Outside Phyl stood for a moment to breathe the warm scented air and look
around her.
To be treated like a child by any other person than Maria Pinckney would
have incensed her, all the same to be told to do a thing because it was
good for her, or because it was a pleasant thing to do, in the teller's
opinion, was an almost certain way of making her do the exact opposite.
The garden did not attract her, the place did.
That cypress avenue with the sun upon it, that broad sweep of drive in
front of the house, the distant peeps of country between trees and the
languorous lazy atmosphere of the perfect day fascinated her mind. She
came along the house front to the right, and found herself at the gate of
the stable yard.
The stable yard of Grangersons was an immense flagged quadrangle bounded
on the right, counting from the point of entrance, by the kitchen
premises.
There was stable room for forty horses, coach-house accommodation for a
dozen or more carriages.
The car had been run into one of the coach-houses and the yard stood
empty, sunlit, silent, save for the voices of the pigeons wheeling in the
air, or strutting on the roof of the great barn adjoining the stables.
One of the stable doors was open and as Phyl crossed the yard a young man
appeared at the open door, shaded his eyes and looked at her. Then he came
forward. It was Silas Grangerson, and Phyl thought he was the handsomest
and most graceful person she had ever seen in her life.
Silas was a shade over six feet in height, dark, straight, slim yet
perfectly proportioned; his face was extraordinary, the most vivid thing
one would meet in a year's journey, and with a daring, and at times,
almost a mad look unforgettable when once glimpsed. Like the Colonel and
like his ancestors Silas had a direct way with women.
"Hallo," said he, with the sunny smile of old acquaintanceship, "where
have _you_ sprung from?"
Phyl was startled for a moment, then almost instantly she came in touch
with the vein and mood and mind of the other and laughed.
"I came with Miss Pinckney," said she.
"You're not from Charleston?"
"Yes, indeed I am."
"But where do you live in Charleston? I've never seen you and I know
every--besides you don't look as if you belonged to Charleston--I don't
believe you've come from there."
"Then where do you think I've come from?"
"I don't know," said Silas laughing, "but it doesn't matter as long as
you're here, does it? 'Scuse my fooling, won't you--I wouldn't with a
stranger, but you don't seem a stranger somehow--though I don't know your
name."
"Phylice Berknowles," said Phyl, glancing up at him and half wondering how
it was that, despite his good looks, his manhood, and their total
unacquaintanceship, she felt as little constrained in his presence as
though he were a boy.
"And my name is Silas Grangerson. Say, is Maria Pinckney in the house with
father?"
"She is."
"Talking over old times, I s'pose?" said Silas.
"Yes!"
"I can hear them. It's always the same when they get together--and I
suppose you got sick of it and came out?"
"No, they put me out--asked me wouldn't I like to look at the garden."
Already she had banded herself with him in mild opposition to the elders.
"Great--Jerusalem. They're just like a pair of old horses wanting to be
left quiet and rub their nose-bags together. Look at the garden! I can
hear them--come on and look at the horses."
He led the way to a loose box and opened the upper door.
"That's Flying Fox, she's mine, the fastest trotter in the Carolinas--you
know anything about horses?"
"Rather!"
"I thought you did, somehow. Mind! she doesn't take to strangers. Mind!
she bites like an alligator."
"Not me," said Phyl, fondling the lovely but fleering-eyed head protruding
above the lower door.
"So she doesn't," said Silas admiringly, "she's taken to you--well, I
don't blame her. Here's John Barleycorn," opening another door, "own
brother to the Fox, he's Pap's; he's a bolter, and kicks like a duck gun.
She's got all her vice at one end of her and he at the other, match pair."
He whistled between his teeth as he put up the bars, then he shewed other
horses, Phyl watching his every movement, and wondering what it was that
gave pleasure to her in watching. Silas moved, or seemed to move,
absolutely without effort, and his slim brown hands touched everything
delicately, as though they were touching fragile porcelain, yet those same
hands could bend an iron bar, or rein in John Barleycorn even when the bit
was between the said J. B.'s teeth.
"That's the horses," said he, flinging open a coach-house door, "and
that's the shandrydan the governor still drives in when he goes to
Charleston. Look at it. It was made in the forties, and you should see it
with a darkey on the box and Pap inside, and all his luggage behind, and
he going off to Charleston, and the nigger children running after it."
Phyl inspected the mustard-yellow vehicle. Then he closed the door on it,
put up the bar, and, the business of showing things over, did a little
double shuffle as though Phyl were not present, or as though she were a
boy friend and not a strange young woman.
"Say, do you like poetry?" said he, breaking off and seeming suddenly to
remember her presence.
"No," said Phyl. "At least--"
"Well, here's some.
"'There was an old hen and she had a wooden leg, She went to the barn
and she laid a wooden egg, She laid it right down by the barn--don't
you think.'"
"Well?" said she, laughing.
"'It's just about time for another little drink--' some sense in poetry
like that, isn't there? But all the drinks are in the house and I don't
want to go in. I'm hiding from Pap. Last night when he was ratty with
rheumatism, he let out at me, saying the young people weren't any good,
saying Maria Pinckney was the only person he knew with sense in her head,
called me a name because I poured him out a dose of liniment instead of
medicine, by mistake--though he didn't swallow it--and wished Maria was
here. So I just sent Jake, the page boy, off with a wire to her; didn't
tell any one, just sent it. Come on and look at the garden--you've got to
look at the garden, you know."
He led the way past the barn to a farmyard, where hens were clucking and
scratching and scraping in the sunshine; the deep double bass grunting of
pigs came from the sties, by the low wall across which one could see the
country stretching far away, the cotton fields, the woods, all hazed by
the warmth of the afternoon.
"Let's sit down and look at the garden," said he, pointing to a huge log
by the near wall--"and aren't the convolvuluses beautiful?"
"Beautiful," said Phyl, falling into the vein of the other. "And listen to
the roses."
"They grunt like that because it's near dinner time--they're pretty much
like humans." He took a cigarette case from his pocket and a cigarette
from the case.
"You don't mind smoking, do you?"
"Not a bit."
"Have one?"
"I daren't."
"Maria Pinckney won't know."
"It's not her--I smoked one once and it made me sick."
"Well, try another--I won't look if you are."
"They'll--she'll smell it."
"Not she, you can eat some parsley, that takes the smell away."
"Oh, I don't mind telling her--it's only--well, there."
She took a cigarette and he lit it for her.
"Blow it through your nose," he commanded, "that's the way. Now let's
pretend we're two old darkies sitting on a log, you push against me and
I'll push against you, you're Jim and I'm Uncle Joseph. 'What yo' crowding
me for, Jim,'" he squeezed up gently against her, and Phyl jumped to her
feet.
He glanced up at her, sideways, laughing, and for the life of her she
could not be angry.
"Don't you think we'd better go and look at the garden?" said she.
"In a minute, sit down again. I won't knock against you. It was only my
fun. We'll pretend I'm Pap, and you're Maria Pinckney, if you like. You've
let your cigarette go out."
"So I have."
"You can light it from mine."
Phyl hesitated and was lost.
It was the nearest thing to a kiss, and as she drew back with the lighted
cigarette between her lips, she felt a not unpleasant sense of wickedness,
such as the virtuous boy feels when led to adventure by the bad boy.
Sitting on a log, smoking cigarettes, talking familiarly with a stranger,
taking a light from him in such a fashion with her face so close to his
that his eyes-- They smoked in silence for a moment.
Then Silas spoke:
"Do you ever feel lonesome?" said he.
"Awfully--sometimes."
"So do I."
Silence for a moment. Then:
"I go off to Charleston when I feel like that--once in a fortnight or
so--Where do you live in Charleston?"
"I live with Miss Pinckney--I thought you knew."
"You didn't say that. You only said you came with her."
"Well, I live with her at Vernons. I'm Irish, y' know. My--my father died
in Charleston, and I came from Ireland to live with Miss Pinckney. Mr.
Richard Pinckney is my guardian."
"Your which? Dick Pinckney your guardian! Why, he's not older than I
am--that fellow your guardian--why, he wears a flannel petticoat."
"He doesn't," cried Phyl, flinging away the cigarette, which had become
noxious, and roused to sudden anger by the slighting tone of the other.
"What do you mean by saying such a thing?"
"Oh, I only meant that he's too awfully proper for this life. He goes to
Charleston races, but never backs a horse, scarcely, and one Mint Julep
would make him see two crows. He's a sort of distant relation of ours."
Phyl was silent. She resented his criticism of her friend, and just in
this moment the something mad and harum scarum in the character of Silas
seemed shown up to her with electrical effect. Criticism is a most
dangerous thing to indulge in, unless anonymously in the pages of a
journal, for the right to criticise has to be made good in the mind of the
audience, unless the audience is hostile to the criticised.
Then she said: "I don't know anything about Mint Juleps or race courses,
but I do know that Mr. Pinckney has been--is--is my friend, and I'd rather
not talk about him, if you please."
"Now, you're huffed," cried Silas exultingly, as though he had scored a
point at some game.
"I'm not."
"You are--you've flushed."
Phyl turned pale, a deadly sign.
"I'd never dream of getting out of temper with _you_," said she.
It was his turn to flush. You might have struck Silas Grangerson without
upsetting his balance, but the slightest suspicion of a sneer raised all
the devil in him. Had Phyl been a man he would have knocked him off the
log. He cast the stump of his cigarette on the ground and pounded it with
his heel. Had there been anything breakable within reach he would have
broken it. Her anger with him vanished and she laughed.
"You've flushed now," said she.