They started at ten o'clock next morning for Charleston, the Colonel
standing on the house steps and waving his hand to them as they drove off.
Silas was nowhere to be seen, he had gone out before breakfast, so the
butler said, and had not returned. Miss Pinckney resented this casual
treatment.
"He ought to have been here to bid us good-bye," said she, as they cleared
the avenue. "He's got the name for being a mad creature, but even mad
creatures may show common courtesy. I'm sure I don't know where he gets
his manners from unless it's his mother's lot, same place as he got his
good looks."
"Why do you say he's mad?" asked Phyl.
"Because he is. Not exactly mad, maybe, but eccentric, he swum Charleston
harbour with his clothes on because some one dared him, and was nearly
drowned with the tide coming in or going out, I forget which; and another
day he got on the engine at Charleston station and started the train,
drove it too, till they managed to climb over the top of the carriages or
something and stop him--at least that's the story. He'll come to a bad
end, that boy, unless he mends his ways. Lots of people say he's got good
in him. So he has, perhaps, but it's just that sort that come to the worst
end, unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it under in time."
Phyl said nothing. Her mind was disturbed. She had slept scarcely at all
during the night, and her feelings towards Silas Grangerson, now that she
was beyond his reach, were alternating in the strangest way between
attraction and repulsion.
They would have repelled the thought of him entirely but for the
instinctive recognition of the fact that his conduct had been the result
of impulse, the impulse of a child, ill governed, and accustomed to seize
what it wanted. Added to that was the fact of his entire naturalness. From
the moment of their first meeting he had talked to her as though they were
old acquaintances. Unless when talking to his father, everything in his
manner, tone, conversation was free, unfettered by convention, fresh, if
at times startling. This was his great charm, and at the same time his
great defect, for it revealed his want of qualities no less than his
qualities.
Do what she could she was unable to escape from the incident of last
night, it was as though those strong arms had not quite released their
hold upon her, as though Pan had broken from the bushes, shown her by his
magic things she had never dreamed of, and vanished.
It was nearly two o'clock when they reached Vernons. Richard Pinckney was
at home, and at the sight of him Phyl's heart went out towards him. Clean,
well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a breath of fresh sea air after
breathing tropical swamp atmosphere.
Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel somewhat the same.
"Yes, we're back," said she, as they passed into the dining-room where
some refreshments were awaiting them, "and glad I am to be back. Vernons
smells good after Grangersons. Oh, dear me, what is it that clings to that
place? It's like opening an old trunk that's been shut for years. I told
Seth Grangerson, right out flat, he ought to get away from there into the
world somewhere, but there he sits clinging to his rheumatism and the
past. I declare I nearly cried last night as he was showing me all those
old pictures."
"He's not very ill then," said Richard.
"Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the telegram. Just an attack of
rheumatism."
She went upstairs to change and the two young people went into the garden,
where Richard Pinckney was having some alterations done.
On the day Phyl's hair went up it seemed to Richard that a new person had
come to live with them. Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman--and
such a young woman! He had never considered her looks before, to young men
of his age and temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood in
them is concerned, little more and sometimes less than things. But Phyl
with her hair up was not to be denied, and had he not been philandering
after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total stranger suddenly seen, it
is quite possible that a far warmer feeling than admiration might have
been the result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.
He showed her the alterations he was making, slight enough and causing
little change in the general plan of the garden.
"I scarcely like doing anything," said he, "but that new walk will be no
end of an improvement, and it will save that bit of grass which is being
trodden to death by people crossing it, then there's all those bushes by
the gate, they're going, those behind the tree,--a little space there will
make all the difference in the world."
"Behind the magnolia?"
"Yes."
"I wish you wouldn't," said Phyl.
"Why?"
"Because they have been there always and--well, look!"
She led the way behind the tree, pushed the bushes aside and disclosed the
seat.
She no longer felt that she was betraying a secret. Her experience at
Grangersons had in some way made Vernons seem to her now really her home,
and Richard Pinckney closer to her in relationship.
"Why, how did you know that was there?" said Richard. "I've never seen
it."
"Juliet Mascarene used to sit there with--with some one she was in love
with. I found some of her old letters and they told about it--see, it's a
little arbour, used to be, though it's all so overgrown now."
"Juliet," said he. "That was the girl who died. I have heard Aunt Maria
talk about her and she keeps her room just as it used to be. Who was the
somebody?"
"It was a Mr. Rupert Pinckney."
"I knew there was a love story of some sort connected with her, but I
never worried about the details. So they used to come and sit here."
"Yes, he'd come to the gate at night and she'd meet him. Her people did
not want her to marry him and so they had to meet in secret."
"That was a long time ago."
"Before you were born," said Phyl.
He looked at her.
"Aunt is always saying how like you are to her," said he, "but she's mad
on family likenesses, and I never thought of it. It may be a want in me
but I've never taken much interest in dead relatives; but somehow, finding
this little place tucked away here gives one a jog. It's like finding a
nest in a tree. How long have you known of it?"
"Oh, some time. I found a bundle of her old letters--" she paused. Richard
Pinckney had taken his place on the little seat, just as one sits down in
an armchair to see if it is comfortable, and was leaning back amidst the
bush branches.
"This is all right," said he, "sit down, there's lots of room--you found
her letter, tell us all about it."
Phyl sat down and told the little story. It seemed to interest him.
"The Pinckneys lost money," said he, "and that's why the old Mascarene
birds were set against her marrying him, I suppose. Makes one wild that
sort of thing. What right have people to interfere?"
"Money seems everything in this world," said Phyl.
"It's not--it seems to be, but it's not. Money can't buy happiness after
one is grown up. You remember I told you that over in Ireland; when candy
and fishing rods mean happiness money is all right--after that money is
useful enough, but it's the making of it and not the spending it that
counts,--that and a lot of things that have nothing to do with money. If
the Mascarenes hadn't been fools they'd have seen that a poor man with
kick in him--and the Pinckneys always had that--was as good as a rich man,
and those two might have got married."
"No," said Phyl, "they never could have got married, he had to die. He was
killed, you know, at the beginning of the war."
"You're a fatalist."
"Well, things happen."
"Yes, but you can stop them happening very often."
"How?"
"Just by willing it."
"Yes," said Phyl meditatively, "but how are you to use your will against
what comes unexpectedly. Now that telegram yesterday morning took me to
Grangersons with Miss Pinckney. Suppose--suppose I had broken my leg or,
say, fallen into a well there and got drowned--that would have been
Fate."
"No," said Pinckney, "carelessness, the telegram would not have drowned
you, but your carelessness in going too close to the well."
"Suppose," said Phyl, "instead of that, Mr. Silas Grangerson had shot me
by accident with a gun--the telegram would have brought me to that without
any carelessness of mine."
"No, it couldn't," said Pinckney lightly, "it would still have been your
own fault for going near such a hare-brained scamp. Oh, I'm only joking,
what I really mean is that nine times out of ten the thing people call
Fate is nothing more than want of foresight."
"And the tenth time it is Fate," said Phyl rising.