal in cotton on. I might have guessed it." Then when Dinah had left the
room and talking half to herself, "There's nothing Richard seems to think
of but business or pleasure. I'm not saying anything against the boy, he's
as good and better than any of the rest, but like the rest of them his
character wants forming round something real. It wasn't so in the old
days, they were bad enough then and drank a lot more, but they had in them
something that made for something better than business or pleasure. Matt
Curry didn't go out and get killed for business or pleasure, and all the
old Pinckneys didn't fight in the war or fight with one another for
business or pleasure. There's more in life than fooling with girls or
buying cotton or sailing yacht races, but Richard doesn't seem to see it.
I did think that having a ward to look after would have sobered him a bit
and helped to form his character--well, maybe it will yet."
"I don't want to be looked after," said Phyl flushing up, "and if Mr.
Pinckney--" she stopped. What she was going to say about Pinckney was not
clear in her mind, clouded as it was with anger--anger at the thought that
she was an object to be looked after by her "guardian," anger at the
implication that he was not bothering to look after her, being too much
engaged in the business of fooling with girls and buying cotton, and a
reasonable anger springing from and embracing the whole world that held
his beyond Vernons.
"Yes?" said Miss Pinckney.
"Oh, nothing," replied the other, trying to laugh and making a failure of
the business. "I was only going to say that Mr. Pinckney must have lots to
do instead of wasting his time looking after strangers, and if he hadn't I
don't want to be looked after. I don't want him to bother about
me--I--I--" It did not want much more to start her off in a wild fit of
weeping about nothing, her mind for some reason or other unknown even to
herself was worked up and seething just as on that day at Kilgobbin when
the woes of Rafferty had caused her to make such an exhibition of herself
in the library. Anything was possible with Phyl when under the influence
of unreasoning emotion like this, anything from flinging a knife at a
person to breaking into tears.
Miss Pinckney knew it. Without understanding in the least the
psychological mechanism of Phyl, she knew as a woman and by some
electrical influence the state of her mind.
She rose from the table.
"Stranger," said she, taking the other by the arm, "you call yourself a
stranger. Come along upstairs with me. I want to show you something."
Still holding her by the arm, caressingly, she led her off across the hall
and up the stairs; on the first floor landing she opened a door; it was
the door of the bedroom next to Phyl's, a room of the same shape and size
and with the same view over the garden.
Just as the drawing-room had been kept in its entirety without alteration
or touch save the touch of a duster, so had this room, the bedroom of a
girl of long ago, a girl who would now have been a woman old and
decrepit--had she lived.
"Here's the picture you wanted to see," said Miss Pinckney leading Phyl up
to a miniature hanging on the wall near the bed. "That's Juliet, and if
you don't see the family likeness, well, then, you must be blind.--And you
calling yourself a stranger!"
Phyl looked. It was rather a stiff and finicking little portrait; she
fancied it was like herself but was not sure, the colour of the hair was
almost the same but the way it was dressed made a lot of difference, and
she said so.
"Well, they did their hair different then," replied Miss Pinckney, "and
that reminds me, it's near time you put that tail up." She sat down in a
rocker by the window and with her hands on her knees contemplated Phyl.
"I'm your only female relative, and Lord knows I'm far enough off, anyhow
I'm something with a skirt on it, and brains in its head, and that's what
a girl most wants when she comes to your age. You'll be asked to parties
and things here and you'll find that tail in the way; it's good enough for
a schoolgirl, but you aren't that any longer. I'll get Dinah to do your
hair, something simple and not too grown-up--you don't mind an old woman
telling you this--do you?"
"Indeed I don't," said Phyl. "I don't care how my hair is done, you can
cut it off if you like, but I don't want to go to parties."
"Well, maybe you don't," said Miss Pinckney, "but, all the same, we'll get
Dinah to look to your hair. Dinah can do most anything in that way; she'd
get twice the wages as a lady's maid elsewhere and she knows it, but she
won't go. I've told her over and again to be off and better herself, but
she won't go, sticks to me like a mosquito. Well, this was Juliet's room
just as that's her picture; she died in that bed and everything is just
exactly as she left it. It was kept so after her death. You see, it wasn't
like an ordinary person dying, it was the tragedy of the whole thing that
stirred folk so, dying of a broken heart for the man she was in love with.
It set all the crazy poets off like that clock of Selina Pinckney's I was
telling you of. The _News and Courier_ had yards of obituary notice and
verses. It made people forget the war for a couple of days. There's all
her books on that shelf and the diary the poor thing used to keep. Open
one of the drawers in that chest."
Phyl did so. The drawer was packed with clothes neatly folded. The air
became filled with the scent of lavender.
"There are her things, everything she ever had when she died. It may seem
foolish to keep everything like that, foolish and sentimental, and if
she'd died of measles or fallen down the stairs and killed herself maybe
her old things would have been given away, but dying as she did--well,
somehow, it didn't seem right for coloured girls to be parading about in
her things. Mrs. Beamis sniffed here just as she sniffed in the
drawing-room, and she said, one night, something about sentiment, as if
she was referring to chicken cholera. I knew what she meant. She meant we
were a pack of fools. Well, she ought to know. I reckon she ought to be a
judge of folly--the life she leads in Chicago. Umph!--Now I'm going to lie
down for an hour, and if you take my advice you'll do the same. The middle
of the day was meant to rest in. You can get to your room by the window."
She kissed Phyl and went off.
Phyl, instead of going to her room, took her seat in the rocker and looked
around her. The place held her, something returned to it that had been
driven away perhaps by Miss Pinckney's cheerful and practical presence,
the faint odour of lavender still clung to the air, and the silence was
unbroken except for a faint stirring of the window curtains now and then
to the breeze from outside. Everything was, indeed, just as it had been
left, the toilet tidies and all the quaint contraptions of the '50's and
'60's in their places. On the wall opposite the bed hung several water
colours evidently the work of that immature artist Mary Mascarene, a watch
pocket hung above the bed, a thing embroidered with blue roses, enough to
disturb the sleep of any aesthete, yet beautiful enough in those old days.
There was only one stain mark in the scrupulous cleanliness and neatness
of the place--a panel by the window, once white painted but now dingy-grey
and scored with lines. Phyl got up and inspected it more closely.
Children's heights had evidently been measured here. There was a scale of
feet marked in pencil, initials, and dates. Here was "M. M.," probably
Mary Mascarene, "2 ft. 6 inches. Nineteen months," and the date "April,
1845," and again a year later, "M. M. 2 ft. 9-1/2 inches, May, 1846." So
she had grown three and a half inches in a year. "J. M."--Juliet without
doubt--"3 feet, 3 years old, 1845." Juliet was evidently the elder--so it
went on right into the early '60's, mixed here and there with other
initials, amongst which Phyl made out "J. J." and "R. P.," children maybe
staying at the house and measured against the Mascarene children--children
now old men and women, possibly not even that. It was in the kindly spirit
of Vernons not to pass a painter's brush over these scratchings, records
of the height of a child that lingered only in the memory of the old
house.
Phyl turned from them to the bookshelf and the books it contained. "Noble
Deeds of American Women," "Precept on Precept," "The Dairyman's Daughter,"
and the "New England Primer"--with a mark against the verses left "by John
Rogers to his wife and nine small children, and one at the breast, when he
was burned at the stake at Smithfield in 1555." There were also books of
poetry, Bryant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Powhatan, a metrical romance
in seven cantos by Seba Smith," and several others.
Phyl did something characteristic. She gathered every single book into a
pile in her arms and sat down on the floor with them to have a feast. This
devourer of books was omnivorous in her tastes, especially if it were a
question of sampling, and she had enough critical faculty to enable her to
enjoy rubbish. She lingered over Powhatan and its dedication to the "Young
People of the United States" and then passed on to the others till she
came to a little black book. It was Juliet Mascarene's diary and
proclaimed the fact openly on the first page with the statements: "I am
twelve years old to-day and Aunt Susan has given me this book to keep as
my diary and not to forget to write each day my evil deeds as well as my
good, which I will if I remember them. She didn't give me anything else. I
had to-day a Paris doll from Cousin Jane Pinckney who has winking eyes
which shut when you lay her on her back and pantalettes with scallops
which take off and on and a trunk of clothes with a little key to it.
Father gave me a Bible and I have had other things too numerous for
mension.
"Signed Juliet Mascarene."
with never a date.
Then:
"I haven't done any evil deeds, or good ones that I can remember, so I
haven't written in this book for maybe a week. Mary and I, we went to a
party at the Pinckneys to-day at Bures, the Calhoun children and the
Rutledges were there and we had Lady Baltimore cake and a good time. Mary
wore her blue organdie and looked very nice and Rupert Pinckney was there,
he's fourteen and wouldn't talk to the children because they were too
small for him, I expect. He told me he was going to have a pony same as
Silas Rhett that threw him in the market place Wednesday last and galloped
all the way to Battery before he was stopped, only his was to be a better
one with more shy in it, said Silas Rhett ought to be tied on next time.
Then old Mr. Pinckney came in and shewed us a musical snuff-box and we
went home, and driving back Mary kicked me on the shin by axident and I
pinched her and she didn't cry till we'd got home, then she began to roar
and mother said it was my ungovernable temper, and I said I wished I was
dead.
"I shan't go to any more parties because it's always like that after them.
Father told me I was to pray for a new heart and not to have any supper
but Prue has brought me up a cake of her own making. So that's one evil
deed to put down--It's just like Mary, any one else would have cried right
out in the carriage and not bottled it up and kept it up till she got
home.
"This is a Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in
trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop
him is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch them
each time with a forked hazel twig."
Phyl read this passage over twice. The mention of Prue interested her
vastly. Prue even then had evidently been a favourite of Juliet's.
She read on hoping to find the name of the coloured woman again, but it
did not occur.
The diary, indeed, did not run over more than a year and a half, but
scrappy as it was and short in point of time, the character of Juliet
shone forth from it, uneasy, impetuous, tormenting and loving.
Many books could not have depicted the people round Vernons so well as
this scribbling of a child. Mary Mascarene, quiet, rather a spoil-sport
and something of a tale-teller, dead and gone Pinckneys and Rhetts. Aunt
Susan, Cousin Jane Pinckney, Uncle George who beat his coloured man,
Darius, because the said Darius had let him go out with one brass button
missing from his blue coat. Simon Pinckney--the one whose ghost
walked--and who "fell down in the garden because he had the hiccups,"
these and others of their time lived in the little black book given by the
miserly Aunt Susan "to keep as my diary and not to forget to write each
day my evil deeds as well as my good."
Towards the end there was another reference to Rupert Pinckney, the tragic
lover of the future:
"Rupert Pinckney was here to-day with his mother to luncheon and we had a
palmetto salad and mother said when he was gone he was the most frivulus
boy in Charleston, whatever that was, and too much of a dandy, but father
said he had stuff in him and Aunt Susan, who was here too, said 'Yes,
stuff and nonsense,' and I said he could ride his pony without tumbling
off like Silas Rhett, anyhow.
"Then they went on talking about his people and how they hadn't as much
money as they used to have, and Aunt Susan said that was so, and the worst
of it is they're spending more money than they used to spend, and father
said, well, anyhow, that wasn't a very common complaint with _some_ people
and he left the room. He never stays long in the room with Aunt S.
"I think the Pinckneys are real nice."
"Mr. Simon Mascarene from Richmond and his wife came to see us to-day and
stay for a week. They drove here in their own carriage with four brown
horses and you could not tell which horse was which, they are so alike,
they are very fine people and Mr. M. has a red face--not the same red as
Mr. Simon Pinckney's, but different somehow--more like an apple, and a
high nose which makes him look very grand and fine." The same Simon
Mascarene, no doubt, that came to the wedding of Charles Pinckney in 1880
as old Simon Mascarene, the one whose flowered carpet bag still lingered
in the memory of Miss Pinckney.
"Mrs. M. is very fine too and beautifully dressed and mother gave her a
great bouquet of geraniums and garden flowers with a live green
caterpillar looping about in the green stuff which nobody saw but me, till
it fell on Mrs. M.'s knee and she screamed. There is to be a big party
to-morrow and the Pinckneys are coming and Rupert."
There the diary ended.
Phyl put it back on the shelf with the books.
She had not the knowledge necessary to visualise the people referred to,
those people of another day when Planters kept open house, when slaves
were slaves and Bures the home of the old gentleman with the musical
snuff-box, but she could visualise Juliet as a child. The writing in the
little book had brought the vision up warm from the past and it seemed
almost as though she might suddenly run in from the sunlit piazza that lay
beyond the waving window curtains.
There was a bureau in one corner, or rather one of those structures that
went by the name of Davenports in the days of our fathers. Phyl went to it
and raised the lid. She did so without a second thought or any feeling
that it was wrong to poke about in a place like this and pry into secrets.
Juliet seemed to belong to her as though she had been a sister, her own
likeness to the dead girl was a bond of attraction stronger than a family
tie, and Juliet's mournful love story completed the charm.
The desk contained very little, a seal with a dove on it, some sticks of
spangled sealing-wax, a paper knife of coloured wood with a picture of
Benjamin Franklin on the handle and some sheets of note-paper with gilt
edges.
Phyl noticed that the gilt was still bright.
She took out the paper knife and looked at it, and then held the blade to
her lips to feel the smoothness of it, drawing it along so that her lips
touched every part of the blade.
Then she put it back, and as she did so a little panel at the back of the
desk fell forward disclosing a cache containing a bundle of letters tied
round with ribbon.
Phyl started as though a hand had been laid on her arm. The point of the
paper knife must have touched the spring of the panel, but it seemed as
though the desk had suddenly opened its hand, closed and clasping those
letters for so many years. For a moment she hesitated to touch them. Then
she thought of all the time they had lain there and a feeling that Juliet
wouldn't mind and that the old bureau had told its secret without being
asked, overcame her scruples. She took the letters and sitting down again
on the floor, untied the ribbon.
There were no envelopes. Each sheet of paper had been carefully folded and
sealed with green wax, with the seal leaving the impression of the dove.
There was no address, and they had evidently been tied together in
chronological order. But the handwriting was the handwriting of Juliet
Mascarene fully formed now.
The first of these things ran:
"It wasn't my fault. I didn't create old Mr. Gadney and send him to church
to keep us talking in the street like that. I did _not_ see you. You
couldn't have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible. I feel
dreadfully wicked writing to you. Do you know this is a clandestine
correspondence and must stop at once? You mustn't _ever_ write to me
again, nor I mustn't see you. Of course I can't help seeing you in church
and on the street--and I can't help thinking about you. They'll be making
me try and stop breathing next. I don't care a button for the whole lot of
them. It was all Aunt Susan's doing, only for her my people would never
have quarrelled with yours and I wouldn't have been so miserable. I feel
sometimes as if I could just take a boat and sail off to somewhere where I
would never see any people again.
"It was clever of you to send your letter by P. This goes to you by the
same hand."
There was no signature and no date.
Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure again that there was no
address. As she did so a faint, quaint perfume came to her as though the
old-fashioned soul of the letter were released for a moment. It was
vervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved of the Duchesse de Chartres and
the ladies of the forties.
She laid the letter down and took up the next.
"It is _wicked_ of you. My people never would be so mean as to quarrel
with your people or look down on them because they have lost money. Why
did you say that--and you know I said in my last letter that I could not
write to you again. I was shocked when P. pinched my arm as I was passing
her on the stairs and handed me your note--Don't you--don't you--how shall
I say it? Don't you think you and I could meet and speak to one another
somewhere instead of always writing like this? Somewhere where no one
could see us. Do you know--do you know--do you, ahem! O dear me--know that
just inside our gate there's a little arbour. The tiniest place. When I
was a child I used to play there with Mary at keeping house, there's a
seat just big enough for two and we used to sit there with our dolls. No
one can see the gate from the lower piazza, and the gate doesn't make any
noise opening, for father had it oiled--it used to squeak a bit from rust,
but it doesn't now and I'll be there to-morrow night at nine--in the
arbour--at least I _may_ be there. I just want to tell you in a way I
can't in a letter that my people aren't the sort of folk to sneer at any
one because they have lost money.
"I am sending this by P.
"The arbour is just back of the big magnolia as you come in, on the
left."
Phyl gave a little laugh. Then with half-closed eyes she kissed the
letter, laid it softly on the floor beside the first and went on to the
next.
"Not to-night. I have to go to the Calhouns. It is just as well, for I
have a dread of people suspecting if we meet too often. No one sees us
meet. No one knows, and yet I fear them finding out just by instinct.
Father said to me the other day, 'What makes you seem so happy these
times?' If Mary had been alive she would have found out long ago, for I
never could keep anything hid from her. I was nearly saying to him, 'If
you want to know why I am so happy go and ask the magnolia tree by the
gate.'
"Sometimes I feel as if I were deceiving him and everybody. I am, and I
don't care--I don't care if they knew. O my darling! My darling! My
darling! If the whole world were against you I would love you all the
more. I will love you all my life and I will love you when I am dead."
Phyl's eyes grew half blind with tears.
This cry from the Past went to her heart like a knife. The wind,
strengthening for a moment, moved the window curtains, bringing with it
the drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that seemed to mock at
this voice declaring the deathlessness of its love. It was impossible to
go on reading. Impossible to expose any more this heart that had ceased to
beat.
The meetings in the arbour behind the magnolia tree, the kisses, the words
that the leaves and birds alone could hear--they had all ended in death.
It did not matter now if the garden gate creaked on its hinges, or if
watching eyes from the piazza saw the glossy leaves stirring when no wind
could shake them--nothing mattered at all to these people now.
She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully closing them in the
secret drawer.
CHAPTER VII
"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl that night as they sat at supper, "when you
left me this afternoon in Juliet's room I stopped to look at the books and
things and when I opened the bureau I touched a spring by accident and a
little panel fell out and I found a lot of old letters behind it. It was
wrong of me to go meddling about and I thought I ought to tell you."
"Old letters," said Miss Pinckney, "you don't say--what were they about?"
"I read one or two," said the girl. "I'd never, never have dreamed of
touching them only--only they were hers--they were to him."
"Rupert?"
"Yes."
"Love letters?"
"Yes."
Miss Pinckney sighed.
"He kept all her letters," said she, "and they came back to her after he
was killed. He was killed here in Charleston, at Fort Sumter, in the war;
they brought him across here and carried him on a stretcher and she--well,
well, it's all done with and let it rest, but it is strange that those
letters should have fallen into your hands."
"Why, strange?"
"Why?" burst out Miss Pinckney. "Why I have dusted that old bureau inside
and out a hundred times, and pulled out the drawers and pushed them in and
it never shewed sign of having anything in it but emptiness, and you don't
do more'n look at it and you find those letters. It's just as if the thing
had deceived me. I don't mind, and I don't want to see them, they weren't
intended for other eyes than his and hers--and maybe yours since they were
shewn you like that."
"Was it wrong of me to look at them?" asked Phyl. "I never would have done
it only--only--Oh, I don't know, I somehow felt she wouldn't mind. She
seemed like a sister--I would never dream of looking at another person's
letters but she did not seem like another person. I can't explain. It was
just as though the letters were my own--just exactly as though they were
my own when I found them in my hands."
Phyl was talking with her eyes fixed before her as though she were looking
across some great distance.
Miss Pinckney gave a little shiver, then supper being over she rose from
the table and led the way from the room.
Richard Pinckney had dined with them but he was out for supper somewhere
or another. They went to the drawing-room and had not been there for more
than a few minutes when Frances Rhett was announced.
The Rhetts were on intimate enough terms with the Pinckneys to call in
like this without ceremony; Frances had called to speak to Miss Pinckney
about some charity affair she was getting up in a hurry, but she had not
been five minutes in the room before Phyl knew that she had called to look
at her. To look at the girl who had come to live with the Pinckneys, the
red headed girl. Phyl did not know that girls of Frances' type dread red
haired girls, if they are pretty, as rabbits dread stoats, but she did
know in some uncanny way that Frances Rhett considered Richard Pinckney as
her own property to be protected against all comers.
All at once and new born, the woman awoke in her instinctive, mistrustful
and armed.
Frances Rhett, despite Miss Pinckney's dispraise of her, was a most
formidable person as far as the opposite sex was concerned. One of the
women of whom other women say, "Well, I don't know what he sees in her,
I'm sure."
A brunette of eighteen who looked twenty, full-blooded, full lipped, full
curved, sleepy-eyed, she seemed dressed by nature for the part of the
world and the flesh--with a hint of the devil in those deep, dark, pansy
blue eyes that seemed now by artificial light almost black.
"Well, I'll subscribe ten dollars," said Miss Pinckney; "I reckon the
darkie babies won't be any the worse for a _creche_ and maybe not very
much better for it. If you could get up an institution to distil good
manners and respect for their betters into their heads I'd give you forty.
I'm sure I don't know what the coloured folk of Charleston are coming to,
one of them nearly pushed me off the sidewalk the other day, bag of
impudence! and the way they look at one in the street with that sleery
leery what-d'-you-call-yourself-you-white-trash grin on their faces
s'nough to raise Cain in any one's heart."
"I know," replied the dark girl, "and they are getting worse; the whip is
the only thing that as far as I can see ever made them possible, and what
we have now is the result of your beautiful Abolitionists."
"Don't call them my beautiful Abolitionists," replied the other. "I didn't
make 'em. All the same I don't believe in whipping and never did. It's the
whip that whipped us in the war. If white folk had treated black folk like
Christians slavery would have been the greatest god-send to blacks. It was
what stays are to women. But they didn't. The low down white made slavery
impossible with his whipping and oppression and _we_ had to suffer. Well,
we haven't ended our sufferings and if these folk go on multiplying like
rabbits there's no knowing what we've got to suffer yet."
Miss Rhett concurred and took her departure. "Now, that girl," said the
elder lady when Frances Rhett was gone, "is just the type of the people I
was telling her about. No idea but whipping. _She_ wouldn't have much
mercy on a human creature black or tan _or_ white. Thick skinned. She
didn't even see that I was telling her so to her face. Wonder what brought
her here this hour with her _creche_. It's just a fad. If they got up a
charity to make alligator bait of the black babies so's to sell the
alligator skins to buy pants with texts on them for the Hottentots it'd be
all the same to her. Something to gad about with. I wish I'd kept that ten
dollars in my pocket."
Miss Pinckney went to bed early that night--before ten--and Phyl, who was
free to do as she chose, sat for a while in the lower piazza watching the
moon rising above the trees. She had a little plan in her mind, a plan
that had only occurred to her just before the departure of Miss Pinckney
for bed.
She sat now watching the garden growing ghostly bright, the sun dial
becoming a moon dial, the carnations touched by that stillness and mystery
which is held only in the light of the moon and the light of the dawn.
Phyl found herself sitting between two worlds. In the light of the
northern moon in summer there is a vague rose tinge to be caught at times
and in places when it falls full on house wall or the road on which one is
walking. The piazza to-night had this living and warm touch. It seemed lit
by a glorified ethereal day. A day that had never grown up and would never
lose the charm of dawn.
Yet the garden to which she would now turn her eyes shewed nothing of
this. Night reigned there from the cherokee roses moving in the wind to
the carnations motionless, moon stricken, deathly white.
Sure that Miss Pinckney would not come down again, Phyl rose and crossed
the garden towards the gate.
She wanted to see if the trysting place behind the magnolia and the bushes
that grew about it were still there.
At the gate she paused for a moment, glancing back at the house as Juliet
Mascarene might have done on those evenings when she had an appointment
with her lover. Then, pushing through the bushes and past the magnolia
trees she found herself in a little half moonlit space, a natural arbour
through whose roof of leaves the moonlight came in quavering shafts. She
stood for a moment absolutely still whilst her eyes accustomed themselves
to the light. Then she began to search for the seat she guessed to be
there, and found it. It was between an oak bole and the wall of the
garden, and the bushes behind had grown so that their branches half
covered it. Neglected, forsaken, unknown, perhaps, to the people now
living in Vernons it had lingered with the fidelity of inanimate things,
protected by the foliage of the southern garden from prying eyes.
She pushed back the leaves and branches and bent them out of the way, then
she took her seat, and as she did so several of the bent branches released
themselves and closed half round her in a delightful embrace.
From here she could see brokenly the garden and the walk leading from the
gate, with the light of the moon now strong upon the walk. The night
sounds of the street just beyond the wall came mixed with the stir of
foliage as the wind from the sea pressed over the trees like the hand of a
mesmerist inducing sleep.
So it was here that Juliet Mascarene had sat with Rupert Pinckney on those
summer nights when the world was younger, before the war. The war that had
changed everything whilst leaving the roses untouched and the moonlight
the same on the bird-haunted garden of Vernons.
Everything was the same here in this little space of flowers and trees.
But the lovers had vanished.
"For man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain." The
words strayed across Phyl's mind brought up by recollection. "He cometh up
and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never
continueth in one stay."
The trees seemed whispering it, the eternal statement that leaves the
eternal question unanswered.
The garden was talking to her, the night, the very bushes that clasped her
in a half embrace; perfumes, moonlight, the voice of the wind, all were
part of the spell that bound her, held her, whispered to her. It was as
though the love letter of Juliet had led her here to show her as in a
glass darkly the vainness of love in the vainness of life.
Vainly, for as she sat watching in imagination the forms of the lost
lovers parting there at the gate, suddenly there came upon her a stirring
of the soul, a joyous uplifting as though wings had been given to her mind
for one wild second raising it to the heights beyond earthly knowledge.
"Love can never die."
It was as though some ghostly voice had whispered this fact in her ear.
Juliet was not dead nor the man she loved, changed maybe but not dead. In
some extraordinary way she knew it as surely as though she herself had
once been Juliet.
Religion to Phyl had meant little, the Bible a book of fair promises and
appalling threats, vague promises but quite definite threats. As a quite
small child she had gathered the impression that she was sure to be damned
unless she managed to convert herself into a quite different being from
the person she knew herself to be. Death was the supreme bogey, the future
life a thing not to be thought of if one wanted to be happy.
Yet now, just as if she had been through it all, the truth came flooding
on her like a golden sea, the truth that life never loses touch with life,
that the body is only a momentary manifestation of the ever living
spirit.
Meeting Street, the old house so full of memories, Juliet's letters, the
garden, they had all been stretching out arms to her, trying to tell her
something, whispering, suggesting, and now all these vague voices had
become clear, as though strengthened by the moonlight and the mystery of
night.
Clear as lip-spoken words came the message:
"You have lived before and we say this to you, we, the things that knew
you and loved you in a past life."
A step that halted outside close to the garden gate broke the spell, the
gate turned on its hinges shewing through its trellis work the form of a
man. It was Pinckney just returned from some supper-party or club.
Phyl caught her breath back. Suddenly, and at the sight of Pinckney,
Prue's words of that morning entered her mind.
"Miss Julie, Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de gate t'night
same's las' night. Done you let on as I told you."
And here he was, the man who had been occupying her thoughts and who was
beginning to occupy her dreams, and here she was as though waiting for him
by appointment.
But there was much more than that. Worlds and worlds more than that, a
whole universe of happiness undreamed of.
She rose from the seat and the parted bushes rustled faintly as they
closed behind her.
Pinckney, who had just shut the gate, heard the whisper of the leaves, he
turned and saw a figure standing half in shadow and half in moonlight. For
a moment he was startled, fancying it a stranger, then he saw that it was
Phyl.
"Hullo," said he. "Why, Phyl, what are you doing here?"
The commonplace question shattered everything like a false note in music.
"Nothing," she answered. Then without a word more she ran past him and
vanished into the house.
Pinckney cast the stump of his cigar away.
"What on earth is the matter with her now?" said he to himself. "What on
earth have I done?"
The word she had uttered carried half a sob with it, it might have been
the last word of a quarrel.
He stood for a moment glancing around. The wild idea had entered his mind
that she had been there to meet some one and that his intrusion had put
her out.
But there was no one in the garden; nothing but the trees and the flowers,
wind shaken and lit by the moon, the same placid moon that had lit the
garden of Vernons for the lovers of whom he knew nothing except by
hearsay, and for whom he cared nothing at all.
CHAPTER VIII
When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South had
lost some of its charm.
Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its life
from Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney's commonplace
question.
This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details but
she could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised her
above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrasted
with the reality.
The whole day had been working up to that moment in the little arbour,
when her mind, tricked or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to
happiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights by
the voice of reality.
The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself be
over-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. Prue's message,
her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet's letters, the little arbour, those and
the magic of Vernons had worked upon her mind singly and together,
exalting her into a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.
It was as though she had played the part of Juliet for a day, suffered
vaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in
life, known Love as Juliet had known it--for a moment.
The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter and
shrivel everything.
And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.
Looking back on yesterday, the things that had happened seemed of little
interest. Sleep seemed to have put an Atlantic ocean between her and
them.
Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney just coming in from the
garden; he said nothing about the incident of the night before, nor did
she, there were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the darkies, had
been 'kicking up shines,' he had given impudence to Miss Pinckney that
morning. Impudence to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive the meaning
of that statement without a personal knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and a
full understanding of the magic of her rule.
Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions he called his
luggage, and old Darius, the coloured odd job man, was getting a barrow
out of the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth's grandmother's
house, somewhere in the negro quarters of the town. The whole affair of
the impudence and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the effects
were widespread and lasting. Dinah was weeping, the kitchen in confusion;
one might have thought a death had occurred in the house, and Miss
Pinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble and silent by
turns.
"Never mind," said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness of a man
towards domestic affairs. "Seth's not the only nigger in Charleston."
"I'm not bothering about his going," replied Miss Pinckney. "He was all
thumbs and of no manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way
he hid his nature. Time and again I've been good to that boy. He looked
all black grin and frizzled head, nothing bad in him you'd say--and then!
It's like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and there's Dinah going
on like a fool; she's crying because he's going, not because he gave me
impudence. Rachel's the same, and I'm just going now to the kitchen to
give them a talking to all round."
Off she went.
"I know what that means," said Pinckney. "It's only once in a couple of
years that there's any trouble with servants and then--oh, my! You see
Aunt Maria is not the same as other people because she loves every one
dearly, and looks on the servants as part of the family. I expect she
loves that black imp Seth, for all his faults, and that's what makes her
so upset."
"Same as I was about Rafferty," said Phyl with a little laugh.
Pinckney laughed also and their eyes met. Just like a veil swept aside,
something indefinable that had lain between them, some awkwardness
arising, maybe, from the Rafferty incident, vanished in that moment.
Phyl had been drawing steadily towards him lately, till, unknown to her,
he had entered into the little romance of Juliet, so much so that if last
night, at that magical moment when he met her on entering the gate--if at
that moment he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, Love might have
been born instantly from his embrace.
But the psychological moment had passed, a crisis unknown to him and
almost unknown to her.
And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace, suddenly, the vague
reservation that had lain between them, disappeared.
"Do you know," said he, "you taught me a lesson that day, a lesson every
man ought to be taught before he leaves college."
"What was that?" asked Phyl.
"Never to interfere in household affairs. Of course Rafferty wasn't
exactly a household affair because he belonged mostly to the stable, still
he was your affair more than mine. Household affairs belong to women, and
men ought to leave them alone."
"Maybe you're right," said Phyl, "but all the same I was wrong. Do you
know I've never apologised for what I said."
"What did you say?" asked he with an artless air of having forgotten.
"Oh, I said--things, and--I apologise."
"And I said--things, and I apologise--come on, let's go out. I have no
business this morning and I'd like to show you the town--if you'd care to
come."
"What about Miss Pinckney?" asked Phyl.
"Oh, she's all right," he replied. "The Seth trouble will keep her busy
till lunch time and I'll leave word we've gone out for a walk."
Phyl ran upstairs and put on her hat. As they were passing through the
garden the thought came to her just for a moment to show him the little
arbour; then something stopped her, a feeling that this humble little
secret was not hers to give away, and a feeling that Pinckney wouldn't
care. Dead lovers vanished so long and their affairs would have little
interest for his practical mind.
The morning was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive,
intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemed
filled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds.
The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaiety
over which the sky heat hazy beyond the Battery rose in a dome of deep,
sublime tranquil blue.
They stopped to inspect the old slave market.
Then the remains of the building that had once been the old Planters Hotel
held Phyl like a wizard whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in the
old days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled with the luggage of
fine folk on a visit to Charleston on business or pleasure. The Planters
was known all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through the States in
the days when General Washington and John C. Calhoun were living figures.
The ghost of the place held Phyl's imagination. Just as Meeting Street
seemed filled with friendly old memories on her first entering it, so did
the air around the ruins of the "Planters."
Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of St. Michael's they went
into the church.
The silence of an empty church is a thing apart from all other silences in
the world. Deeper, more complete, more filled with voices.
As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged in dusting and tidying let
something fall, and as the silence closed in on the faint echo that
followed the sound they stopped, just by the font to look around them.
Here the spirit of spring was not. The shafts of sunlight through the
windows lit the old fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and the
font crowned with the dove with the light of long ago. Sunday mornings of
the old time assuredly had found sanctuary here and the old congregations
had not yet quite departed.
The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcely
disturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of the
sounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a medium
unshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birds
in marqueterie.
"That was George Washington's pew," whispered Pinckney, "at least the one
he sat in once. That's the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures--other
people sit there now. This is our pew--Vernons. The Mascarenes had it in
the old days, of course."
Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, no
doubt, whilst the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on the
delusions of the world and the shortness of Time.
Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael's, but none
have ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as that
which the old church preaches to those who care to hear.
They turned to go.
Outside Phyl was silent and Pinckney seemed occupied by thoughts of his
own. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation
can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but you
cannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They
visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow,
without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where the
docks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rotting
timbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest and
contemplate things.
"There used to be ships here once," said he. "Lots of ships--but that was
before the war."
He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in his
mind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves,
his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energetic
conduct of affairs, and his other self that was content to let things lie,
to see Charleston just as she was, unspoiled by the thing we call Business
Prosperity. It was a battle between the South and the North in him.
He talked it out to her. Went into details, pointed to Galveston and New
Orleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world and
give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted,
her storehouses empty.
He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wasted
chances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put in
her word.
"Well," said she, "it may be so but I don't want it any different from
what it is."
Pinckney laughed, the laugh of a man who is confessing a weakness.
"I don't know that I do either," said he.
It was rank blasphemy against Business. At the club you would often find
him bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting
by the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenly
came to him that there was something here that business would drive away.
Something better than Prosperity.
It was as though he were looking at things for a moment through her eyes.
They came back through the sunlit streets to find Miss Pinckney recovered
from the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah and
the directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl's hair "went up."
"It's beautiful," said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, "and
more like Juliet than ever. Take the glass and look at yourself."
Phyl did.
She did not see the beauty but she saw the change. Her childhood had
vanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.
PART III
CHAPTER I
In a fortnight Phyl had adjusted herself to her new environment so
completely that to use Pinckney's expression, she might have been bred and
born in Charleston.
Custom and acquaintanceship had begun to dull without destroying the charm
of the place and the ghostly something, the something that during the
first two days had seemed to haunt Vernons, the something indefinable she
had called "It" had withdrawn.
The spell, whatever it was, had been broken that night in the garden, when
Pinckney's commonplace remark had shattered the dream-state into which she
had worked herself with the assistance of Prue, Juliet's letters, the
little secret arbour and the moonlight of the South.
One morning, coming down to breakfast, she found Miss Pinckney in
agitation, an open telegram in one hand and a feather duster in the
other.
It was one of the early morning habits of Miss Pinckney to range the house
superintending things with a feather duster in hand, not so much for use
as for the purpose of encouraging others. She was in the breakfast room
now dusting spasmodically things that did not require dusting and talking
all the time, pausing every now and then to have another glance at the
telegram whilst Richard Pinckney, unable to get a word in, sat on a chair,
and Jim, the little coloured page, who had brought in the urn, stood by
listening and admiring.
"Forty miles from here and ten from a railway station," said Miss
Pinckney, "and how am I to get there?"
"Automobile," said Pinckney.
It was evidently not his first suggestion as to this means of locomotion,
for the suggestion was received without an outburst, neither resented nor
assented to in fact. They took their seats at table and then it all came
out.
Colonel Seth Grangerson of Grangerson House, Grangerville, S. Carolina,
was ill. Miss Pinckney was his nearest relative, the nearest at least with
whom he was not fighting, and he had wired to her, or rather his son had
wired to her, to come at once.
"As if I were a bird," said the old lady. Grangerville was a backwater
place, badly served by the railway, and it would take the best part of a
day to get there by ordinary means.
"A car will get you there inside a couple of hours," said Pinckney.
"As if he couldn't have sent for Susan Revenall," went on she as though
oblivious to the suggestion, "but I suppose he's fought with them again. I
patched up a peace between them last midsummer, but I suppose the patches
didn't stick; he's fought with the Revenalls, he's fought with the
Calhouns, he's fought with the Beauregards, he's fought with the
Tredegars--that man would fight with his own front teeth if he couldn't
get anything better to fight with, and now he's dying I expect he reckons
to have a fight with me, just to finish off with. He killed his poor wife,
and Dick Grangerson would never have gone off and got drowned only for
him--Oh, he's not so bad," turning to Phyl, "he's good enough only for
that--will fight."
"Too much pep," said Pinckney.
"I'm sure I don't know what it is. They're the queerest lot the Almighty
ever put feet on, and I don't mind saying it, even though they are
relatives." Turning to Phyl. "I suppose you know, least I suppose you
think, that the Civil War was fought for the emancipation of the darkies
and that they _were_ emancipated."
"Yes!"
"Well, they weren't--at least not at Grangersons. While the Colonel's
father was fighting in the Civil War, his first wife, she was a Dawson,
kept things going at home, and after the war was over and he was back he
took up the rule again. Emancipation--no one would have dared to say the
word to him, he'd have killed you with a look. The North never beat
Grangerson, it beat Davis and one man and another but it never beat
Grangerson, he carried on after the war just as he carried on before, told
the darkies that emancipation was nigger talk and they believed him.
People came round telling them they were free, and all they got was broken
heads. They were a very tetchy lot, those niggers, are still what are left
of them. You see, they've always been proud of being Grangerson's niggers,
that's the sort of man he is, able to make them feel like that."
"Silas helps to carry on the place, doesn't he?" asked Pinckney.
"Yes, and just in the same tradition, only he's finding it doesn't work, I
suspect. You see, the old darkies are all right, but when he's forced to
get new labour he has to get the new darkies and they're all wrong, and he
thrashes them and they run away. They never take the law of him either. I
reckon when they get clear of Silas they don't stop running till they get
to Galveston."
They talked of other things and then, breakfast over, Miss Pinckney turned
to Richard.
"Well, what about that automobile?"
"I'll have one at the door for you at ten," said he.
She turned to Phyl.
"You'd better go with me--if you'd like to; you'd be lonely here all by
yourself, and you may as well see Grangersons whilst the old man's there,
though maybe he'll be gone before we arrive. We may be there for a couple
of days, so you'd better take enough things."
Then she went off to dress herself for the journey, and an hour later she
appeared veiled and apparelled, Dick following her with the luggage, a
bandbox and a bag of other days.
She got into the big touring car without a word. Phyl followed her and
Pinckney tucked the rug round their knees.
"You've got the most careful driver in Charleston," said he, "and he knows
the road."
Miss Pinckney nodded.
She was flying straight in the face of her pet prejudice. She was not in
the least afraid of a break down or an overset. An accident that did not
rob her of life or limb would indeed have been an opportunity for saying
"I told you so." She was chiefly afraid of running over things.
As Pinckney was closing the door on them who should appear but Seth--Seth
in a striped sleeved jacket, all grin and frizzled head and bearing a
bunch of flowers in his hand. He had not been dismissed after all. When
Miss Pinckney had gone into the kitchen to pay him his wages he had
carried on so that she forgave him. The flowers--her own flowers just
picked from the garden--were an offering, not to propitiate but to
please.
Pinckney laughed, but Miss Pinckney as she took the bouquet scarcely
noticed either him or Seth, her mind was busy with something else.
She leaned over towards the chauffeur.
"Mind you don't run over any chickens," said she.
It was a gorgeous morning, with the sea mists blowing away on the sea
wind, swamp-land and river and bayou showing streets and ponds of sapphire
through the vanishing haze.
Phyl was in high spirits; the tune of Camptown Races, which a street boy
had been whistling as they started, pursued her. Miss Pinckney, dumb
through the danger zone where chickens and dogs and nigger children might
be run over, found her voice in the open country.
The bunch of flowers presented to her by Seth and which she was holding on
her lap started her off.
"I hope it is not a warning," said she; "wouldn't be a bit surprised to
find Seth Grangerson in his coffin waiting for the flowers to be put on
him; what put it in to the darkey's head to give me them! I don't know,
I'm sure, same thing I suppose that put it into his head to give me
impudence."
"You've taken him back," said Phyl.
"Well, I suppose I have," said the other in a resigned voice, "and likely
to pay for my foolishness."
Pinckney had said that it was only a two hours' run from Charleston to
Grangerville, but he had reckoned without taking into consideration the
badness of some of the roads, and the intricacies of the way, for it was
after one o'clock when they reached the little town beyond which, a mile
to the West, lay the Colonel's house.
Grangerville lies on the border of Clarendon county, a tiny place that yet
supports a newspaper of its own, the _Grangerville Courier_. The _Courier_
office, the barber's shop and the hotel are the chief places in
Grangerville, and yellow dogs and black children seem the bulk of the
population, at least of a warm afternoon, when drowsiness holds the place
in her keeping, and the light lies broad and steadfast and golden upon the
cotton fields, and the fields of Indian corn, and the foliage of the woods
that spread to southward, enchanted woods, fading away into an enchanted
world of haze and sun and silence.
When the great Southern moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance
touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey
voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees--all are the
same as of old--and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and
it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the
Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that men are able to
talk to one another at a distance of a thousand miles, fly like birds,
live like fish, and perpetuate their shadows in the "movies."
Grangersons lay a mile beyond the little town, a solidly built mansion set
far back from the road, and approached by an avenue of cypress. As they
drew up before the pillared piazza, upon which the front door opened, from
the doorway, wide open this warm day, appeared an old gentleman.
A very fine looking old man he was. His face, with its predominant nose,
long white moustache and firm cleft chin, was of that resolute and
obstinate type which seems a legacy of the Roman Empire, whose legionaries
left much more behind them in Gaul and Britain than Trajan arches and
Roman roads. He was dressed in light grey tweeds, his linen was
immaculate--youthful and still a beau in point of dress, and bearing
himself erect with the aid of a walking stick, a crutch handled stick of
clouded malacca, Colonel Seth Grangerson, for he it was, had come to his
front door, drawn by the sound of the one thing he detested more than
anything in life, a motor car.
"Why, Lord! He's not even in bed," cried the outraged Miss Pinckney, who
recognised him at once. "All this journey and he up and about--it beats
Seth and his impudence!"
The Colonel, whose age dimmed eyes saw nothing but the automobile, came
down the steps, panama hat in hand, courtly, freezing, yet ready to
explode on the least provocation. Within touch of the car he recognised
the chief occupant.
"Why, God bless my soul," cried he, "it's Maria Pinckney."
"Yes, it's me," said the lady, "and I expected to find you in bed or
worse, and here you are up. Silas sent me a telegram."
"He's a fool," cut in the old gentleman. "I had one of my old attacks last
night, and I told him I'd be up and about in the morning--and I am. Good
Gad! Maria, you're the last person in the world I'd ever have expected to
see in one of these outrageous things." He had opened the door of the car
and was presenting his arm to the lady.
"You can shut the door," said Miss Pinckney. "I'm not getting out. The
thing's not more outrageous than your getting up like that right after an
attack and dragging me a hundred miles from Charleston over hill and
dale--I'm not getting out, I'm going right back--right back to
Charleston."
The Colonel turned his head and called to a darkey that had appeared at
the front door.
"Take the luggage in," said he. Miss Pinckney got out of the car despite
herself, half laughing, half angry, and taking the gallantly proffered arm
found herself being led up the steps of Grangersons, pausing half way up
to introduce Phyl, whom she had completely forgotten till now.
The Colonel, like his son Silas, as will presently be seen, had a direct
way with women; the Grangersons had pretty nearly always fallen in love at
sight and run away with their wives. Colonel Seth's father had done this,
meeting, marrying and fascinating the beautiful Maria Tredegar, and
carrying her off under his arm like a hypnotised fowl, and from under the
noses of half a dozen more eligible suitors, just as now, the Colonel was
carrying Maria Pinckney off into his house half against her will. Phyl
following them, gazed round at the fine old oak panelled hall, from which
they were led into the drawing room, a room not unlike the drawing room at
Vernons, but larger and giving a view of the garden where the oleanders
and cherokee money and the crescent leaves of the blue gum trees were
moving in the wind. Colonel Seth, despite the war, had plenty of roses and
Grangersons was kept up in the old style. Just as in Nuremberg and
Vittoria we see mediaeval cities preserved, so to speak, under glass, so at
Grangersons one found the old Plantation, house and all, miraculously
intact, living, almost, one might say, breathing.
The price of cotton did not matter much to the Colonel, nor the price of
haulage. This son of the Southerner who had refused to be beaten by the
North in the war, cared for nothing much beyond the ring of sky that made
his horizon. Twice a year he made a visit to Charleston, driving in his
own carriage, occasionally he visited Richmond or Durham, where he had an
interest in tobacco; New York he had never seen. He loathed railways and
automobiles, mainly, perhaps, because they were inventions of the North,
that is to say the devil. He had a devilish hatred of the North. Not of
Northerners, but just of the North.
The word North set his teeth on edge. It did not matter to him that
Charleston was picking up some prosperity in the way of phosphates, or
that Chattanooga was smelting ore into money, or that industrial
prosperity was abroad in the land; he was old enough to have a
recollection of old days, and from the North had come the chilly blast
that had blown away that age.
A servant brought in cake and wine to stay the travellers till dinner
time, refreshment that Miss Pinckney positively refused at first.
"You will stay the night," said the Colonel, as he helped her, "and Sarah
will show you to your rooms when we have had a word together."
Miss Pinckney, sipping her wine, made no reply, then placing the scarcely
touched glass on the table and with her bonnet strings thrown back, she
turned to the Colonel.
"Do you see the likeness?" said she.
"What likeness?" asked the old gentleman.
"Why, God bless my soul, the likeness to Juliet Mascarene. Phyl, turn your
face to the light."
The Colonel, searching in his waistcoat pocket, found a pair of folding
glasses and put them on.
"She gets it from her mother's side," said Miss Pinckney, "the Lord knows
how it is these things happen, but it's Juliet, isn't it?"
The Colonel removed his glasses, wiped them with his handkerchief, and
returned them to his pocket.
"It is," said he. Then in the fine old fashion he turned to the girl,
raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
"Phyl," said Miss Pinckney, "would not you like to have a look at the
garden whilst we have a chat? Old people's talk isn't of much interest to
young people."
"Old people," cried the warrior. "There are no old people in this room."
He made for the door and opened it for Phyl, then he accompanied her into
the hall, where at the still open door he pointed the way to the garden.