After luncheon that day Phyl, having nothing better to do, went up to her
room and resumed her book.
Richard Pinckney had not come in to luncheon, he rarely returned home for
the meal, yet all the same, his absence made her uneasy. Suppose Silas
Grangerson had met him--suppose they had fought? She called to
recollection Silas's face just after she had struck him, the insane
malevolence in it, the ugliness that had suddenly destroyed his good
looks. Silas was capable of anything, he would never forgive that blow and
he would try to return it, of that she felt certain. He could not avenge
himself on her but he could on Richard. He imagined that she cared for
Richard Pinckney. Did she? The question came to her again in Miss
Pinckney's voice--she did not even try to answer it. As though it
irritated her, she tossed the book she was holding in her hand to the
floor and lay with her eyes fixed on the lace window curtains that were
moving slightly to the almost imperceptible stirring of the air from
outside.
Beyond the curtains lay the golden afternoon. Sometimes a bird shadow, the
loveliest thing in shadow-land, would cross the curtains, sometimes a note
of song or the sound of a bird's flight from tree to tree would tell that
there was a garden down below. The street beyond the garden and the city
beyond the street could be heard, but were little more evident to the
senses than those things in a picture which we guess but cannot see.
Phyl, allowing her mind to be led by these faint and fugitive sounds, fell
into a reverie. Then she fell asleep and straight way began to dream.
She dreamed that Miss Pinckney was in the room moving about dusting
things, a duster in one hand, an open letter in the other. There was
troublous news of some sort in the letter, but what it was Miss Pinckney
would not say. Then the room turned into the piazza, where Juliet
Mascarene was standing with her hands on the rail, looking down on the
garden.
She seemed to know Juliet quite well and was not a bit surprised to see
her there; she touched her but she did not turn. Phyl slipped her arm
round Juliet's waist and stood with her looking at the garden, and as they
stood thus the most curious dream feeling came upon her, a feeling of
duality, Juliet was herself, she was Juliet. Then as this feeling died
away Juliet vanished and she was standing alone on the piazza.
Then she half woke, falling asleep again to be awakened fully by a sound.
A sound, deep, sonorous, now rhythmical, now confused. It was the sound of
guns.
She had heard it once long ago on the Brighton coast, and now as she sat
up every nerve and muscle tense, and her mind filled with a vague dread,
it came so heavily that the walls of Vernons shook.
She ran on to the piazza. There was no one there. The garden gate was wide
open, there was no one in the garden, and she noticed, though without any
astonishment, that some one had been at work in the garden altering the
paths. A white butterfly was flittering above the flowers, and a red bird
leaving the magnolia tree by the gate, flew, a splash of colour, across to
the garden beyond.
These things she saw but did not heed. She was under the spell of the
guns, the sound rose against the brightness of the day as a black cloud
rises across the sky or a sorrow across one's life, insistent, rhythmical,
a pall of sound now billowing, now sinking, as though blown under by a
wind.
She sought the piazza stairs and next moment was in the garden, then she
found herself in the street.
Meeting Street was almost deserted. On the opposite side two stout,
elderly and rather quaintly dressed gentlemen were walking along in the
direction of the station, but away down towards the Charleston Hotel there
was a crowd.
The sight of this crowd filled her with terror, a terror remote from
reason, an impersonal terror, as though the deadliest peril were
threatening not herself but all things and everything she loved.
She ran, and as she drew close to the striving mass of people she saw men
bearing stretchers.
They were pushing their way through the crowd, making to enter a house on
the right.
Then came a voice. The voice of one man shouting to another.
"Young Pinckney's killed."
The words pierced her like a sword, she felt herself falling. Falling
through darkness to unconsciousness, from which she awoke to find herself
lying on the cane couch in her room.
She sat up.
The curtains were still stirring gently to the faint wind from outside, on
the floor lay the history of the Civil War open just as she had cast it
there before falling asleep. The sound of the guns had ceased, and nothing
was to be heard but the stray accustomed sounds of the city and the
street.
She struggled to her feet and came out on the piazza. The garden gate was
closed and the garden was unaltered. She had dreamt all that, then.
For a minute she tried to persuade herself that it was a dream, then she
gave up the attempt. That was no dream. Everything in it was four square.
She could still see the shadows of the two gentlemen who had been walking
on the other side of the street, shadows cast clearly before them by the
sun.
The first part of her experience had been a dream, all that about Miss
Pinckney and Juliet. But right from the sound of the guns all had been
reality. She had seen, touched, heard.
Glancing back into the room she saw the book lying on the floor, the sight
of it was like a crystallising thread for thought.
She had seen the past, she had heard the guns of the war.
She went back into the room and took her seat on the couch and held her
head between her hands. She recalled the terror that told her that
everything she loved was in danger. When the man had cried out that young
Pinckney was killed, it was the thought of the death of Richard Pinckney
that struck her into unconsciousness. Yet she knew that what she had seen
was the day of the death of Rupert Pinckney, that one of those figures
carried on the stretchers was his figure, that her grief was for him.
Had she then experienced what Juliet once experienced, seen what she saw,
suffered what she suffered?
Was she Juliet?
The thought had approached her vaguely before this, so vaguely and so
stealthily that she had not really perceived it. It stood before her now
frankly in the full light of her mind.
Was she Juliet, and was Richard Rupert Pinckney? She recalled that evening
in Ireland when she had heard his voice for the first time, and the thrill
of recognition that had passed through her, how, at the Druids' Altar that
night she had heard her name called by his voice, the feeling in Dublin
that something was drawing her towards America. Her feelings when she had
first entered Meeting Street and the garden of Vernons, Miss Pinckney's
surprise at her likeness to Juliet. Prue's recognition of her, the finding
of those letters, the finding of the little arbour--any one of these
things meant little in itself, taken all together they meant a great
deal--and then this last experience.
Her mind like a bird caught in a trap made frantic efforts to escape from
the bars placed around it by conclusion; the idea seemed hateful,
monstrous, viewed as reality. Fateful too, for that feeling of terror in
the vision had all the significance of a warning.
Then as she sat fighting against the unnatural, her imaginative and
superstitious mind trembling at that which seemed beyond imagination, a
miracle happened.
The thought of danger to Richard Pinckney brought it about. All at once
fear vanished, the fantastic clouds surrounding her broke, faded, passing,
showing the blue sky, and Truth stood before her in the form of Love.
It was as though the vision had brought it to her wrapped up in that
terror she had felt for him. In a moment the fantasy of Juliet became as
nothing beside the reality. If it were a thousand times true that she had
once been Juliet what did it matter? She had loved Richard Pinckney
always, so it seemed to her, and nothing at all mattered beside the
recognition of that fact.
Perfect love casteth out fear, even fear of the supernatural, even fear of
Fate.
* * * * *
"Richard," said Miss Pinckney that night, finding herself alone with him,
"that Silas Grangerson is in town and I want you to beware of him."
"Silas," said he, "why I saw him at the club, he's gone back home by this,
I expect, at least he said he was going back to-night. Why should I beware
of him?"
"He's such an irresponsible creature," she replied. "I'm going to tell you
something, and mind, what I'm going to tell you is a secret you mustn't
breathe to any one: he's in love with Phyl."
"Silas?"
"Yes. I knew it wouldn't be long before some one was after her. She's the
prettiest girl in Charleston, and she's different from the others
somehow."
The cunning of the woman held her from praise of Phyl's goodness and
mental qualities, or any over praise of the goods she was bringing to his
attention.
"Has he spoken to her about it?" asked he.
"I'm sure to goodness I don't know what I'm about telling you a thing that
was told to me in confidence," said the other. "Well, you promise never to
say a word to Phyl or to any one else if I tell you."
"I promise."
"Well, he's--he's kissed her."
Richard Pinckney leaned forward in his chair. He seemed very much
disturbed in his mind.
"Does she care for him?"
"I don't believe she does--yet. They always begin like that; girls don't
know their minds till all of a sudden they find some man who does."
"Well, let's hope she never cares for Silas Grangerson," said he rising
from his chair. "You know what he is."
He left the room and went out on the piazza where the girl was sitting. He
sat down beside her and they fell into talk.
Richard Pinckney's mind was disturbed.
Only the day before he had proposed to Frances Rhett and had been
accepted. No one knew anything of the engagement; they had decided to say
nothing about it for a while, but just keep it to themselves. The trouble
with Pinckney was that Frances had, so to say, put the words of the
proposal into his mouth. Frances had flirted with every man in Charleston;
out of them all she had chosen Pinckney as a permanent attache, not
because she was in love with him but because he pleased her best. She
matched him against the others, as a woman matches silk.
Pinckney had allowed himself to be led along; there is nothing easier than
to be led along by a pretty woman. When the trap had closed on him he
recognised the fact without resenting it. He was no longer a free man.
Phyl had told him this without speaking. For some time past he had been
admiring her, and yesterday on returning in chains from Calhoun Street,
Phyl picking roses in the garden seemed to him the prettiest picture he
had seen for a long time, but it did not give him pleasure; it stirred the
first vague uneasy recognition that his chains had wrought. He had no
right to look at any girl but Frances--and he had been looking at her for
a year without the picture stirring any wild enthusiasm in his mind.
Miss Pinckney's revelation as to Silas had come to him as a blow. He could
not tell what had hit him or exactly where he had been hit. What did it
matter to him if a dozen men were in love with Phyl? What right had he to
feel injured? None, yet he felt injured all the same.
As he sat by her now in the lamp-lit piazza, the thought that would not
leave his mind was the thought that Silas had kissed her.
Behind the thought was the feeling of the boy who sees the other boy going
off with the ripest and rosiest apple.
And Phyl was charming to-night. Something seemed to have happened to her,
increasing the power of her personality, her voice seemed ever so slightly
changed, her manner was different.
This was a woman, distinct from the girl of yesterday, as the full blown
from the half blown flower.
They talked of trifles for a while, and then he remembered something that
he ought to have mentioned before. The Rhetts were giving a dance and they
had sent an invitation to Phyl as well as Miss Pinckney.
"It will be here by the morning post, I expect," said he. "You'd like to
go, wouldn't you?"
Phyl hesitated for a moment. "Is that--I mean is that young lady Miss
Frances Rhett--the one who called here?"
"Yes," cut in Pinckney, "those are the people. You'll come, won't you?"
"Is Miss Pinckney going?"
"She--of course she's going, she goes to everything, and old Mrs. Rhett is
anxious to meet you."
"It is very kind of them," said Phyl. "Yes, I'll come." But she spoke
without enthusiasm, and it seemed to him that a chill had come over her.
Did she know of his entanglement with Frances Rhett? And could it be--
He put the question aside. He had no right to indulge in any fancies at
all about Phyl as regarded himself.
Then Miss Pinckney came out on the piazza and Phyl rose to go into the
house.