When they came round to the front of the house they found Colonel
Grangerson and Miss Pinckney coming down the steps.
They were going to the garden in search of Phyl.
"We've been looking at the horses," said Silas, after he had greeted Miss
Pinckney. "No, sir, I did not leave any of the doors open, but I've been
looking for Sam with a blacksnake whip to liven him up. He left the grey
without grooming after she was brought in this morning, and I was rubbing
her down myself when this lady came into the yard."
"I'll skin that nigger," cried the Colonel.
"I reckon I'll save you that trouble, sir," replied the son, as they
turned garden-wards.
Silas had little use for "r's" and said "suh" for "sir" and "wah" for
"war." He was also quite a different person in the presence of his father
from what he was when alone or in the presence of strangers.
In the presence of his father, past generations spoke in his every word
and action, he became sedate, deferential, leisurely. It was not fear of
the elder man that caused this change, it was reflection from him.
The shadows were long in the garden, and away across the pastures,
glimpsed beyond the cypress hedge and bordering the cotton fields, the
pond-shadows cast by the live oaks at noon had become river shadows,
flowing eastward; the murmur of bees filled the air like a haze of sound,
and here and there as they passed a bush coloured flowers detached
themselves and became butterflies.
They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened and sun warmed to enjoy
the view, and the Colonel talked of tobacco and politics and cotton,
including them all in his conversation in the grand patriarchal manner.
Phyl understanding little, and half drowsed by the warmth and the buzzing
of the bees and the voice of the speaker, had given herself up to that
lazy condition of mind which is the next best thing to sleep, when she was
suddenly aroused. She was seated between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silas
had pinched her little finger.
She snatched her hand away, and turned towards him. He was looking away
over the pastures; his profile showed nothing but its absolute
correctness. Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel, who had
finished with cotton, looking at his watch, declared that it was close on
dinner time.
After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the garden. Silas had not
appeared at supper; the Colonel had brought down a book of old
photographs, photographs of people and places dead or changed, and he and
Miss Pinckney became so absorbed in them that they had little thought for
the girl.
She went out to look at the moon, and it was worth looking at, rising like
a honey coloured shield above the belt of the eastern woods.
The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly as
the light of vanished days, white moths were flitting above the bushes,
and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl came across the cotton
fields.
Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was still
warm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.
The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faint
sounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath the
night; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now and
then a whisper of wind rising and dying out across the garden and the
trees.
A faint sound came from behind the seat, and before Phyl could turn two
warm hands covered her eyes.
She plucked them away and stood up.
"I _wish_ you wouldn't do things like that," she cried. "How _dare_ you?"
"I couldn't help it," replied the other, "you looked so comfortable. I
didn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming across
the grass."
"I didn't--and you shouldn't have done it."
"Well, I'm sorry. There, I've apologised, make friends."
"There is nothing to make friends about," she replied stiffly. "No, I
don't want to shake hands--I'm not angry, let us go into the house."
"Don't," said Silas imploringly. "He and she are sitting over that old
album, comparing notes. I saw them through the window, that's why I came
to look for you in the garden. Do you know, I believe the Governor was
gone once on Maria, years ago, but they never got married. He married my
mother instead."
Phyl forgot her resentment.
The faint idea that Colonel Grangerson and Maria Pinckney had perhaps been
more than friends in long gone days, had strayed across her mind, to be
dismissed as a fancy. It interested her to find Silas confirming it.
"Of course, I can't say for certain," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "I
only judge by the way they go on when they're together, and the way he
talks of her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?"
"No, I don't--ever."
"Neither do I. I hope I'll be kicked to death by a horse, or drowned or
shot before I'm forty. I don't want to die in any beds with doctors round
me. I reckon if I'm ever like that I'll drink the liniment instead of the
medicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red label
for my ticket. Sit down for a while and let's talk."
"No, I don't care to sit down."
"I won't touch you. I promise."
Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She was not afraid of Silas in
the least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; it
seemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less an
inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the point
of craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her as
he had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and his
good looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that lay
away at the back of his character and gave colour to this personality,
managed, somehow, to condone his queerness of conduct.
All the same she sat a foot away from him on the seat, and kept her hands
folded on her lap.
Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he spoke.
"Where's this you said you came from?"
"Ireland."
"You don't talk like a Paddy a bit."
"Don't I?"
"Not a bit, nor look like one."
"Have you seen many Irish people?"
"No, mostly in pictures--comic papers, you know, like _Puck_."
"I think it's a shame," broke out Phyl. "People are always making fun of
the Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips--but it's only
ignorant people who never travel who think of them like that."
"That's so, I expect," replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig at
himself or undesirous of a quarrel, "and the next few dollars I have to
spare I'll go to Ireland. I'm crazy now to see it."
"What's made you crazy to see it?"
"Because it's the place you come from."
Phyl sniffed.
"I hate compliments."
"I wasn't complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas
sweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gaze
for a moment, then it flitted away across the bushes.
"Let's forget Ireland for a moment," said she, "and talk of Charleston. Do
you know many people there?"
"I know most every one. The Pinckneys and Calhouns and Tredegars and
Revenalls and--"
"Rhetts."
"Yes--but there are a dozen Rhetts; same as there's half a hundred
Pinckneys and Calhouns, families, I mean. What's his name--Richard
Pinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett."
"He is not."
"He is--Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I've
seen them canoodling often, and every one says they are engaged."
"Well, he's not, or Miss Pinckney would have told me."
"Oh, she's blind. I tell you he is, and she'll be your guardian when he's
married her."
"That she won't," said Phyl.
"How'll you help it? A man and wife are one."
"He's only guardian of my property."
"Well, Heaven help your property when she gets a finger in the pie; she'll
spend it on hats--sure."
This outrageous statement, uttered with a laugh, left Phyl cold. The
statement about Frances Rhett had disturbed her, she could not tell
exactly why, for it was none of her business whom Pinckney might choose to
marry--still--Frances Rhett! It was almost as though an antagonism had
existed between them since that afternoon when she had seen Frances first,
driving in the car with Richard Pinckney.
She rose to her feet and Silas rose also, throwing away the end of his
cigarette.
"Going into the house?" said he.
"Yes!"
"Well, you'll be off to-morrow morning, and I won't see you, for I have to
be out early, but I'll see you in Charleston, though not at Vernons maybe,
for I'm not in love with Richard Pinckney, and I don't care much for
visiting his house. But I'll see you somewhere, sure."
"Good-bye," said she holding out her hand. He took it, held it, and then,
all of a sudden, she found herself in his arms.
Helpless as a child, in his arms and smothered with kisses. He kissed her
on the mouth, on the forehead, on the chin, and with a last kiss on the
mouth that made her feel as though her life were going from her, he
vanished. Vanished amidst the bushes whilst she stood, tottering, dazed,
breathless, outraged, yet--in some extraordinary way not angry. Pulled
between tears and laughter, resentment, and a strange new feeling suddenly
born in her from his burning lips, and the strength that had held her for
a moment to itself.
In one moment, and as though with the stroke of a sword, Silas had cut
down the barrier that had divided her from the reality of things. He had
kissed away her childhood.
Then throwing out her hands as though pushing away some presence that was
surrounding her, she ran to the house. In the hall she sat down for a
moment to recover herself before going into the drawing room, where Miss
Pinckney and the Colonel were closing the book which held for them the
people and the places they had known in youth, and between its leaves who
knows what old remembrances, like the withered flower that has once formed
part of a summer's day.